Hitler's Holocaust: Ghetto

VIDEO

Hitler’s Holocaust: Ghetto. Videocassette. © MPR Film und Fernsch Produktion GmtH for the History Channel, 2000. Running Time: Approximately 50 minutes.

REVIEW

Ghetto opens with the alarming statistic that in a 1½ square mile area there lived 370,000 people – this was the Warsaw Ghetto (another way to say this is that 30% of Warsaw’s population lived in 2.4% of its area). I like to pause the VCR at that point and roughly draw an image in the students’ minds of just how large an area that would be, relative to the community around our school. I think this is one instance when the Holocaust gives us a large number to which we can thankfully put a value. Upon resuming the video, films authorized by propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels and produced by filmmaker Fritz Hippler (who is interviewed) are shown. The footage, we are told, was staged in an effort to show in some cases that life in the ghetto was not so bad, and in other cases that the Jews were getting “what they deserved”. These images provide students another opportunity for an interruption for discussion – Why would the Nazis film what they were doing? Why would the Jews act as if nothing was wrong? Why was there no refusal to participate?

Ghetto is a very good survey of the events of the ghettoization process as it applied to many parts of the German empire in the early 1940’s. The filmmakers have, as they’ve done throughout the Hitler’s Holocaust series, gathered people from all walks of life in the Shoah. Of note in this installment of the series is Niklas Frank, son of the governor of Poland at the time, Hans Frank (“the butcher of Poland”). The younger Frank is not hesitant in indicting his father for various crimes and antisemitic attitudes; he says, “Human beings meant nothing to him…profit meant everything. Our home had nothing but stolen things laying around.” Survivors and soldiers abound with their testimonies, and we are privileged to again hear from Samuel Pisar, who so eloquently tells of his life’s tragedies. Students who have seen Schindler’s List will most likely find a familiar idea when the narrator addresses the issue of Germans flooding to the east to profit from the conquered Poland; German soldiers tell of duty in Poland being a “choice assignment”. Of course, with the Poles crushed and the invasion of the Soviet Union a ways off, it was the Holocaust that preoccupied them – one could enjoy a life of leisure outside of the 9 to 5 drudgery of killing Jews and Polish intelligentsia. As one soldier absurdly put it, “I laughed, I loved; I led the life of a normal happy person.”

Survivors speak of life in the ghetto – one man discusses life in Lodz and of the daily routine of the learning of new decrees. As he put it, the people just got used to yesterday’s new law and another one had been issued alongside it. Archival film of an SS market raid is shown, as the Germans sought out smugglers and their contraband. People tell of Jews thrown from their homes, and often beaten up in the process. The Warsaw ghetto is the basis for perhaps the most memorable story of this film. We are told of the conditions as winter set in – of frozen water pipes that burst. Because the people were now without running water, the corridors were used as toilet facilities. Excrement and urine were thrown out of the windows to the yard below. And when the spring thaw came, and what had been frozen began to flow, then came the diseases: typhoid fever and typhus. Survivors then relate how they were disinfected – men and women shaved of all body hair (which we are told was particularly traumatic for the women to have their long hair cut) and the clothing boiled. We learn that after the Nazis purified the clothing, it was thrown out into the cold Polish air. The Jews were made to go outside naked and find their wet clothes.

Jan Karski relates his personal story as a Polish underground fighter smuggled into the Warsaw ghetto to ferret out information. He tells a story of seeing a corpse on the street, naked except for a newspaper across the dead man’s midsection, small stones on the edges to keep it in place. He says that for the most part the dead were left uncovered, that “every piece of clothing was priceless.” The justification of the Jews was that in these bad times, the dead would be forgiving of any injustice. Every day, hundreds of people perished, and were lost to mass graves. A woman from Lodz says that only spiritual resistance, and religious and cultural resistance to this treatment were possible – physical resistance was not. And as Lodz was “resettled” in January 1942, that lack of physical resistance only sped along the 30-minute journey (covering perhaps only 12 km) to Chelmno, where gas vans waited. The order to begin general liquidations came in March 1942 (deportations would actually stop from September 1942 to May 1944); as one survivor tells, “You only knew one thing – ‘I am going away from here.’” But right after he says, “We heard the terrible noise of shooting in the distance.” This is another good opportunity to pause the movie – many students will be aghast at the notion that even this late in the events of the Shoah, some victims still did not completely perceive their fate.

