Three television dramas with Holocaust themes won top honors in their categories at Sunday night’s 53rd Annual Primetime Emmy Award ceremony, proving once again the lasting impact of the Nazi horror in our popular culture.
"Anne Frank" on ABC was named best miniseries for its powerful, four-hour long exploration of Anne’s life, from her happy school days, through her two years in hiding during which she wrote her famous diary, and her final days at Bergen-Belsen.
"Conspiracy," a dramatic reenactment of the 1942 Wansee Conference, which drew up the blueprint for the Nazi extermination of European Jewry, won two awards for HBO: one for actor Kenneth Branagh, who portrayed SS leader Reinhard Heydrich, and the other for Loring Mandel, who wrote the script.
Brian Cox, in the role of Field Marshall Hermann Goering, won supporting actor honors for the TNT miniseries "Nuremberg," a dramatization of the 1945-46 trial of top Nazi war criminals.
Other Jewish winners:
- Barbra Streisand earned her fourth career Emmy for the Fox special "Barbra Streisand: Timeless."
- Television veteran Doris Roberts took home the award for best supporting actress in a comedy series for the CBS show "Everybody Loves Raymond."
The awards, held at the Shubert Theatre, had been twice postponed following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Actress Ellen DeGeneres hosted the show and drew the evening’s biggest laugh when she observed, "I’m in a unique position as host because, think about it, what would bug the Taliban more than seeing a gay woman in a suit, surrounded by Jews?"
