This 1938 Soviet feature is considered to be the first dramatic film on the subject of anti-Semitism. The story involves a Jewish surgeon at a Berlin hospital who is systematically stripped of his duties by hospital officials, harassed by Nazi terrorists and then murdered by storm troopers when he finally attempts to publicly denounce the Fascists. His son joins the Communist party and becomes a leader of the underground anti-Fascist movement. Professor Mamlock was hailed by critics in the United States for its bold and realistic treatment of German anti-Semitism (“a topic which Hollywood, with its fear of jeopardizing foreign markets, has not dared to touch” New York Times); but even the New York Times chided the Russian filmmakers for bringing in the Communist element (“a selfish political argument”). Annette Insdorf notes in Indelible Shadows: Film and the Holocaust that the film was banned in Chicago as “purely Jewish and Communist propaganda against Germany” and that some other states followed suit. “Professor Mamlock was the first film to tell Americans that Nazis were killing Jews,” Insdorf writes, “however, what must have made the censors really nervous was that it is a political film that places its faith in Communism.... Professor Mamlock implies that the doctor dies not simply because he is a Jew, but because he never allowed politics to touch his life....”