Vishniac: The Man Who Documented Shtetls and the Jews Who Lived There

Before they fled National Socialist Berlin, Roman Vishniac took an eerie photo of his daughter Mara standing in front of a propaganda poster of Adolph Hitler that says: “Fight with us for peace and equality.” Does that sound familiar to any group staging large demonstrations today? Vishniac documented the lives of European Jewry on the eve of the Holocaust, but lived to reinvent himself in America. Director Laura Bialis chronicles his life and legacy in the documentary, Vishniac, which opens Friday in New York.

Vishniac was born in Russia to a Jewish family, but the new Communist regime forced them to relocate—to Berlin. That was Weimar Berlin, Europe’s leading city for tolerance, sophistication, and culture. Vishniac thrived there personally, but he did not find his niche professionally, until the American Jewish Joint Relief Committee (JDC) commissioned him to document the lives of shtetl residents throughout Eastern Europe.

Conditions for European Jews were always difficult, but neither Vishniac or the JDC expected the horror of the Holocaust. Of course, that gave his photo studies incredible significance, since were the last (and in most case, only) images of people and a way of life that would soon disappear.

Today, the visual power of his photos, collected in books like The Vanished World, remain hauntingly arresting. They are a remainder of why there will always be a real and pressing need for a Jewish homeland. Let’s not kid ourselves. The “anti-Zionists” really just want to leave the Jewish people vulnerable to more pogroms. If you can watch Vishniiac or look at his pictures and not own up to the Jew-hating reality of the pro-Hamas demonstrations, then you are a coward and you are kidding yourself.

Indeed, Vishniac could not be timelier. Yet, Vishniac the man had a meaningful second act in life. Essentially, he developed a new career and identity for himself as a science photographer and filmmaker. His microscopic cellular photos appeared in Life magazine, when it was like the Instagram of its day. With his educational films and lecture series, he became sort of an early forerunner to Mr. Wizard or Bill Nye (the bachelor's degree guy).

Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah: Four Sisters

If there was a Nobel Prize for conducting interviews, the late Claude Lanzmann would have surely been a laureate. Through recorded oral histories, he documented the Holocaust in directly personal terms. The ten-hour Shoah felt distinctly radical in 1985 and it remains the single most important cinematic exploration of the National Socialist genocide. Lanzmann continued to revisit the Holocaust in subsequent films, employing the same sensitive but persistent interview style. Essentially, this is a collection of outtakes from Shoah, but they are decidedly weighty and compelling outtakes. Four women tell how they witnessed and survived the horrific in Lanzmann’s Shoah: Four Sisters (trailer here), which opens today in New York.

The “sisters” are both alike and different in significant ways. Ruth Elias was from a well-established, long-assimilated Czechoslovakian family, but she had the dubious misfortunate of finding herself pregnant at the worst possible time. Her condition would eventually bring her face-to-face with Josef Mengele. Needless to say, the title of her segment, “The Hippocratic Oath” is meant to be darkly ironic.

Ada Lichtman hailed from the Polish hamlet of Wieliczka, where all the men were executed en masse, very much like the Katyn Forest Massacre, except it really was perpetrated by the Germans, rather than the Soviets. She lived with the constant expectation of death, yet she survived, because she was one of only three women selected for a work detail in Sobibor. However, her job including the soul crushing duty of washing and repairing dolls confiscated from Jewish children.

Paula Biren explains the realities of life in the Lodz Ghetto, where issues of complicity start to arise. Her well-to-do family were fully aware of the brewing danger of National Socialism, but they remained in Poland, because they didn’t have any other place to go. For a while, she worked for the ghetto’s Jewish Women’s Police, but she was wracked with guilt over the grim fate of the black marketeers she arrested. Biren resolved to quit the Women’s Police, despite the dire consequences she would face, but her decision was superseded by greater historical forces, which was a mixed blessing for her.

Hanna Marton’s segment will be the most controversial, because she survived as one of the fortunate passengers on the so-called Kasztner transit. She is fully aware of the controversies surrounding Kasztner, but maybe not as forthright and contrite as slightly frustrated-sounding Lanzmann would prefer. Although he is as soft-spoken as ever, he still grills her on the moral implications of Kasztner’s rescue mission. However, attitudes have maybe softened towards the leader of the Hungarian rescue committee. He was definitely practicing lifeboat ethics, but that is rather understandable, given the nature of the times.

All four women have a lot to say, but their stories need sometime to properly unfold, which is presumably why Lanzmann had not used most of this footage previously. However, it is hard to get around the rather static nature of Lanzmann’s straight-forward, long-take interview format. At least the background scenery changes during Biren’s segment, because she insists on taking Lanzmann out for a walk on the beach.

As it happens, the Quad is screening Biren and Marton’s segments together and pairing up Elias and Lichtman for the other Four Sister program. Arguably, the first block has the most dramatic subject matter, whereas the second is the more emotionally draining. Regardless, it is good for the future of civil society to have this material more widely available. Highly recommended as either a warm-up or a chaser to Lanzmann’s indispensable Shoah (1985), Shoah: Four Sisters opens today (11/14) in New York, at the Quad Cinema.

