Ben Mendelsohn as Director Krennic, who basically plays Reinhard Heydrich. Courtesy of Disney+

By PJ Grisar April 23, 2025

Since the beginning of the franchise, Star Wars has invited Nazi comparisons — but usually superficial ones.

The white-armored Stormtroopers, Darth Vader in his swooped cowl and Imperial bridge officers in Hugo Boss-inspired feldgrau, had all the markers of space fascism while largely sidestepping racial ideology or tactics.

But Tony Gilroy’s Andor is another animal, and in its season two premiere, it took its cue from the infamous meeting where the Nazis outlined the final steps of the Holocaust. Andor has even created a new sort of space Jew for the occasion.

Forwarding the News

Thoughtful, balanced reporting from the Forward and around the web, bringing you updated news and analysis each day.

Terms(Required)

I agree to the Forward's Terms of Service and Privacy Policy

Email(Required)

At a snow-capped mountain lair, Director Orson Krennic (Australian Jewish actor Ben Mendelsohn) gathers a select circle of the Empire’s most decorated bureaucrats, advising them that this particular meeting is not to be included on their calendars.

“No notes, no records, none of you were here,” Krennic says, before lowering a shade on the window and playing a cheery video of Ghorman, a planet of silk textile manufacturers marked for annihilation.

If all this secrecy seems a lot like the Wannsee Conference, it should.

“The very first scene that Krennic has where he talks about Ghorman, that’s based on the Wannsee convention — the Nazi convention where the Nazis got together and planned the final solution over a business lunch,” Andor creator Tony Gilroy told The Hollywood Reporter.

At the 1942 Wannsee Conference — indeed a luncheon — shorthand minutes were taken, but the conference’s chair Reinhard Heydrich ordered, at the meeting’s close, that the notes were not to be verbatim. Only a protocol summary of the meeting survives.

Dramatizing Wannsee, Gilroy and director Ariel Kleiman chose a more dramatic locale than the Berlin suburb villa, which overlooked its eponymous lake, instead opting for what the Reporter describes as Star Wars’ answer to Hitler’s Eagle Nest in Bavaria and Hohenwerfen Castle in Austria.

That the scene is chilling — and recalls the quite good HBO film of the meeting, 2001’s Conspiracy — is a testament to Gilroy’s more sophisticated take on George Lucas’ universe.

But the Empire’s target of Ghorman — needed for its deposits of a mineral called kalkite — is more than a bit suggestive of the Nazis’ chosen victims. As we watch the video of the doomed weavers spinning fibers, there is a flash of what looks remarkably like a Torah scroll with wooden dowels being closed. (I suspect Kleiman, who is Jewish, knew exactly what he was doing.)

The people on the street — who aren’t cutting cloth — are dressed a lot like pre-war Europeans, including a man in a skullcap who sells his wares from a suitcase.

And then we get to the propaganda: two Goebbelsian figures are behind a whisper campaign to “weaponize galactic opinion” against the Ghor to paint them as a people who are clannish, prideful, arrogant, tend to overcharge and, as we see demonstrated, work in a space spider shmatta business.

There’s even a bit of a Stab-in-the-Back myth at play having to do with shipping lanes or something. (Frankly, my eyes glaze over whenever Star Wars takes up supply chains or trade embargoes.)

While we haven’t seen the Ghor in the flesh yet, I wouldn’t be surprised if they are also accused of funding some form of Space Marxism. We’ll have to stay tuned to learn more about these people — who Wookieepedia identifies as including some brave partisans — but any sort of space Jew that improves upon the template of Watto is to be welcome in this galaxy.

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a gift today!

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

$90 $180

$360

Other amount