In May 1942, two months before the Nazis began shipping its residents off to the Treblinka extermination camp, a Nazi propaganda film crew arrived in the Warsaw ghetto and began filming. Their intent was to show that the “elite” Jews of Warsaw would ignore their less prosperous brethren. A canister containing 60 minutes of raw film was found from that shoot after World War II’s end, simply labeled “Das Ghetto.” For decades, it was the only, if flawed, visual record for historians researching the Warsaw ghetto.
“A Film Unfinished” shows the viewer four recently discovered reels of raw footage from that shoot, showing staged elements of the “elites” attending lavish banquets and dinner parties, buying food and living well while others less fortunate suffered all around them. There are several takes of the shots of well-dressed Jews walking past corpses lying on the sidewalks outside the tenements; of hungry children staring into a butcher shop window; of frightened people being hurried out of a building, or along the street by policemen wearing the Jewish star on their armbands.
The film’s main narration is in English, but shifts to Hebrew, German and Polish as the narrator changes. The “Judenrat,” the leader of the Jewish Council, Adam Czerniaków, kept a diary of the filmmakers’ staging of the scenes and what he thought about them. The film is minutely edited to flow with his observations.
The testimony of one of the Nazi cameramen, Willy Wist, is the only “staged” part created for this film’s release; two actors portray Wist’s taped testimony with the commission investigating the Warsaw ghetto. The real Wist is briefly seen in the film, having walked in front of the camera while another was shooting a scene. As with Czerniaków’s diaries, his narration flows with what is being shown on screen.
Five survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto screen the films along with us, the reflected light of the screen playing across their weathered faces, speaking for those who mutely stare into the camera. Their comments are heart-wrenching: one worries that she will see someone she knows. Another stares in disbelief as she sees a staged scene of an “elite” Jewish woman arranging a vase. “When did you ever see a flower? We would have eaten a flower!” she exclaims. Another vents her rage as a staged funeral is held; “Jews don’t use coffins!” One covers her eyes with her hands, peeking occasionally and cringing, then hiding her eyes again.
- Interview with author and Holocaust film researcher Adrian Wood
- Interview with Holocaust scholar Michael Berenbaum
- The U.S. War Department propaganda short film “Death Mills,” directed by Billy Wilder.
- A PDF study guide is also available if the disc is inserted into a personal computer.
Anyone who has been to the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C.; seen any of the number of films on the Holocaust such as “Schindler’s List;” or even watched the History Channel has seen the atrocities committed as part of the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question.” By those standards, “A Film Unfinished” is relatively tame; the included short “Death Mills” graphically shows you all of that. It’s surprising that the MPAA rated the film “R” and refused to re-classify it on appeal.
There are no gas chambers, no boxcars full of prisoners waiting to die. Yet knowing what is about to happen to the people depicted in the film gives it a poignancy that is unnerving, to say the least. Czerniaków knew; he documented it in his diary. When he was ordered to make lists of Jews so that they could be “resettled,” he committed suicide using the cyanide capsule that he had hidden away.
There are plenty of corpses in the film; having no way to properly bury their dead, who had usually succumbed to starvation and/or typhus, they left the corpses on the street. A mass grave is shown, the emaciated bodies sliding down a chute into a pit, layered like badly stacked wood.
Another staged scene by the Nazis shows naked men and women taking a ritual Jewish bath. You don’t see the guns pointed at them, but you can see the fear and shame in their eyes as they walk into the plunges. Yet another scene shows a well-dressed young Jewish woman standing next to a wretch; her lovely face cannot mask her disgust at what she is being forced to do.
Bottom line: It’s doubtful that you would want to watch this film more than once in a lifetime. But if you have the opportunity, do try to see it.
A Film Unfinished
Oscilloscope Laboratories, 90 minutes, R, $29.99