TIME OF THE LITZMANNSTADT GHETTO.

FILM IMAGESINFERNO IN THE PROMISED LAND. PROJECT CATALOGUE

TIME OF THE LITZMANNSTADTGHETTO.

FILM IMAGES

INFERNO IN THE PROMISED LAND. PROJECT CATALOGUE

Concept: Tomasz MajewskiAcademic editing: Tomasz Majewski, Joanna PodolskaAuthors: Małgorzata Andrzejewska-Psarska, Ewa Ciszewska, Tomasz Majewski, Joanna Podolska, Bartosz ZającResearch and co-editing: Tamara SkalskaProofreading (Polish version): Emilia MichalakDesign and typesetting: agpositivo.plCover design: agpositivo.plEnglish version: Dorota DekiertProofreading (English version): Nigel Axworthy

Unless no detailed information is given below the photographs in this catalogue, the published materials have been made availablefor free by their makers, producers or distributors of the films presented in this catalogue as a part of license rights, and by the State Archive in Łódź.

ISBN 978-83-63182-15-1

History of the Litzmannstadt Ghetto 8

Time of the Litzmannstadt Ghetto. Film Images 15

The memory of the Łódź ghetto 19

FILMS 27The Time of the Ghetto 29Litzmannstadt Getto 30The Face of an Angel 31The Story of Chaim Rumkowski and the Jews of Lodz 32Lodz Ghetto 33Photographer 34The King and the Jester: a Soul Song to Ghetto Lodz 35Mostowicz 36Zamir: Jewish Voices Return to Poland 37To Stay Alive 38Radegast Station 39The Gypsy camp in Łódź 40From the depths I call 41A Baluty Ghetto 42Radegast 43Litzmannstadt Ghetto. Inferno in the Promised Land 44Memorial Radegast Bahnhof 45My Lodz is No More: The Story of Yosef Neuhaus 46Song of the Lodz Ghetto 47Aj waj 48Aspangbahnhof 1941. A Story of a Female Friendship 49Linia 41 50Give Me Your Children 51

ESSAyS 53Holocaust and Representation. Notes on three films about the Łódź ghetto 55

Litzmannstadt Ghetto – Affective Memory, Photography and Music 69

A Journey to the Cursed Land. Western European Jews in documentary films about the Litzmannstadt Ghetto 84

Contents

The ghetto in Łódź functionedfor five years as a huge labourcamp. Photo courtesy of the State Archive in Łódź

On February 8, 1940, the 'Lodzscher Zeitung'daily newspaper published a directive from Johann Schafer, the German police president,about the creation of a separate housing districtfor Jews in the Stare Miasto and Bałuty districts.On February 12, 1940, a mass resettlement action began: Jews had to move to the ghetto,whereas Poles and Germans were moved out ofthat area to other parts of the city. At that time,Łódź was incorporated into the Reich and waspart of the Warthegau region. On April 11, 1940it was renamed Litzmannstadt to honour theGerman general, Karl Litzmann (1850-1936)

History of the LitzmannstadtGhetto

who rendered great service to Germany duringWWI as a commander of the German army in theso-called battle of Lodz in 1914. On April 30,1940, the ghetto was closed and strictly isolatedfrom the rest of the city. Initially, 160,000 Jewsfrom Lodz were incarcerated there. In the autumn of 1941, the Nazis brought 20,000 peo-ple to the ghetto. They were Jews from Europe(including Vienna, Berlin, Frankfurt, Hamburg,Luxembourg and Prague) and another 20,000from the liquidated ghettoes in nearby towns (in-cluding Zduńska Wola, Sieradz, Pabianice,Ozorków and Włocławek). Additionally, two other

1940 1944

camps were located within the ghetto bound-aries: a camp for Gypsies, where the Nazis im-prisoned over 5,000 Roma and Sinti fromBurgenland at the end of 1941 and beginning of1942, and a camp for Polish children, which op-erated from December 1942 till the end of thewar.As early as January 1942, the deportations toChełmno nad Nerem (Kulmhof) began. By theautumn of 1942, the Nazis had deported andmurdered over 70,000 people there. No one sur-vived. The ghetto was turned into a large labourcamp. The confined district of Litzmannstadt sur-vived until the summer of 1944 with approxi-mately 72,000 inhabitants. It was the last large

Jewish population in the occupied Poland. All theother ghettoes were liquidated in 1942 and1943. The liquidation of the Łódź ghetto beganon June 23, 1944. The first transports were dis-patched to Chełmno nad Nerem; after a shortbreak they resumed and were sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau. The last transport was dispatchedfrom Radegast station on August 29, 1944.Over 43,000 people died of hunger and emaci-ation in the ghetto. Their graves are located atthe Jewish cemetery in the Bałuty district. Ap-proximately 150,000 people lost their lives inChełmno, Auschwitz-Birkenau and other camps.Out of the several thousand survivors of the Lodzghetto only a few are still alive.

Children playing at Marysin.Photo courtesy of the State Archive in Łódź

A still from Photographer [Fotoamator]directed by Dariusz Jabłoński,1998 – courtesy of Apple Film Production

15Time of the Litzmannstadt Ghetto. Film images

Pierre Norra, an outstanding French historian, often em-phasized that it is not visible and tangible physical ob-jects that connect and oblige our memory, creating whathe called lieux de memoire [sites of memory], but certainimages, relics, traces and entire cultural landscapeswhich we recognize as having symbolic meaning. The ex-termination of the Jews was an unprecedented event.Numerous thinkers have ascribed it to the oppositetrend: the 'extermination of meaning', lack of form, help-lessness in terms of one's attempts to express it. 'Lackof representation' and 'unwitnessed event' are well-known definitions which connect 'the duty of remem-brance' to this disturbing consequence of the times oforganized homicide. The memory of the Holocaust, al-luding to Norra, 'has no place' (non-lieux de memoire).There are, however, specific places where the Holocausttook place. One of them is the Łódź ghetto. This confineddistrict for Jews remains largely untouched to this day;many buildings, frontages and quarters still exist. Thistopography enables us to contextualize the location ofthe images and accounts of the ghetto experience con-veyed by the victims and survivors. The documentary films we would like to present to yougather different forms of remembrance which intersectin the words, photographs and songs of the Łódź ghetto.They are intertwined – or even tangled – threads ratherthan distinct places of memory. Articles written by EwaCiszewska, Bartosz Zając and the undersigned will helpyou to untangle some of the more detailed questionsabout the films presented. Getting to know the world ofthe Łódź ghetto, seeing it through the eyes of childrenand survivors brought to Łódź from Western Europe, lis-tening to their emotions expressed through music,makes us want to ask: what do these songs and imageswant with us? I would dare to answer cautiously: theywant us to experience them. If it happens, we will surelyremember it.

Time of the Litzmannstadt Ghetto. Film Images — Tomasz Majewski

Deportations from the ghetto began in January 1944 and continued till the autumn. The deportation actionwas reactivated in the summer of1944. Photo courtesy of the StateArchive in Łódź

A still from The Ghetto in Bałuty [Ghetto jménem Baluty], directed by P. Štingl,Poland, Czech 2008– courtesy of yeti FilmsSp. z o.o.

19e memory of the Łódź ghetto

Ten years ago, when a review of documentary films(Song of the Murdered Jewish Nation) was being pre-pared for the 60th anniversary of the liquidation of Litz-mannstadt Ghetto, one of the greatest surprises wasthe discovery of Daniel Szylit’s film, Litzmannstadt Gettoproduced in 1965 by the Educational Film Studio inŁódź. At that time, the Łódź ghetto seemed to be forgot-ten. However, when I looked deeper into the matter itturned out that since 1945 the ghetto survivors hadbeen trying to commemorate the martyrdom of the ŁódźJews. Every year, symbolic ceremonies were performedat the Jewish cemetery. From the very beginning, thesurvivors wanted to build a memorial to the Jews mur-dered in the ghetto in Bałucki Rynek, addressing theirrequest to the changing authorities of the city. As nothinghad been done for ten years, in 1956, the Jewish inhab-itants of Łódź founded a memorial and placed it withinthe boundaries of the Jewish cemetery. Up to this day, atthe end of August, religious ceremonies are organizedand Kadish for the dead is said at that memorial.

The ghetto survivors did not give up. They kept fight-ing for a memorial dedicated to the Jewish populationof Łódź to be built in the city. On the 20th anniversary ofthe liquidation of the ghetto (1964), Jewish activists, in-cluding survivors, Barbara Beatus and Arnold Mostow-icz, held several meetings with Michalina Tatarkówna,who at that time was the first secretary of the Łódź com-mittee of Polish United Party of Workers [PZPR], and rep-resentatives of the City Council, reminding them aboutthe plans to build a memorial. In spite of their efforts,they achieved nothing but a formal ceremony in theNowy Theatre to commemorate the 20th anniversary ofthe liquidation of the Łódź ghetto, and another cere-mony at the Jewish cemetery. However, on the rising tideof interest in the ghetto, several important books werepublished. The works published in the 1960s include

The memory of the Łódź ghetto— Joanna Podolska

20 Joanna Podolska

the Diary of Dawid Sierakowiak (a newly discovered tes-timony of ghetto life), the diary of Jakub Poznański andKupiec Łódzki [The Merchant of Łódź] by Adolf Rudnicki,inspired by the figure of Chaim Rumkowski (although itdid no good to the ghetto and its leader, marking himfor many years as a collaborator and Nazi marionette).First and foremost, however, the Chronicle of the ŁódźGhetto edited by Danuta Dąbrowska and Lucjan Do-broszycki – a very important document of the Holo-caust, written by the ghetto prisoners almost day by dayand containing information on daily life in the confineddistrict between 1941 and 1944 - began to be pub-lished.

In the mid-1960s the Educational Film Studio madethe aforementioned Litzmannstadt Ghetto documen-tary, directed by Daniel Szylit, a survivor of the ghetto.This short film presents the most significant facts aboutthe Jewish district created by the Nazis in occupiedŁódź. After exactly 50 years, Szylit’s film is still relevant,although it contains a certain dose of propaganda char-acteristic of its times: it highlights the profile of ZulaPacanowska, a communist deported from the ghetto toChełmno nad Nerem in 1942 and murdered there. Italso emphasizes the role of Union Left [Lewica Związ-kowa], an anti-fascist organization which operated in theghetto. Approximately at the same time, the Bulletin ofthe Jewish Historical Institute published extensive re-ports on the ghetto by members of that organization.

It could seem that the tragic fate of the Jews of Łódźwas about to be commemorated. One of the streets inthe Old Town was named after Zula Pacanowska, wellremembered by her old comrades... Two volumes of theChronicle of the Łódź Ghetto, covering the years 1941– 1942, were published and the next ones were readyto go to press., but as March 1968 approached, every-thing changed. The Chronicle of the Łódź Ghetto was of-ficially withdrawn from printing, and the materials weredestroyed. Its editors were forced to leave Poland. It wasthe end of discussion about the Jewish past of the cityand the tragic chapter of its history which terminatedmulticultural Łódź.

After twenty years, during the post-Solidarity thaw,the topic returned. In the meantime, veterans and anever-smaller group of survivors would hold their annualAugust meetings in front of the memorial at the Jewish

21e memory of the Łódź ghetto

cemetery. In 1984, the Regional Nazi Crimes ResearchCommittee in Łódź organized a symposium Getto w Ło-dzi 1940-1944 [The Łódź ghetto 1940-1944], and a plaque commemorating 205,000 Jews and 5,000 Gyp-sies was attached to the building at 1, LimanowskiegoStreet, on the spot where a Gestapo post was locatedduring the war. An exhibition of documents from theghetto was opened. A museum project about the Łódźghetto at Bałucki Rynek was discussed along with a pro-posal to mark out tourist routes in the former ghettoarea. Although no decision was made within the nextten years, historians, archivists and journalists weredelving deeper into the topic and filled the emptyspaces in the history of Łódź with new publications.

Children's performance in the community centre at Krawiecka Street, 1941.Photo courtesy of the StateArchive in Łódź

22 Joanna Podolska

In the 1980s, the first documentary films about theghetto appeared in Sweden and the USA. They were notshown in Łódź. We were still behind the Iron Curtain.The extermination of the Jews of Łódź started being dis-cussed during international symposiums. Memoirs fromthe ghetto were published in various languages and his-torians from all around the world came to Łódź to re-search archival materials on the spot. The State Archivein Łódź holds an enormous collection of documents,which constitute an obligatory material for all seriousacademic publications, exhibitions and films.

In the 1990s, two important exhibitions on the Łódźghetto were organized in Germany and in Israel in coop-eration with Łódź institutions: Our Only Way is Work inFrankfurt am Main (1990) and The Last Ghetto. Life inthe Łódź Ghetto 1940-1944 in Jerusalem (1995).TheGerman exhibition was later brought to Łódź and formany years it was open to public in the Historical Mu-seum of Łódź.

In 1994, fiftieth anniversary commemoration cere-monies of the liquidation of the ghetto were organizedin the new post-communist Poland. It became possibleagain to discuss certain topics which had formerly beenpushed aside. There was another symposium and newpublications. A chance to talk about Łódź with formerghetto prisoners came up. Survivors were coming toŁódź in growing numbers with their children and grand-children in order to search for their roots and traces oftheir families. Country borders posed no problem any-more. TV Łódź and Contra Studio together with the Is-raeli director, Edward Etler produced two films: TheDeath District and Under the Roofs of Holon, featuringthe Łódź Jews who had survived the ghetto and were liv-ing in Israel at that time. The city mayor, MarekCzekalski visited members of the Organization of For-mer Inhabitants of Łódź in Israel to signal that the con-temporary inhabitants of Łódź were ready for dialogue.

On the rising tide of interest in the history of JewishŁódź, the Monumentum Iudaicum Lodzense Foundationwas established to save the heritage of the Łódź Jews.Its first president was Arnold Mostowicz. For almosttwenty years, it has been working to preserve the Jewishcemetery and the memory of the Łódź Jews. A statue ofMoses with the Ten Commandments tablets, also calledThe Monument of the Decalogue, was unveiled in Park

23e memory of the Łódź ghetto

Staromiejski close to the place where a synagogue wasonce located.

From that time on, the topic of the ghetto was con-stantly discussed in Łódź, but it was not until MayorJerzy Kropiwnicki decided to organize the commemora-tion of the 60th anniversary of the liquidation of Litz-mannstadt Ghetto on an international scale, thatvarious educational, cultural and commemorative ac-tions were undertaken which changed the cityscape ofŁódź and its world image.

It was a real revolution. A memorial to the victims ofthe ghetto was erected at Radegast station, the Sur-vivors’ Park, where since 2004, trees have been plantedto symbolize the people and families who survived theHolocaust, and commemorative plaques were placedon former ghetto buildings to inform people of the func-tion they performed in the ghetto. Numerous publica-tions, special exhibitions and educational programmesfor young people emerged. Commemoration cere-monies were attended by guests from all around theworld, including several hundreds survivors and theirfamilies. They were moved and grateful for the memoryof their presence in the history of Łódź and their tragedyduring the Second World War.

Additionally, the Mayor of Łódź commissioned severalfilms concerning the ghetto; documentaries aboutRadegast station, the history of Litzmannstadt Ghettoand the Gypsy Camp were produced. In 2009, a 3D film,Likwidacja 08.1944 [Liquidation 08.1944] directed byMichał Bukojemski was produced on the initiative of theCity Hall. The screenplay writers, Michał Bukojemski andMarek Miller, created a feature story about the last mo-ments of the ghetto; the staged scenes with actors andextras were shot using stereoscopic technology andcombined with 3D-processed archival photographs fromthe ghetto. A Dolby Digital soundtrack was added, cre-ating an unusual film about the tragic events of the lastdays of the ghetto. Its premiere took place on August27, 2009, during the commemoration ceremony of the65th anniversary of the liquidation of the ghetto. At thesame time, a Righteous among the Nations Memorialwas unveiled in the Survivors’ Park to honour the Poleswho had rescued the Jews during WWII.

The next stage was creation of a new place – TheCentre for Dialogue, which would remember the history

24 Time of the Litzmannstadt Ghetto. Film images

of the Łódź Jews and the ghetto all year long and notonly during anniversary ceremonies. In 2010, the CityCouncil of Łódź established the The Centre for Dialogue,named after Marek Edelman, the last leader of the up-rising in the Warsaw ghetto and a honorary citizen ofŁódź. Since January 2014, the Centre has been operat-ing in its new home in the Survivors’ Park.

