I appreciate that the subject matter for the first week was so balanced. In the films, Conspiracy & Soviet Story, we see more historical accounts of the political actions being taken by both Germany & Russia at the outset of World War II.
Elie Wiesel (7th from left, 2nd bunk from bottom) at Buchenwald, in a very famous photograph from the camp
In Elie Wiesel's Night, we are able to gain a much more personal account of the Holocaust, likely the most personal and moving account I've read. I think having the background provided by the films was helpful toward getting my mind in the right political frame with which to dissect Wiesel's book.
The Wannsee Conference, as displayed in Conspiracy, was a despicable meeting of a cabinet of Hitler's that decided what became the "Final Solution" to the "Jewish Question." This Conference was the direct cause of the entire ordeal Wiesel went through. It was the blueprint to the Holocaust.
I actually have some major beef with Soviet Story, honestly. It was produced by a Latvian filmmaker, which was one of the smaller satellite nations abused by the Soviets during Stalin's reign. They certainly felt the pains of Stalin's forced-famines and systematic killings. While I don't doubt a Latvian person could be unbiased, I find the connections he makes between German fascism and Russian communism to be extremely weak, and forced. While his research pointing to some German leaders having respect for Marx's words is compelling, it is hardly enough basis to draw the parallels the filmmaker does. The filmmaker equates German fascism as being Russian communism with the enemies being "the other", non-Aryan people, instead of "the proletariat." That is weak logic, and Marxist thought was bastardized by Stalin. The "spectre that is haunting Europe" is true Communism, not Stalins' version of violence & cruelty on opponents, & to use a statue of Marx & Engels as a scary omen at the end of the film is just not scholarly.
In Night, Wiesel recounts, nearly day by day, life in Romania, then Poland, then Germany. He experiences life in the Jewish ghettos, and then when the Final Solution is enacted, he is transported with his family to Auschwitz, in Poland. His mother & baby sister are both gassed before he even is assigned a spot in the camp. He remembers being torn from them, & it is they last time he sees them. He and his father work together, trying to survive. Eventually he is left with more strength than his father, and begins to resent him. The fact that Wiesel could resent his own father in a time when they were both facing death every minute sickened him. He lost all faith in God, disbelieving any loving being could possibly allow such despair to come on his people. I don't imagine this type of sentiment was rare in the concentration camps. For an individual to cling to God I think would be far more indicative of madness. No being could claim omniscience or omnipotence, yet allow a murderous reign like that of the Nazis to occur. That is the attitude we see in Wiesel, especially when he sees the young child hanged and says, "This is God, right here, hanging." It is amazing to think back on the Wannsee Conference, from Conspiracy, and ponder Wiesel's life as a result of the laws that arose from it. These men sat coldly at a conference table, & decided that the world needed a Germany that was free of Jews and other undesirables, and Wiesel's account is as fitting an example as any of just how far Germany was willing to get it.
Your comments on Soviet Story are very impassioned. I know that, if I were a Jew in Hitler's Europe or a Kulak in Stalin's Ukraine, their political differences/ideologies would not matter. The goal of each was extinction. I am not sure why a Latvian would necessarily be more biased than a person from Kiev, Estonia, etc. You need to explain that more fully. Your discussion of Night brings up a very important issue: Elie was very religious before the Nazis came to his village; the more he sees of deportation, concentration camps, gas chambers, etc., the less faith he has. Maybe that is a measure of his sanity. He thinks clinging to faith in a godless world insane.
ReplyDeleteGudan: Comment on Rogers' blog on Soviet Story
ReplyDeleteLike Donna said, I’m not sure if I completely agree with your thoughts about Soviet Story, but I’d like to watch the film again. It didn’t even register to me who was making the film or their background. Now that you bring it up, I see how that’s an important point; I understand that much of history depends on who’s telling it. However, perhaps it’s just my personal background more than I realize, but it seems like in this documentary it didn’t really matter who was telling the story, as long as it was told. The testimonials from the survivors seemed more important than anything else. Even though there was no translation, I felt that the people near the end, especially the two women, were more convincing of the horrors of what happened and their effect than all the historians and all the images that anyone can muster. I understand that your issue was more of how they compared Nazism and Communism, so I can see how it would bother you, but on the point of the Lativian director/producer, the meat of the argument, at least from my point of view, was more about individuals and about the fact that they are so thoroughly forgotten. Not to be saucy, but I feel like people can argue politics and ideologies all day, like the difference between Nazism, Communism, and how Marxism had a hand in the Holocaust, but the end result – what people have to deal with today – is the same. Again, I’m not trying to undermine your point, or to say that politics and all that is not relevant or essential to the issue, just that it wasn’t the focus of the film. Sorry that I’m kind of running around in circles here. The two statues at the end was kind of cheesy, but I felt like the connection he was making between Soviet Communism and Nazism was there. I probably just need to study up on it more. Thanks for bringing it up though.
I think that the film wasn't too bias. While I was abroad, I went to Estonia and to Latvia to visit my friend from there. We had a long conversation about the KGB and what the Soviet era meant to her and her family. She told me that her mother(Ukrainian) and her father(Belorussian) who lived in Latvia during the Soviet era were okay with it and they didn't think it was so horrible. Her grandparents on the other hand hated the Soviets and she said one of her grandfathers was sent to Siberia after the end of WWII. For her, though she has no Russian ancestry, she was brought up being 'Russian', but she acknowledges the crimes they have committed. I can see why the film makers could or would be bias, but they just want to show others things that happened during that time. For me, I never knew these things went on in Ukraine, but I did know about the camps and deportation in the Soviet Union.
ReplyDeleteMs. McCay, my point was not on Latvia, but more about the satellite states that experienced the brunt of Stalin's rampage in general. I agree with the Tien & Sarah that the film was definitely meant to be a remembrance of those who died at the hands of the Russians, and that aspect of the film can stand on its own. There is no doubt that whatever ideology the USSR hung its hat on during this time, it resulted in the murders of millions. That's why I found the scholarship of the film to be so unsatisfactory. I found the political conclusions of the movie's authors to be forced and untrue. While politics can seemingly get in the way of humanitarianism at times, if there are not accurate accounts of motivating forces, be they for good or evil, then we've learned that millions of people died, and nothing else that's of substance, or perhaps something more harmful, like the equation of a legitimate political ideology with Hitler & Stalin's actions.
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