A Film Unfinished

In an East German archive, three reels of silent film lay untouched and forgotten amid the chaos of World War II and its Communist aftermath. 40 years later, on an American airbase, a British film historian came across these reels simply titled, "Das Ghetto." The deceptively simple name, however, belied the power of its contents.

As we quickly learn in A Film Unfinished, the recently released documentary about the making of “The Ghetto” by Israeli filmmaker Yael Hersonsky, “The Ghetto” refers to the Warsaw ghetto and the three reels of film are the missing companions to a fourth reel--discovered in the early 1960s. Until recently, that single reel was used by historians and Holocaust museums as an accurate account of the Jewish ghetto experience. (One might wonder why this was accepted as truth when it is doubtful that Jews would have access to camera, never mind the freedom to openly film their lives, but that is the subject for another post). Together, these four short films were the raw footage—shot in May of 1942--for a planned Nazi propaganda movie. The film was never completed and it is unlikely we will ever learn how the Nazis intended to use the material.

Hersonsky’s documentary is the first to examine the film in its entirety and to present a more accurate picture of its filming of the movie as well as of life in the Warsaw ghetto. The 63 minute work serves as the backbone of her film into which she intersperses three key organizing elements: poignant commentary from survivors of the ghetto watching the film for the first time, a reenactment of an interview between Willi Weis, one of the cameramen of the Nazi film, and an unnamed interrogator, and excerpts from diaries by Adam Cherniakov--head of the Warsaw ghetto Jewish Council--and Emanuel Ringleblum--the ghetto's unofficial historian--about the making of the movie.

Hersonsky’s self-defined objective was to recontextualize the Nazi film before the last of the survivors die and leave future scholars unable to separate fact from fiction. Her painstaking process of peeling back the layers of misconceptions that surround the film and its subjects is thorough and crucial. But what makes this film more than just an educational aide, is how it challenges its audience to examine its own preconceptions of ghetto survival. Now that we know the circumstances of the making “Das Ghetto,” it would be easy to paint all of the scenes as clearly staged. But the film, perhaps unconsciously, also forces its audience to accept some hard truths about life in the ghetto--namely that for many imprisoned there, they lived as best they could. One scene depicts, for example, a group of young, attractive men and women smiling as they sunbathe in a patch of dirt. Without context, it would be easy to assume that this was staged, but in fact scenes like this did occur, even outside of the range of Nazi cameras. As one of the survivors commented as she watched, people were still concerned about how they looked even in the midst of all of the chaos and brutality around them. It was a way to maintain their humanity, their sense of self. Another scene showed a well-dressed woman ignoring beggar children on the street. Although we might chalk this, too, up to Nazi propaganda, another survivor simply offered the explanation that without this act of self-preservation, one could not survive. Later, as this same survivor cried as she watched two corpses lie untended on the sidewalk while saying that she was so happy that she could cry as she watched the frame. Her crying made her human, she said, something that she could not succumb to while living in the ghetto.

When we view the Holocaust today, it is easy to see its victims in broad strokes of black and white. The primary goal of A Film Unfinished was to properly contextualize the subjects of the Nazi footage and to further demonstrate the chilling reach of the Nazi propaganda machine. But this film also succeeds in the far more difficult task. It offers its audience a glimpse of the shades of gray that hover, often ignored, just beneath the surface.

The French Railroad on Trial

Reuters reported this week that 100 French and American plaintiffs are suing SNCF, the French national railroad company, for their role in transporting French Jews to concentration camps during the Holocaust. The group, made up of Holocaust survivors and their descendants, insist that it’s not about the money, but rather about exposing the crimes in which the rail company participated. “‘It is about money but not in the way they mean,’” said William Wajnryb, whose father died at Auschwitz. “When people make accusations about money, they should look at the SNCF first of all,” he said. “The core of this story is that the SNCF got money for deporting Jews.’”

I certainly understand the motivation that is driving these plaintiffs to sue the SNCF. The trauma of the Holocaust coupled with the French government’s decades-long refusal to acknowledge its role in contributing to that trauma is enough to want to fight for whatever compensation might be available. That is logical. Just because it is logical however, doesn’t make it right. Had this case been brought to court 40 or 50 years ago, when the money would have made a tangible difference, I would be more sympathetic. But today, with most of the survivors gone and many of their children successful, they don’t need the money to help them survive.