Commencing our preparations for the 70th anniver-sary of the liquidation of Litzmannstadt Ghetto we havedecided to bring documentaries about the ghetto fromvarious places in the world and show them during thecommemorative ceremonies in August. Up to this day,several dozen of documentaries, TV programmes andbiographical films about the Łódź ghetto have been pro-duced in Poland and abroad; they often feature ghetto

End of the summer camp season at Marysin, September 1941. Photo courtesy of the StateArchive in Łódź

25e memory of the Łódź ghetto

survivors, who tell the story of their life and families. Theauthors are mainly professional documentary filmmak-ers, but also those inspired to make a films about familystories. These films register the memory of the Łódźghetto, but more and more often the historical eventsbecome a pretext for artistic reflection.

We wanted to create a database of such films. Wehave invited Tomasz Majewski, a film theoretician work-ing for the University of Łódź and Jagiellonian Universityin Cracow and Ewa Ciszewska and Bartosz Zając fromthe University of Łódź Institute of Modern Culture to co-operate with us. Our film project, Inferno in the Prom-ised Land has been co-financed by the Ministry ofCulture and National Heritage.

This year, our film review will feature 23 titles, but wewant to continue this project in the future. Most of thefilms presented in August 2014 will be available in thearchive which is coming into being in the Marek Edel-man Centre for Dialogue in Łódź.

FILMS

29Films

DIRECTED By: Frédéric RossifSCREENPLAy: Madeleine Chapsal,Frédéric RossifCINEMATOGRAPHy: Marcel FradétalNARRATOR: Nadine Alari, Jean PerrotHISTORICAL CONSULTATION: Michał BorowiczMUSIC: Maurice Jarre, vocals: Devy Erlih, Emile KacmannPRODUCTION DESIGNER:Roger FleytouxPRODUCER: Pierre BraunbergerPRODUCTION: Les Films de la PléiadeLENGTH: 79 minLANGUAGE: French with Polish subtitlesPRODUCTION DATE: 1961FEATURING: Wiera Gran and anonymous survivors of the Warsaw ghetto living in FranceARCHIVAL MATERIALS USED: materials shot by the Nazis in the Warsaw ghetto in 1942, fragments of Der ewige Jude by F. Hippler(1940), accounts, letters, films and photographs from the archives of the Lohamei Hagetaot Kibbutz, Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw, yad Vashem Institute in Jerusalem; archival films from the collections of Film Polski, Filmarchive DDR Berlin, Centre dedocumentacion de juif contempo-raine, S.C.A. Paris, yad Vashem Institute

e Time of the Ghetto

The film tells the story of the Warsaw ghetto. It begins andends with images of a sea of rubble, which was all that re-mained of Warsaw in 1945. The archival photographs showeveryday life in the ghetto, its stratification and contrasts:famine and performances in cafes; a beach in the confineddistrict (with no access to the river); removal of dead bodiesfrom the streets; cheap soup kitchens. The archival materialsare counterpointed with a historical commentary and wit-nesses' accounts of dehumanization, terror, famine, loss ofrelatives. The narration is conducted in chronological orderfrom the begginning of the ghetto until its liquidation and theuprising in April 1943.

T.M.

FILMING LOCATIONS IN ŁÓDŹ: Wolborska/Jakuba Street (9), a non-existent section of Wschodnia Street, at present it is a part of ParkStaromiejski (filmed in 1940 by Fritz Hippler's crew). These materi-als were thought to have been shot in Warsaw and therefore wereincluded in the film.

[Le temps du ghetto]

30 Films

The film, Litzmannstadt Ghetto was made for the 20th an-niversary of the liquidation of the ghetto. It begins with the in-formation about the Jewish population in pre-war Łódź,followed by subsequent stages of the ghetto's history: creationof the ghetto, organization of industry, deportations, Szperaand liquidation in 1944. The film highlights a communistgroup led by Rachela Róża Pacanowska-Krengel. DirectorDaniel Szylit (1924 – 1987) was a survivor of the Łódź ghetto,where he lost his parents. His sister survived, but after the liq-uidation she was sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau, and from thereto another concentration camp. As a result of Count FolkeBernadotte's action, she was rescued and brought to Sweden.Daniel Szylit stayed in the ghetto as a member of the 'cleaningcommando unit'. In 1949, he joined the Film School and laterworked as a second director with Jerzy Skolimowski(Walkower, 1965) and Henryk Kluba (Słońce wschodzi raz nadzień, 1967). Due to the anti-Semitic campaign of March1968, he immigrated to Israel and died there in 1987. T.M.

DIRECTED By: Daniel SzylitCO-DIRECTOR: Irena KukulskaSCREENPLAy: Daniel SzylitCINEMATOGRAPHy: Bogdan ChamczykEDITING: Anna KoziejaHISTORICAL CONSULTATION:Lucjan DobroszyckiMUSIC: Piotr HertelPRODUCTION DESIGNER:Zdzisław SochaPRODUCER: Wytwórnia Filmów Oświatowych w Łodzi [EducationalFilm Studio of Łódź]LENGTH: 16 min 51 sLANGUAGE: PolishPRODUCTION DATE: 1965ARCHIVAL MATERIALS USED: archival photographs of the Lodz ghetto by Mendel Grossman and HenrykRoss, pre-war photographs of Łódźfrom the collection of The Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw andState Archive in Lodz; Dawid Sier-akowiak's diary, Jankiel Herszkowicz'ssongs

Litzmannstadt Getto

31Films

DIRECTED By: Zbigniew ChmielewskiSECOND DIRECTOR: Wojciech WójcikSCREENPLAy: Zbigniew Chmielewski,Stanisław LothDIALOGUES: Stanisław GrochowiakCINEMATOGRAPHy: Stanisław LothFILM SET DESIGN:Bolesław KamykowskiEDITING: Zenon PióreckiCONSULTATION: Stefan Grelewski,Tadeusz Raźniewski, Józef WitkowskiMUSIC: Piotr MarczewskiSOUND: Wiesław ĆwiklińskiPRODUCTION DESIGNER:Tadeusz BaljonPRODUCTION: Zespół Filmowy Nike,WFF w Łodzi [Feature Film Studio in Łódź]LENGTH: 91 min.LANGUAGE: Polish and German dialoguesPRODUCTION DATE: 1970CAST: Jiri Vrstala – Augustin, MarekDudek - Tadek, Zygmunt Malawski – guard in the workshop, WojciechPszoniak – Tadek's father, Alicja Zommer – female guard (tossing breadcrumbs), SaturninŻórawski – commander of the camp

e Face of and Angel

A feature film. In 1942, a camp for children was establishedwithin the Łódź ghetto between Bracka, Górnicza and EmiliiPlater Street. The children prisoners were brought from allaround Poland and abroad. About 12,000 children wentthrough the camp, called Polen-Jugendverwahrlager, before itwas liberated by the Red Army. Less than a thousand survived.Numerous minor prisoners were killed in the camp. Childrenclassified as 'Nordic type' were sent to the Reich, and thoseof 16 years of age were transferred to concentration campsfor adults or directly to Auschwitz-Birkenau. The main character of Chmielewski's film is 11 year-old Tadek,a half-orphan boy. Through his eyes, we see everyday life in a concentration camp, where children are treated as cruellyas adults in other concentration camps. An ambiguous rela-tionship develops between Tadek and Augustin, one of theGerman guards. Influenced by the medical opinion of one ofthe Nazi doctors, Augustin plans to take the angel-facedNordic boy home to his wife. He alternately mollifies and hu-miliates Tadek - the object of his attention. The boy begins togamble for the highest stake: the opportunity to survive thewar.

A still from The Face of anAngel [Twarz anioła ]source: Studio Filmowe Kadr/ Filmoteka Narodowa

[Twarz anioła ]

32 Films

A documentary about the history of the Lodz ghetto from itsbeginnings in February 1940, to its liquidation in August1944.The authors depict in detail the subsequent stages ofthe organization of the ghetto. The key figure is ChaimRumkowski, appointed as the Eldest of the Jews in Litz-mannstadt Ghetto. The Nazi decree which ordered that JewishCouncils come into being was an important element of the ex-termination strategy. Rumkowski's role in those plans is dubi-ous. The authors resign from any ultimate evaluations. Theypainstakingly reconstruct the living conditions in the ghettousing a rich collection of archival photographs. At the end ofthe film, the photographic material is supplemented with filmfootage – the only record of the ghetto shot by an anonymousGerman soldier. B.Z

DIRECTED By: Peter Cohen, Bo KuritzenSCREENPLAy: Bo KuritzenCINEMATOGRAPHy: Mendel Grossman, Henryk RossNARRATOR: Karl-Ake Mohlin EDITING: Peter CohenHISTORICAL CONSULTATION:Lucjan DobroszyckiPRODUCER: Peter CohenPRODUCTION: POJ Film Production ABand Swedish Television STV 1LENGTH: 55 min.LANGUAGE: English and SwedishPRODUCTION DATE: 1982ARCHIVAL MATERIALS USED: from the collection of The British Museum (London), Bundesarchiv(West Germany), The Museum of Polish Jews (Warsaw), The Wiener Library (London), The yIVO Institute for Jewish Research (New york)

e Story of Chaim Rumkowski and the Jews of Lodz

FILMING LOCATIONS IN LODZ: Jojne Pilcer Market Square (4), Zgierska Street, Kościelny Square (5), Rynek Bałucki (15), Radegaststation (37), Nowomiejska Street (7), Wojska Polskiego Street atKościelny Square (4).

33Films

DIRECTED By: Alan Adelson,Kathryn TavernaSCREENPLAy: Alan AdelsonCINEMATOGRAPHy: Józef Piwkowski,Eugene SquiresPHOTOGRAPHIC DOCUMENTATION:Gary Becker, Kathryn TavernaNARRATORS: Jerzy Kosiński, Nicholas Kepros, Barbara Rosenblat,David Warrilow, Gregory Gordon, Alan Adelson, Theodore BikelEDITING: Kathryn TavernaHISTORICAL CONSULTATION:Lucjan DobroszyckiMUSIC: Wendy BlackstoneEXECUTIVE PRODUCER: Steven SamuelsPRODUCER: Alan AdelsonLENGTH: 103 minLANGUAGE: EnglishPRODUCTION DATE: 1989ARCHIVAL MATERIALS USED: Photographs by Mendel Grossmanand Henryk Ross, notes from the Lodzghetto by Oskar Rozenfeld and OskarSinger, Dawid Sierakowiak's diary,writings of Józef Klementynowski andIrene Liebman, excerpts from theChronicle of the Lodz Ghetto

Lodz Ghetto

A historical portrait of Litzmannstadt. Compilation of archivalmaterials from the ghetto, fragments of Nazi film chroniclesand film materials produced at the end of 1980s. Excerptsfrom ghetto diaries are used in lieu of classical commentary.These diaries, as was the case with Mendel Grosman's pho-tographs, were written in secret and left for future generationsas a testimony. The victims' memoirs, read expressively bymale and female voices build a subjective historical testimony– a story of the everyday life (including the writer Jerzy Ko-siński) in the Litzmannstadt Ghetto.

B.Z.

FILMING LOCATIONS IN LODZ: Zgierska Street, Kościelny Square (2),Jojne Pilicer Square (3), Wojska Polskiego Street, ŁagiewnickaStreet.

e King and the Jester: a Soul Song to the Lodz Ghetto

34 Films

In 1987, a collection of colour slides from the Łódź ghettomade by Walter Genewein (chief accountant of the ghetto) – was discovered in one of the Viennese antique shops. Theslides resemble an advertisement leaflet; they show law andorder and various kinds of industrial and artisan productionof the 'model ghetto'. The reality presented by Genewein'sslides is confronted with the account of an eye witness: ArnoldMostowicz, a former ghetto doctor. The narrative includes Ge-newein's correspondence with IG Farbenindustrie AGFA aboutthe technical parametres of the slides, taken – as Geneweinputs it – with a 'requisitioned Jewish camera'. The accountantwas never judged and died in 1974 in Salzburg as a respectedAustrian citizen.

T.M.

DIRECTED By: Dariusz JabłońskiCO-DIRECTOR: Jakub SkoczeńSCREENPLAy: Andrzej Bodek, ArnoldMostowicz, Dariusz JabłońskiCO-WRITER: Marcin SzczepańskiCINEMATOGRAPHy: TomaszMichałowskiNARRATORS: Peter matic, SzymonSzurmiej, Norbert Langer, Jurgen Andreas, Jurgen FranzEDITING: Milenia FiedlerCONSULTATION: Alina Skibińska, Julian Baranowski, Marek Budzirek,Karl Stuhlpfarrer, Bertrand Perz, Florian FreundMUSIC: Michał Lorenc; vocal: Małgorzata Rudnicka (aria Senon é vero)PRODUCTION DESIGNER: MirosławNycz, Janusz WąchałaPRODUCER: Dariusz JabłońskiPRODUCTION: Apple Film ProductionLANGUAGE: PolishLENGTH: 57 minPRODUCTION DATE: 1998FEATURING: Arnold MostowiczARCHIVAL MATERIALS USED: Walter Genewein's slides (property of the Jewish Museum in Frankfurt am Main); documents of the Gettoverwaltung and Chronicleof the Lodz ghetto (property of theState Archive in Łódź); included in the film are fragments of an unfinished film by Krzysztof Krauze(cinematography by Jacek Petrycki).

Photographer

FILMING LOCATIONS IN ŁÓDŹ: 4 Kościelny Square (5), AssumptionChurch (2), Staromiejski park and the Old Market Square (8)(aerial photographs), corner of Zgierska and Lutomierska Streets(6), corner of Wojska Polskiego and Łagiewnicka Streets (Jojne Pilicer marketplace) (3), Zgierska Street at Bałucki Rynek (15), 36 Łagiewnicka Street (Helena Wolff Hospital) (23), 14 ZachodniaStreet (10), 13 Bazarowa Street (11), Radegast station (36), 11 Jaracza Street (gettoverwaltung and Hans Biebow's office), Jewish cemetery at Bracka Street (35).

[Fotoamator]

35Films

DIRECTED By: Elad Dan and yosi GodardSCREENPLAy: yosi GodardFILMING CREW: Dany Barnea, yehudaKaveh, Daphna Kaplansky, yaakovyanaiNARRATOR: Dror KerenMUSIC: Avi BinjaminANIMATION AND DESIGN: Elad DanCOSTUMES: Nurit GordonPRODUCTION: Israeli Television ch.1,Israel Broadcasting AuthorityLENGTH: 50 minLANGUAGE: HebrewPRODUCTION DATE: 1999CAST: Izrael Sasza Demidow (JankielHerszkowicz), Leonid Kaniewski(Chaim Rumkowski), Assi Rusak,Shmuel EtingerARCHIVAL MATERIALS USED: Mendel Grossman's photographs from thearchives of yad Vashem Institute, The Chronicle of the Lodz Ghetto,Jankiel Herszkowicz's songs, photographs from the archives of the Lohamei Hagetaot Kibbutz, Municipal Museum of Frankfurt,Chronos Archive, Israel Film Archive – Jerusalem Cinematheque, IBA FilmArchive.

e King and the Jester: a Soul Song to the Lodz Ghetto

A television musical collage. Colourized archival photographsby Mendel Grossman are accompanied by Jankiel Herszkow-icz's songs, which illustrate the state of mind of the ghetto in-habitants. The King is Chaim Rumkowski, who – according tothe film-makers – lived in a mysterious symbiosis with Her-szkowicz, a street singer, the Jester. The musical sequencesintertwine with the speeches of Rumkowski and fragments ofthe Chronicle of the Lodz ghetto.

T.M.

36 Films

Arnold Mostowicz – writer, journalist, doctor, survivor of theLodz ghetto, recalls pre-war Łódź, his family and the night-mare of four years in the confined district of Litzmannstadt.Małgorzata Andrzejewska-Psarska interviewed Mostowicz dur-ing the production of a documentary about the Zamir Choraleof Boston, established in 1969, and its precedessor, the Ha-zomir choir of Łódź (full name: Hazomir Association for Litera-ture and Music), which operated between 1899 and 1940.Arnold Mostowicz's father, Ignacy Moszkowicz, was one of itsfounders and its long-time president. Arnold Mostowicz tellsthe story of his father's life – from a poor shopkeeper's familyin his native Krośniewice to an experienced businessman (a lodzermensch) and an activist of cultural life in pre-warŁódź. Ignacy Moszkowicz's path led him to the Warsaw ghetto,where the Moszkowicz family escaped from the Łódź Gestapoin hope of survival. young Arnold was incarcerated in the Litzmannstadt Ghetto. Mostowicz speaks about the flourishingcultural life of Łódź, brilliantly analyzing the social processeswhich took place in the city. He does not avoid anecdotes. Hiswartime memories, although guarded and seemingly devoidof emotions, are a terrifying testimony of the atrocities of WWII.

