Response-A Film Unfinished

Response Essay

“A Film Unfinished”

            “A Film Unfinished” is about the Warsaw ghetto. The Nazis filmed the ghetto and tried to make the life of the Jew look good. In the process of doing so they filmed what was exactly happening and the graphic mistreatment of Jews. The film was never finished and years later we found these films in a bunker in Germany. It was hard watching some of the film not so much of the violence but just the thought of people treating other people like that. I’ve seen plenty of gore and plenty of nasty cruel things out there so watching this wasn’t too bad. What was bad was knowing that it actually happened. Every time I think of the holocaust I just think, “How could this happen to such a large group of people.”

            While doing the survivor testimonies, I came across a guy who was in the Warsaw ghetto and he said this was like heaven compared to the concentration camp because he still had his family. I watched that film and although it was terrible, the treatment they received in the ghetto wasn’t nearly as bad as certain other places. They had their family with them in the ghetto which if that was me I think I’d be counting my blessings. The biggest complications in the ghetto were food and space. They fit 250,000 people into a square three miles which is just absolutely insane. I could deal with the space issues but not having enough food would be my fear and biggest problem.

            Yes a film unfinished is hard to watch but nothing compare to what was happening at Treblinka or Auschwitz. I think the most heartbreaking seen was the dead children just lying in the street. That’s what would get me if I lived in the Warsaw ghetto. Another thing that would be hard, especially as a parent would be seeing my kids hungry and withering away. Something good about the ghetto is they were able to secretly practice their religion which is everything to the Jews. There were some things not too bad about being in the ghetto but then again it’s definitely not any way someone wants to live life.

A film unfinished - response summary

In "A Film Unfinished" it shows the horrible truth about the Warsaw ghetto. This film was very disturbing to me , but at the same time I viewed it as a eye opener on what was happening during the war when the German Nazis tortured the Jewish culture. In the thirty days of filming they captured things that were going on such as people starving,children searching for ways to eat ,trash everywhere because people were just to weak to carry it ot, Jews being mistreated and filmed as if they were animals. They were also filming things that were staged and untrue for propaganda purposes. I couldnt imagine being expelled from my home and forced to find a home within the ghetto walls in 2 days not able to have all my belongings,in most cases families were to share one room and only had access to very little food. The film showed how the Jewish community just roamed the streets most of them became very weak and unhealthy in a short time due to lack of eating and hygeine. Families were torn apart as they were eventually dying off in the streets, one survivor mentioned herself as becoming "unhuman" ,she had became "indifferent of others,otherwise it would have been impossible to live." They were eventually stepping over corpses of all ages that were lying in the streets and sidewalks, watching Jews picking up other Jews throwing them in a cart and taking them to mass graves.While watching this part of the film I asked myself , How could someone just stand there and film things like this go on ? It is heartbreaking to watch, I couldnt imagine being a part of something so horrible. The staging of scenes like making Jews walk with their heads held high as if nothing was going on, the feeding them in resturaunts , even a fake funeral precession is just another horrible act. How can people be so cruel? The Holucost is a very interesting topic however after viewing this film it was put into perspective of all the torture and inhumane things those poor people had to endure during the War and the Film was a little hard to sit through and watch without tears coming to my eyes.

Devon Bennett Video Response

Class Film

The film we watched in class was a propaganda film that the Nazi party filmed to show life in the ghettos.  The film was intended to let people see just how great the ghettos were by the Nazis but they also filmed the dark side of the ghetto.  They never thought that one day people might actually see what was going on inside these ghettos and just how horrible the conditions were.  After watching this film one can only say that the Jews in the Warsaw ghetto were treated as if they were the animals that the Nazis used as a joke for their entertainment. 

The conditions inside the ghetto were some of the worst things I have ever seen before.  The people were actually dead on the street and because the people were so sick themselves and starving they didn’t have the time to mourn.  The people were numb according to a lady in the film casing them to be oblivious to the pain and agony inside the camp. 

I would have to say that the Nazis were playing a huge trick on the Jews and they were just trying to create propaganda.  They would create scenes inside the camp that portrayed a group of people that were having a great time.  They showed people dinning with the best things money could buy, and living a life that was so false that even the Jews doing it had a hard time understanding.   According to the people on the film they were told if they didn’t cooperate they would be shot and killed.  They were forced to laugh and pretend that they had a great life going for them. 

The major feature in the film was the interview with the guy who was hired by the Nazis to film the ghetto.  He was asked if he knew what was going in inside the ghetto and he said that he didn’t until after.  He knew that things were not as good as the film was to portray but he couldn’t do anything or he would have been charged as well. 

The real reason that all of this was done was because the population in Germany was starting to get curious as to where all the Jews went and they wanted to know.  They were going to be shown by the Nazi party that they were fine in this ghetto living one of the best lives a person could possibly live.

A Film Unfinished. ReBecca Burnett.

