Saw Shoah. This final segment detailed a Czech concentration camp with schools and so forth, and a recounting of the ghetto at Warsaw. The days when the Warsaw ghetto stood are powerfully recounted by some kind of Polish diplomat. He breaks down several times as he recounts his journey through a Brueghelian hell-scape. The diplomat is lead through the ghetto by a member of the resistance. Whenever he asks what people are doing or why, the resistance member always replies "they are dying." He witnesses naked corpses rotting in the street, Jews terrorized by two handsome Hitler Youths with pistols, and men and women and babies starving on their feet in public squares. After his tour is complete, the resistance member tells him emphatically to report to the world what he has seen. Tell even the Germans and the Polish people. "Perhaps they do not know!" This is very near the end of the film and the film-maker chooses this time to linger over the famous, haunting piles of shoes, glasses, toothbrushes. This seems to be his purpose too. To tell the world. Perhaps we do not know.
This is an exhausting film, not least for its length. It wears down our defenses through sheer duration. It is not a film which inspired shock and horror for me. It was too slow for that. Rather, it inspired a sort of reeling, numb resignation. There is so much to see and to know, and we know there is yet more that is lost forever. This is difficult for me. In my weakness I eagerly anticipate a return to more facile fare, to films where twist endings can be considered daring and where ghosts and zombies can be considered terrifying.
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