Page 92 - Centrum Dialogu im. Marka Edelmana w Łodzi. Time of the Litzmannstadt Ghetto. Film images.

most untouched. In Łódź, there is no specific museum
dedicated to the Jews incarcerated in the Litzmannstadt
Ghetto. On the contrary, the memory of the ghetto is
constantly 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 the
buildings are used for different purposes than in the
ghetto times, but most of the tenement houses, court-
yards and streets remain unchanged, to the surprise of
the survivors.
The astonishment and disbelief of the survivors is
often followed by a feeling of time having stopped in
Bałuty. The ghetto, shown through the contemporary city
makes one wonder what kind of historical status this
place has. Apart from streets and walls, even
streetscape elements, inscriptions or wires turn out to
date back to wartime. As an example, Lucille Einchen-
green (RD) visited one of the courtyards and wondered
whether some piece of barbed wire had remained there
from since the times of the ghetto. A similar question
arose when she saw an inscription in German, featuring
the word Hamburg.
The ghetto experience in the discussed documentary
films 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 on
Bałuty in the past and at present. In the first perspec-
tive, the voices of the ghetto survivors prevail both in
Radegast by Borys Lankosz and in Bałuckie getto by
Pavel Štingl (‘This is probably the place, but it looks even
worse than 60 years ago. Nothing has changed, it still
looks the same. 50, perhaps 55 steps upwards, and the
staircase is as dirty as it was then, in the ghetto’ – says
Lucille in the film by Lankosz).
All documentaries featuring the theme of a survivor
visiting Łódź are constructed in a way which enables the
viewer to juxtapose and compare the ghetto experience
with the reality of Bałuty in our times. They are different
with regard to the speaker’s attitude and the amount of
space which the authors leave for the interpretation of
the picture. For instance, Lucille’s story about trade in
the ghetto is illustrated with pictures of the contempo-
rary Rynek Bałucki [Baluter Ring] (Radegast). What was
a faint suggestion of Bart and Lankosz, in Štingl’s film
becomes an assumption which prevails in the narrative,

90 Ewa Ciszewska