M. A.-P.

INTERVIEW By: Małgorzata Andrzejewska-PsarskaCINEMATOGRAPHy: Marcin BuchowskiPRODUCTION: Verissima ProductionsIncorporated, Pam Pacelli Coope & Rob CooperrLENGTH: 102 minLANGUAGE: PolishPRODUCTION DATE: 1998FEATURING: Arnold Mostowicz, interviewed by Małgorzata Andrzejewska-Psarska

Mostowicz

37Films

DIRECTED By: Rob Cooper and Eric StangeCINEMATOGRAPHy: David RabinovitzNARRATOR: Joshua JacobsonART DIRECTOR: Joshua JacobsonEDITING: Jon NeuburgerMUSIC: Yomeh, Yomeh (Benjamin,Benjamin), Hava Nagila (Let us Rejoice), Halleluyah (Praise the Lord),Az Ikh Vel Zogn Lekho Doydi (When I say „Come My Friend”), „Albukerke” with Kapelye’s Chicken, HaZamir (The Nightingale), Al Naharot Bavel(By the Rivers of Babylon), Macht Zu di Eygelach (Close Your LittleEyes), Simona Mi-Dimona (Simonafrom Dimona), Al Giv’ot Sheikh Abreik(On the Hills of Sheikh Abreik), TsenBrider (Ten Brothers), Hatikvah (The Hope), Regle (Mountain Forests),I Got Rhythm, Bakhuri Le’An Tisa (MyBoy, Where are you going?), EvenWhen God is Silent, Niggun, Hey Har-monika (Hey, Accordion), Mayim (Water),Ledor Vador (In Every Generation),Tumbalalalka (Play the Balalalka), Tikvatenu (The Antient Hope), Stimmtand die Seiten (Let the Strings Sound)PRODUCTION DESIGNER: Eric Stange PRODUCER: Eric Stange, Pam CooperPRODUCTION: Spy Pond Productions Inc.LENGTH: 60 minLANGUAGE: EnglishPRODUCTION DATE: 2000FEATURING: Joshua Jacobson, Scheri Beker, Peter Bronk, MurrayCion, Professor Arthur Lermer, Arnold Mostowicz, Carol Tellerman,Zamir Chorale of BostonARCHIVAL MATERIALS USED: Archiveof John E.Allen Inc., Archiwum Doku-mentacji Mechanicznej, FilmotekaNarodowa, materials from the filmNight and Fog directed by. A. Resnais(courtesy of Argos Films), HenryBaigelman's collection , The HistoricalMuseum of Łódź, National Center forJewish Film at Brandeis University,Royal Library Copenhagen, The StateArchive of Łódź, United States Holo-caust Memorial Museum, Carol Teller-man, yIVO Institute for Jewish

Zamir: Jewish Voices Return to Poland

The Zamir Chorale of Boston, established in 1969, performsvarious kinds of Jewish music, including liturgical, classicaland ghetto songs. Its name refers to the Hazomir choir, whichoperated in the Lodz ghetto. In the summer of 1999, the ZamirChorale members set out on a journey to Central Europe andvisited the places related to Jewish culture: Prague, Łódź,Auschwitz-Birkenau, Cracow, Terezin and Vienna. They heldpublic performances in each of those places – in synagogues,on squares or in courtyards. According to the narrator's words,their journey was supposed to facilitate their return to theirspiritual roots and bring Jewish music back to its birthplaces,where it once flourished.

E.C.

LOCATIONS IN LODZ: Wolności Square, Nowomiejska Street (7), 21Kościuszki Street, the Jewish cemetery at Bracka Street (35).

38 Films

Lucie Cytryn-Bialer, survivor of the Łódź ghetto, recalls thestory of her life, which she dedicated to the commemorationof her younger brother Abraham Cytryn, victim of the Łódźghetto, and her daughter, who died in the 1980s after a longillness. She dedicates her books to the memory of those twopersons. Her fight to commemorate her brother resulted inpublication of his poems and notes from the ghetto. Only a part of Abramek's notebooks from the ghetto survived andthey were in very bad condition, but even those remnants tes-tify to the great talent of the young poet.

T.M.

DIRECTED By: Piotr ZarębskiSCREENPLAy: Jacek IndelakCINEMATOGRAPHy: Piotr ZarębskiEDITING: Henryk SzczepańskiMUSIC: Zofia Kucharska-Kowalik(sound), Va pensiero (Giuseppe Verdi);Mein Jidisze Mama (trad., performedby Rabin Attia); Elmerachim (prayer; traditional music; performed by Rabin Attia)PRODUCTION DESIGNER: Krzysztof SułekPRODUCER: Piotr ZarębskiPRODUCTION: Telewizja Polska S.A.,Komitet Kinematografii, Marta Tv & FilmLENGTH: 58 minLANGUAGE: PolishPRODUCTION DATE: 2000FEATURING: Lucie Cytryn-Bialer, Edith Grycman, Cecile Platt, FelicjaŻytnicka, Maurice Errera, Josef Gotliband families of R.J. Lerer, J.I. Liron,M.S. Pacanowski.ARCHIVAL MATERIALS USED: from the collection of The Józef Piłsudski Regional and Municipal Public Library of Łódź and privatearchives of Lucie Cytryn-Bialer and Marta TV & Film

To Stay Alive

FILMING LOCATIONS IN ŁÓDŹ: Lodz Fabryczna station, 10 LegionówStreet, Radegast station (36) Wolności Square, the Jewish cemeteryat Bracka Street (35) Hotel Grand.

[Nie oplataj mnie... ]

39Films

DIRECTED By:Małgorzata Burzyńska-KellerSCREENPLAy: Małgorzata Burzyńska-KellerCINEMATOGRAPHy:Małgorzata Burzyńska-Keller, Grzegorz BartoszewiczNARRATOR: Hubert RogozińskiEDITING: Monika ZawadzkaCOMMENTARy WRITTEN By: Symcha Keller, Hubert RogozińskiCONSULTATION: Symcha KellerDOCUMENTATION:Małgorzata Burzyńska-KellerMUSIC: Wojciech LemańskiPRODUCTION DESIGNER: Małgorzata Burzyńska-KellerPRODUCER: Centre for Jewish History and CulturePRODUCTION: The City Hall of Łódź by order of Jerzy Kropiwnicki, Mayor of ŁódźLANGUAGE: Polish with English subtitlesLENGTH: 20 minPRODUCTION DATE: 2003ARCHIVAL MATERIALS USED:The State Archive of Łódź, Steven Spielberg Archive

Radegast Station

A montage of archival photographs and films illustrating thehistory of the Łódź ghetto. It features Radegast station, at thattime still forgotten and overgrown with grass. Later it was con-verted into a memorial. The film is narrated by Hubert Rogo-ziński. E.C.

FILMING LOCATIONS IN ŁÓDŹ: Radegast station (36), WolborskaStreet, Franciszkańska Street, Lutomierska Street.

[Stacja Radegast]

Stacja Radegast

40 Films

Julian Baranowski (The State Archive in Łódź) and Antoni Gal-iński (The Institute for National Remembrance) tell the story ofthe Gypsy camp established within the Lodz ghetto boundariesbetween Głowackiego, Brzezińska, Towiańskiego and Staro-sikawska Streets. A group of over 5,000 Gypsies from Burgen-land (located at the border between Austria and Hungary),including 2,689 children, was brought there. They belonged tothe Gypsy aristocracy and brought a lot of jewellery and musicalinstruments with them. A typhus epidemic broke out in thecamp due to very poor living conditions. The dead were buriedat the Jewish cemetery (sections P4 and P5 of the ghetto field).Those who survived the epidemics were deported to the exter-mination place in Chełmno nad Nerem and gassed.

E.C.

DIRECTED By: Jarosław SztanderaSCREENPLAy: Jarosław SztanderaCINEMATOGRAPHy: Radek ŁadczukNARRATOR: Julian BaranowskiEDITING: Jarosław SztanderaCONSULTATION: Julian BaranowskiDOCUMENTATION: Jarosław SztanderaMUSIC: Teresa Mirga and Kałe Bała:I Will Tell you Something, Mother, WeDon't Need Much, Lullaby(Wydawnictwo Jana Słowińskiego)PRODUCTION DESIGNER:Marcin MalatyńskiPRODUCER: PWSFTViT [National FilmSchool in Łódź]PRODUCTION: PWSFTViT [NationalFilm School in Łódź]LANGUAGE: Polish with French subtitlesLENGTH: 20 minPRODUCTION DATE: 2004FEATURING: Julian Baranowski, AntoniGaliński, Hubert Rogoziński, ZdzisławLorek, Ludomir ŻądłoARCHIVAL MATERIALS USED:The State Archive in Łódź

e Gypsy camp in Łódź

FILMING LOCATIONS IN ŁÓDŹ: 84 Wojska Polskiego Street, the Jewish cemetery at Bracka Street (ghetto field) (35), the Gypsy camp (32).

[Obóz cygański w Łodzi ] (Zigeunerlager in Litzmannstadt)

41Films

DIRECTED By: Wojciech GierłowskiSCREENPLAy: Joanna PodolskaCINEMATOGRAPHy: Jacek ŁechtańskiNARRATOR: Ewa Chmurska, Kuba GutkowskiEDITING: Jacek ŁechtańskiCONSULTATION: Zbigniew JaneczekMUSIC: Andrzej Krauze, Tova Ben-Zvi(vocal in Psalm 130)SOUND: Andrzej Papajak, AndrzejKrauzePRODUCTION DESIGNER:Elżbieta StankiewiczEXECUTIVE PRODUCER: Zbigniew ŻmudzkiPRODUCTION: Telewizja Polska, Se-Ma-For Produkcja FilmowaLENGTH: 25 minLANGUAGE: Polish, English, FrenchPRODUCTION DATE: 2005CAST: Jakub Gutkowski, JustynaSkrobecka, Kay Dużyński, Anna Chojnacka, Iwo DużyńskiARCHIVAL MATERIALS USED:from the collection of the StateArchive in Łódź

From the depths I call

The film is dedicated to the memory of children who died inthe Łódź ghetto and to those few who managed to survive. Theauthors quit the classical form of historical documentary fo-cussed on impersonal presentation of facts. They combine a documentary with a poetic form, telling the story of theghetto with children's voices. The reality of life in the ghetto ispresented through excerpts from the autobiographical proseof Sara Zyskind, Jehuda Lubiński's diary, Abram Koplowicz'stexts and Abram Cytryn's poems. Archival photographs weresupplemented by staged shots to create an elegiac image ofthe Łódź ghetto. B.Z.

FILMING LOCATIONS IN ŁÓDŹ: Łagiewnicka/Organizacji WiN Streets(28), Piotrkowska/Moniuszki Streets (Grand Hotel,Piotrkowska/Tuwima Streets, Wojska Polskiego Street at KościelnySquare (4), Zgierska Street, Radegast station (36), the school at Dworska Street (27), Helena Wolff Hospital at 34/36 ŁagiewnickaStreet (23).

[Z głębokości wołam]

42 Films

Hundreds of Jews from Prague were deported to the Litz-mannstadt Ghetto. The accounts of Czech survivors are jux-taposed against the opinions of contemporary inhabitants ofBałuty about their living conditions and their views of theworld. In one of the interviews, Pavel Štingl said: 'I got inter-ested in Łódź because the ghetto is not a historical topicthere, but a timeless, universal question. I wanted to considerthe stigma of this place, which represents a half-decomposi-tion. One can feel past events echoing there. I wanted to checkhow the fact that people were once living there under extremeconditions influences contemporary life in that district'.

E.C.

DIRECTED By: Pavel ŠtinglSCREENPLAy: Pavel ŠtinglCINEMATOGRAPHy: Miroslav JanekEDITING: Tonička JankováSOUND: Michael Míček, Daniel NěmecDOCUMENTATION: cooperation withthe Jewish Museum in Prague – AnnaLorencová, Anita Franková, KateřinaSvobodováMUSIC: Tonička Janková (selection);Michael Delia, Usuku – Sunny side of the road; Jaroslav Kořan andfriends – Líné léto, Zapomenutý orchestr země snívců – compositionno. 1; Jaroslav Kořan – Selection /Orloj cinkání, composition no. 5;Lubomír Fidler – Every savage candance, composition no. 6. Lubomír Fidler – Every savige can dance, composition no. 9 – The World;Lubomír Fidler – Jiná rychlost časunr 1 Confine of light; Lubomír Fidler/Štěpán Pěčirka, 4 x harmonika, composition no. 3 – 100 Voices.PRODUCTION DESIGNER: Ondřej ZimaPRODUCER: Piotr Mularuk, Mag-dalena Napieracz, Ondřej ZimaPRODUCTION: K2 Ltd., yeti Films Sp. z o.o., Evolution Films s.r.o. Czech Television – Ostrava StudioLENGTH: 87 minLANGUAGE: Czech and Polish withEnglish subtitlesPRODUCTION DATE: 2008FEATURING: Marie Alešová, Věra Arnsteinová, Mája Randová, LiběnaHájková, Mario Petrovský, VěraPoláková, Peter Rössler, Rudolf Vilím,Hubert Rogoziński, inhabitants of BałutyARCHIVAL MATERIALS USED: Photographs by Henryk Ross (Archive of Modern Conflict/CollectionArt Gallery of Ontario, Toronto)

e Ghetto in Bałuty

FILMING LOCATIONS IN ŁÓDŹ: 4 Kościelny Square (5), Franciszkańska Street, Bałucki Rynek (15) Radegast station (36),Memorial Radegast Bahnhof (36) Sporna Street, Bazarowa Street(11), Lutomierska Street, Młynarska Street, 8 Ceglana Street (16), 1 Limanowskiego Street (14), 28 Limanowskiego Street 918), Zgierska/Wojska Polskiego Street (5), 22 Berlińskiego Street (29), 5 Joselewicza Street (30), 10 Joselewicza Street (31), 27 Drewnowska Street (13), 56 Franciszkańska Street (21).

[Ghetto jménem Baluty ]

43Films

DIRECTED By: Borys LankoszSCREENPLAy: Andrzej BartCINEMATOGRAPHy: Borys LankoszNARRATOR: Bronisław Wrocławski,Grażyna Walasek, Mariusz SiudzińskiEDITING: Wojciech AnuszczykCOMMENTARy WRITTEN By:Andrzej BartCONSULTATION: Julian BaranowskiDOCUMENTATION: Andrzej BartMUSIC: Elżbieta TyszeckaPRODUCTION DESIGNER:Magdalena JanowskaPRODUCER: Beata Bart, Grupa Filmowa FargoPRODUCTION: Grupa Filmowa Fargo,Telewizja PolskaLENGTH: 50 minLANGUAGE: Polish and English, with English and Polish subtitlesPRODUCTION DATE: 2008FEATURING: Lucille Eichengreen,Erwin Singer, Roman Freund, Nachman Zonabend, Stella Czajkowska, Bronisław WrocławskiARCHIVAL MATERIALS USED:Tunes: Es geyt a yeke, performed byBrave Old World, lyrics: Jankiel Herszkowicz (from the record Songs of the Lodz ghetto, Winter and WinterNo. 910, 104-2; Rumkowski Khaim,vocal: ya’kov Rotenberg, lyrics: JankielHerszkowicz (recording of 1985 r.from the collection of Gila Flam) Hebräische Melodien by JosephJoachim; archival photographs from the collection of the StateArchive in Łódź and private collectionsof Lucille Eichengreen and NachmanZonabend, excerpts from Dawid Sierakowiak's diary.

Radegast

The main storyline features the Western Jews in the Łódźghetto and the accounts of survivors – Lucille Eichengreen,Erwin Singer, Roman Freund, Nachman Zonabend and StellaCzajkowska. Bronisław Wrocławski, actor of the Stefan JaraczTheatre in Łódź, narrates the story presenting the most impor-tant facts from the history of the Łódź ghetto and reading thespeeches of Chaim Rumkowski, including his appeal 'Give Meyour Children'. The artistic supervisor of the film was Leo Kantor.

E.C.

LOCATIONS IN LODZ: Radegast station (36), Memorial RadegastBahnhof (36), 109 Franciszkańska Street (25), Centre for Art Propaganda in H. Sienkiewicz Park; Zgierska Street, WrześnieńskaStreet, 114/116 Piotrkowska Street, Młynarska Street, Wojska Polskiego/Łagiewnicka Streets (3), 29 Franciszkańska Street (20), 4 Kościelny Square (5), K. Scheibler's factory 'Centrala' –2Zwycięstwa Square.

44 Films

History of the Litzmannstadt Ghetto narrated by survivors, Zy-gmunt Dąbrowski and Helena Bergson, who recall theirwartime experiences. They describe the first months of theghetto, the worsening living conditions and their everyday fightfor survival. Their voices are joined by those of other wit-nesses. Historical commentary is read by Piotr Fronczewski.The film was made to commemorate the 65th anniversary ofthe liquidation of the ghetto in Łódź.

E.C.

