During the month of May in 1942, a few weeks before deportations to the extermination camp Treblinka began, secret films were ordered to be shot in the ghettos of Warsaw, on the orders of the SS. The barely touched original footage survived the war, to then emerge from the film archives of the GDR. Up to now, the material has provided detailed insight into the everyday life in the ghettos. The images show the gatherings of the Jewish security services set up by the SS, the work of the Jewish Ghetto Police, the kosher butchering of a hen, death on the streets and burials in mass graves. Filmmaker Yael Hersonski, granddaughter of a survivor of the Warsaw ghetto, sets the 60-minute long, silent, black and white images in the context of comments from witnesses of the era. The juxtaposition of comments from those who survived the ghetto with the perpetrators’ perspectives makes it very clear that the intention was to use it as propaganda.
Germany / Israel, 2010. Director: Yael Hersonski. German with English subtitles. Please RSVP to
bso@johannesburg.goethe.org by 29 October 2017.
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