          

While watching “A Film Unfinished” I found it extremely hard to watch.  This video, or should I say documentary, was shot by the infamous Nazi’s in May of 1942 in the Warsaw ghetto.  This film was never found entirely, but the footage that they have, they put together to make this video.  Because not all of the video footage was found, some of the scenes were set up and they had staged actors to play the role of the Jews.  The video, remind you that is filmed by the Nazi’s, was supposed to show the life of the Jews after they were taken from Germany.  It showed the daily life and living conditions after being rounded up and taken, but like I said they hired actors, so some of the scenes were to over dramatized.  The Nazi’s wanted to hide any sign of torture of the Jews, so they went to different lengths to cover how the Jews actually lived. 

            In the video film makers had multiple survivors sit in a theater and watch the horrible real-life documentary made by the Nazi’s.  The heartbroken survivors were in complete disbelief of how the Nazi’s portrayed how the Jews were treated and how the conditions of the ghettos were.  The survivors couldn’t believe what they were saying and how they showed life as a luxury. This was so not the case for any of the Jews, because as most of us know, life for the Jews was not an easy one.  Jews were to live in one bedroom apartment with multiple families and barely any food to eat.  Later in the video is when the rawness of the horror comes too in the Warsaw ghetto life.  Then pictures of the innocent dead bodies, garbage and the sadness upon men’s faces flash upon the screen and for me, that’s what I take away from this video, the sadness that these innocent lives had to face and the life they had live behind because.  The rawness of the footage is terrifying and heartbreaking for anyone to watch.  It shows the way the Nazi’s wanted people to view life and how life really was. (359)

A Film Unfinished - Kaitlyn Wallace

After watching the movie "An Unfinished Film" all I could think was how lucky I am to have to have the life I have to day. It is unfathomable the things they did to the Jews. How could any person become so numb that the suffering of others that they could just kill and torture people without thinking anything of it. It made me sick to my stomach to see the conditions they were forced to live in and the things that the film makers would make them do. One scene that I cannot get out of mind was when they were burying the bodies. They would just walk down the street and pick up the carcasses of everyone who had died that day and throw them onto a cart. They then took them to a massive grave and would just slide the bodies down a slide into the grave, they had at least ten to twenty people in one grave. It was hard to watch them throw around the bodies like they were nothing that the people who had died were just worthless. Another thing that stood out was the scene where they made them take the baths together and be filmed. It just seemed so cruel to make them do that and be filmed, I cannot even imagine how the camera men had to feel. I wonder if they wanted to try and help the people or if they were just as emotionless as the Germans? 

A Film Unfinished-Cheyenne Long

“A Film Unfinished” is about a German film crew that was hired to film the Warsaw Ghetto. They had decided to film the largest ghetto and show what they were like. There were more than 300,000 people into a mile and a half space. The amount of emotional and physical torture the Jews went through was tremendous. My heart aches for the people who had to endure the hatred of the Germans. The films were staged to ensure others that the camps were good not bad. There were corpses on the sidewalk; people had to ignore the suffering of others in order to live. The film crew staged a lot of what they filmed. One film maker says he saw a Jew picking up bodies and taking them to the cemetery. He saw forty to fifty bodies put into a shack, and then they were taken to this mass grave filled with layers of Jews. The bodies of the deceased look like twigs, just skin and bone. Warsaw was in very bad shape. The Jews had no clue what was to happen, exterminations were planned. The Jewish shootings lasted thirty days, many had died. People starved to death and many died from illness. The Germans were questioning what had happened to the Jews and that is where the film came from. It was a complete propaganda; they only filmed the good in the ghetto. At times the true treatment of the Jews was filmed but the plan was to edit those out. The Jews believed they were going to be sent out to a work facility.

survivor testimony 2

Anne DeCamillo Mr. Neuburger Eng. 102-120 10 March 2013 Survivor Testimony Holocaust Survivor This survivor testimony is from Eline Hoekstra Dresden she was born in Holland where she lived with her Mother and Father and four other siblings. Luckily Eline was able to finish school and get some college before the Nazis no longer allowed the Jews to go to school. Eline goes on to explain how she became pregnant and about three months after the baby was born things started to become very bad and the people in Holland were beginning to be scared. Eline decided to send her baby boy with a friend of the family where he would be safe and it was not long after that Eline was taken into a camp. Eline goes on to say how this was not a normal camp it was actually a castle where a group of educated Jews were held. She states how they did not know why they were in that group but she was glad she ended up there because it was not too bad and could have been worse. After a few months this group of Jews was taken to another camp and Eline explains how this camp was not as bad as it could have been and explained it as a prelude to the last kind of camp you can go to. Eline states “We arrived tired, scared and expecting misery”. So in regards to what it could have been she was very pleased in the way it turned out. Eline explains she doesn’t exactly know how she survived but she explains that she did little sneaky things that she got away with which made her feel empowered and that empowerment gave her the survival instinct she needed to do just enough to survive. Eline explains a lot of work that she did in the camp and explains how she worked in the fields and a lot of the Jews would collapse because they were so weak. Eline explains how one time the Jews were called together because someone stole. The person who had stole came forward only because they knew they would be punished collectively and everything would be taken away and the workload would be even harder. Eline had come forward and also told how she had taken two loafs of bread as well and to her surprise she wasn’t beat and was only told to do a chore that wasn’t worse then any other chore they had done. Eline explains how she was very lucky and did not know how she got away with as much as she did. In conclusion Eline was in the camp until the end of the war. She found out that her brother had survived and her sister as well, the son she sent away to be safe was also indeed safe and luckily Eline and her husband survived through these tragic times. Eline seen a lot of horrible things which caused her very much turmoil through out her life However she expresses Gratitude that she survive