DIRECTED By: Mariusz OlbrychowskiSCREENPLAy: Mariusz OlbrychowskiCO-DIRECTOR: Bart ZieglerCINEMATOGRAPHy: Marcin KowalczykNARRATOR: Piotr FronczewskiEDITING: Bożena MrożewskaCONSULTATION: Julian Baranowski,David Aaron BloomMUSIC: Kevin Mac Leod, yale StromCO-CINEMATOGRAPHER:Tomasz WieczorekPRODUCTION DESIGNER:Jarosław OlbrychowskiPRODUCER: Jarosław Olbrychowski,Michał KwiecińskiPRODUCTION: Time after Time International, Akson StudioCO-FINANCING: Polski Instytut SztukiFilmowejLANGUAGE: Polish LENGTH: 57 minPRODUCTION DATE: 2009FEATURING: Zygmunt Dąbrowski, Helena Bergson, Kazimierz Katz(archival audio recording), NachmanZonabend (archival audio recording),Halina Hirschbein (archival audiorecording), Irena Korski (archivalaudio recording).ARCHIVAL MATERIALS USED:photographs by Henryk Ross, MendelGrossman, Nachman Zonabend; Naziphotographs and documentaries, filmmaterials on the commemoration of the liquidation of the Łódź ghetto(2008)

Litzmannstadt Getto: Inferno in the Promised Land

FILMING LOCATIONS IN ŁÓDŹ: St Mary's Assumption Church at Kościelny Square (2), Bałucki Rynek (15), 1 LimanowskiegoStreet (10)

[Litzmannstadt Getto. Piekło na ziemi obiecanej]

Memorial Radegast Bahnhof

45Films

DIRECTED By:Małgorzata Burzyńska-KellerSCREENPLAy: Małgorzata Burzyńska-KellerCINEMATOGRAPHy: Józef RomaszEDITING: Monika ZawadzkaCONSULTATION: Symcha KellerMUSIC: Małgorzata Burzyńska-Keller,Grzegorz KortanPRODUCTION DESIGNER: MałgorzataBurzyńska-KellerPRODUCER: Fundacja Ochrony Dziedzictwa Kultury Żydów [Foundation for the Protection of Jewish Cultural Heritage]PRODUCTION: The City Hall of Łódźby order of Jerzy Kropiwnicki, Mayor of ŁódźLANGUAGE: PolishLENGTH: 20 minPRODUCTION DATE: 2009FEATURING: Jerzy KropiwnickiARCHIVAL MATERIALS USED: Exhibitsfrom The Museum of IndependenceTraditions in Łódź

The film narration is constructed of archival photographs andfilm materials combined with a soundtrack and recently filmedmaterials about Radegast station with its platform, carriagesand locomotive, animated with the use of film and scenerytricks to create a visual story about the Łódź ghetto from itsbeginnings to its liquidation. In the epilogue, Jerzy Kropiwnicki,a former mayor of Łódź, explains how important it was to com-memorate this place which became a symbolic memorial ofthe tragedy of the Jews. E.C.

FILMING LOCATIONS IN ŁÓDŹ: Radegast station (36), RadegastBahnhof Memorial (36)

Memorial Radegast Bahnhof [Memoriał Radegast Bahnhof]

46 Films

The film tells the story of the Jewish community in Łódź, fo-cussing on the fate of yosef Neuhaus. Born in Łódź in 1924,son of Tova and Zvi Hirsch, yosef was resettled to the ghettoin May 1940 with his parents and younger sister Sofia. Theystayed in the ghetto for four years and were deported toAuschwitz-Birkenau. All members of his family were killed inthe camp. yosef managed to survive and was sent to severalother camps. In 1946, he immigrated to Palestine, fought inIsrael's wars, including the Independence War in 1948. Afterthe Independence War he started a family to begin his lifeanew. Zvi Nevo's documentary recalls the most importantevents of yosef's life, his fight for survival and his contributionto the State of Israel. B.Z

DIRECTED By: Zvi NevoCINEMATOGRAPHy: Zvi NevoEDITING: Zvi NevoHISTORICAL DOCUMENTATION:Avia Salomon-Hovav, Na'ama ShikMUSIC: Ben NunPRODUCER: Zvi NevoEXECUTIVE PRODUCER: Lea PrawerPRODUCTION: The InternationalSchool for Holocaust Studies, yad Vashem, The Hebrew University of JerusalemLENGTH: 40 minLANGUAGE: HebrewPRODUCTION DATE: 2009FEATURING: yosef Neuhaus, Helena OchotskyARCHIVAL MATERIALS USED: yadvashem Archives, The Visual Center at yad Vashem, International HistoricFilms, Inc. USA, The Steven SpielbergJewish Film Archives

My Lodz is No More: e Story of Yosef Neuhaus

FILMING LOCATIONS IN ŁÓDŹ: Zielona Street, Piotrkowska Street,Kościelny Square (2), Szeroka Street, Jojne Pilicer Market Square(3), Radegast station (36).

47Films

DIRECTED By: David KaufmanSCREENPLAy: David KaufmanCINEMATOGRAPHy: Robert Holmes,Colin AllisonNARRATOR: Albert SchultzEDITING: Milenia FiedlerCONSULTATION: Joanna PodolskaMUSIC: Brave Old World (Alan Bern,Michael Alpert, Kurt Bjording, StewardBotman) courtesy of JA/NEINMusikverlag & Pinorrekk Musikverlag(GEMA), Jankiela Herszkowicz's musicwith the permission of Elżbieta Herszkowicz, song titles: RumkowskiKhayim/Lodz fidl; Lodz Overture, A gantz fayn maztlov; Nisht norsimkhe/ Veynendiks; Vayl ikh binyidele; S’iz kaydankes, kaytn; Kimts in herts/ Rumkovski Khayim; Es geyta yeke; Geto, getunya; Makh tsi dieygelekh; Yikhes/ Winter 1942; Verklapt du azoy/ Geto vareyant; Lodzcoda; Bobover khupe – marsh;Amerike hot erklert/ KempfnPRODUCER: David KaufmanPRODUCTION: Sun-Sreet ProductionCO-FINANCING: The Zuckermann Family Foundation, Herschel Segal LENGTH: 121 minLANGUAGE: english, polish subtitlesPRODUCTION DATE: 2010FEATURING: Elżbieta Herszkowicz,Chava RozenfarbARCHIVAL MATERIALS USED: Photographs from Henryk Ross collection, Ontario Museum, collectionof yad Vashem, (photography section),collection of the Jewish Museum inFrankfurt an Main, archives of yIVO,New york

Song of the Lodz Ghetto

The film tells the story of Jankiel Herszkowicz's songs and theirmeaning to the survivors all around the world. It describes theresearch of Herszkowicz's work conducted by ethnomusicolo-gists and specialists in oral stories, who collect stories fromthe ghetto. The film shows the story of a Jewish tailor who be-came a bard of the Litzmannstadt Ghetto, simultaneously pre-senting the ghetto history and the figure of Chaim Rumkowski,the Elder of the Jews. Chava Rosenfarb, a yiddish writer livingin Canada, recalls the living conditions in the ghetto. Her-szkowicz's daughter-in-law and his grandchildren recall hispost-war life (he worked for a long time as a night guard in oneof the Jewish schools in Lodz). His granddaughter wandersthrough the courtyards of old houses singing one of his songs.The film scenes are combined with a recording of Brave OldWorld's concert of Herszkowicz's songs in Toronto, 2007.

FILMING LOCATIONS IN ŁÓDŹ: Zgierska/Podrzeczna Streets, municipal cemetery at Doły, ul. Rybna.

48 Films

Director Joanna Satanowska is the main character of the filmin search of information on the fate of her family, who lived inŁódź during WWII. She checks the archival registers, visits of-ficial institutions and apartments which her family could havelived in. Gradually, her father joins the research. A journey intohistory which has never been important to the characters, be-comes an occasion for painful reflections on private relation-ships, identity and memory.

B.Z.

DIRECTED By: Joanna SatanowskaSCREENPLAy: Andrzej BartCINEMATOGRAPHy:Mateusz CzuchnowskiADDITIONAL SHOTS: Jakub StoleckiNARRATORS: Bronisław Wrocławski,Grażyna Walasek, Mariusz SiudzińskiEDITING: Cecylia PacuraCONSULTATION: GrażynaKędzielawska, Maria Zmarz-KoczanowiczMUSIC: Jerzy SatanowskiPRODUCTION DESIGNER:Witold FranczakPRODUCER: Beata Bart, Grupa Filmowa FargoPRODUCTION: PWSFTViT [National Film School in Łódź]LENGTH: 14 minLANGUAGE: PolishPRODUCTION DATE: 2014FEATURING: Joanna Satanowska,Jerzy Satanowski, Robert Satanowski,Elżbieta HerszkowiczARCHIVAL MATERIALS USED:Fragment of the film Jerzego Satanowskiego przystanek życie directed by Kamila Drecka and Magdalena Kłaczyńska, TVP Poznań 1993

Aj waj

FILMING LOCATIONS IN ŁÓDŹ: 6 Sierpnia Street, 25 DrewnowskaStreet (12), Pomorska Street, Skorupki Street.

[Aspangbahnhof 1941. Geschichte einer Frauenfreundschaft]

49Films

DIRECTED By:Angelika BrechelmacherSCREENPLAy: Martina Aichhorn, Angelika BrechelmacherCINEMATOGRAPHy: Martina AichhornEDITING: Martina Aichhorn, AngelikaBrechelmacherCONSULTATION: Maria GoldsteinPRODUCTION: Verlag grenzen erzaehlen, Vienna 2014CO-FINANCING: ARGE grenzenerzählen, Zukunftsfonds der RepublikÖsterreich, Magistratsabteilung 57der Stadt Wien, Magistratsabteilung 7der Stadt Wien, Kärnter Sparkasse Forschungsrat der Universität,KlagenfurtLENGTH: 69 minLANGUAGE: German with Polish subtitlesPRODUCTION DATE: 2014FEATURING: Hella Fixel, Grete Sternnée FeldsbergIN COLLABORATION WITH: Institut für Wissenschaftskommunikation undHochschulforschung, iff, UniversitätKlagenfurt, Instytut Tolerancji Łódź,the State Archive of Łódź.ARCHIVAL MATERIALS USED: collections of the State Archive in Łódź, Bundesarchiv-Bildarchiv; The Central Database of Shoah Victims' Names yad Vashem, Dokumentationsarchiv des Österreichischen Widerstands Österreichische Nationalbibliothek;Österreichisches Staatsarchiv; Stadtgemeinde Gmünd; Wien Museum; private collections of Hella Fixel and Grete Stern

A story of two ninety year old women, who were deported fromVienna to the Łódź ghetto in 1941, and after its liquidation toAuschwitz-Birkenau. They met each other on the train to anextermination camp and became friends for life. Their ac-counts were recorded in 2009 and 2013, when Hella Fixel wasstill living in Vienna, and Grete Stern in Israel, near Tel-Aviv.Both women feel that they are the only ones who can under-stand each other's wartime experiences and maintain theirclose relationship through frequent telephone calls.

T.M.

Aspangbahnhof 1941. A Story of a Female Friendship

[Aspangbahnhof 1941. Geschichte einer Frauenfreundschaft]

50 Films

The main storyline features Natan Grossman's return to Łódź.Grossman, survivor of the Holocaust, lost his brother in the ghettoin 1942. His parents perished during the war. years later he visitsthe city and has to face his traumatic past and return to placesand events he wanted to forget.Other survivors and witnesses act as guides to the history of theŁódź ghetto. A Polish woman named Henryka Żyndul recalls hereveryday journeys on a tram which crossed the ghetto. Jens-Jürgen Ventzki, son of Werner Ventzki, the Nazi Oberburger-meister of Litzmannstadt who was responsible for the creation ofthe ghetto and extermination of its inhabitants, decides to under-take the difficult confrontation with his father's past. The tram ofthe title, No. 41, which crossed the ghetto through a fenced-offcorridor, is a metaphor for the complicated stories and intersectingfates of Łódź inhabitants, who lived in the same city, but underdifferent conditions.

B.Z.

DIRECTED By: Tanja CummingsSCREENPLAy: Tanja CummingsCINEMATOGRAPHy: Marek IwickiEDITING: Tanja Cummings, Marek IwickiHISTORICAL CONSULTATION: Ewa Wiatr, dr Andrea Löw, dr KrystynaRadziszewska, Iza TerelaDOCUMENTATION: Tanja CummingsPRODUCTION DESIGNER: Marek IwickiPRODUCER: Tanja CummingsPRODUCTION: European Associationfor East-West Rapproachmnet (EVA)CO-PRODUCTION: Weltfilm GmbH (Co-Production)LENGTH: approx. 90 min (the film is still in postproduction)LANGUAGE: Polish and GermanPRODUCTION DATE: 2014ARCHIVAL MATERIALS USED: photographs from the Łódź ghetto, Legitimationskarten (work permits)from the Łódź ghetto, lists of deportees, materials from the collection of the State Archive in Łódź, Bundesarchiv, Museum of Independence Traditions (Radogoszcz Branch, Radegast Sta-tion Branch) in Łódź, family archives.FEATURING: Natan Grossman (Survivor), Jens-Jürgen Ventzki (Witness), Tanja Cummings, ArminHornberger (Witness), Helena Bergson(Survivor), Ewa Wiatr (Expert), Waldemar Seiler (Witness), Tadeusz Borowski (Witness), Henryka Żyndul (Witness), KrystynaLatuszewska (Witness), ZdzisławLorek (Expert), Grzegorz Wróbel (Expert)

Line 41

FILMING LOCATIONS IN ŁÓDŹ: photographs of Zgierska Street, Kościelny Square (2), Wojska Polskiego/Zielna Streets (33), the former Gypsy camp (32), 1 and 2 Zielna Street (26), 2 Tokarzewskiego Street (the former metal department, today the Municipal Street Care and Cleaning Company) (24), Old MarketSquare (8), ‘the red house’ – former Kripo post at 8/10, KościelnaStreet (1) Radegast station (36), Jewish cementary at Bracka Street(35), Staromiejski Park.

51Films

DIRECTED By: Piotr Weychert, Piotr PerzSCREENPLAy: Piotr Weychert,Mirosław Chojecki, Marek MillerCINEMATOGRAPHy: Grzegorz SiwickiEDITING: Sławomir FilipCOMMENTARy WRITTEN By:Piotr Perz, Paweł Śpiewak, Piotr WeychertCONSULTATION: Anka GrupińskaDOCUMENTATION: Piotr Weychert,Piotr PerzMUSIC: Jarosław LublinPRODUCTION DESIGNER: Paweł LipskiPRODUCTION: Grupa FilmowaCO-FINANCING: PISF, Media Kontakt,City of ŁódźLANGUAGE: PolishPRODUCTION DATE: 2014ARCHIVAL MATERIALS USED:The film is still in post-production

Give Me Your Children

The film features the accounts of survivors, who recall theworsening living conditions in the ghetto, work beyond humanendurance, death from starvation and emaciation. It focuseson an unprecedented event in the ghetto history: the GreatSzpera. In his speech of September 4, 1942, Chaim MordechajRumkowski, the Elder of the Jews, announced that the Nazishad ordered the deportation 24,000 inhabitants of the ghetto,including small children. Rumkowski appealed to the ghettoinmates to give their children voluntarily. Eventually, 20,000'unproductive' persons (children under the age of 10, the illand people over the age of 60) were deported. Their deporta-tion was a harbinger of what was yet to come: a mass exter-mination in death camps. B.Z.

[Oddajcie mi swoje dzieci]

President Chaim MordechajRumkowski and his retinue.Photo courtesy of the StateArchive in Łódź

ESSAYS

Boys working in the metal processing workshop.Photo courtesy of the StateArchive in Łódź

55Holocaust and Representation. Notes on three films about the Łódź ghetto

Right after I started writing this text I began to have cer-tain doubts. Concentration on matters of style, form orsimply aesthetics is widespread and in most cases ab-solutely justifiable in film studies discourse. In our eval-uation of a film, we point out innovative narrativemethods, masterful direction, breaking storytelling con-ventions etc. This is the way the film critique or critic(PERSON /JOB or ARTICLE / ESSAy ABOUT A FILM?) – cinemaphilic cinephile (person) by definition – works,lifting avantgarde films onto a pedestal to map out newroads in the evolution of cinema. However, the descrip-tion of films and documentaries about the Holocaustfrom such a perspective seem unethical. Should wepass sentence on the value of those pictures by usingaesthetical categories; should we analyze the form ap-plied to the traumatic events of WWII?

The problem of representation of the Holocaust inthe cinema has a rich history of films of diverse genresand themes, critical commentaries and aesthetical the-ories. The Holocaust films constitute a large category ofmovies which tell the multi-layered story of the Holo-caust. They include compilation documentaries, inter-views with the survivors, classical Hollywood featurefilms, comedies, musicals and experimental films. His-torians and theorists have long been arguing aboutmethod used to speak about the Holocaust. Which po-etics should be the one entitled to speak about the un-speakable?