If the money is meant to serve a purely symbolic purpose, then I look forward to reading that each of the plaintiffs is receiving a one dollar bill (or one euro coin) from the SNCF in recognition of their past. But in the absence of such a proposal, there are many other ways to draw attention to the SNCF’s crimes that could have a greater impact.

If the group insists on some sort of significant monetary compensation, they should use their winnings to set up a foundation to help victims of current genocides or donate it to other non-profit organizations that advocate for increased Holocaust education. Another alternative is for the SNCF to publicly acknowledge their guilt, something it has already begun to do. In ‘The SNCF under the German Occupation,’ a self-commissioned study, it was revealed that during the war SNCF workers were, “quite willing to protest vigorously to the Germans about excessive demands in other areas, [they were] ready to pack thousands of Jews and others off to Eastern Europe in plainly inhuman conditions without any apparent qualms.” Reuters does not say how or if the report has been made public, but it is an important step forward.

Alain Lipietz, a spokesman for the plaintiffs, suggested that this trial serves a wider purpose by demonstrating that crimes such as those committed by the SNCF will never be forgotten until justice is served. But justice will not be served if its rewards help only a handful of people. Roughly 76,000 French Jews were persecuted and killed during the Holocaust with the help of the SNCF. No amount of money or admission of guilt can bring them back. So instead of making this trial about reparations for the past, it should be about working towards a future where such gestures will no longer be needed. Only then will it be worth it.

How Do You Teach Human Rights?

On International Holocaust Memorial Day (January 27) this year, a report from the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) was released outlining the current Holocaust education curriculum in EU secondary schools. The report advocates linking the study of that era with more contemporary instances of human rights crimes As the authors of the report ask, “Is education about the history of the Holocaust an end in itself? How can knowledge about the past be used for mastering the present? Is there a natural link between Holocaust education and human rights education? How can young people be encouraged to reflect self-critically on their role in society?”

The FRA report brings to light deficiencies in the classroom that may have led to the recent embrace of right-wing ideology. (Exhibit A: Switzerland and the Netherlands). It is not enough, the authors’ believe, to teach about the Holocaust and to assume that broader lessons of acceptance and tolerance will be learned. Maybe I’m cynical, but I don’t think greater concentration on making the lessons of the Holocaust relevant for today’s students, through a hazily-defined “human rights education,” is the best way forward either.

First of all, I am uneasy with using the Holocaust as a pedagogical morality tool. While it is important for every generation to understand its country’s role during that period, it is equally important for them to understand the historical framework which allowed it to occur. Racism, xenophobia, and anti-Semitism come in all forms and from various sources. To paraphrase a French-Jewish journalist, anti-Semitism is not only about hearing the jackboots marching down the street or Nazi flags flying.

Secondly, yes. Human rights is an important issue. It is the cornerstone of many European countries’ constitutions. And yet, those rights are diminished time and again. When politicians liken the Koran to Mein Kampf (as Geert Wilders, the leader of the Dutch ‘Party for Freedom’ did) with no political repercussions and when the construction of religious buildings is made illegal, citizens’ rights are being violated. Recommending greater human rights education as a way to combat these trends is a sound abstract idea. But this report offers few suggestions on how to translate that lofty goal into a concrete reality.

Insisting that all graduating students should know about Universal Declaration of Human Rights–as one member of an FRA focus group suggested—is not enough. Human rights education should include weaving information into the school day about the various religious and ethnic groups that live in Europe. Accompanying lessons on the Holocaust should be discussions of contemporary Jewish life in the Netherlands. Discussions about the headscarf or the minaret controversy (if this is even broached in the classroom) should involve a larger discussion about Muslim traditions. The report acknowledges that the past needs to be linked to the present to have a real effect. But instead of relying primarily on pedagogically successful visits to concentration camp or museums of tolerance to make a difference, it should also be linked to issues in their students’, and their own, backyards.

Otherwise, it will be one more thing to forget after graduation and will result in little change at the polls.

News Links Round-Up

Headlines from around the world:

Berlin is going the way of Hungary with its new park to "disgraced monuments." That's now at the top of my list of things to do in Germany.