survivor testimony 1

Anne DeCamillo Mr.Neuburer Eng. 102-120 March 11, 2013 Essay Response Survivor Testimony In this interview Gustav Goldberg interviews holocaust survivor Hans Werner Levy Known now by Henry Laurant.Laurant was born May 28, 1924 in Koenigsberg Germany.Laurant had an older sister growing up and does recall his life before the war and before the persecution of Jewish families.Laurant’s father was a medical doctor and had his own medical practice so growing up Laurant’s family was well off financially. Laurant reflects on the first time he encountered anti-semitism and refers to the age of about five years old, when he was walking down the street and a group of German children started yelling things at him and calling him bad names. At the time Laurant was confused and Quotes that “he was terrified and confused thinking they had the wrong kid.” Laurant goes on to explain how eventually after his father had his own medical practice for nearly 20 years and eventually lost it due to the german’s, however, at this time there were no restrictions on career fields for the Jewish. So at this time Laurant and his family moved to Berlin where his father changed career fields and started doing Psychoanalyst. The family was excited to get out of the town they were residing in and to start a new school and to be unknown was a good thing at this time and it was approximately 1936. Laurant explains how his mother and father were non religious and did not practice the religion as many other families they knew did. But for Laurant he wanted to partake in many of the traditions and his family supported him. For example Laurant explains how he had a formal celebration for his Bar mitzvah. And how he introduced many things to his family such as the Friday night dinner and prayer in which his family partook with him as well.But none the less he explains his parents as being non religious. Laurant also goes in to explain how all of the changes in Germany and the surrounding areas were very gradual. Although, after the Olympics 1938. That’s when things really started to change. Laurant goes into a story in which This man goes to the Nazi party offices after hearing of the death of his parents and finds the highest ranked person and killed him then turns himself into the police. Well the Germans used this in their propaganda against the jews and shortly after is Nov. 10th the night of kristalnacht. Laurant remembers leaving their home to hide out and luckily no one came to where they were staying . As time goes on and things start to become worse Laurants father finds a way to send him to England So Laurant is sent away to safety and the impression that the separation between him and his family is temporary stays with him until the war hits because until then he was able to keep in touch with his family on a regular but after the war started it became more difficult. Laurant later learns of the fate of his sister and then the fate of his parents. In 1971 Laurant returns to Berlin and is given the documentation of his mother and fathers arrest in which Laurant finds out his parents were sent to Auswich. Later Laurant moves to America where he married and remarried a few times and explains the guilt he feels as a survivor and the guilt he feels for leaving his parents but in reality there was nothing he could do.

A Film Unfinished - Zach Eaton

            The documentary, “A Film Unfinished” is about a German film crew hired to capture the Warsaw Ghetto in its prime. The Warsaw Ghetto was the biggest ghetto during the Holocaust. It packed more than 350,000 people into a mile and a half space. The films were uncovered many years after the holocaust had concluded. A reporter found them in an archives section. German military were using the films as propaganda to German civilians, capturing images of Jewish people playing soccer, images of them dancing, images of Jewish people that were not malnourished. The scenes were staged so that people couldn’t see exactly how the Jews were being treated. They wanted German people to think that the Jewish people were perfectly fine and had decent living quarters. This was not the case in fact.

            Images of what really was going on were uncovered throughout the films. Having so many people squeezed into such a little space was unthinkable. Jewish people were being starved to death. Corpses were everywhere. You could find dead people on sidewalks, just lying on the ground, and others had to just live with it. They would be carted off sooner or later and buried in a mass grave. Many Jews were so under fed and so weak that they would just sit against walls or just lay around, more than likely passing away not to long after. German soldiers would ridicule and torture Jewish people. They had no respect for the living or the dead. They were strictly there to make sure that Jewish people had no way of a decent life and to try and make their life a living hell. Conditions were indescribable, and the film makers captured most of it. The film “ A Film Unfinished” showed everyone the reality and severity the Jewish people were put through and had to endure on a daily basis.  