A storm of polemics arose at the end of 1970s afterthe TV series Holocaust was broadcast in the US. Its au-thors were criticized for using the classical conventionof realistic cinema and melodrama, just as Steven Spielberg was for his Schindler’s List (1993)1. Similar

1 —See: Miriam Bratu Hansen,

Schindler’s List is not Shoah: The Second Commandment,

Popular Modernism and Public Memory

Holocaust and Representation. Notes on threefilms about the Łódź ghetto

— Bartosz Zając

56 Bartosz Zając

opinions on conventional realism being inappropriatewhen speaking about the Holocaust can be heard today.The words of Robert Braun, who paraphrased Adorno’sfamous thesis on the impossibility of writing poetry afterthe Holocaust, and concluded that it is possible to writepoetry after Auschwitz, but in is not possible to describethe historical past in the convention of realistic narrative2,are characteristic in this context. Classical realism withits narrative logic, clarity of view on history and confi-dence in its judgements, is incapable of picturing, evenroughly, the crisis which the industrial killing of Jews bythe Nazis caused in history. That problem was depictedin a similar way by Hayden White, who called it a mod-ernist event, i.e. one that exceeds former experiencesand description methods applied to them3. In lieu of re-alistic narrative, Hayden proposed the use of experimen-tal narrative techniques of Modernistic Novel, whichallow the reader to experience the radical alienation re-lated to the Holocaust already on the level of language,in the very method of picturing its history. That alien-ation should actually be understood in the ‘Brechtiansense’, as a representation which does not allow a pas-sive internalization and inclusion in the literary causeand effect sequence, but instead forces the audienceto take a position and confront the traumatic dimensionof the Holocaust.

The argumentation of Andreas Huyssen is sympto-matic for the opponents of formal experiments in Holo-caust-themed films. In his opinion, modernist narrativesare too intellectual for the cultural needs of the massaudience, constituting a communication barrier whichhinders any emotional engagement and identificationof the viewer with an individual Jewish character, whichHuyssen considers essential for internalization of theHolocaust remembrance. According to Huyssen, anycritic of the Holocaust TV series and other films basedon the classic convention of cinema is a result of aes-thetic preferences and does not reflect deeper on theconsequences and limitations of individual representa-tion models4. Huyssen discredits the critics of realisticrepresentations of the Holocaust suggesting that theirsympathies are of aesthetical nature and result fromtheir cinephilic evaluation of film forms and not fromtheir reflection on the ethics of Holocaust representa-tions5. He forgets, however, that the authors of the real-

2 —Robert Braun, The Holocaust and

the Problem of Representation,„History and Theory” 1994, vol.33,

no.2, p. 174. Also see: Ewa Domańska, introduction to

the anthology „Pamięć, etyka i historia. Anglo-amerykańska

teoria historiografii lat dziewięć-dziesiatych”, Ewa Domańska (editor), Poznań 2006, p. 18

3 —Hayden White, The Modernist

Event, translated into Polish by Maciej Nowak [in:] HaydenWhite. Proza historyczna, ed.

Ewa Domańska, Kraków 2009, pp. 289-313.

4 —See: Andreas Huyssen,

The Politics of Identification: ‘Holocaust’ and Wets German

Drama. „New German Critique”1980, no. 19(1), p. 17-36

5 —With regard to the Schindler’s ListMiriam Bratu Hansen emphasizes

the shock which the film had created in the public despite the

opinions of academic critique. Thatshock triggered a wide debate onthe politics of remembrance and

strategy of representation. Hansenpoints out thet the opponents

of realistic representation of theHolocaust in Spielberg’s film have

omitted a deeper analysis of thenarrative and negated the film

almost a priori only because of itsHollywood connections and

realistic representation codes. Herown analysis, however, reveals

a subtle elliptic form and self-reflexiveness of Schindler’sList, associated with modernist

cinema rather than realistic featurefilms. Additionally, Hansen draws

our attention to the dynamics of reception; Spielberg’s film (and

other realistic films) can provokedifferent methods of reception

depending on cultural and historical context, as well as

activate meanings which exceedbeyond those suggested by the

form or the author’s intention. See:Miriam Bratu Hansen, op. cit.

57Holocaust and Representation. Notes on three films about the Łódź ghetto

istic feature films that he extolls do not question the rep-resentation of the Holocaust in any way, thus suggest-ing, as it were, that the Holocaust is a story which canbe told like any other, using the same constructionmechanisms of a film spectacle as in any commercialfilm, whereas the narrative style, as mentioned earlier,is not just an empty container – on the contrary, it is a vehicle of the traumatic dimension of the Holocaust,– its essence.

One of the episodes of Jean-Luc Godard and Anne-Marie Mieville’s TV documentary series France/Tour/Detour/Two/Children features the question of style asa tool which enables the historical truth to make its wayto the audience’s consciousness without any covers: ‘IfSolzhenitsyn’s book had no style, no one would havepaid any attention to it. It required its great style to pen-etrate that gruesome archipelago which – as all of usknew – exists in ourselves”. Godard and Mieville showclearly that style does not have to contradict realism,but it can be a condition necessary for realism to takeon a form which facilitates a more personal and intenseconfrontation with reality. The modernist narratives crit-icized by Huyssen do not exclude the emotional identi-fication of the viewer with the characters featured onscreen. The cinema of representation language experi-ments do not have to avoid emotions on principle, it onlymakes a different use of them.

With regard to the Holocaust-themed films, JoshuaHirsch created the term of post-traumatic cinema. In hisopinion, the role of those films is ‘presenting that con-tent that mimics some aspects of post-traumatic con-sciousness itself, the attempt to formally reproduce forthe spectator an experience of suddenly seeing the un-thinkable’ 6. Films about the Holocaust are a substitutecarrier of a real traumatic experience. In order toachieve it, however, they must relentlessly go beyondthe standard methods of representation of the Holo-caust so that they do not become established withinconventionalized, familiarized narratives. Initially, asHirsch points out, the very images were sufficient toshock audiences and confront them with the trauma ofthe Holocaust; it was unnecessary to set them in a real-istic or modernist narrative. That phase, in which im-ages of the Holocaust themselves were a carrier of traumatic contents, did not last long though. Hirsch

6 —Joshua Hirsch, Afterimage:

Introduction to Film, Trauma andthe Holocaust, Temple Universitypress, Philadelphia 2004, p. 19

58 Bartosz Zając

explains the decrease in social interest with a massnumbing, indifference and activation of defence mech-anisms. At that point, materials which cease to be effi-cient must be additionally supported in a film, thusevoking again the question of style, which allows the au-dience to see, despite their defence mechanisms ofnumbing and indifference7.

Hirsch’s suggestion, his resignation from followingcertain poetics, a certain mode of featuring the Holo-caust in a film, seems to settle the dispute between re-alists and modernists. It indicates that no poetics has amonopoly on the truth or on the global, exhaustive rep-resentation of the Holocaust. It also reminds us thatevery picture loses it initial impact, therefore it is nec-essary to refresh our perception on a regular basis. Thefilms I am going to discuss further in this text undertakethe problematics of the Holocaust using the repre-sentation conventions typical for different genres: traditional interview documentary, fiction cinema and a combination of documentary and avantgarde films.

The Face of an Angel [Twarz anioła] (1970) by Zbig-niew Chmielewski is a feature film about Polish childrenimprisoned in the Polen-Jugendverwahrlager concentra-tion camp which functioned within the boundaries of theLitzmannstadt Ghetto in 1942-1945. The core of thestory is the complicated relationship between Tadek, a boy newly arrived in the camp, and Augustin, the boys’Nazi tutor.

The film realistically depicts the everyday life of thechildren in the camp. After his arrival in the camp, Tadekis subjected to the registration procedure and a detailedphysical examination. He is registered, fingerprinted andphotographed. Because of his good health the doctorssend him to work in a needle factory in the camp. Fromthat moment on, every day is planned according to a strict schedule of morning physical exercise drill, dur-ing which the boys are often beaten, roll-calls and longhours of work in a barrack with no daylight. As in all filmswhich recall the reality of concentration camps andghettoes, hunger is a recurring theme. Despite theirhard work, the children receive only small portions ofbread and watered-down soup. Some of them secretlytry to obtain additional portions of food to increase theirchances of survival. Theft is severely punished, as areother offences. The boys are often beaten and put in

7 —Ibidem, pp. 18-19

59Holocaust and Representation. Notes on three films about the Łódź ghetto

solitary confinement. In one of the scenes, we see a boy,who had tried to escape again, executed. Actually it isonly Tadek who can count on special treatment, sinceone of the camp doctors announced that his cranium isof Nordic shape. Augustin, who has already taken inter-est in the boy’s looks, awaits a confirmation of this in-formation, planning to adopt Tadek. However, the man’sweakness, his occasional signs of human feelings areoften crushed by his heartlessness. Augustin punishesTadek several times, trying to teach him German disci-pline. He beats him cruelly and puts him in solitary con-finement for a few days. On another occasion, seeingthe boy’s health worsening, he gives him medicine andtakes care of him. Augustin’s character illustrates themechanisms of dehumanization, which suppress em-pathy and replace it with mindless brutality. Remnantsof human feelings are pushed aside and the man’s be-haviour is regulated by some ‘uber-human’ mechanismthat allows the Nazis to silence their conscience and ful-fill their duties.

Other images of The Face of an Angel feature thechildren’s attempts to escape from the everyday routineand violence. In the rare moments when no guard isnear, the boys play. The authors have included se-quences of visions which evoke life outside the camp.Tadek repeatedly dreams about his father. We do notknow whether his visions are his memories or just anexpression of the boy’s longings, independent of currenttime. Visual sequences are incorporated into the narra-tive differently from retrospections evident in classicalcinema.

The above description of the film suggests that it be-longs to classical realistic cinema with its typical con-centration on the fates of individual characters, cleardepiction of their views, conflicts they participate in andsetting them in a chronological narrative. That realism,however, is interrupted by numerous formal tricks usedby the authors.

The representation strategy of The Face of an Angelis revealed as early as in the opening credits. Indistinctfigures appear in the frame. Images which are verygrainy, as if the picture was over-magnified, blur the out-lines and make it hard to recognize featured shapes.We see the vague silhouette of a uniformed man andsome looped photographs of anonymous men and

60 Bartosz Zając

women are repeated. The soundtrack is very rich; wecan hear disturbing sound-processed strikes, as hard toidentify as the photographs. Retrospectively, we cansuspect that those are the sounds of children’s shoesthudding on the ground while being driven to a trans-port. After a moment, drums and military music overlapthe thudding. Eventually, we see the first scene of thefilm, with graphic shadows cast on the rails by a rushingcargo train. As a whole, it is very engaging for the imag-

A still from The Face of anAngel [Twarz anioła]directed by Z. Chmielewski,1970source: Studio Filmowe Kadr/ Filmoteka Narodowa

61Holocaust and Representation. Notes on three films about the Łódź ghetto

ination and makes the audience fill in the gaps in theaudial and visual aspects of the film. The authors didnot employ conventional realistic representation and in-stead used deformed images and sounds in order toevoke the feeling of alienation and dread and subjec-tively picture the reality into which the young characterswere plunged. ‘One has an impression that those tiny,lunatic beings were crawling out into the light from somedungeons, from subterranean darkness. Dread and ter-ror permeate the air. We sense that something is goingto happen, although it is nothing we can specify. Wepass from reality to a world of nightmares. The unnatu-rally pale faces of the children, their slow movementsand shining eyes resemble a procession of ghosts or ap-paritions known from paintings or expressionist films” – wrote Janusz Skwara in his review published shortlyafter the film was completed8.

In this film, we are dealing with fiction, so we can re-construct the sequence of events quite accurately, butthe way the narrative is constructed through the use oflarge close-ups, strictly graphic composition of shots,high contrast lighting and expressive non-realisticsounds – activates a very engaging type of reception.We do not watch the world shown in the film from a safedistance from outside; on the contrary, we are forced totake on a perspective which constitutes a part of thatworld and was imposed on the children incarcerated inthe universe of a concentration camp.

The making of The Face of an Angel was triggeredby Report from an Empty Field, a book by WiesławJażdżyński. Stanisław Loth, cinematographer of TheFace of an Angel, came across the name and memoriesof Tadeusz Raźniewski, the basis for Tadek’s character,while reading that book. Loth made friends withRaźniewski and corresponded with him while Raźniew-ski was working on his book, Chcę żyć [I Want to Live],a recollection of his and Polish childrens’ traumatic ex-periences in the camp in Litzmannstadt. A reportage onthe making of the film gives an account of how the in-formation about the camp for Polish children in Łódźwas gradually gathered and reconstructed. After the lib-eration in 1945, only a few adults believed that Raź-niewski had really been imprisoned in a Nazi camp 9. ‘Itwas only after several years had passed and the littleprisoners were in a state to reconstruct the past that

8 —Janusz Skwara, Tragedia i wizja

plastyczna, „Kino” 1971, no. 7, p.5

9 —The camp for Polish children was

located by the Nazis within theghetto, which was strictly isolated

from the city and could not be accessed by the Poles. That is mostprobably why the knowledge about

the camp was scarce both duringand after the war.

62 Bartosz Zając

the Commission for the Investigation of Nazi Crimes inPoland encouraged them to write, speak and gatherkeepsakes and documents. The Commission began tolook for them in the 1950s, when Czechoslovakia sentin a question as to whether the Czech children fromLidice had been imprisoned in the Łódź camp. ‘DziennikŁódzki’ [a local daily newspaper] called for information.That is how it began. The location and history of thecamp were reconstructed on the basis of written andoral accounts. Later, the documentation vanished, butseveral personal questionnaires, referrals and lettersfrom the children prisoners to their families remained.They were deposited in the ZBoWiD [Association ofFighters for Freedom and Democracy] for the Museumof Revolutionary Movement’10.

In view of that fragmentary documentation consist-ing of only a few testimonies and accounts, the decisionto make the film seemed obvious. The limited and in-complete knowledge about those events was renderedin the audiovisual aspect of the film11. ‘The artistic con-cept of the film assumes that everything is shown on abigger scale, exactly how the adults remembered theworld of their childhood; besides, we concentrate onfilming mostly details and fragments remembered bythe former prisoners, so that the audience can createan image of the camp and its everyday life in their ownimagination’ – said the cinematographer of The Face ofan Angel in an interview12.

The evocative sounds and expressive cinematogra-phy of Chmielewski and Loth’s film abandon the canonsof realistic storytelling but simultaneously imitate whatcannot be pictured or verbalized in a simple way, thushelping the viewer to build a mental image of events andinternalize the memory of them despite the lack of vi-sual documentation. In this sense, The Face of an Angelcrosses the boundary between fiction and non-fictioncinema, becoming a kind of replacement memory – outof necessity – utilizing the representation strategies offiction cinema, although not in order to create an illusionof a complete testimony and consistent narrative, butto prevent it falling into oblivion.

A particular marriage of non-fiction cinema and sto-rytelling techniques characteristic to realistic narrativescan be found in a poetic documentary, Z głębokościwołam [From the depths I call] (2005) by Wojciech

10 —Krystyna Garbień, W dziecięcymkacecie, „Kino” 1970, no.6, p.8

11 —Works aimed at commemoration

of the camp at Przemyslowa Streetwere undertaken following

the research conducted during themaking of the film. In 1971 the

Memorial of Children's Martyrdom,also known as the Broken Heart

Memorial, was erected.

12 —Ibidem, p. 9

63Holocaust and Representation. Notes on three films about the Łódź ghetto

Gierłowski and Joanna Podolska. The authors used theexhaustive visual documentation of the LitzmannstadtGhetto. Numerous photographs depict the daily life ofthe Łódź Jews in 1939, just before the war, and laterafter the invasion of German troops, through the begin-nings of the ghetto and subsequent phases of its cre-ation until its liquidation in August 1944. Viewers mighthave seen some of these photographs in other docu-mentaries. The testimony conveyed by this visual docu-

A still from The Face of anAngel [Twarz anioła]directed by Z. Chmielewski,1970source: Studio Filmowe Kadr/ Filmoteka Narodowa

64 Bartosz Zając

mentation of the Holocaust grows weaker with time dueto the mechanisms described by Hirsch. The form cho-sen by Gierłowski and Podolska testifies to their aware-ness of the necessity to retrieve the meaning of thesepictures, which must be supported by a film narrative inorder to speak again. Z głębokości wołam combinesarchival photographs from the ghetto with stagedscenes and verbal narration. Fragments of SaraZyskind’s autobiographic prose, Jehuda Lubiński’s Dzi-ennik z Bałut [A Diary from Bałuty], Abram Koplowicz’smemoirs and poems and Abram Cytryn’s poems areread out by children. Instead of a classic voice-over, - animpersonal voice of history, we hear a subjective ac-count of the ghetto experience. It is supplemented withcontemporary staged scenes where young actors do notso much play the role of Jewish children as lend theirbodies to them in order to strengthen the performativepower of the film as a medium between the testimonyof the archival pictures, memoirs and poems and thepresent time.