German Holocaust survivors use hip-hop to tell their story.

A new ruling from the European Court on Human Rights forces Bosnia and Hertzagovina to change their laws about who can run for high office.

And more on difficulties facing Muslims in Germany.

Complex Justice

The current trials involving alleged Nazi concentration camp guards provoke some complex questions about what constitutes justice. The question is not so much should they be punished, but rather what form that punishment should take. I discuss this in greater detail a recent post for Moment Magazine.

But there are some other areas which I didn't explore: the concept, for instance, of collective guilt. If the families of these former Nazis knew about their father's/grandfather's past, and didn't do anything, should they be held accountable as well? If so, in what way? Should they also be jailed? If they didn't know, should they be pressured to take responsibility for their father's/grandfather's actions? What what form would that pressure take?

And what do these trials offer Holocaust survivors and their families today? A spokesperson for Yad Vashem suggests that it offers some modicum of justice. But again, what kind of justice? All of the accused are elderly and many in ill health. If we morally can't hold their families responsible for their actions, then there is no long-term punishment for these men. We won't be cutting them off from life or happiness prematurely. Yes, they will at long last be imprisoned, but it is only temporary. Others may argue that these trials demonstrates that Germany is exorcising its sins. But few people would argue that Germany hasn't done enough to come to terms with its past. Would these trials really mean the difference between forgiving Germany or not? Would it mean opening up the discussion about the Holocaust in the way that the Eichmann trial did in the 60s? Again, I think not.

I certainly don't have all the answers, (although I do make some suggestions) but would like to hear what some of you think.

Do You Want to Friend Heino?

"My name is Henio Zytomirski. I am seven-years-old. I live on 3 Szewska Street in Lublin [Poland]." This excerpt is from the profile of Heino Zytomirski, a young addition to Facebook. Why is this newsworthy? Because Heino is dead. He was killed in the Holocaust before the age of 10. His profile and status updates are written by Piotr Buzek, a 22 year-old staff member of the Brama Grodzka Cultural Center in Lublin. The Center says that it is harnessing new technology to teach the internet generation about the history of Jews in Poland and to keep their memory alive.

To be perfectly honest, I feel queasy about this approach. First of all, much of what the Center does focuses on Lublin’s Jewish past. Which is important and necessary. But in doing so, it looks backwards and not ahead. There is increasing evidence that Jewish communities in Poland not only exist, but are growing. Just look at the articles published by JTA over the past few days. So why isn’t the Center celebrating and advertising those triumphs? It could easily choose a young 20-something contemporary, living, Polish Jew to talk about his life, experiences, hopes to friends around the world.

Secondly, how can Heino’s story, as horrific as it is, help us today? If more non-Jews are aware of Jewish life in Poland pre-Holocaust and about their subsequent extinction through Heino and his Facebook page, then, again, I applaud the Center’s efforts. But it does no good to focus solely on the Holocaust and not address contemporary issues and conflicts. It is not enough to focus on the past with 20/20 hindsight and proclaim what we should have or would have done. It is too easy to demonstrate support for a long-deceased boy from the comfort and safety of our own homes via computer. Efforts like these are gimmicks, superficial stabs at righting old wrongs that we can never right, however we might wish it otherwise. No matter how many friends Heino makes, they will never be able to save him from death.

Issues of anti-Semitism and intolerance and racism continue to exist in Poland, just as they exist everywhere. There are contemporary victims of other types of oppression and violence around the world whose fates are not sealed and for whom our actions can make a difference. These are the people that we should be creating Facebook pages for. The Center should harness the power and energy of social media and its users to offer a means to organize and fight against injustice that can actually make a difference. If nothing else, we owe to it Heino.

Four Seasons Lodge

Four Seasons Lodge is a lyrical yet powerful mediation on love, aging, and the importance of friendship. The film, shot in 2006, follows a group of 50 couples, all Holocaust survivors, on their last annual trip to the Four Seasons Lodge, one of the few remaining resorts in the Catskills. Shot in a Robert Altman-esque style, we are given fleeting glimpses into the lives of these individuals, while much remains a mystery. Unlike most documentaries about Holocaust survivors, the focus of this film is not the survivors’ wartime experiences. In fact, we learn very little about their lives during that time aside from some brief shots of arm tattoos, a few allusions to Auschwitz, and a smattering of faded black and white photographs. Instead, the real centerpiece is the enduring friendship that have sustained these men and women in their postwar lives. This retreat in the Catskills provides not only a break from city life, but also a refuge where they could feel comfortable being themselves, no matter their demons, while surrounded by others who shared their experiences.