A Film Unfinished-Caitlin Jewell

Caitlin Jewell

Comp. 102-118

Mr. Neuburger

25 March 2013

Summary

 

"A Flim Unfinished"

 



     "A Film Unfinished" is a movie about how historians uncovered footage that had been filmed over

 the course of the Holocaust in a ghetto. The ghetto that was filmed was the largest, it was called the

Warsaw Ghetto. While first watching these films people would think that this ghetto was full of

happiness. Commonly watching people dancing and going to different shows and activities didn't

make it look so bad. In reality the Jews were in high numbers around 350,000 in just a 1.5 mile span

and constantly were stepping over each other and crammed too tight in the small space provided.

Later in the film you were able to see Nazis doing different takes and camera angles, which meant the

 filmings were being staged to look good to the eye. Jews were being beaten, starved and many died

 and just layed in the streets. Only the rich were able to buy good food such as meats and breads, but

that was only a handful of about 20 people. The camera men actually didn't know why they were

filming these events, they just did as they were told. They caught on film, some of the worst acts in

history.

A Film Unfinished (Video Response) - Jordan Wiertzema

In “A Film Unfinished” the lives of the Jewish population in the Warsaw Ghetto were revealed through a German film crew. The film was supposedly taken for propaganda purposes to be shown to the German people during World War II. The footage in the movie was forgotten but eventually found in German archives later. Many of the scenes were staged and the German film crew was very particular about choosing certain Jews to be actors and actresses in their scenes. They wanted to only show those who seemed to be doing well in life or those that weren’t dying of starvation. Their purpose was to show the German people where the Jews had gone and that they were living a decent and lavish lifestyle. This was not the case however for the majority of those living in the ghetto. At its height, the ghetto reached around 500,00 people packed into an extremely small area which was walled in and cut off from the rest of the city.

            The conditions were horrible in the film and revealed what life was actually like. There would be corpses that would be laid on the street and then carried off on carts to be buried in a mass grave. Those who were suffering from starvation would be seen laying on the ground or propped up against walls too tired to move. Many gave up hope and the despair could be seen on the faces of those Jews which appeared in the film. Some believed that their stay in the ghetto was only temporary. They had no idea that courses of action had been set in motion that would liquidate the ghetto in time. In the end, “A Film Unfinished” was able to reveal the true story of what life was like in the ghetto.

Warsaw Ghetto Video Response

Watching the video on the Warsaw Ghetto was very disturbing. The video was made to show what the Germans wanted people think the Jews went through on a day to day basis in the ghetto, but in reality, it was much worse. They staged many scenes with the Jews acting more content and comfortable in their environment than they were sure to be. The film makers would have many takes of scene to try and make it look as realistic as they could. They even filmed the Jews walking down the streets who seemed not to care at all that they were walking over and around dead bodies; they were everywhere. It is impossible to watch something like that and not feel completely sick at your stomach. From shootings to starving, people were dying so rapidly that it was unreal. There was no food to spare, no nourishment at all. These people were so thin that they looked like they could just fall over any minute, and so many of them did. When the Germans finally removed the deceased bodies from the streets, they would carelessly pick them up and throw them in to a wooden box. The Germans took mass amounts of dead bodies to a big “grave” and just dumped the corpses on top of each other, piling with no limits. Each of these bodies was like skin and bones, nothing to them. Staging scenes throughout the ghetto was simply a way for the Germans to cover up evidence of all that was going on behind the scenes. I cannot even begin to imagine how the Jews living in the ghetto felt. The fact that one human could even do these things to another is so sickening. The video definitely opened my eyes even more to what ghettos in the holocaust were like. I cannot even begin to imagine being one of the survivors and looking back on these videos.

"A Film Unfinsihed" - Alyssa Vandiver

Alyssa Vandiver

ENG Comp 101-135

Mr. Neuburger

25 March 2013

Essay

“A Film Unfinished”

“A Film Unfinished” is a moving documentary about the Nazis staging the Jewish people in different scenes in the Ghetto to be used for propaganda. The films were taken during WWII in the Warsaw Ghetto. The Warsaw Ghetto was the largest Ghetto built by the Nazis. There were over 400,000 Jews in a 1.3 square mile radius. For a long time the films were just thought as documentation and no one knew that the films were staged. It wasn’t until recently that a film that was unfinished had showed the Nazi soldiers filming and doing re-takes was discovered. The Nazis filmed these to prove that the Ghetto wasn’t a bad thing; they were used as propaganda to show that the Ghetto life wasn’t bad. They showed the Jews dancing, playing games, talking, and going about their days. They made the films look as realistic as possible. In one scene they even fired gun shots in to the air to cause panic. They would do as many retakes as possible to make the scene seem as real as possible. They would shoot from different angles over and over again. The retakes showed that everything was staged and unreal. The Nazis made the Ghetto look like a nice place for the Jews when in reality they were so cramped they had to step over dead bodies just walking down the streets. The Nazis were starving the Jews in the Ghetto. They were so cramped that there was nowhere for people to walk without being next to someone else. The films showed the Jews happy when they were actually starving, scared, and cramped. After the Nazis were finished with the Jews in the Ghetto they were sent to concentration camps where many died. When the film with all the retakes was finally found it had shown what life was actually like for the Jewish people in the community, it also proved how far the Nazis would go to change the minds of others to make what they were doing seem ethical and to get the country to stand behind them.