A still from From the depths I call [Z głębokości wołam] directed by W. Gierłowski,2005, courtesy of Se-Ma-ForProdukcja Filmowa

65Holocaust and Representation. Notes on three films about the Łódź ghetto

The film does not lose authenticity despite the dom-ination of its lyrical tone. Thanks to its unusual form, thepriceless documentation comprised of poems andmemoirs conveys not only information, but also knowl-edge. As was the case with The Face of an Angel, theauthors’ concentration on emotions increases the au-dience’s identification with the characters, although itis not anchored – as Huyssen would like it – in an indi-vidual character. Here the identification is dynamic anduniversal. The narrative methods develop an emotionalbond between the audience and the experiences de-picted in the film – with a tragedy that cannot be re-duced to the individual fates of the diaries’ authors, butexpands onto the entire picture.

In the introduction to this text, I have reported criticalopinions towards the use of realistic conventions andnarrative schemes of fiction cinema in representing theHolocaust. Those were mainly about feature films. Withreference to Robert Braun’s statement saying that afterAuschwitz the historical past cannot be depicted in theconvention of realistic narrative anymore, it is worth not-ing that films using modernist representation strategiesare a small marginal minority among contemporarydocumentaries on the Holocaust. The realistic conven-tion, which applies in equal measure to the descriptionof all phenomena originating from reality, rules with al-most absolute power in documentary cinema. If criticsof realism in feature cinema formulated ethical chargesagainst the use of conventional fiction language tospeak about the Holocaust, then the same charges canbe directed towards realistic documentaries, which usethe same language to describe both the Holocaust andother wars or historical events.

Such realistic documentary cinema formulas are uti-lized by Piotr Weychert and Piotr Perz in their documen-tary, Litzmannstadt Ghetto 1942 (2012)13 to tell thestory of the Jews from the Łódź ghetto; in particular theevents from September 1942, known as the GreatSzpera14, when all the children, elderly and ill were de-ported from the ghetto as unproductive for the ghettoindustry. In this film, we will not find any reflection onlanguage appropriate for speaking about the Holocaust;neither are any narrative experimentation methodsused. It is actually difficult to describe this film in termsof technique and form. The authors have just let the

13 —Litzmannstadt Ghetto 1942 wasprimarily entitled Wielka szpera

[The Great Szpera]. The new reedited version will be screenedunder the title Oddajcie mi swoje

dzieci [Give Me your Children].

14 —The word „szpera” originates from a German expression Allgemeine

Gehsperre (general curfew). General curfew was introduced any

time when the ghetto inhabitantswere not allowed to leave their

apartments. The name GreatSzpera concerns the dramatic

events of September 1942, whenthe Nazis deprted approx. 20,000

Jews, mainly children under theage of 10, adults over the age

of 65 and the ill, considered unproductive and useless by the

Germans. The deportations of children were preceded by

Rumkowski’s famous speech. TheElder of the Jews would say: ‘ It is

necessary to sacrifice the childrenand the elderly’.

15 —The interview with Piotr Weychert

is available on the website of Dziennik Łódzki:

http://www.dziennkilo-dzki.pl/artykul/650889,premiera-litzmannstadt-getto-1942,id,t.html

66 Bartosz Zając

survivors speak, occasionally combining their accountswith archival photographs from the ghetto. The wit-nesses talk to the authors, recalling their memories ofthose traumatic events. It is generally sufficient. On theother hand, one may get the impression that the filmlacks a form which would allow the survivor’s stories toresound. After the first version of the film was screened,the director Piotr Weychert announced that the new ver-sion would differ from the first. ‘ At the last moment wetook the decision to make a film for the [70th] anniver-sary [of the liquidation of the ghetto]. Some say that thefirst version will suffice, but we would like to put moreeffort into the visual and sound form. We want to findthe sounds of the ghetto and add some fragments fromdiaries. But all attempts at aesthetization may be out ofplace in relation to the content’15.

At this stage, it is difficult to say what shape Oddajciemi swoje dzieci will take in its final version. Will the au-

A still from From the depths I call [Z głębokości wołam] directed by W. Gierłowski,2005, courtesy of Se-Ma-ForProdukcja Filmowa

67Holocaust and Representation. Notes on three films about the Łódź ghetto

thors decide to show the witnesses’ accounts or willthey choose to support the documentary record withfilm techniques? The key to the answer is perhaps PiotrWeychert’s remark about the search for a more refinedform competing with the documentary value of the sur-vivors’ words. Experiments in the field of representationform are ineveitably not about aesthetic or intellectualattractiveness.

69Litzmannstadt Ghetto – Affective Memory, Photography and Music

1 —Bill Nichols, Typy filmu

dokumentalnego, [in:] Metody dokumentalne w filmie,

red. D. Rode, M. Pieńkowski, Łódź 2013, pp. 19-22.

The poetics of documentary films about the Łódź ghettois in many respects typical for the non-fiction cinemadedicated to the Holocaust and mirrors its changeswithin the last few decades. The early productions, be-ginning with those of the1960s, were dominated by his-torical commentary which created the film narrative,either in an emotional or exalted tone, like DanielSzylit’s Litzmannstadt Getto (1965) or in a descriptiveand factual form, like Chaim Rumkowski and the Jewsof Lodz (1982), where the word prevails over the visualmaterial. Simultaneously, the voice-over characteristicof the explanative tone of documentaries is what thepresented photographs do not hold (or what is ‘beyond’the photographs); it supplements or negates what wesee, thus symbolizing a kind of knowledge inaccessibleto the ghetto victims. In relation to the time the pictureswere taken and the knowledge of the people they de-pict, the commentary anticipates, as it were, whatcomes next1. From the 1990s onwards, documentaryproductions have often featured accounts of the sur-vivors, who in front of a hypothetic court of justice wouldperform the role of both an eye witness (the Latin testes)and partly that of a victim on whom evidence is beinggiven by others. Archival photographs more and moreoften serve as keypoints of the film narrative, since theirmeaning exceeds that of mere illustration of the wit-nesses’ reports or testimonies included in the parame-ters of an objective commentary. In this article I wouldlike to discuss photography and music as forms of af-fective memory and the change of their status in thedocumentary films dedicated to the Łódź ghetto.

Litzmannstadt Ghetto – Affective Memory,Photography and Music

— Tomasz Majewski

Henryk Ross, one of the ghettophotographers, employed in the Statistics Department.Photo courtesy of the StateArchive in Łódź

Since the 1990s, it is the archival photographs – and not the excerpts from documents like Dawid Sierakowiak’s Diary or The Chronicle of the Łódź Ghetto– which more and more often and clearly become notonly a material, but also a starting point for an atypicalfilm aesthetics. I want to emphasize that it is the photo-graphs in themselves and not the film footage or a filmframe. Because of that we can feel their compositionalcompleteness and statics – which film directors oftentend to break by focusing the camera on a chosen detailor creating movement to simulate a changeable direc-tion of attention in an open space in a macrophoto-graphic view. Those are classic techniques of featurecinema, aimed at an imaginatory transfer of the viewerinto the image presented in the photograph. Such sto-rytelling tricks deprive the pictures of something impor-tant, but simultaneously grant them something else.They animate the pictured figures and endow them witha kind of ‘super-presence’, whereas the stillness of thepictures and a primary feeling of separation from thepictured scene vanish. In other words, it is about creat-ing a certain ‘structure of feeling’, as Raymond Williamsput it, with the methods used in fiction cinema. Thestructure of feeling brings us closer to the pictured fig-ures and helps to remove from our field of view the his-torical and compositional frame, which by definitionsituates us outside of that world as replacement wit-nesses, who – although present and observing – arenot contemporary with the pictures and therefore do notbelong there.

A fictitious, though not yet hallucinatory situation,combining eye witnessing and ‘being there’ is created,I must emphasize, more thanks to the narrative and cin-ematic method of reading the photographs with thecamera than to the photographs themselves. In Photog-rapher [Fotoamator] (1998), the colour photographsmade by Walter Genewein, the Nazi bookkeeper of theghetto administration, found in 1987, are rarely shownas a material object in form of a framed celluloid pic-ture. More often than not they are cropped and trans-formed into the form of a long take (changing mode ofcropping of movements, simulation of shooting the ob-jects first in close-up, half close-up or long shot, andthen in a travelling shot, as if to explore the space of the

70 Tomasz Majewski

71Litzmannstadt Ghetto – Affective Memory, Photography and Music

image) or animated by merging and other ‘soft’ editingtechniques.

All this, combined with the sounds of the streets,trams and human voices is supposed to deprive the im-ages of their static, or ‘dead’ character. Such a framingmethod engages the audience (with a moving picture,which moves the mind and body of the viewer) and re-duces the feeling of alienation and stillness of the pic-tures. However, it is those reduced features whichabsorb us, though in a different way than in a cinematicreading; our attention is drawn to those small picturesso strongly that sometimes we wish we could look away– or, on the contrary, we activate our reserves of atten-tion and ‘patience techniques’.

Animation of Genewein’s colour slides juxtaposedagainst the black-and-white, mute images of Łódź of the1990s is justified in the film’s construction through themontage of documents which constitute a personalcommentary: private and business correspondence, of-ficial reports are read as a voice-over to bring the audi-ence closer to the mind of the photographer. In the faceof the tragedy of the ghetto Walter Genewein is worriedonly about the technical quality of his photographs,which transform the ghetto into an idyllic advertisement

A still from Photographer [Fotoamator]directed by. Dariusz Jabłoński,1998 – courtesy of Apple Film Production

leaflet. Director Dariusz Jabłoński proposes a readingmethod of the film based on patient search for what es-caped the photographer’s control.

A camera slowly zooming in on a woman’s face(close-up of her eyes) creates the effect of her lookingat the viewer. It evokes a subconscious anxiety, all themore so because her gaze reaches out to us, but at thesame time she is trying to hide from us. The audiencemay perceive the fear in her eyes as a fear of them. Thisimage serves as a means of developing a fictitious, non-simultaneous relationship, thus creating an effectiveevent, which – despite its being created by the film – isnot ethically neutral. The camera zoom is transformedinto the ‘meaningful’ gaze of the victim from within theframe, which ‘identifies’ a potential viewer with the po-sition and sight of the one who took the picture. Hergaze identifies the viewer of ‘now’ with the photographerwho looked at her ‘then’. Such perception provoked bythe camera work goes beyond things which can be in-cluded in a purely visual order – it is a ‘visual performa-tive’ aimed at provoking the audience’s emotions,stimulating their imaginations, which aims to help themempathize. Since in our imagination and emotions we

72 Tomasz Majewski

A still from Photographer [Fotoamator]directed by. Dariusz Jabłoński,1998 – courtesy of Apple Film Production

73Litzmannstadt Ghetto – Affective Memory, Photography and Music

are transferred to that place, we look at things from theviewpoint of the figures pictured on the screen – that iswhy I find it well-grounded to write about a quasi-fic-tional character in films like Fotoamator, which at the same time belong to the domain of non-fiction cinema.

At this point, it is worthwhile giving some thought towhether the title, Photographer [Fotoamator] is not con-fusing. There are many arguments in favour of the hy-pothesis that the series of colour slides used in the filmwas not made as a private or amateur undertaking. Thevery cost of colour negative film was high, and Ge-newein’s correspondence with IG Farben quoted in thefilm gives several clues that the slides were taken forofficial purposes - to confirm the production efficiencyof the ghetto and illustrate the managing skills of theGerman administration of the ghetto (Gettoverwaltung)to the Nazi authorities. It would surely be possible tostructure the narrative differently than Jabłoński did: to-wards a stronger focus on the staged character of thephotographs, which were rather unlikely to have beentaken without Hans Biebow’s (the manager of the Get-toverwaltung) remarks on location choices and direc-

A still from Photographer [Fotoamator]directed by. Dariusz Jabłoński,1998 – courtesy of Apple Film Production

tion. In some cases, he was probably accompanied byhis deputy, Friedrich Wilhelm Ribbe, who had supervisedthe project of a Jewish museum (later that idea wasdropped) and managed the preparations for an exhibi-tion of the ghetto’s products in the hospital building at34/36 Łagiewnicka Street2.

Genewein’s slides give a very selective and falseimage of the ghetto, creating grounds for their criticaland emotionally marked reception suggested by DariuszJabłoński. The aforementioned series of slides can beeasily juxtaposed against the black-and-white photo-graphs from the Litzmannstadt Ghetto, which seem tobe the carriers of historical truth. It is particularly obvi-ous when we compare the location of Grosman and Ge-newein’s photographs of Plac Strażacki – those twopictures complement each other like a shot and a coun-tershot, with a reservation that Grosman shows us whatcannot be seen in Genewein’s photographs. A gallows,for instance. But here as well the matter becomes com-plicated at a closer view. The photographs used in theearly films about the ghetto in Łódź (in particular inDaniel Szylit’s film) were made by Mendel Grosman,Henryk Ross and Lajb Maliniak3 – photographers em-ployed by the Statistics Department of the Elder of theJews. Not all of those photographs were intended for of-ficial use. Some of them are private4 (it was possibleuntil 1942, when ‘unofficial’ representations of theghetto were forbidden), and some were made by MendelGrosman at the risk of his life to document executions,deportations and other events which were to leave notrace. The status of those three kinds of documentationcan not be identical, although their use as visual mate-rial in films does not always respect that. The photo-graphs made for official and propaganda purposes wereselective in the way they depict reality, often staged,which obviously does not exclude the possibility of usingthem as a form of historical testimony, but such use re-quires caution and the consciousness of the change ofinterpretation.

Witnesses recall that Mendel Grosman had two cam-eras at his disposal: one for official orders from the Sta-tistics Department, and a Leica which he would hideunder his coat and use to record things on his own ini-tiative5 . The most important of those secret pictures arethe ones taken during the Szpera. According to Ruzka

2 —See: T. Majewski, Getto w kolorach Agfa. Uwagi

o „Fotoamatorze” DariuszaJabłońskiego [in:] Między słowem

a obrazem. Księga pamiątkowa dlauczczenia jubileuszu profesor

Eweliny Nurczyńskiej-Fidelskiej, ed. M. Jakubowska, T. Kłys, B. Stolarska, Kraków 2005

3 —They have left approximately

20,000 photographs gathered in photobooks made

by the Statistics Department.

4 — The Board of the Elder of the Jews

gave their consent to create a cooperative of eleven photogra-

phers in the ghetto. They were to have two ateliers at their

disposal – at 11 Brzezińska Streetand at 34 Lutomierska Street; see

notes of 10-13 January 1942 [in:] Kronika getta łódzkiego/

Litzmannstadt Getto 1941-1944,vol. II 1942, ed. J. Baranowski,

K. Radziszewska, A. Sitarek, M. Trębacz, J. Walicki, E. Wiatr,

P. Zawilski, Łódź 2009, p.22

5 —J. Podolska, Z Leicą pod

płaszczem. Fotografowie getta, [in:]Odwaga patrzenia. Eseje o fotografii, ed. T. Ferenc,

Łódź 2006, pp. 41-52.

74 Tomasz Majewski

75Litzmannstadt Ghetto – Affective Memory, Photography and Music

(Rózia) Grosman, the photographer’s sister, MendelGrosman was assisted by Arie Ben Menachem whiletaking those photographs from hiding. In January 1943,Arie Ben Menachem created a photo-collage album6 ofeighteen pages, using both types of Grosman’s photo-graphs: those made for the Statistics Department andthose made secretly, to give testimony to what the au-thors of the Chronicle of the Łódź Ghetto had to passover. Ben Menachem’s deeply moving, expressive work,referring to the aesthetics of constructivist collage isparticularly interesting with regard to the fact that Gros-man’s photographs create a continuum. Edited and in-corporated into a collage, at first they appear to be anexpression of the terror of ‘everyday life in crisis’, ofmanaging the unbearable, of surviving and survival –until the secretly taken pictures reveal the destructivepower and traumatic dimension of the deportations.Every page of the album has a title. The two last pagesare entitled meaningfully: In spite of all and We will sur-vive, enabling the contemporary reader to understandthe victims’ viewpoint, time horizon and their experienceof January 1943. From this point of view, the ‘official’and ‘unofficial’ ghetto photographs used by Ben Men-

6 —Getto. Terra incognita. Sztuka

walcząca Ariego Ben Menachema i Mendla Grosmana, ed. X. Modrzejewska-Mrozowska,

A. Różycki, M. Szukalak, Łódź 2009. I could see

reproductions of that (not existinganymore) book at the exhibition

Polak-Żyd-Artysta. Tożsamość a awangarda by Joanna Ritter

and Jarosław Suchan, Muzeum Sztuki w Łodzi,

November 2009-January 2010.

