Page 67 - Centrum Dialogu im. Marka Edelmana w Łodzi. Time of the Litzmannstadt Ghetto. Film images.

The film does not lose authenticity despite the dom-
ination of its lyrical tone. Thanks to its unusual form, the
priceless documentation comprised of poems and
memoirs conveys not only information, but also knowl-
edge. As was the case with The Face of an Angel, the
authors’ concentration on emotions increases the au-
dience’s identification with the characters, although it
is not anchored – as Huyssen would like it – in an indi-
vidual character. Here the identification is dynamic and
universal. The narrative methods develop an emotional
bond 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, but
expands onto the entire picture.
In the introduction to this text, I have reported critical
opinions towards the use of realistic conventions and
narrative schemes of fiction cinema in representing the
Holocaust. Those were mainly about feature films. With
reference to Robert Braun’s statement saying that after
Auschwitz the historical past cannot be depicted in the
convention of realistic narrative anymore, it is worth not-
ing that films using modernist representation strategies
are a small marginal minority among contemporary
13 — documentaries on the Holocaust. The realistic conven-
Litzmannstadt Ghetto 1942 was tion, which applies in equal measure to the description
primarily entitled Wielka szpera
[The Great Szpera]. The new of all phenomena originating from reality, rules with al-
reedited version will be screened most absolute power in documentary cinema. If critics
under the title Oddajcie mi swoje of realism in feature cinema formulated ethical charges
dzieci [Give Me your Children].
against the use of conventional fiction language to
14 — speak about the Holocaust, then the same charges can
The word „szpera” originates from be directed towards realistic documentaries, which use
a German expression Allgemeine
Gehsperre (general curfew). the same language to describe both the Holocaust and
General curfew was introduced any other wars or historical events.
time when the ghetto inhabitants Such realistic documentary cinema formulas are uti-
were not allowed to leave their
apartments. The name Great lized by Piotr Weychert and Piotr Perz in their documen-
Szpera concerns the dramatic tary, Litzmannstadt Ghetto 1942 (2012) 13 to tell the
events of September 1942, when story of the Jews from the Łódź ghetto; in particular the
the Nazis deprted approx. 20,000
Jews, mainly children under the events from September 1942, known as the Great
14
age of 10, adults over the age Szpera , when all the children, elderly and ill were de-
of 65 and the ill, considered ported from the ghetto as unproductive for the ghetto
unproductive and useless by the
Germans. The deportations industry. In this film, we will not find any reflection on
of children were preceded by language appropriate for speaking about the Holocaust;
Rumkowski’s famous speech. The neither are any narrative experimentation methods
Elder of the Jews would say: ‘ It is
necessary to sacrifice the children used. It is actually difficult to describe this film in terms
and the elderly’. of technique and form. The authors have just let the

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