Warsaw Ghetto Video Response Landon Rice

Landon Rice

Mr. Nueburger

Composition II

March 24, 2013

Warsaw Ghetto

            The video was about the life of Jews in the Warsaw ghetto.  The video was made by the Nazi’s to show Germans what was happening to all the Jews.  The Nazi’s staged most of the scenes of the movie because it was meant to depict the life of the Jews in a good light. They also hired actors to do this. The Nazi’s also filmed the real life of the Jews, but of course that was edited out of the video.  The lifestyles of the Jews were nowhere near what was shown in the video.  The survivors of the holocaust watched the movie and showed their reaction.  It was very emotional for them because they had to see the bodies of Jews that littered the streets.  These people all died from starvation because they were not given enough food to live.  It must have been very hard for these people to come back and relive what they try to forget about.

            While watching this video, I tried to put myself in the shoes of the Jews but I can’t even begin to comprehend anything that they went through.  I do not understand how the Nazi’s thought Jewish people were the cause of their problems, or why they took it as far as they did.  I also don’t understand how none of the Nazi’s thought they were doing was wrong.  One soldier threw a body in the trash as if it was nothing.  

Devon Bennett Harrison Burgeron

Response Essay Harrison Bergeron

A Film Unfinished Response- Carlie Allison

Carlie Allison

Mr. Nueburger

Composition II

23 March 2013

A Film Unfinished

            There are very few things that surprise me anymore about what the Nazi's did to the Jews during the Holocaust, but this was an exception.  I find everything they do deeply disturbing in the film.  The way that they depict life for some Jews in the film as being in a well off home with multiple rooms, looking healthy and clean, and staging these scenes to make it look like they're carrying on with their lives. I really don’t understand this little project of the Nazi's because they were filming more than just the set up scenes. They were filming the actual lives of these people, and I know that the Nazi's didn’t want the rest of the world knowing what they were actually doing. They wanted to make sure there was no evidence.  It's seems to me a waste of time for the Nazi's even for propaganda purposes, but then again how can I make sense of what was reasonable in the Nazi mind? The film shows very disturbing footage of what the people in the Warsaw ghetto were willing to ingest and where they found some of these things to eat.  It just goes to show what people are really willing to do in order to survive no matter how repulsive it gets. Some of the survivors talk about how they could really start to tell which ones were starving and which ones were starving but going to survive. They were trying to explain that the spirit of the person meant everything. It meant whether you were going to live or die in some cases. It was very heartbreaking to hear one woman saying, as she watched the footage, how she just kept waiting to see her mother walking around on the street before she died. The beginning of the film is much easier to stomach than the end of the film. Everything just gets progressively worse. People are dying on the streets right and left and no one is really paying attention to it anymore because it becomes the norm for someone to just slump over on the sidewalk, dead. It's hard to fathom. 

Response---Warsaw Ghetto Video

The video was about the life of Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto. They showed how or they wanted the people to see that the Jews are living as normally as they are still in Germany. They even hired actors as shown in the video to stage dinners and parties to back up their propaganda. They would also tell the Jews to do what they want so that the Germans would not look bad in the cameras. But behind those staged dinners and parties, is ugly and sad truth that the Jews are not living as extravagant as they would show it in the video. The truth behind these They also let survivors watch the video. And they showed how the survivors reacted to the video. They also showed the corpses of those poor Jews who died of starvation. But despite all of this, the Jews are still hopeful that their suffering would end. They still had the faith that they would be free again.

When I was watching the video, I guess I can say that I’m confused. I am confused that a human being can be so cruel to another human being just by being different. I feel bad and a bit angry that one is capable of such cruelty. I don’t understand why they blamed these Jews for the bad things that happened to them. I also feel sad that when these Jews died, they were deprived of a proper burial. And when those corpses from the streets were put into what it seems to be a wooden coffin, those soldiers just threw the corpse in like a trash. But I honor those Jews because despite the cruelty that was inflicted to them, they never lost hope that one day, they would be free. They were always hopeful that their suffering would end soon. That they will not die. It must have been really painful for them to suffer this kind of cruelty. And as for those who survived that were shown in the video. I feel really bad that they get to relive their worst experience in the Warsaw Ghetto. I also honor them for being strong to survive the holocaust. It took a lot of courage to survive that horrible time. I can’t imagine what they’ve been through all those years under the Nazis.

