Audience Member
A Succession of Miracles
The thing is, we don't think about the Jews in Europe before the Holocaust. It's as though they sprang full into existence to be killed by the Nazis. If we do think of them, we perhaps think of the Russian pogroms, as so ably depicted in [i]An American Tail[/i]. I think perhaps that, when most people think of Jews, they think of them in terms of persecution. Not just mass killings, mind, but things like restricted community here in the US. Maybe, if we are very aware of history, we think of the persecution of Jews during the Spanish Inquisition. And, all right, quite a lot of the history of the Jewish people can be written in who's trying to kill or subdue them at any given point in time. Though it is, of course, more complicated over the last fifty years. However, there have still been thriving communities that lasted hundreds of years. There is the great medieval tradition of Jewish scholarship. There are, in short, times of peace. Not freedom, necessarily, and certainly not without oppression, but places where a happier time was possible.
That is the Jewish history we are examining here. Poland has had a Jewish community for over a thousand years. Much of the history of the country is tied into that community. There had been ups and downs, but by and large, Polish Jews were safer than Jews pretty much anywhere else in the world. Here, we have a portrait of a thriving center of population, a thriving culture. The documentary paints the lives of families, of social groups. We see the Yiddish theatre. The Hebrew newspapers. We learn about the increasing anti-Semitism faced by a people who had contributed to Poland for so long. The world is slowly changing, and that change will inevitably be devastating for these people, but for now, there is peace. For now, there is a time to sing music-hall songs and read great books. And mostly, this is a story of urban life, possibly because the documentation there is better. It is also true that urban life was generally better for outsiders than rural life.
This picture, I think, could have been painted of anywhere in Europe. These are, for the most part, people who consider themselves Poles first and then Jews, not the image that was responsible for much persecution over the centuries. Yes, there was a strong Jewish tradition, and yes, there was a connection to Jewish culture. And, of course, there was the religious thing. However, I suspect a majority of Jews thought of themselves as having more in common with Polish gentiles than with, oh, French Jews. At that, the differences were as much forced on them as anything else. They were by-Gods Poles. This is known to have been true all over Europe. Oh, there were doubtless exceptions. More than a few. However, the distinctions between, say, German Jews and German gentiles were similar to the distinctions between Prussians and Bavarians. They were all Germans. Just different kinds of Germans. (The reason I use that version is that I don't, in fact, know the names of any regions in Poland.) That's just how things were.
Again, there were cultural differences, of course. The language difference, for one. However, I think the film highlights the similarities. Again, a lot of it is just about family lives, about the hardships left over from World War I, about wanting to go out to shows and sing songs. However, winding through the story is the growing fear and hatred of that community, that ancient community. It's probable the resentment was long-lasting, and we do know that there had been conflicts, even pogroms, over the thousand-year history. However, even as one of the women interviewed talks about the booths for Sukkot, she also talks about gentiles coming to visit their complex, I believe to patronize the barbers living therein. It's a happy image. Many of the things described in the movie are. This is a life you can picture yourself leading, I think, though I have a hard time picturing myself leading any life that doesn't involve lots of movies and an internet connection.
There is a nostalgic appearance to the movie. It's filmed in 1980s-scope, and of course half the people appearing are probably dead by now, if not more. There is also a heavy reliance on what surviving images we have of the time. After all, in the time just after the story ends, we must deal with the destruction of untold pictures, of everything or nearly everything the society created. History, as we know, would not be kind to these people. The title of this review comes from the statement of one of the men interviewed, who says it's how he survived the war. There were, of course, many ways Polish Jews survived the war. The two most famous are of course the [i]Schindlerjuden[/i] and Roman Polanski, who was first sent to France and then put into hiding from there. (His cousin was a Schindler Jew.) Obviously, the film must focus on those who survived the war, if for no other reason than that they can't interview the others. However, you cannot forget the background, the reason we're dealing with this story in the first place.
Rated 4/5 Stars •
Rated 4 out of 5 stars
02/12/23
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