{"id":15906,"date":"2021-04-19T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-04-19T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/?p=15906"},"modified":"2025-04-08T12:45:48","modified_gmt":"2025-04-08T12:45:48","slug":"commemorating-the-warsaw-ghetto-uprising","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.berghahnbooks.com\/blog\/commemorating-the-warsaw-ghetto-uprising","title":{"rendered":"Commemorating the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Read an excerpt from Marek Haltof\u2019s POLISH FILM AND THE HOLOCAUST: Politics and Memory<\/a><\/em>.<\/h3>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
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On April 19, 1943, the Warsaw ghetto uprising began after German troops and police entered the ghetto to deport its surviving inhabitants. Learn more about the history of this fierce act of resistance by reading the entry in the USHMM\u2019s Holocaust Encyclopedia<\/a>. <\/h4>\n\n\n\n

The following is excerpted from Marek Haltof\u2019s POLISH FILM AND THE HOLOCAUST: Politics and Memory<\/a>.<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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Commemorating the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in Border Street <\/em>(1949)<\/strong><\/h1>\n\n\n\n

[Chapter 3, pp. 56-57, 60-62]<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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To understand the difficulties\nfaced by [Aleksander] Ford, it is imperative to see the political context of\nhis film, namely how the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising had been commemorated in\nPoland. The first memorial was unveiled in Warsaw on 16 April 1946, and was\nplaced where the uprising started. Designed by Polish architect Leon Marek\nSuzin, the monument was dedicated (in Polish, Yiddish, and Hebrew) \u201cTo the\nmemory of those who died in unparalleled and heroic struggle for the dignity\nand freedom of the Jewish nation, for free Poland, and for the liberation of\nmankind\u2014the Jews of Poland.\u201d Nathan Rapoport\u2019s Warsaw Ghetto Monument, which\nwas unveiled to full military honors on 19 April 1948, five years after the\nuprising began, is arguably better known. The heroic-tragic figures on the\nfront of this eleven-meter-high monument represent different ghetto fighters.\nThe composition clearly emphasizes armed resistance and martyrdom rather than\nthe memory of those who were exterminated in the ghetto and in the\nconcentration camps. The inscription on it, \u201cTo the Jewish nation\u2014to its fighters\nand its martyrs,\u201d makes this notion apparent. The reverse side of the monument,\nsometimes missed by visitors, represents the suffering, deportations, and\ndeath.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It has to be stressed that the first\nmemorial commemorating the 1944 Warsaw Rising was built as late as 1989, after\nthe fall of communism. This fact certainly did not help Polish-Jewish\nrelations. A Warsaw-based journalist Konstanty Gebert aptly writes that \u201cthese\nJewish memorials reminded many of the Poles of the monument to the Warsaw\nUprising of 1944, one year after the Ghetto Uprising, which had not been built.\nThe 1944 struggle, led by the non-communist underground army (Armia Krajowa,\nAK), had become almost a nonevent in Polish communist historiography. The\nspeedy commemoration of the Jewish Uprising, coupled with the official non\nrecognition of the Polish one, provided grounds for years of bitter feelings.\u201d\nTaking this into account, one may only agree with Omer Bartov who fittingly\nwrites that Ford\u2019s Border Street<\/em> served \u201ctwo contradictory purposes\u201d:\n\u201cFirst, it was an opportunity to extol Jewish heroism, showing that the Jews\nwere \u2018just as heroic\u2019 as the Poles and asserting that Jews and Poles had united\nin resisting the Germans. Second, it served as an ersatz depiction of what most\nPoles experienced as a far more traumatic, but equally heroic event, the Polish\nWarsaw Uprising of August 1944.\u201d Released in 1957, Andrzej Wajda\u2019s breakthrough\nKanal <\/em>(Kana\u0142<\/em>) became the first film about the Warsaw Rising,\nnarrating the story of a Home Army unit that manages to escape German troops\nvia the only route left \u2014the city sewers\u2014 in which the majority of the fighters\nmeet their deaths. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Warsaw Ghetto Monument reflects a general attitude toward martyrdom and victimhood in the late 1940s. Writing about the American attitudes toward the Holocaust, Peter Novick states: \u201cWhereas nowadays the status of victim has come to be prized, in the forties and fifties it evoked at best the sort of pity mixed with contempt. It was a label actively shunned.\u201d He also notes that in the late 1940s several prominent American Jewish organizations objected to a proposed Holocaust memorial in New York City: \u201cThey were concerned that such a monument would result in Americans\u2019 thinking of Jews as victims: it would be \u2018a perpetual memorial to the weakness and defenselessness of the Jewish people\u2019; it would \u2018not be in the best interests of Jewry.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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*** <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Ulica Graniczna (1948)<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Border Street<\/em> opens with credits over the shots of wartime Warsaw ruins. After the credits the camera continues to capture images of destruction. The voiceover commentary introduces the setting of the film: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Streets changed into cemeteries.\nRuins, burned down places. So many of them you can still find in Warsaw. The\naction of our film takes place on one such street. Let us call it Border\nStreet, although it could be D\u0142uga, Biela\u0144ska or \u015awi\u0119tokrzyska. We don\u2019t want\nto determine its real name. We do intend only to show a small fragment of its\nhistory, the history of its modest inhabitants, little people, children, or\npractically children.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This initial comment suggests that\n\u201cBorder Street\u201d is a fictional street that could be anywhere in Warsaw, thus\nenhancing a deeply symbolic, universal meaning of the film. There was, however,\na real \u201cBorder Street\u201d (Ulica Graniczna) in Warsaw, situated alongside the\nghetto wall, and close to one of the entrances to the ghetto. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The film\u2019s action moves briefly to\na period preceding the September 1939 invasion of Poland and swiftly introduces\nseveral different Polish and Jewish families living in a Warsaw apartment building\non Border Street. Among them is the Polonized Jewish doctor J\u00f3zef Bia\u0142ek (Jerzy\nLeszczy\u0144ski) and his daughter Jadzia (Maria Broniewska); a bank employee\nKazimierz Wojtan (Jerzy Pichelski) with family, who is portrayed as a proud\nnationalist Pole; Ku\u015bmirak, an opportunist shopkeeper who runs a caf\u00e9 with his\nfamily; the good natured, working-class Cieplikowski (W\u0142adys\u0142aw Walter) with\nhis son Bronek. The basement of the building is inhabited by the Libermans: an\northodox Jewish tailor Liberman (W\u0142adys\u0142aw Godik) and his family, including an\nassimilated socialist worker Natan (Stefan \u015ar\u00f3dka) and his nephew Dawidek\n(Jerzy Z\u0142otnicki). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The initial scenes of Ford\u2019s film\nalso introduce the anti-Jewish attitudes of several Poles. For example, Dawidek\nis victimized by Polish boys when he clumsily tries to join them for a soccer\ngame. Wojtan also comments that \u201cof course, there will be no war. Hitler will\nnever dare. The Jews only encourage such gossip to make better business,\u201d and\nforbids his son, W\u0142adek, to play with Dawidek. However, Wojtan\u2019s wife defends\nDawidek by saying that he \u201cis a good child although he is Jewish,\u201d and she\ncalls the Libermans \u201cdecent people.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