Halocaust survivors Joseph Morton and Malka Baran

I watched Joseph Morton survivor story he was born in 1924 in Lodz, Poland. He talks about having a fairly normal early childhood hood, he had 5 brothers and 1 sister. They all lived in a small one bedroom apartment and some of the young children shared a bed with the parents. He grew up in a very traditional, way his family celebrated holidays and the Sabbath. Then he starts to talk about when the war started he said it all started very quickly, the war began on a Wednesday and that Friday the Germans were already marched in and had taken over. They made all the Jews walk down to the market place and see the bodies they had already hung of people who disobeyed them just to show their power. He then goes on describing the Ghetto and how they crammed so many people in this area and all the hunger problems there were that everyone was starving there were only a few lucky enough to not have problems getting food. He mentions that there was also a smaller Ghetto for Gypsy's and at night they would heard shots being fired. At one point he and his family was told that they were going to go do different jobs. Once they arrived at Ashfits that was the end of his family, they separated everyone randomly. He, his father, and his brother were all placed in the same spot his mother and the rest of his siblings were sent away. He was lucky to have been in very good physical condition so he was able to fight off disease in the Ghetto. He did get sick for a period of time but was able to fight it off. They fixed American military jeeps, and electrical work. He was lucky enough to be given the chance to move to Canada. He still does not know what happen to his mother and other siblings. His father latter joined him and his brother in the states.

"they would grab people they took them away we didn't know where some of them they tortured I'm shamed to say it they would take them to places where they had barrels of crap I should say shit and they made them put their faces in those barrels."

Malka Baran was born on January 30^th 1927, in Warsaw, Poland. She was apart of a family of four with extended family. She grew up in Transtahula where she went to private school. As a child she and her friends would play “games” such as walking up to strangers and asking them what time it was, they would do this to several different people. Her family lived in a one room apartment. Baran’s father owned a small printing company, just below their apartment. In September 1939 she remembers the Germans occupying Transtahula, in just one day they over took the city. The schools all closed, teachers were disappearing and German soldiers were walking the streets. They were ordered to wear yellow stars on their arms, shortly after her father’s printing equipment was taken from him. Slowly the Germans began to enforce more and more rules. In 1943 her family was taken from their home and sent to the street where they separated the Jews into five groups. Her mother was taken away from her family and that was the last time she saw her mother. Her father and brother were both shot in the back while they were working. She was taken to a work camp. She and a friend met a Jewish Russian who would bring them food every day. He wanted to help Baran escape but once they began to make a plan he was sent to a different town. But a few weeks later he sent one of his men with a note that said to follow him. Her friends decided she should go but not by herself so a friend went with her.  On their journey away they stopped in an abandoned village to stay the night. The man brought them soup an blankets, and brought them into the stable. The girls were afraid to fall asleep , once they fell asleep they were both woke up by something falling on them, when they woke up in the morning a blanket was covering them. It the first time in five years that they experienced kindness.

 

 

“I had a golden heart that was given to me by my parents on my last birthday on a golden chain. When I came to came I wore a skirt and somehow I made a little tiny entering hole in the waist line and put the heart and chain in it, it was my only thing from home”

Warsaw Ghetto Video Response- Jamie Beelow

The video we watched in class displays the Warsaw Ghetto. The intention of this video was to illustrate what was happening to the Jews after they were rounded up and taken from Germany. It shows what the living conditions, and daily lives, of the Jews were like. However, the Nazi’s went through every precaution to show the lives of the Jews were more spectacular than reality. They rounded up Jews and asked them to parade around the streets to show how “active” the ghettos were. They also hired staged actors to go into homes and stage dinner scenes and parties. The video shows actual survivors of Warsaw watching these films in horror, as they recollect their lives in the ghetto.  Numerous survivors viewed the staged depictions in complete shock stating, “When did one see a flower? We would have eaten it. It was food.” They were in disbelief of the way the Germans tried to depict the lives of the Jews. In reality Jewish people lived in single bedroom homes with numerous families; not extravagant homes with china, flowers, and fancy furniture. Later in the video, the film depicts more of the reality of the ghetto. Here, film crews capture corpses on the street, people, skin and bones, lying in the street because they are too weak to walk. The most horrific of all these rolls are ones that illustrate the bodies being carted away to burial grounds where mounds of corpses are created. One roll even shows the roundup of Jewish men and women who were forced to congregate in a bathhouse and strip completely naked as camera men filmed them. Many people in the ghettos maintained hope that this was a temporary situation and they would soon be released to go home. However, as the years went on, they soon realized that this was the least of their horrors, as they watched thousands of Jews being carted to concentration camps. Videos of the Holocaust have always been difficult for me to watch because I have a hard time watching people being treated this way. I don’t understand how a group of people could be ok with exterminating thousands of people.

