Page 80 - Centrum Dialogu im. Marka Edelmana w Łodzi. Time of the Litzmannstadt Ghetto. Film images.

9 — of the Warsaw ghetto – most of them were made by the
The Unfinished Film (2010) Nazis in May 1942 . The global character of the memory
9
directed by yael Hersonski
is a critical reading of the film ma- of the Warsaw ghetto has many reasons which I will not
terials from the Warsaw ghetto discuss here. The consequences of such a sitiation,
left by the Nazis, a large part however, are crucial for my deliberations. There is
of which was discovered in the
1990s. Hersonski's strategy resem- a widespread impression that the images of the Warsaw
bles the one implemented by ghetto constitute a universalized image of a ghetto as
Dariusz Jabłoński in Fotoamator such and constitute a universal icon of the Holocaust.
towards the colour slides made
by Walter Genewein. The transformation process of the Warsaw ghetto into
a global memorial was accompanied by a process of
‘taking over’ other representations and including them
in the narrative about that symbolic place. In that way
the representations of the Łódź ghetto and the Jewish
district of Łódź before it was closed in 1940 became an
unmarked illustration material for the story of the War-
saw ghetto, as is the case in the French film, Le Temps
du Ghetto (1962), where the narrative on Nalewki and
Leszno streets in Warsaw is illustrated with materials
from the Bałuty and Stare Miasto districts of Łódź, shot
by the Nazi film crew of Fritz Hippler in November and
December 1939 and later used in the anti-Semitic prop-
aganda film, Der ewige Jude (1940).
Apart from photography, music is another source of
affective memory, which I understand as an emotionally
marked form of cultural memory creating a feeling of
participation. Music seems to become increasingly sig-
nificant as a carrier of someone else’s past experience
inaccessible to the contemporary audience. The repre-
sentation strategy which focuses on music in a docu-
mentary film is well exemplified by two films dedicated
to Jankiel Herszkowicz, the bard of the Łódź ghetto:
10 —
Those are probably recordings Songs of the Lodz Ghetto (2012) and The King and the
of Herszkowicz himself, made for Jester (1999). The use of two of Herszkowicz’s songs in
the local branch of the Polish Radio Daniel Szylit’s film was not accidental; Szylit, who knew
in 1965 or 1966 and added to the
Szylit's film in postproduction. the reality of the ghetto from personal experience, re-
10
membered the songs from ghetto streets . Works of the
11 — ghetto singer constitute a ‘site of memory’, as Pierre
P. Norra, Między pamięcią 11
a historią: Les lieux de mémoire, Norra puts it, which combines the narrations of all sur-
transl. P. Mościcki, Tytuł viving documentaries on the Łódź ghetto. A scene from
roboczy:Archiwum, 2009, nr 2, Fotoamator, when Arnold Mostowicz begins to hum the
p. 4-12, published by Muzeum 12
Sztuki w Łodzi. song, Rumkowski Chaim, er git indz klajim and trans-
late it from yiddish into Polish, is another memorable
12 — moment. Jo Wajsblat, who recollects Birkenau, men-
http://holocaustmusic.ort.org/
places/ghettos/lodz/ tions the song, Shtubn-eltster composed there by Her-
rumkovski-khayim0/ (09.06.2014) szkowicz. We hear different singers performing these

78 Tomasz Majewski