The movie is powerful in its simplicity. It has no real narrative arc and the filmmakers don’t push the survivors to tell their stories. Rather the camera allows us a peek the inner workings of this family that they’ve created for themselves out of the ashes of Holocaust. Warts and all.

It's now playing at Quad Cinemas.

For a more in depth review of the film, click here.

Watch the trailer here:

Swiss banks Aren't the Only Ones Holding Out

Le Monde published an interesting article today regarding the payment of 25 million Shekels ($6.7 million dollars) by three Israeli banks to The Company for Restitution of Holocaust Victims Assets (an organization set up to oversee reparations to Holocaust survivors and their descendants). Apparently, goods belonging to Holocaust survivors (including land, furniture, etc...) have been held by 5 Israeli banks for the past sixty years. Only recently have 3 of these 5 banks agreed to find the survivors (and their families) and give them their financial due.

What the article doesn't address however, is how or why Israeli banks have these goods and how they acquired them. From the survivors themselves? From Swiss banks? From relatives? Interestingly, I haven't found any other articles about this issue in Israeli or Jewish papers.

Holocaust Preservation in the Ukraine

There's been a recent flurry of interest in the Ukraine as the Kiev city council toyed with building hotels for its 2012 European Football championships on the site of the Babi Yar massacre. The massacre, carried out from September 29 to Oct. 1, 1941 by the Nazis, killed 33,000 Jewish men, women, and children. Due to pressure from local and international Jewish and human rights groups, the city council ultimately decided against building the hotels.

Not surprisingly, all of the media coverage I've seen has been from the Western/Israeli Jewish perspective. Any space given to the Ukrainians has been quotes from Jewish leaders hypothesizing why the Kiev city council acted as they did. For instance, the Jerusalem Post offers this from Dr. Efraim Zuroff, director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Jerusalem, "perhaps it is not surprising that such a decision was made in a country in which there was extensive participation of locals in the mass murder of the Jews...Since their independence, [Ukraine] has not investigated a single case of a local Nazi war criminal, let alone brought any such murderers to justice."

It is all well and good to write articles vilifying those who wish to destroy Holocaust memorial sites, but what new do we gain from those pieces? Not much. Dr. Zuroff attributes Kiev’s lack of respect for Holocaust victims to anti-Semitism. But that kind of rhetoric neglects to take into account the cultural and societal narratives that evolved in the Soviet Bloc around World War II and the Holocaust that sharply diverge from those in the West and in Israel. More helpful would be some insight into the thinking behind the hotel proposal or questioning if the city council understood the full significance of the site. Anti-Jewish sentiment or Holocaust denial may have played a part, but in the often corrupt Ukrainian government, I’m sure that there were other baser motives as well—like greed.

To build a hotel on the Babi Yar site would be grossly inappropriate. And even if we do gain a deeper understanding of the Ukrainian position, this does not make the council’s initial decision less offensive. However, there is nothing to be lost by trying to insert more nuance into the discussion, even if the conclusions remain the same.

Have you heard of Irena Sendler?

I know I'm a little behind the curve here but did any of you see the film, The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler on the Hallmark Channel? I Tivoed it when it aired but, faced with the prospect of seeing another melodramatic Holocaust movie (complete with clichéd Nazi brutality and weeping Jewish victims), I let it fall down in my queue.

Well, I came across it last week and ended up watching it. For all its shortcomings (curiously enthusiastic Catholic families eagerly welcoming Jewish children into their homes and their families, minimal addressing of Polish anti-Semitism, etc...), the story itself made compelling TV. Irena Sendler, a Catholic social worker in Warsaw, became so incensed at the treatment of Jews inside the Warsaw ghetto that she conspired with a small group of trusted colleagues to smuggle children out of the ghetto. In the end, she managed to save over 2,500 Jewish children (the famous Oskar Schindler, for example, saved 1,100).