Courtney Stewart -- Class Video

The beginning of the video starts off explaining what was happening within Jewish communities as well as interviews of some survivors in order to get a better understanding of what life was like before the war, and during the war; what it was like being rounded up, resettled, and forced into horrible ghettos where one bedroom apartments housed far too many Jews than what it was truly capable of holding. Throughout the movie, the viewer has the opportunity to witness the emotions and reactions of the survivors to what the actual footage captured during the struggle of the Jews and others that were tortured throughout the war. Within the beginning of the video, the viewer is able to get a look at how absurd the Germans/Nazis made the Jewish community out to be, by portraying their lifestyle as one that was comforting and uplifting in such a time; when in truth, the Jews were suffering and being killed off at the enjoyment of the Germans/Nazis. Later on in the video, being gathered and sent into ghettos was captured, showing the separation of families and hardships that each person had, being left for abandonment from their loved ones and personal belongings. The Jews were left with nothing and that is something that one must understand before believing any sort of propaganda and falsifications made out by the horrible Nazis. Though many feared where they would be sent after being transported to the ghettos, their high hopes to moving forward within their replacement location ended much earlier than what most believed. It is understand that most Jews died in labor camps or death camps, and though that may be true, it needs to be emphasized that not many made it out of the ghettos. The environment that the ghettos provided and the treatment in which they endured in that time shows that the Nazis made it as impossible as they could on the Jews to take one step further towards life beyond the ghetto. As the movie reels go on, the surviving viewers recapture the truth behind their fate and are forced to look away in order to maintain some sort of sanity that they have tried for years to regain after their experience from 1941-1945, and for many, years after that; though they were liberated in 1945 when the war was over.

The movie made me feel extremely upset but very sad at the same time. If I could go back and protect these people in any sort of way, I definitely would. I would give them their dignity back if I could. I would die for them if I could. Those poor people. May their abusers feel their pain, always.

Testimonial #2:

Henry Warner Laurant was born on May 28, 1924 in Konigsberg. His father was a doctor and his mother was an artist. His family lived very well. They have servants and a huge apartment. He considers himself as more involved in the practices of Jews than her parents. His parents were practiced holidays but they are not as involved as him. His first experience of discrimination was when he was 5 years old. When he was in high school, he had two friends. One was a full Jew and the other was half Jew. During that time, they were being bullied by their schoolmates. He and his friends experienced being separated from other students in the school who were not Jew. In 1934, he witnessed the Nazis destroyed the sign on his father’s office. By 1936, his whole family moved from Konigsberg. Their reason for leaving was that discrimination against the Jews was worsening. And on April of 1936, his father changed his specialty from pediatrics to psychiatry. His father practiced his new specialty in Berlin. His parents decided to enroll him and his sister to a private school instead of a public school. Despite the rise of the Nazis at that time, they were still able to live normally. Or so they seemed. In 1938, while he was at the theater, a soldier just barged in and requested that all Jews in the theater to leave. By the time Kristallnacht was in effect, his family went into hiding. And at that time, they were separated. But they reunited 4 days later. He recalls that when Kristallnacht was in effect, Jewish businesses were being closed since it was very popular in Germany at that time. He did not experience the cruelty of the Nazis physically, but the terror that the Nazis caused him and his family was and will always be unforgettable.

Quotes from Henry: “Jews have to fight very hard for assimilation.” “There is always discrimination.”

Brittney Stewart -- Holocaust Survivor and Testimony

Judith Becker, a Holocaust survivor, was born on September 11, 1928.  She was born in the main city of the province of Pomerania located in Germany (after the war, it is what’s now Poland).  Becker’s life before the war was centered heavily around the family structure.  She shares a wonderful, yet tragic story regarding a tradition she once upheld; every Thursday she would visit her aunt in order to retrieve a potato cake.  However, on her last departure, Becker arrived in time to see Gestapo men at her aunt’s house.  Her aunt asked her to deliver a message to Becker’s parents, “Tell them we have visitors.”  With that instruction, she was curious, but not afraid of the men of authority.  When she made it back home, the Gestapo men were waiting.  Due to the fact that her parents were not yet home, her baby sitter asked for her (along with her siblings) to go to bed.  While she was in the comfort of her room, her mother finally arrives in the early morning. 

At this time, the Gestapo men ask that the children wake and go to the station with the men.  Judith Becker recalls that the day before this took place, that was going to be the last time she would see her own father; she believes this might be due to the fact that the Gestapo men were rounding up men.  The men were targeted, as Becker explains, due to the fact that ancestry was being traced—any ancestry prom Poland was a sure ticket into the hands of the Nazis.

Once her family had been shipped off to a Ghetto, her mother became a corset maker.  Becker would lend a helping hand, bringing in food and material as profit.  Eventually, after being separated from a few of her siblings, she was sent to stay in a camp (her brothers became ill, or died in the last camp occupied by the family).  As the camp was, later on, turned over (individuals ran after the final clearing of the camp) Becker ran into a ditch.  There, she landed on an American soldier.  She fell into the hands of survival.  This is something she said she thinks about daily--memories that are sad, yet full of inspiration and hope.

“I just hope that my blood goes to the most important ‘hero’ that you have on that front, because he will be dead before you even get the transfusion into him…” Becker stated as she tells of a time her brother informed her that the medical team will draw blood in order to provide for the German army.

As Judith Becker reiterates the story of Jews running from the [last] camp, she anxiously states, “Whoever could, ran.”

