A single film cannister simply labeled 'The Ghetto', found many years following the end of World War II, sheds light on the Nazi propaganda machine and it's attempt to manipulate public opinion by revealing how 'wealthy' Jews seemingly lived alongside those of lesser means without regard for their squalid conditions. I was fascinated by the frequent use of the term 'rich' Jews, as today, the clothes they wore and the parties they attended under staged conditions resembled what would be considered moderately middle class. In actuality, I couldn't relate to terms like 'luxury' and 'paradise' as portrayed in the documentary, although one might consider that luxury would have described any possibility of escaping the torment and misery depicted here.
If one's only perception of living conditions for the mass of Jewish humanity under the Nazi regime is pictures like "Schindler's List", then this footage offers the real deal. It's impossible to imagine hundreds of thousands of people cramped into a three square mile area of a ravaged city, starving and malnourished, tossing garbage out the windows of their tenements because they're too weak to dispose of it properly. Gaunt, expressionless children rummaging through piles of garbage looking for a useful bit of food scrap. The dead brought out to sidewalks and left to be rounded up in mass graves because they couldn't be buried properly. The conditions presented in this film are almost impossible to conceive in one's imagination, so horrid are the images that citizens of the Warsaw Ghetto had to endure as part of their daily life.
Much of the film commentary is gleaned from the written documentation provided by Adam Czerniakow, the head of the Jewish council placed in charge of the Ghetto by the Nazi regime. There's also the recollections of cameraman Willy Wist who recorded much of the atrocity, one of the few such photographers who's name can be connected to the visual history of this era. By the end of his tenure, Czerniakow obviously concluded that his job in The Ghetto was that of a manager of a holding pen for Jewish natives and refugees on their way to a Nazi final solution, the Treblinka Death Camp. Two months after being ordered to draw up lists of Jews for relocation to Treblinka, he committed suicide with a cyanide capsule.
As a historical document, this film is unscathing in it's portrayal of Nazi atrocity and the dehumanization of life on a grand scale. The reactions of now elderly survivors of the era who witnessed the conditions portrayed when they were children lends further testimony to how fortunate they were to finally escape. For historians and anyone interested in World War II, this is an unflinching look at how Man's inhumanity to Man can achieve indescribable proportions.
If one's only perception of living conditions for the mass of Jewish humanity under the Nazi regime is pictures like "Schindler's List", then this footage offers the real deal. It's impossible to imagine hundreds of thousands of people cramped into a three square mile area of a ravaged city, starving and malnourished, tossing garbage out the windows of their tenements because they're too weak to dispose of it properly. Gaunt, expressionless children rummaging through piles of garbage looking for a useful bit of food scrap. The dead brought out to sidewalks and left to be rounded up in mass graves because they couldn't be buried properly. The conditions presented in this film are almost impossible to conceive in one's imagination, so horrid are the images that citizens of the Warsaw Ghetto had to endure as part of their daily life.
Much of the film commentary is gleaned from the written documentation provided by Adam Czerniakow, the head of the Jewish council placed in charge of the Ghetto by the Nazi regime. There's also the recollections of cameraman Willy Wist who recorded much of the atrocity, one of the few such photographers who's name can be connected to the visual history of this era. By the end of his tenure, Czerniakow obviously concluded that his job in The Ghetto was that of a manager of a holding pen for Jewish natives and refugees on their way to a Nazi final solution, the Treblinka Death Camp. Two months after being ordered to draw up lists of Jews for relocation to Treblinka, he committed suicide with a cyanide capsule.
As a historical document, this film is unscathing in it's portrayal of Nazi atrocity and the dehumanization of life on a grand scale. The reactions of now elderly survivors of the era who witnessed the conditions portrayed when they were children lends further testimony to how fortunate they were to finally escape. For historians and anyone interested in World War II, this is an unflinching look at how Man's inhumanity to Man can achieve indescribable proportions.