With the war imminent, Wojtan puts\non his officer\u2019s uniform and is surprised to see Natan also wearing a Polish\nsoldier\u2019s uniform. In another scene, Cieplikowski\u2019s comment, \u201cI\u2019m telling you:\nthere will be no war,\u201d is followed by images of German planes over Warsaw. An\nabrupt cut moves the action to occupied Warsaw and introduces a symbolic image,\noften employed in Polish cinema, of a wounded Polish soldier watching the\nvictorious German troops marching on the streets of Warsaw. The subsequent\noccupation changes relations among the families on Border Street. In an almost\nfarcical scene, Ku\u015bmirak (played by a Czech actor Josef Muncliger) defines\nhimself as a Volksdeutsch<\/em> in purely visual terms at a barber store, by\ntrimming his Pi\u0142sudski-like moustache and changing his hairstyle to resemble\nHitler (\u201cThe times have changed,\u201d he proclaims to a surprised barber). Later,\nKu\u015bmirak (now Kushmirak) takes advantage of his privileged position and\nblackmails Dr. Bia\u0142ek, threatening to reveal his Jewish identity. He forces him\nto move to the ghetto and takes over his spacious apartment. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

While showing differences between\nthe treatment of Poles and Jews by the Germans, Ford constantly accentuates the\nneed for unity and common struggle with the occupier. Wojtan comes to the\nconclusion that \u201cthe Jews are not all alike, and we have our own Ku\u015bmiraks,\ntoo.\u201d When Liberman comments that \u201cterrible times are coming for the Jews,\u201d\nNatan responds emphatically, \u201cnot only for the Jews.\u201d After learning about the\ncreation of the ghetto, Liberman says that \u201cmaybe it will be better for the\nJews to be separate.\u201d When his daughter supports him (\u201cBut at least in the\nghetto, we shall all be equal\u201d), Natan responds in the following way: \u201cOh yes,\nthey will exterminate all of us equally. Don\u2019t you see? They want to separate\nus from the Poles. It will be easier to eliminate us and the Pole \u2026 It is their\npolicy. In the POW camp people were saying that we should be together. To fight!\u201d\nWhen the fatalistic Liberman ridicules Natan\u2019s desire to fight, he responds\nthat the Jews will fight even with bare fists (and his gesture looks as if\ntaken from a propagandist war poster): \u201cThe Poles will surely fight and we\nshould go with them.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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About the book<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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POLISH FILM AND THE HOLOCAUST<\/a>
Politics and Memory<\/strong>
Marek Haltof<\/em>

Choice Outstanding Academic Title 2012<\/strong>

\u201cIn this excellently researched, highly informative survey of Polish films about the Holocaust, Haltof\u2026 expands on a chapter in his valuable Polish National Cinema\u2026 His measured assessments, conveyed in clear, accessible prose, are rooted in an enviable command of both the relevant production documents and important secondary literature. The select list of relevant films and television programs is very useful. The ample notes and fine bibliography incorporate many Polish sources as well as all the available literature in English.\u201d<\/em> \u00b7 Choice<\/strong>

Available in eBook and paperback
Request an e-inspection copy<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Browse our latest Jewish Studies titles by reading our most recent e-newsletter<\/a>. <\/h3>\n\n\n\n

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