Page 88 - Centrum Dialogu im. Marka Edelmana w Łodzi. Time of the Litzmannstadt Ghetto. Film images.

A still from Radegast, That impression was particularly strong in Łódź, the
directed by B. Lankosz, 2008, heart of Jewish choir music.
courtesy of Grupa Different train stations will appear subsequently in
Filmowa Fargo
the film: Grunewald station in Berlin, from where the
German Jews were deported to the East, the station in
Hamburg, where Lucille Eichengreen started her jour-
ney, and Holesovice station in Prague (the story of Erwin
Singer). The destination of trains which were leaving
those 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 newcomers
would 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 balloon
left on the platform. That balloon is a distinctive symbol
of interrupted childhood and the end of carefree
dreams. The cinematic erudition of the film-makers al-
lows us to believe that this attribute of childhood alludes
to 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 World
In October 1941, over 20,000 Jews from Czechoslova-
kia and the West arrived in Łódź. They were different

86 Ewa Ciszewska