Yet the most fascinating part of the story is what was not explored on screen. In typical made-for-TV fashion, the movie ends when Sendler is reunited with her lover and we are left to assume that they lived happily ever after in post-war Poland. However, while perusing Hallmark Channel’s website after the movie, I realized how wrong that was. In reality, she lived in obscurity following the war, was labeled a fascist by the Communist regime and—even after 1989--chose not to discuss her role in saving these children because of lingering anti-Semitism in Poland. Instead, it fell to a group of high school students in Kansas to uncover her story and bring it to light.

Addressing the psychological aftershocks of total war is a far messier business than the typical good vs. evil narrative so often marketed to the Hallmark audience. But if the directors chose to expand the arc of the movie to encompass the postwar life of their heroine, it would have provided an additional, richer, dimension to the story and placed Sendler’s extraordinary actions into even greater relief. That would have been a movie I would have watched right away.

Guarding Memory

There has been a recent wave of media coverage of a fund-raising campaign by the Auschwitz museum to raise over 120 million Euros, or $200 million, to put towards to the upkeep and refurbishing of the barracks and other buildings at the Auschwitz concentration camp that have fallen into disrepair due to age and exposure. The money raised would to be used towards laying down new floorboards in the barracks, replacing rusted hardware, among other improvements, including dismantling the infamous sign, “Arbeit Macht Frei,” temporarily replacing it with a replica while the original is being refurbished. Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, the director of the international Auschwitz center, asserts that all these changes, will be done in such a way as to exactly match the materials and building practices of the 1940s. The goal, Bartoszewski assures us, is not to ‘Disnify’ Auschwitz, but rather to maintain the site and its authenticity.

Yet it is exactly this authenticity that risks being lost in the name of preservation. The camp is visited by hundreds of thousands of visitors a year who seek, above all, a genuine experience and the hope that being in exact spot where so much suffering occurred will allow them deeper insight into an event and a place is often impervious to true understanding. Will that understanding truly come from an ersatz camp, made up of refurbished barracks and polished signs?

Auschwitz has been preserved to play a specific role in our contemporary world: that of ‘lieu de memoire,’ a tangible yet fragile connection to a brutal era that every day recedes further into the rearview mirror of history. Indeed, more than almost any other symbol of that era, this camp has become synonymous with the Holocaust and its brutalities. In reading these articles, it is clear that for the advocates of this fund-raising campaign, there is a direct line between the physical presence of these buildings, and the feelings of horror and sadness that they provoke, and the ability of subsequent generations to absorb and pass on the story of the Shoah.

Indeed, as Piotr M.A. Cywinski, member of the Auschwitz museum administration insists, “allowing the camps to return to nature …is not a responsible alternative for remembrance," “That's being completely irresponsible. Allowing the same to happen to Auschwitz would simply be finishing what the Nazis started - "realizing the SS's dreams. That's why we are trying to keep the memory.” (Click here to read the full article)

The museum leadership is right to be concerned about the education of future generations. But they are mistaken if they truly believe that is only through the physical presence of the buildings that their children will absorb the lessons of the Holocaust. In an era when hundreds of novels, biographies, memoirs, and other works of scholarship are published yearly throughout the Western world, not to mention the numerous Holocaust movies to appear from Hollywood directors, it is clear that subsequent generations have in fact taken this history to heart and continue to seek out ways to represent it in all its complexity. This multimedia approach does not override or negate the importance of the site nor of its preservation. However, they must be taken into account by those for whom the loss of the buildings spell the end of Holocaust remembrance.

There are many reasons why the camp must be sustained as a site of remembrance and bereavement. But the real fund-raising emphasis should be on raising money to support programs within Poland and throughout the world that support not only Holocaust education, but also education about the roots of other forms of contemporary hatreds: racism, bigotry, and xenophobia. For it is most essential that this generation understand that the hatred that led to the Holocaust did not die in Auschwitz nor does it only concern Jews. It unfortunately lives on in many forms and against a multitude of groups. One day, the buildings that comprised Auschwitz the camp may very well crumble and disintegrate and return, as Mr. Cywinski says, back to nature. But if the Auschwitz museum and others like it champion education for future generations, the knowledge of the camp and the inhumanity that it represents will be impetus enough for them guard and pass on the memory.