Mendel Grossman.courtesy of the State Archive in Łódź

achem in a similar way ‘testify’ and ‘accuse’, althoughthe difference between the representation orders is in-tentional.

Seemingly, Daniel Szylit’s Litzmannstadt Getto(1965) presents the above procedure in an intensifiedform, but it becomes comprehensible only after the pri-mary communication context of the film is recreated. Anemphatic commentary, which ‘speaks for the victims’steers the narration , but also contributes to the impres-sion of uniformity of the photographs used in the film.The historical lecture suggests that someone is speak-ing on behalf of Polish society about the crime commit-ted against the Jewish society, and the affective toneexpresses the pathos of the collective ‘us’. The openingshots proudly show the pre-war achievements of theJewish population of Łódź, mentioning Julian Tuwim andArtur Rubinstein’s contribution to national and interna-tional culture. Subsequently, they are followed by im-ages of damage and exhausting work, which contrastwith the opening story of vitality and the achievementsof the Jewish population. The existing version of the filmends with information on the liquidation of the ghetto inAugust 1944, illustrated by Mendel Grosman’s photo-graphs, and on the resistance movement organized bya communist group led by Rachela Róża Pacanowska-Krengel. She is the only individual character in the film;the decision to highlight only her fate in a story aboutthe entire population was undoubtedly made for politi-cal reasons. It is even more obvious as an exceptionfrom the rule; the mention of the social activist deportedto Chełmno nad Nerem in 1942 after the informationabout the liquidation of the ghetto in August 1944 is theonly thing that disrupts the chronological order. How-ever, an analysis of the first version of the scenario, pre-served in the archive of the Educational Film Studio[Wytwórnia Filmów Oświatowych], proves that the end-ing of the film was supposed to be different. DanielSzylit proposed to end the film with a contemporary se-quence of Bałuty and the newly built settlement ofapartment blocks, named after Włada Bytomska. Thesequence would be based on images of daily life of a society that had survived and its vitality, resigning fora moment from the division into Poles and Jews. Butsuch a solution evokes doubts, since only a small partof the pre-war Jewish population of Łódź survived; there-

76 Tomasz Majewski

77Litzmannstadt Ghetto – Affective Memory, Photography and Music

fore it would only be justifiable to use ‘I’ instead of ‘us’in the commentary.

The little known biography of the director may behelpful in understanding that paradox. Daniel Szylit wasone of the survivors of the Łódź ghetto; he remainedthere after the liquidation as a member of the cleaningunit7. After the war, he lived in the former ghetto area,in the aforementioned settlement at Boya-ŻeleńskiegoStreet. His wartime experiences must have been knownat least to some people from the film circles. AndrzejWajda, who was a contemporary of his in the FilmSchool, appointed him as his co-worker while workingon Samson (1961), a famous film based on KazimierzBrandys’ prose about the uprising in the Warsaw ghetto.Szylit himself directed only two films before he immi-grated to Israel after the anti-Semitic events in March1968. One of them is the afore-mentioned documentarycommemorating the twentieth anniversary of the liqui-dation of the Litzmannstadt Ghetto, which Szylit was de-termined to make. Soon after the film had beencompleted, it was most probably put on a shelf, judgingby the lack of any information about it being screenedor distributed8.

Another issue I would like to address is the demar-cation line between the cinematic representations ofghettoes in Warsaw and in Łódź. At first that borderlineseems accidental; there are more existing film records

7 —I would like to thank Mr Leon

Kelcz, who was so kind as to sharethe biographical data of Daniel

Szylit with me.

8 —The first public show of Szylit'sfilm took place 40 years later,

in April 2004, as a part of a retrospective of documentary

films about the Łódź ghetto (Song of the Murdered Jewish

Nation) organized by the Instituteof Tolerance.

Photograph of Daniel Szylit(courtesy of Mr Leon Kelcz)

of the Warsaw ghetto – most of them were made by theNazis in May 19429. The global character of the memoryof the Warsaw ghetto has many reasons which I will notdiscuss here. The consequences of such a sitiation,however, are crucial for my deliberations. There is a widespread impression that the images of the Warsawghetto constitute a universalized image of a ghetto assuch and constitute a universal icon of the Holocaust.The transformation process of the Warsaw ghetto intoa global memorial was accompanied by a process of‘taking over’ other representations and including themin the narrative about that symbolic place. In that waythe representations of the Łódź ghetto and the Jewishdistrict of Łódź before it was closed in 1940 became anunmarked illustration material for the story of the War-saw ghetto, as is the case in the French film, Le Tempsdu Ghetto (1962), where the narrative on Nalewki andLeszno streets in Warsaw is illustrated with materialsfrom the Bałuty and Stare Miasto districts of Łódź, shotby the Nazi film crew of Fritz Hippler in November andDecember 1939 and later used in the anti-Semitic prop-aganda film, Der ewige Jude (1940).

Apart from photography, music is another source ofaffective memory, which I understand as an emotionallymarked form of cultural memory creating a feeling ofparticipation. Music seems to become increasingly sig-nificant as a carrier of someone else’s past experienceinaccessible to the contemporary audience. The repre-sentation strategy which focuses on music in a docu-mentary film is well exemplified by two films dedicatedto Jankiel Herszkowicz, the bard of the Łódź ghetto:Songs of the Lodz Ghetto (2012) and The King and theJester (1999). The use of two of Herszkowicz’s songs inDaniel Szylit’s film was not accidental; Szylit, who knewthe reality of the ghetto from personal experience, re-membered the songs from ghetto streets10. Works of theghetto singer constitute a ‘site of memory’, as PierreNorra11 puts it, which combines the narrations of all sur-viving documentaries on the Łódź ghetto. A scene fromFotoamator, when Arnold Mostowicz begins to hum thesong, Rumkowski Chaim, er git indz klajim12 and trans-late it from yiddish into Polish, is another memorablemoment. Jo Wajsblat, who recollects Birkenau, men-tions the song, Shtubn-eltster composed there by Her-szkowicz. We hear different singers performing these

9 —The Unfinished Film (2010) directed by yael Hersonski

is a critical reading of the film ma-terials from the Warsaw ghetto

left by the Nazis, a large part of which was discovered in the

1990s. Hersonski's strategy resem-bles the one implemented by

Dariusz Jabłoński in Fotoamator towards the colour slides made

by Walter Genewein.

10 —Those are probably recordings

of Herszkowicz himself, made forthe local branch of the Polish Radioin 1965 or 1966 and added to the

Szylit's film in postproduction.

11 —P. Norra, Między pamięcią

a historią: Les lieux de mémoire,transl. P. Mościcki, Tytuł

roboczy:Archiwum, 2009, nr 2, p. 4-12, published by Muzeum

Sztuki w Łodzi.

12 —http://holocaustmusic.ort.org/

places/ghettos/lodz/rumkovski-khayim0/ (09.06.2014)

78 Tomasz Majewski

79Litzmannstadt Ghetto – Affective Memory, Photography and Music

songs, but every time it is an intonation and someone’sunique voice supported by that person’s experience andindividual story. The juxtaposition of ghetto songs per-formed by the klezmer group, Brave Old World 13 with thesong, Geto, getunia, getochna kochana performed byŁódź-born granddaughter of Jankiel Herszkowicz walk-ing through the courtyards of the Old Town is particularlymoving,

The Israeli film, The King and the Jester; presents a different strategy in terms of music. A TV collage withelements of video mixing, merging images and ani-mated scenography to creates a rich visual form, almosta video clip, in comparison with the aforementionedfilms. Subsequent narration episodes are illustrated byHerszkowicz’s songs and accompanied by colourizedarchival photographs by Mendel Grosman or by ani-mated scenography. Their aim is to represent the inter-nal experience and state of mind of the ghettoinhabitants in various situations of the ‘daily crisis’,when facing the death, hunger and disease of relatives.The songs, however, retain a little of warmth, care andtenderness towards Herszkowicz’s brethren. They strikethe notes of sadness, irony and rebellion. The King isChaim Rumkowski, who–according to the filmmakers,lived in a mysterious symbiosis with the street singer.The episodes of the film are named after the words ofRumkowski’s speeches and counterpointed with frag-ments of Herszkowicz’s songs. The commentary is readby different male and female voices, which affects themusical aspect of the film as well. As an example, a drynote from the Chronicle of the Łódź Ghetto is about theuse of 250,000 bricks from demolished houses to pavethe road leading to the cemetery at Bracka Street. Readas a voice-over, it is accompanied by Herszkowicz’ssong about the places of relaxation and eternal restbeing not accidentally so close to each other at Marysin.The film is preceded by a meaningful notice: ‘Streetsongs had been reconstructed by the singer himself be-fore he took his life’, alluding to the suicide of Herszkow-icz, caused, according to his family, by a nervousbreakdown he experienced after many of his friendshad left Poland due to the anti-Semitic campaign of1968. For long years, Herszkowicz was forgotten inŁódź, where he lived after the war and was buried at thecemetery at Doły in 197214, Nevertheless, his songs

13 —Those recordings are included in the album Song of the Łódź

Ghetto (2006)

14 —Jankiel Herszkowicz's

grave has been transferred to the Jewish cemetery

at Bracka Street in 2012

80 Tomasz Majewski

yankele Herszkowicz 1941(photograph byMendel Grossman)courtesy of the State Archive in Łódź

have remained and become a symbol of the ghetto in-mates’ experiences, their love, bitterness, hope and de-spair. The ironic tone of these songs allowed them todrive away the shadow of death. Today they teach em-pathy better than any other texts, and perhaps, whenlistened to, they merge with the anxiety as to whetherwe are able to comprehend this kind of experience.

81Litzmannstadt Ghetto – Affective Memory, Photography and Music

The Gypsy camp after its liquidationin January 1942. Photo courtesy of the State Archive in Łódź

84 Ewa Ciszewska

The leitmotif of a return to the ghetto marks a very spe-cial group of documentary films dedicated to the Litz-mannstadt Ghetto. The returns are either metaphorical– as a memory travel of the survivors recollecting theirlife in the ghetto – or physical, for those who visit theformer Litzmannstadt Ghetto.

The Bałuty district of Łódź is visited not only by sur-vivors of Polish origin, but also by Jews who werebrought to Łódź from Western Europe, Luxembourg andCzechoslovakia. I am going to focus on those documen-taries about their life in the ghetto, which feature theirreturn to contemporary Łódź. The testimonies of Czechand Western European Jews reveal the existence of a separate ‘hell circle’ in the Litzmannstadt Ghetto,where oppression, suffering and hunger were felt withdifferent intensity and sensitivity than in its other parts.That specific ‘writing out of the voices’ on suffering (forthe ghetto experience had different dimensions for chil-dren, women, Gypsies and others) is not aimed at mak-ing one of those perspectives more important than theothers. Instead, it is intended to emphasize thepolyphony of the survivors’ testimonies and draw atten-tion to the intersecting – and often contradictory or mu-tually exclusive – lines of narratives on the ghettoexperience. I will also discuss the theme of non-Jewishvictims of WWII who were incarcerated in Łódź: childrenfrom the Czech towns of Lidice and Ležáky.

My deliberations on the above problems will be illus-trated by the following documentaries: Radegast(directed by Borys Lankosz, screenplay by Andrzej Bart,2008), A Baluty Ghetto [Bałuckie getto] (written and di-

A Journey to the Cursed Land. Western European Jews in documentary filmsabout the Litzmannstadt Ghetto Ewa Ciszewska —

85A Journey to the Cursed Land

rected by Pavel Štingl, 2008, Czech Rep. – Poland) andLitzmannstadt Ghetto. Litzmannstadt Ghetto. Inferno inthe Promised Land [Piekło na ziemi obiecanej] (writtenand directed by Mariusz Olbrychowski, 2009)1.

A Journey to the Cursed LandTrain stations constitute a leitmotif of the documentaryfilm by Borys Lankosz (director) and Andrzej Bart (writer,author of documentary films and screenplay writer, au-thor of the book on Chaim Rumkowski, Head of the Ju-denrat, published in 2008 under the title ‘The FlytrapFactory’)2. The train station theme is suggested in theopening shot, which shows Radegast station in a winterlandscape and a moment later we are transferred to theBerlin Hauptbahnhof. These two places indicate the out-ermost points of the main characters’ journey. In thisnarrative, Radegast will turn out to be the end stationor the one from which the characters will set out on theirlast journey to Chełmno nad Nerem. The modern archi-tecture of Berliner Hauptbahnhof with its escalators,glass elevators, electronic displays and large windowpanes contrasts with the wooden makeshift barrack of Radegast station. A young male rock climber with anadvertising banner encourages tourists to visit Poland:‘Polen in 2 h. Dort’. This slogan seems ironic and bitterin the context of subsequent scenes in the film. A yid-dish song heard in the background (‘Here comes a yekewith his suitcase, searching for fats and margarines – he won’t buy anything here, but instead he will get a visa to the cemetery at Marysin’ – written by JankielHerszkowicz) signals that we will go on a journey notonly in space, as suggested by the crowd of passengersboarding a train, but also in time. The song tells thestory of the last journey of a yeke – a Western EuropeanJew – to the cemetery at Marysin, located within theboundaries of the ghetto. Herszkowicz’s song clearly in-dicates the destination of a metaphorical journey: theghetto in Łódź. It is worth noticing that music from theghetto (not only in the Radegast documentary) becomesa tool which enables us to travel back in time and reachthe past. Similarly, the film, Zamir: Jewish Voices Returnto Poland, features members of a Canadian choir per-forming songs from the ghetto, which have inspiredthem to travel to Poland. The narrator recalls an impressionof travelling in time during their tour of Central Europe.

1 —I will hereinafter use the following

abbreviations: RD (Radegast, directed by B. Lankosz),

BG (A Baluty Ghetto, directed by P. Štingl), LG (Litzmannstadt

Ghetto. Inferno in the PromisedLand, directed by M. Olbrychowski)

2 —For more information on films

by Andrzej Bart see: Ewa Ciszewska, Andrzej Michalak,

W służbie pamięci – o filmach dokumentalnych Andrzeja Barta,[in:] Zobaczyć siebie. Polski film

dokumentalny przełomu wieków,Mikołaj Jazdon, Katarzyna

Mąka-Malatyńska (editors), Centrum Kultury Zamek,

Poznań 2011

86 Ewa Ciszewska

That impression was particularly strong in Łódź, theheart of Jewish choir music.

Different train stations will appear subsequently inthe film: Grunewald station in Berlin, from where theGerman Jews were deported to the East, the station inHamburg, where Lucille Eichengreen started her jour-ney, and Holesovice station in Prague (the story of ErwinSinger). The destination of trains which were leavingthose stations during the war was a remote, inconspic-uous station in Łódź, linked to the world by a stone-paved, muddy road. Walking that road, the newcomerswould realize that they had reached a strange and en-tirely different world.

The aforementioned Berlin station constitutes the‘backdrop’ for a film metaphor as well: after the passen-gers had boarded the train there is only a red balloonleft on the platform. That balloon is a distinctive symbolof interrupted childhood and the end of carefreedreams. The cinematic erudition of the film-makers al-lows us to believe that this attribute of childhood alludesto the Oscar-awarded short film by Albert Lamorisse,The Red Balloon (1956), in which a red balloon accom-panies a boy in his adventures in the streets of Paris.

A Doubly Foreign WorldIn October 1941, over 20,000 Jews from Czechoslova-kia and the West arrived in Łódź. They were different

A still from Radegast,directed by B. Lankosz, 2008,courtesy of GrupaFilmowa Fargo

87A Journey to the Cursed Land

from the locals in terms of their appearance (thereforethey were nicknamed yekes – ‘jackets’), manners andeducation. They came mostly from rich bourgeoisie ormiddle class families, had university educations and be-longed to intelligentsia circles. They were lawyers, doc-tors, writers, musicians, scientists. 700 lawyers andtheir families were brought in the second transport fromPrague alone. The ghetto inhabitants joked that therewere more future Nobel prize winners there in onesquare metre than anywhere else in the world. ‘Here thegreat encounter of two worlds takes place’– says StellaCzajkowska. – ‘Into this abnormal world, ruined by thewar, and ruled by famine and filth, came the aristocracyof Western Jews, who had hitherto lived in relative free-dom. They came excellently equipped, they had neverexperienced hunger and suddenly they were confrontedwith the daily life of the Łódź ghetto’ (RD).

