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WHO WILL WRITE OUR HISTORY
Director: Roberta Grossman MPAA
Rating: Running Time: 1:35 Release Date: 1/18/19 (limited); 2/1/19 (wider) |
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Review by Mark Dujsik | January 31, 2019 The Onyeg Shabes Archive was an ambitious attempt to tell the story of the Jewish people in the Warsaw Ghetto, born out of rebellion against Nazi propaganda and the necessity of the mounting realization that most of the people in that place wouldn't be able to tell their stories in the near future. The archive was kept hidden while the ghetto was populated and buried beneath the foundations of buildings just before the mass deportation of the population. Who Will Write Our History tells the story of the archive, but it misses the more important point: to tell the stories for which the archive was created. Director Roberta Grossman uses expert interviews, archival footage, and dramatic re-enactments to show how Emanuel Ringelblum, Rachela Auerbach, and almost 60 others commissioned, collected, and kept safe the various writings of everyday people in the ghetto. Their story is vital, of course, not only in the contemporary courage of such an endeavor but also in the foresight of preserving the truth against a system of hateful lies. We are told over and over again how many pieces—from journals, to letters, to poems, to literature—were collected over the course of the ghetto's existence, but the movie's focus is almost exclusively kept to the archive-keepers' major figures. The story of the ghetto is told with clarity, since filmmakers commissioned by the Nazi government left behind damning footage in their attempts to demonize the population. We're left with a general sense of the horrors through the footage and the writings of the archivists, but Grossman's straightforward approach to this material only offers flashes of different perspectives. One such moment is an extended sequence that re-creates a short story, written by an ordinary man who recounts his daily routine. He begins his day hungry, and after witnessing dead bodies and starving children and a mother keeping watch over her child while he undergoes surgery, the man always returns to the all-consuming fact of his hunger. It's a personal account of what the experience of the ghetto was like amidst a movie that, otherwise, feels more academic than intimate. Who Will Write Our History acknowledges that there are countless stories preserved by the efforts of Ringelblum, Auerbach, and those other brave and righteously defiant souls. It goes little further than the acknowledgment, though. Copyright © 2019 by Mark Dujsik. All rights reserved. |
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