Edith Coliver, spelt “C-O-L-I-V (for victory!)-R.”  This woman gave a testimony in regards of the Germans, and the Jews.  She begins the testimony by announcing she was born “a long time ago” on July 26, 1922 in Karlsruhe (Germany).  Coliver states that this part of the town was known as the seat of Grand Dukes.  In this town, the place of her childhood, she notes that she was a part of a very peaceful life—standing in the middle class.  She shared this childhood with parents, and two brothers.

            One event Coliver explains focuses on her gym teacher that lived in the house above her.  She remembers that he would visit her family in order to discuss the wrong doings of the Nazis, or German members.  The irony in her story is that this man came to the family one day, and said in regards of a Nazi, “You know, he keeps saying it (speaking of a newspaper that distributed lies about the Jewish people), and nobody is challenging him—there must be some truth to it.”  Coliver sadly replies to such memory, “I never saw him in a Nazi uniform, and I hope he didn’t get one.”

            Once the sides seemed to be turning, her parents began to worry about the situation for Coliver.  They asked her to move to America with them in order to avoid a great war.  Applying for visas, she was quickly accepted, remembering the consol say, “We Americans have no interest in separating parents from their children.”  In response, her father told Coliver, “There’s a war coming, and I’m not going to be separated by an ocean…I want you to come along.”  And she stayed in America for quite some time, in order to return a few years later (visiting once it was safe).  On this visit, she ran into an old school friend, in which they discussed their classmates.  Her friend asked her about a Gertrude Marx (Coliver’s best friend): “And then she asked me about Gertrude Marx.  And I said, ‘she died in an extermination camp.’  And we had nothing more to talk about.” 

            Her message to future generations is “Get involved, and stay involved…particularly in human rights.” 

Courtney Stewart -- Survivor Interviews

Malka Baran (Formally Klin was last name)

Born in Warsaw, Poland, on January 30, 1927. This woman was included in a family of four that had a one bedroom apartment home, with her father's occupation as a man running a print shop in the same building as their home. Malka had a happy childhood; friends, interests in studies, was a good student, celebrations were traditional and welcoming, and finding enjoyment in walking places with friends took up her childhood. Malka loved reading books in her home, playing with children outside, walking with her father to the city on Saturdays and later working in the shop he had when she was older, as well as free passes into the movies because her father could print them. Her home was later a part of the ghetto that was set up in Warsaw, though she cannot recall how large of an area her home area was: "That I cannot tell you. I was very young and I'm very ignorant in areas and people." Malka has a very private connection with God, though her parents did not teach her: "I put my arm on my heart and I said goodnight to him and thank you for my brother and my parents..." Her religion and her families religion was very relaxed, not too strict in Judaism. Later, she admits that her younger brother (two years younger) and her parents were murdered. Sweet Malka cannot recall what the ghetto looks like, though she can remember being assigned to her barracks and the "concentration camp" they called it, though it was a labor camp. This camp contained no gas chambers, but only killing by shootings. In her barrack, Malak explained "bunks" of three layers, with hers being located on the bottom. This woman loved children and when a young child was found and hidden in her barrack, she made sure he was taken care of and maintained some sense of enjoyment. This little boy ended up being saved when this barrack and others were liberated.

"Don't you dare to fall asleep ... I called it the tiny flame."

"I start crying when I talk about it ... It was so -- you must understand that for five-four years we didn't hear a human kindness or experience a human kindness, so when the first occurrence when somebody was kind to us at the same time it could be a disaster -- meant so much..."

Helen Greenbaum

Helen grew up in a very comfortable home with her parents and four other siblings (one additional sibling that passed which Helen never met). Her father worked in a soft leather shop in the same building as her home which provided meals for every occasion and day, as well as a "spoiled" sort of lifestyle. This woman went to an all girls school, mainly Jewish children. Helen lost her father as she and the rest of her family were hiding in a basement area of this mans' home, where her father refused to stay locked up in the basement. With him refusing to do so, the "Nazis" (she does not call them Germans because she will not blame an entire group over a situation that not all Germans participated in) ripped the door off of it hinges and took her father. Her mother was later taken (leaving Helen to be alone and abandoned) when the Nazis were grouping the Jews, taking what they had from them; only to be reunited with her brother, brother in law and sister, when they had to go to the camps. While her brother in law and brother were looking for hiding places, the girls were put on trucks and sent into ghettos. Her youngest brother found out about the trucks and began to run towards the truck -- That is the last time Helen saw him. She later finds out that her brother was shot on the street for doing so. While put into the camps, Helen later obtained a job working on machines that produced bullet cases (shells, I'm sure). January 16, 1945.. the only day she remembers is when she was taken to another location. She began to see many gas chambers selections and killings. She got scurvy and believe it or not, the moldy food that the "Nazis" gave her actually saved her!! Mold make penicillin, which treated her illness! Hah, take that, Nazis.

"You know what scurvy is? ... They didn't even know they were taking care of me! Because we were getting food with mold. Make sense? Mold makes penicillin."

"...And we went out to greet the American soldiers and we dropped to our knees and we kissed their boots..."