Page 81 - Centrum Dialogu im. Marka Edelmana w Łodzi. Time of the Litzmannstadt Ghetto. Film images.

songs, but every time it is an intonation and someone’s
unique voice supported by that person’s experience and
individual story. The juxtaposition of ghetto songs per-
13 — formed by the klezmer group, Brave Old World with the
13
Those recordings are included song, Geto, getunia, getochna kochana performed by
in the album Song of the Łódź
Ghetto (2006) Łódź-born granddaughter of Jankiel Herszkowicz walk-
ing through the courtyards of the Old Town is particularly
moving,
The Israeli film, The King and the Jester; presents
a different strategy in terms of music. A TV collage with
elements of video mixing, merging images and ani-
mated scenography to creates a rich visual form, almost
a video clip, in comparison with the aforementioned
films. Subsequent narration episodes are illustrated by
Herszkowicz’s songs and accompanied by colourized
archival photographs by Mendel Grosman or by ani-
mated scenography. Their aim is to represent the inter-
nal experience and state of mind of the ghetto
inhabitants 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 and
tenderness towards Herszkowicz’s brethren. They strike
the notes of sadness, irony and rebellion. The King is
Chaim 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 of
Rumkowski’s speeches and counterpointed with frag-
ments of Herszkowicz’s songs. The commentary is read
by different male and female voices, which affects the
musical aspect of the film as well. As an example, a dry
note from the Chronicle of the Łódź Ghetto is about the
use of 250,000 bricks from demolished houses to pave
the road leading to the cemetery at Bracka Street. Read
as a voice-over, it is accompanied by Herszkowicz’s
song about the places of relaxation and eternal rest
being not accidentally so close to each other at Marysin.
The film is preceded by a meaningful notice: ‘Street
songs 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 nervous
breakdown he experienced after many of his friends
14 — had left Poland due to the anti-Semitic campaign of
Jankiel Herszkowicz's 1968. For long years, Herszkowicz was forgotten in
grave has been transferred
to the Jewish cemetery Łódź, where he lived after the war and was buried at the
14
at Bracka Street in 2012 cemetery at Doły in 1972 , Nevertheless, his songs

Litzmannstadt Ghetto – Affective Memory, Photography and Music 79