Memories of the Catskill Game Farm tend to carry plenty of nostalgia for locals who visited the family-owned petting zoo in Catskill during its 73 years in operation. But a new documentary turns a spotlight on a particularly dark corner of the Greene County tourist attraction\u2019s history.<\/p>\n
\u201cAmerican Zoo\u201d had its U.S. premiere on June 4 at the Tribeca Film Festival. Directed by British filmmaker Tim Travers Hawkins, the film uses footage discovered in 2022 during a visit to the former zoo to explore its troubled past \u2014 including links to a Nazi-era animal-breeding program aimed at reviving extinct animal species.<\/p>\n
The property once occupied by the Catskill Game Farm has undergone a series of dramatic renovations, redesigns, sales and piecemeal divisions since the zoo closed in 2006, but early on in its run as a popular destination\u00a0\u2014 widely regarded as the country\u2019s first privately owned zoo\u00a0\u2014 the facility hired German scientist Heinz Heck Jr., according to The Overlook<\/a>, which first reported on the film\u2019s premiere.<\/p>\n After joining the farm\u2019s staff in 1959, Heck began secretly experimenting on animals in an attempt to breed extinct species back into existence, including a type of wild cattle once found in Europe, according to the film. The program was based on the work of his uncle, Lutz Heck, a scientist who had worked under Nazi leader Hermann\u00a0G\u00f6ring, Adolf Hitler\u2019s second in command during World War II. Heinz\u2019s experiments led to a series of genetic birth defects in many of the zoo\u2019s animals.<\/p>\n During a Q&A following the film\u2019s Tribeca premiere, Hawkins said Lutz Heck was \u201ca fascist,\u201d while Heinz Heck was \u201cprobably in the Nazi Youth.\u201d<\/p>\n The Catskill Game Farm\u2019s former location is now home to a hotel and campground that have been on the market for several years<\/a>, and \u201cAmerican Zoo\u201d puts a lens on the difficulty of reconciling the zoo\u2019s rich history and pleasant memories for so many visitors with the darker elements of its past that remained largely unknown until recent years.<\/p>\n That past also includes questionable treatment\u00a0\u2014 both morally and legally\u00a0\u2014 of the zoo\u2019s animals and their capture from the wild by the Lindemann family, the Catskill Game Farm\u2019s founders, as seen in the footage Hawkins recovered from an abandoned cafeteria at the former farm.\u00a0<\/p>\n