Shortly before the deportations are discussed, and the narrator tells that the locals knew what the transports were, the film thankfully does show us a perpetrator who is remorseful for his part in history. The former member of the German Order Police states: “A few days later it occurred to me, the Jews are not our ruin; we are our own disaster.” Unfortunately, his opinion was in the minority…

Note: Host Roger Mudd concludes this installment of the series with an anecdote about Polish collaboration, and uses the incident at Jedwabne, Poland, where Poles burned 1600 of their Jewish townsfolk in a barn, to get his point across. Author Jan T. Gross covered these circumstances in his excellent book, Neighbors.

PASSAGE/QUOTE FOR CLASSROOM USAGE

Early in the video, Samuel Pisar (from whom we’ve heard testimony in an earlier film in this series) makes the following statement, in speaking of the early days of life in the ghetto:

“This was the normal universe and maybe it’s true – maybe I am subhuman, and maybe they are the master race. And you kept going…”

Ask your students to “set the table”, so to speak, prior to watching the film. Read to them the above statement, or write it on the chalkboard prior to students entering the classroom. Have them form groups and brainstorm, from what they might already know of the Holocaust in general and the ghettos in particular, conditions and ideas that might have formed Pisar’s opinion. Before starting the video, have groups share their lists.

RATIONALE FOR USAGE/UNIT RELEVANCE

The film Ghetto obviously ties in with any discussion of the topic, and also nicely accompanies any readings that might be used on the subject. It can also be effective in a unit of study on perpetrators and victims, and collaborators as well, as many German businesses made use of labor supplied by the ghetto populations. While there is nothing specifically aimed at resistance (this comes in a later film in the series), certainly there would be opportunities for discussion based on some of the testimonies given in the film.

CLASSROOM METHOD OF USAGE

As stated earlier, the film may be shown in its entirety or broken into segments for smaller blocks of discussion.

STUDY QUESTIONS/DISCUSSION GUIDE

For this film there are many memorable quotes. Several are supplied below. Students should skim over the study guide, and then listen carefully for these statements in the film. This is a worthwhile activity, as many students today perform poorly when required to only be passive listeners. This activity will require acute listening and quick responses. Of course, the teacher should take care not to intimidate students with special needs. The assignment can be modified as needed.

Name __________________________________

On the Road to Extermination: Quotes From People Who Were There

Hitler’s Holocaust: Ghetto

On the lines that follow you will see a quote or statement from the film Ghetto. You are to listen carefully for the quotation, and summarize as best you can the context of that person’s testimony. Do not worry about neatness or writing in complete sentences. After viewing the film, you are to take home these notes and write your feelings where there is a statement that made a particular impact on you during viewing or upon seeing specific images.

“This was the normal universe and maybe its true – maybe I am an untermensch (subhuman), and maybe they are the Aryan rasse (master race). And you kept going.”

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*Young soldiers had been taught that Jews were subhuman and could do whatever they wanted.*

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“Human beings meant nothing to him... profit meant everything”

*For German occupiers, Poland was a land flowing with milk and honey.*

*Occupied Poland was a choice assignment.*

“In Krakow, 100,000 people used to live in the section of town where the ghetto was.”

“You had to find your clothes outside in the Polish winter.”

“Every piece of clothing was priceless.”

“The death penalty was in effect in the ghetto for possessing foreign currency and any jewelry.”

*In Lodz, there were orders for resettlement and the promise of a better life.*

“The clothing was sorted color-to-color and cut into strips for weaving.”

“You only knew one thing – I am going away from here.”

“We heard the terrible noise of shooting in the distance.”

“Moses, it’s time for you to die.”

“My mother said to me, ‘Should I dress you in long trousers or short pants?’”

Of Hans Frank: “Everyone has a conscience and everyone must kill this conscience inside of him to do things like this.”

*The trains returned empty, and for too quickly to have moved east for resettlement.*