Life in the ghetto was regulated by particular lawswhich differed from those applicable outside. Adapta-tion to the reality of life in a Central European ghettowas difficult for all its inhabitants, but it was extremelypainful for newcomers from Western Europe. ‘They wereput into ‘boiling water’, whereas we gradually accus-tomed ourselves to the rising temperature’ – said thefather of little Roman Freund (RD) to explain the highdeath rate among Western European Jews who came toŁódź. ‘In the ghetto there were many Jews who used to

A still from Radegast,directed by B. Lankosz, 2008,courtesy of GrupaFilmowa Fargo

88 Ewa Ciszewska

live under difficult conditions before the war as well, soit was easier for those poor workers and artisans toadapt to the gradually worsening situation’ – remem-bered Helena Bergson (LG). ‘We, who came from goodliving conditions, were also experiencing it step by step.People were getting used to it, but those Western Jewswho came from normality to extremely hard conditions.And they died in large numbers, very quickly’ (HelenaBergson, LG)3.

In order to survive, the newcomers had to adjust tonew living conditions and get to know the rules applica-ble in the ghetto. ‘After a few days, I was sure that themost important thing is what one has available for ex-change’, says Erwin Singer (RD). – ‘whatever one stillpossesses and can exchange for food’. Lucille Eichen-green chose to assimilate and is very frank about it inthe film by Lankosz and Bart: ‘I had decided that I couldno longer be a Jewish girl from Germany. I made myselfbelieve it. I would tell everyone that I felt Polish. I knewthat I had to be like the locals in order to survive. I wouldtell everyone that I felt Polish. Even if they were paintingtheir floors red I would do the same.’

However, assimilation or adaptation were not alwayspossible. Many people would fall ill as a result of theirattempts to keep their hygienic habits and bathed in ice-cold water. They did not know how to divide their foodrations and would quickly suffer from hunger. ‘They justcouldn’t... for instance, there was a time when we weregetting 250 grams of bread per day, so we would divideit and eat some in the morning, at noon and in theevening. And they would eat it all at once and thenstarve. So they started to die very quickly.’ (Helena Berg-son, LG).

The feeling of alienation influenced the behaviour ofboth parties. ‘The Western Jews would often look downon the Jews from the East and treat them as a lower cat-egory’ – remembers Stella Czajkowska (RD), whereasErwin Singer (RD) recalled an impression of finding him-self in a place where civilization had ended: ‘Some peo-ple were sitting on the pavement and looked differentfrom those we were accustomed to. They were oftenbearded, elderly men, in comparison with whom welooked like guests from a different world. ‘An excerptfrom Dawid Sierakowiak’s diary illustrates the preju-dices harboured by the local inhabitants of the ghetto:

3 —Confrontation of the East with

the West is an important theme in historical studies on the Western

European Jews in the ghetto. See:Krystyna Radziszewska, Żydzi zachodnioeuropejscy w getcie łódzkim w świetle dzienników

i wspomnień z getta, [in:] Fenomengetta łódzkiego 1940-1944, edited

by. Paweł Samuś, Wiesław Puś, Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu

Łódzkiego, Łódź 2006, pp. 309-325; Julian Baranowski,

Żydzi z zachodniej Europy w getciełódzkim (1941-1944), [in:] Mówią

świadkowie Chełmna, edited by.Łucja Pawlicka-Nowak, Rada

Ochrony Pamięci Walk i Męczeństwa w Warszawie,

Muzeum Okręgowe w Koninie,Konin 2004, pp. 17-31; Adam

Sitarek, Transporty Żydów z Berlinado getta łódzkiego (1941-1942),[in:] Studia i szkice dedykowane

Julianowi Baranowskiemu, editedby Ewa Wiatr, Piotr Zawilski,

Archiwum Państwowe w Łodzi, Uniwersytet Łódzki, Centrum Badań

Żydowskich, Łódź 2010, pp.226-241; Julian Baranowski,

Żydzi wiedeńscy w getcie łódzkim1941-1944, Fundacja

Monumentum Iudaicum Lodzense,Archiwum Państwowe w Łodzi przy

współpracy Oficyny Bibliofilów, Łódź 2004; et al.

89A Journey to the Cursed Land

‘The first group of deportees from Vienna is expectedtomorrow. Reportedly there are Christians and Nazi of-ficials with Jewish grandmothers among them. Wait andsee till they start some anti-semitic association here’.But a few days later, he added: ‘yesterday, we visited theCzechs. Some of them are good guys. Those from Lux-embourg too. It was great to talk to them. They are sur-prised with the filth here and are afraid of disease. Theyare intelligent, clean and open-minded. Great boys. It isnice to spend time with them’4.

Rumkowski scheduled the Western Jews as the firstto be deported, as most of them were incapable of phys-ical work which was most valued in the ghetto. Collec-tives from Vienna, Düsseldorf, Köln and Prague weresent to their deaths first. At the beginning of May 1942,over 10,000 people from the West were sent toChełmno nad Nerem. They had lived in Łódź for sixmonths.

A staircase as dirty as it was in the ghettoThe confrontation of the Survivors’ memories with the contemporary district of Bałuty, where the Litzmannstadt Ghetto was located, is a frequent themeof documentaries about the ghetto. The meeting withthe past is even more painful because of its materialcarriers – houses and streets of Bałuty – remaining al-

4 —Quoted after the film Radegast.

Lucille Eichengreen.A still from Radegast,directed by B. Lankosz, 2008,courtesy of GrupaFilmowa Fargo

90 Ewa Ciszewska

most untouched. In Łódź, there is no specific museumdedicated to the Jews incarcerated in the LitzmannstadtGhetto. On the contrary, the memory of the ghetto isconstantly present in the form of a living museum,where the wartime buildings are still inhabited and si-multaneously perform the role of exhibits. Some of thebuildings are used for different purposes than in theghetto times, but most of the tenement houses, court-yards and streets remain unchanged, to the surprise ofthe survivors.

The astonishment and disbelief of the survivors isoften followed by a feeling of time having stopped inBałuty. The ghetto, shown through the contemporary citymakes one wonder what kind of historical status thisplace has. Apart from streets and walls, evenstreetscape elements, inscriptions or wires turn out todate back to wartime. As an example, Lucille Einchen-green (RD) visited one of the courtyards and wonderedwhether some piece of barbed wire had remained therefrom since the times of the ghetto. A similar questionarose when she saw an inscription in German, featuringthe word Hamburg.

The ghetto experience in the discussed documentaryfilms is featured in two ways,: the first being the testi-monies of survivors, the second: the authors’ interpre-tation of those testimonies and their reflections onBałuty in the past and at present. In the first perspec-tive, the voices of the ghetto survivors prevail both inRadegast by Borys Lankosz and in Bałuckie getto byPavel Štingl (‘This is probably the place, but it looks evenworse than 60 years ago. Nothing has changed, it stilllooks the same. 50, perhaps 55 steps upwards, and thestaircase is as dirty as it was then, in the ghetto’ – saysLucille in the film by Lankosz).

All documentaries featuring the theme of a survivorvisiting Łódź are constructed in a way which enables theviewer to juxtapose and compare the ghetto experiencewith the reality of Bałuty in our times. They are differentwith regard to the speaker’s attitude and the amount ofspace which the authors leave for the interpretation ofthe picture. For instance, Lucille’s story about trade inthe ghetto is illustrated with pictures of the contempo-rary Rynek Bałucki [Baluter Ring] (Radegast). What wasa faint suggestion of Bart and Lankosz, in Štingl’s filmbecomes an assumption which prevails in the narrative,

91A Journey to the Cursed Land

as suggested by the very title of the film, (A BałutyGhetto) which combines the current name of that dis-trict with a historically marked noun.

The juxtaposition of survivors recalling death in theghetto and the current inhabitants of Bałuty complain-ing about the lack of drinking company within the samefilm may cause consternation. A report of a survivor onthe resourcefulness of the ghetto inmates illustratedwith materials on the resourcefulness of the Bałuty lo-cals, who do whatever they can to get money for alcohol,evokes mixed feelings as well. Štingl’s frankness re-sulted in attacks and repugnance (the filmmaker wasaccused of putting Łódź in a negative light), but it hasalso earned him voices of approval for his courage indealing uncompromisingly with the difficult and incon-venient topic of the socioeconomic exclusion of Bałuty’sinhabitants5.

Outstanding personages in the ghettoThe focus on West European Jews and references totheir biographies reminds the audience of the individualcharacter of the Shoah. Some typical opinions about theŁódź ghetto say that the Jews incarcerated there camemainly from the poor districts. The emphasis put on thepresence of West European Jews serves as a reminderthat it was Litzmannstadt Ghetto where the Jewish intellectual elite of Prague, Munich and Berlin perished.

Lucille Eichengreen.A still from Radegast,directed by B. Lankosz, 2008,courtesy of GrupaFilmowa Fargo

5 —The opinions quoted above wereexpressed by the audience after

the premiere of the film on January31, 2009 during a conference with

the director in the Charlie cinemain Łódź.

6 —Except for the article by MichałTrębacz, Dzieci czeskie z Lidic

w obozie przy ul. Żeligowskiego w Łodzi, [in:] Ludność cywilna

w łódzkich obozach przesiedleńczych, ed. Joanna

Żelazko, Instytut Pamięci Narodowej, Komisja Ścigania

Zbrodni Przeciw Narodowi Polskiemu, Urząd Miasta Łodzi,

Łódź 2010, pp.135-144.

7 —There is no written evidence

of the deportation of the childrento Chełmno nad Nerem, their

arrival and extermination. Historians have deduced it basing

on indirect evidence and witnesses’ reports.

92 Ewa Ciszewska

A fragment of Lankosz and Bart’s film elaborates onthat theme: Bronisław Wrocławski, an actor and nativeof Lodz, speaks about Franz Kafka’s sisters, ProfessorCaspari, a promoter of healthy nutrition, Hugo Ditz, a Nobel Prize candidate, and Jakob Speyer, an outstand-ing chemist, who invented Eukodal. He also mentionsRudolf Bandler, a great opera singer. Again, we are en-abled to ascribe certain places to certain persons.

Parallel editing. Czech children from Lidice and Ležaky in ŁódźIt is important to highlight a theme rarely mentioned inPolish academic literature6 – the non-Jewish childrenfrom Czechoslovakia, who were brought to Łódź as a result of Nazi politics and fell victims of the Holocaust.They came from the small towns of Lidice and Ležáky and were incarcerated in camps at 41/43,Żeligowskiego Street and at 73, Sporna Street. The ma-jority of them were gassed in Chełmno nad Nerem inJuly 19427.

This topic appears on the periphery of Pavel Štingl’sfilm, Bałuckie getto, which according to the director wasinspired by his frequent visits to Łódź during the workon his earlier project on the tragedy of Lidice. In 2005,

A Bałuty Ghetto, directed by P. Stingl, 2008, courtesy of yeti Films Sp. z o.o.

93A Journey to the Cursed Land

Pavel Štingl and Eduard Stehlík visited Łódź to docu-ment the place where the Czech children were impris-oned. Their photographs and film materials wereincluded in a multimedia exhibition Památník Lidice(The Lidice Memorial). Those visits connected with theLidice project inspired the director to make a film aboutthe ghetto in Łódź.

The inhabitants of Lidice were accused of collabora-tion in planning the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich,Protector of Bohemia and Moravia, on May 27, 1942,and killed in a retaliatory action. A few days after the as-sassination, Heydrich died of wounds in the Bulovkahospital in Prague. Since the long investigation broughtno results, the Nazis directed their retaliation towardsLidice, which according to one of the traces (later itturned out to be false) was supposed to have a connec-tion with the assassins.

The Nazis shot all 173 of the men and deported thewomen to the concentration camp in Ravensbrück.Their houses were set on fire and blown up; eventuallythe area was levelled and sprinkled with salt, so that noplants could grow there8. The settlement of Ležáky,where the Czech resistance movement had placed a transmitter used for communication with GreatBritain, was burned down two weeks later and all itsadult inhabitants were killed.

Children from  Lidice and Ležáky were brought toŁódź in two transports – on June 13, 1942 (88 children)and July 7, 1942 (18 children)9. They were placed in a transitory camp (Durchsganglager II) at 41/43,Żeligowskiego Street (Gneisenauerstrasse)10 for per-sons unfit for Germanization or work in the Reich. TheCzech children were isolated from other prisoners andhoused in factory buildings. The living conditions in thecamp were as miserable as those in the camp for Polishchildren and youths at Przemysłowa Street (within theghetto boundaries). Seven children were selected by theRassenamt in Łódź to be transferred to a camp at 73,Sporna Street and Germanised; another six childrenwere sent to Lebensborn in Puszczykowo (Puschkau)near Poznań with the same purpose. After Germaniza-tion they were adopted by Czech families.

Information about the imprisonment of the Czechchildren spread very quickly in Łódź and their fateevoked general sympathy even in comparison with the

8 —Information on that spectacular

action of the Nazis aimed at literaleradication of Lidice from the face

of the earth was widely spreadamong the Allies and paradoxically

contributed to the rebirth of thetown in social memory.

9 —Data after Pavel Slezák, Lidické

a ležácké děti v Lodži – znovuobjevení budovy táboraGneisenaustraße 41, [in:] Osud

jménem Ležáky, Ronado, Velákov,work in progress, chapter from

the webpage: http://www.dolezalova-lezaky.cz/

wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Clanek_20140107.pdf (accessed

on May 28, 2014).

10 —There were two factories located at that address. Many resources incorrectly reproduce the image of the factory located in the rear of the allotment (for instance in

the article by Michał Trębacz). The actual building was located

closer to the road. (Pavel Slezák,Lidické a ležácké děti v Lodži,

op.c it.) Both buildings were demolished in 2007 and replaced

by City Park apartment blocks.

94 Ewa Ciszewska

tragedy of the ghetto and the situation in other camps.Among them there were toddlers between 1 and 3 yearsof age, incapable of looking after themselves. The chil-dren were dirty, famished and soiled with excrement.Some of them were suffering from diarrhoea, respiratorytract infections and angina11. They regularly wettedtheir beds, which apart from their ‘too Slavic features’was considered an indication of being unfit for German-isation. Those of them who would wet their bed were forced to go outside, hosed with cold water andbeaten 12.

The tragedy of the Czech children was parallel to thetragedy of the Jews incarcerated in the LitzmannstadtGhetto. They met the same fate and were sent to the ex-termination camp in Chełmno nad Nerem at the begin-ning of July, 194213. Unsent postcards and witnesses’reports (of incarcerated children and doctors whotreated them) are all that remains of the children fromthe camp at Żeligowskiego Street, but their fates werenot left nameless thanks to numerous commemorativeactions organized mainly in the Czech Republic to honorthe tragedy of Lidice.

ConclusionCinematic testimonies regarding West European andCzech Jews and their fate constitute an interestingsource of narratives on life in the ghetto which highlightthe experience of a new, unknown world. The collisionof the West with the East seems to be an important per-spective of the ghetto memories. Survivors from West-ern Europe and Czechoslovakia who visit Łódź, often forthe first time since the war, still do experience the exis-tence of the ghetto through the remaining buildings andmeetings with their current inhabitants, who are as so-cially and materially excluded class as the ghetto in-mates were.

Documentary films concerning the testimonies ofWest European Jews allow the audience to broadentheir knowledge of Czech children from the towns ofLidice and Ležáky, the non-Jewish victims of the Nazisin Łódź.

11 —Jan Zielina, Dzieci z Lidic,

„Przegląd Lekarski“ 1966, nr 1, p. 138-140 after: Michał Trębacz,

op.cit., p. 140.

12 —Ghetto Litzmannstadt 1941-1944.

Dokumenty a výpovědi o životě českých židů v lodžském ghettu,

ed. Richard Seemann, Ústav mezinárodních vztahů, Terezínský

památník, Praha 2000, p. 141.

13 —The fate of Lidice children

is illustrated in the film Kukułka w ciemnym lesie [A Cuckoo

in a Dark Forest](Poland-Czechoslovakia,1985), directed by. Antonin Moskalyk.

Its main character is a Czech girlsubject to germanisation. The filmfeatures her father being killed byGerman soldiers and her motherbeing taken away, her stay in the

transitory camp and later inLebensborn, and the time she

spent with a German family. Noplace names are mentioned, but

the story itself and commentariesof the filmmakers show their inspi-ration with the story of the children

from Lidice, particularly that ofMarie Hanfova, who survived the

war and gave evidence in theNuremberg Trials.

WE WISH TO THANK THE FOLLOWING PERSONS, WHO SELFLESSLy SUPPORTEDTHE REALIZATION OF THE FILM PROJECT INFERNO IN THE PROMISED LAND:Małgorzata Andrzejewska-Psarska, Beata Bart, Małgorzata Burzyńska-Keller Peter Cohen, Rob Cooper, Dariusz Dekiert, Grzegorz Habryn, Leon Kelcz, Mariusz Olbrychowski, Justyna Turczynowicz, Piotr Zarębski, Piotr Zawilski

PUBLISHER:

PARTNERS:

CO-FINANCING

The Marek Edelman Dialogue Centerwww.centrumdialogu.com

Co-financed by the Ministryof Culture and National Heritage

Co-financed by the City Hall of Łódź