Lens On The Holocaust, From East Of The Berlin Wall

[struggle4progress]

In the aftermath of World War II, Eastern European cinema took a hard look at the recent atrocities.
George Robinson - Special To The Jewish Week

here is a long-held assumption that in the aftermath of World War II, a devastated world responded to the Shoah with a sort of stunned silence; that beyond the initial, horrific revelations of mass murder, people were reluctant to explore the reality of the death camps. When it comes to cinema, the truth, says film historian Annette Insdorf, is more complicated.

“There was neither cinematic silence in Europe, nor a large group of films about the Holocaust,” Insdorf said in an e-mail interview last week. “Rather, in a country like Poland, which already had a rich cinematic tradition, directors such as Wanda Jakubowska (‘The Last Stop’) and Aleksander Ford (‘Border Street’) made powerful dramas.” ...

Focusing its attention on the women’s infirmary at the death camp, the film’s script by Jakubowska and Gerda Schneider is a celebration of female solidarity in the face of horrific brutality. In that regard, “The Last Stop” is ahead of its time. On the other hand, as Insdorf noted, it also “reflects its time and place, presenting hope in the form of Communist resistance.” ...

“Rotation,” on the other hand, is a striking and intelligent film, albeit flawed, that makes a fascinating companion to Staudte’s more famous postwar piece, “The Murderers Are Among Us.” Like that film, “Rotation” is a surprisingly pessimistic study of those who stood by and did nothing while the Nazis rose to power. From the film’s strikingly complex opening sequence of a bombing of Berlin at the end of the war — seen through a series of sinuous camera movements through a bomb shelter, the rubble-strewn streets of the city and a single prison cell — to its concluding invocation of a happier time in the past, “Rotation” is filled with stunning sequences ...

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