One of the many strange things that the Nazis were fascinated by and put lots of money into was their film industry. They burned through millions of feet of film capturing every aspect of their Third Reich that they could, to preserve their "Feats" forever in images.
This documentary is an interesting find, discovered in an underground bunker filled with old Nazi propaganda films was a can of four reels of film, no other copies of it amongst all the other reels of known films. There were no credits at the start or the end, nothing written on the can other than "The Ghetto." When viewed it shows an amazing contrast in the propaganda that the Nazis were creating, and the reality they so viciously wanted proof of.
On one hand they show "rich" Jews walking around in the Warsaw ghetto past the poor, and malnourished, but interestingly enough there are multiple takes of these occurrences. They were staged, and rather well because at first glance they appear to just be a cameraman catching a deplorable show of indifference. On the flip side to showing how well the Jews were being treated in the ghetto was footage of all the atrocities that were occurring. In one hand they wanted to show people a lie, that the Jews were happy in the ghetto and flourishing, and then on the same reel showing what was really happening, because they loved it, they found great pleasure in capturing these images. Himmler kept a photo album on his desk filled with photos from the ghettos that showed how people were slowly starving to death, rotting on the street, etc. He liked to show it to people who would come into his office, he took great pride in the things that he and the Nazis were doing.
The documentary shows this long lost footage with a small amount of narration explaining what was happening at the time. There are excerpts that are read from peoples secret diaries who lived in the ghetto, who all were sent to the camps to die. Hundreds of different peoples accounts of what the reality of the situation was. The footage is also shown to people who were there and lived through it, we see their reactions and hear their stories through the footage. They also were able to track down one of the cameramen who worked on the film, and were able to get pieces of information out of him about what he had been doing there, and who had commissioned the film.
It's on the lighter side of holocaust films, and by that by no means do I mean there is any levity to it, it's just the images are tamer than those of other holocaust documentaries I've seen. That does not mean that there aren't terrible things shown in this. As a film by itself it understood what it could and could not accomplish in an hour and a half, so the narrative sticks to what we can see in the old footage, and not try and fit the whole awful occurrence into a small amount of time. It was quiet in its depiction, and respectful, it didn't over dramatize things, or play them down, they let those who had died, and lived though it tell their stories of what the Warsaw ghetto was actually like.
It was beautifully sad, I got chills several times. It was a well made and modest documentary, I can't say I enjoyed it, I don't think anyone could. I would recommend it as a introductory film when learning about the Warsaw ghetto before jumping fully in. It's a good primer, but there is so much more to know from what happened there. 8/10 stars.
Director: Yael Hersonski
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