New and old movies marking Shoah to be screened across Israel in week of Holocaust Remembrance Day

Holocaust Remembrance Day will be marked this year by screenings of new films and classics, including feature films and documentaries, that illuminate the lost lives and traumatized survivors.

These films are told from different points of view and in all different styles, with some relying on archival footage and others using different elements to tell stories from the Holocaust, including interviews and animation. These films are a very vivid way to absorb the history, and a reminder that there are still thousands of stories to be told, as we also think about hostages enduring similar traumas in Gaza today.

Among Neighbors, a fascinating new documentary by Yoav Potash about the Jews of the small town of Gniewoszów, Poland, during the war, as well as their relationship with their gentile neighbors and their legacy, is playing around Israel, with screenings at the cinematheques in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, the Israel Museum, and Lev Cinema in Ra’anana during the week, as well as a showing on YesDocu on April 23 following the broadcast of the official commemoration ceremony.

Potash, who also directed Crime After Crime, which was shown at the Sundance Film Festival, uses the story of this one town as a microcosm for what happened to Jews all over Poland.

Very much in the tradition of Claude Lanzmann’s classic documentary Shoah, Potash interviews Poles living in the town today, both the elderly and the younger generation, to ask about what they remember and have heard about the Jews who once composed a substantial portion of the town’s population. He also speaks with elderly Jewish survivors from the town and their descendants.

The heartbreaking stories of the Jews who perished in or escaped the Holocaust are told through these interviews and also through evocative animated sequences to dramatize moments that were never photographed.

Another aspect the film spotlights is the work of a young Polish photographer who documented all the uses to which Jewish tombstones were put after the locals destroyed their cemeteries, such as grindstones, paving stones, and even as gravestones for Christians, with the Hebrew letters hidden.

The movie also places its story in the context of contemporary Polish politics, as the government there tries to criminalize depictions of Poles collaborating with the Nazis and hurting Jews on their own during the war. Among Neighbors emphasizes that while some gentiles did help the Jews, the norm for Poles was either to turn a blind eye or to work with the Nazis.

The cinematheques are featuring extensive and varied programs (please go to their websites for the full programs), many of which will be accompanied by meetings with the film’s creators and historians.

Among the new films that will be shown at the Tel Aviv Cinematheque will be Sleeping with the SS by Rami Kimchi, a dramatized version of a strange, true story of a Jewish boy from the Greek city of Salonika who hid with a Jewish family posing as Greek shepherds. Surprisingly, he found himself in close contact with Nazis who took shelter with them.

The Tel Aviv Cinematheque is also presenting recent, popular Israeli feature films about the legacy of the Holocaust, including Dana Modan’s The Property, based on a graphic novel by her sister Rutu Modan, and Adir Miller’s The Ring. Both of these films are about Israelis going back to Europe to regain family property that was stolen during the war, journeys that don’t go the way they planned and which teach them as much about themselves as they do about the older generation.

Erez Tadmor’s Soda is a drama about a glamorous, mysterious survivor (Rotem Sela) who moves to a tight-knit Israeli community in the 1950s, where a former resistance fighter (Lior Raz) falls for her.

Documentaries that will be shown in Tel Aviv include Riefenstahl, a new portrait of the filmmaker who created much of the Nazis’ most effective propaganda films, by Andres Veiel.

Traces, Voices of the Second Generation, by Isaac Brown, gives a voice to the children of survivors, and will be shown at both the Jerusalem and Tel Aviv cinematheques.

Also at the Jerusalem Cinematheque, Margarethe von Trotta’s biopic Hannah Arendt will be shown, which stars Barbara Sukowa and focuses on the years during and after her coverage of the Eichmann trial. Her article and subsequent book about the trial are her best known work, which was very controversial, in which she coined the phrase “the banality of evil” to describe the architect of the Holocaust.

Eric Friedler and Michael Lurie’s From Darkness to Light is a recently released documentary about Jerry Lewis and his never-released Holocaust movie, The Day the Clown Cried, a movie that has fascinated cinephiles for half a century.

Irena’s Vow, a feature film based on the true story of a Polish Catholic nursing student (Sophie Nelisse) who was hired as the housekeeper for a Nazi and who ended up hiding Jews in his home, will be released in theaters throughout Israel this week, following a run in the US.

If you missed the movie A Real Pain – written, directed by, and starring Jesse Eisenberg, about two cousins who go on a trip to Poland to visit Holocaust memorial sites and to see where their late grandmother grew up – when it was in theaters, now you can stream it on Apple TV+. It’s currently available to buy for less than the price of a movie ticket and will be available to rent soon.

Kieran Culkin won an Oscar for his performance as one of the cousins, and this is a complex and well-acted movie that different generations can enjoy together, although it’s not intended for children.

JPost