Because I was a Painter: Art and Artists that Survived the Concentration Camps

Josef Richter’s life could inspire a truly great narrative film. In 1943, the Polish resistance fighter knowingly infiltrated Sobibor with the express intention of documenting the horrors within. Since smuggling in a camera would be impractical, Richter smuggled out hand-drawings of concentration camp life. (Conveniently for screenwriters, almost nothing else is known about the rest of his life, leaving ample room for artistic license.) Although his intent was more journalistic than artistic, Richter is justly included in Christphe Cognet’s study of the art and artists that survived the Holocaust in Because I was a Painter (trailer here), which opens today in New York.

Painters paint and sketch artists sketch. That is what they do, regardless where they might be. Therefore, the artists consigned to the National Socialist camps logically used their art to process the madness. Some sought beauty amid the terror, while others considered such attempts impossible. Indeed, this is the great pseudo-debate of Because, but it is hardly one viewers can join. After all, every artist profiled in the film came to their opinions by enduring the worst humanity can inflict on fellow human beings.

Obviously, the work featured in the film is extremely powerful and extreme in nature. Unfortunately, Cognet’s detached, slow cinema approach does not always serve his subject matter particularly well. He deliberately keeps the audience at arm’s length, interspersing his interviews with long, drawn-out tracking shots of the former camp sites that now look deceptively peaceful and overgrown by nature.

Yes, time moves forward, but the past can still haunt the present (and the future). More narrative structure and more context would increase our understanding of the artists Cognet profiles. Some pieces, such as Dinah Gottliebova’s portraits of Mengele’s experiment subjects (previously documented in Hilary Helstein’s more aesthetically conventional As Seen Through These Eyes), need the barest of background to be fully appreciated. For the most part though, their work literally speaks for itself.

Indeed, the work of the artists surveyed is so powerful precisely because it incorporates art as it is ideally understood, as well as a form of journalistic documentation and a method of asserting one’s existence. There are many valuable sequences and riveting oral histories in the film, but Cognet’s stylistic severity is sometimes counter-productive. Even though it can be frustrating, it is still good that we have this film. Recommended for students of art and history, Because I was a Painter opens today (4/24) in New York, at the Lincoln Plaza.

My Italian Secret: The Cyclist and the Archbishop

Considering the sport of cycling’s most important competition recently lost nine years of history to doping scandals, you would think they would look celebrate a genuine hero from their past, but Italian champion Gino Bartali’s clandestine efforts to save Italian Jewry remain largely unsung. He was not alone in his secret defiance. Eighty percent of Jews in wartime Italy survived thanks to Bartli and a host of like-minded Italians. Oren Jacoby profiles many of Italy’s righteous and the grown survivors they helped save in My Italian Secret (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Mussolini had been firmly entrenched in power since the 1920s, but the Holocaust was slow in reaching Italy. Yes, anti-Semitic laws were passed, but anti-Semitism never really caught on as an ideology. It was not until the German occupation that deportations started in earnest. Of course, there were more than enough Fascists willing to collaborate, but not Bartali.

The Fascists did there level best to coop Bartali as a symbol of Italian physical supremacy, but the cyclist refused to participate in their propaganda. Fortunately, his standing as Italy’s preeminent sportsman granted him certain liberties, such as an excuse for long distance bike runs. Soon, Bartali was shuttling counterfeited documents provided by the Catholic Church to Jews in hiding. Bartali further risked his neck by sheltering a Jewish family in his own home.

Frankly, it is quite eye-opening to see the bourgeoisie or even privileged status of so many of the Italian Righteous, given the carefully romanticized proletariat image of the resistance. Granted, Bartali came from rugged smallholding farm stock, but Marchesa Gallo did not. Yet, she sheltered numerous Jewish families in her grand palazzo. Likewise, Dr. Giovanni Borromeo was a man of considerable position, who ran tremendous risks operating his special “K” wing, where he hid Jewish fugitives supposedly infected with the nonexistent “K” disease. Jacoby also makes it crystal clear how deeply involved the Catholic Church was in rescue efforts. In fact, it was the Archbishop of Florence who recruited Bartali in the first place.

Jacoby uses the tried and true methods of documentary filmmaking, to good effect. He sparingly employs recreations, but incorporates plenty of archival photos and video. However, the most dramatic sequences by far capture the heartfelt meetings between the survivors (now of advanced years) and the children of their protectors. The Hot Club soundtrack selections are also quite pleasant.

Frankly, it is strange more of these incidents have not been more widely reported, especially given Italy’s remarkable high Jewish survival rate. However, Bartali was characteristically modest about his actions. Fortunately, he now has Oscar nominated actor Robert Loggia to literally speak for him. Jaded viewers might think they more or less know the trajectory of its collected stories and perhaps they do, but the details are unusually rich. Secret also helps counteract the ideologically-driven smearing of the WWII-era Church and Pope Pius XII, complimenting recent scholarship, like Rabbi David Dalin’s The Myth of Hitler’s Pope. Recommended for general audiences and especially students, My Italian Secret opens this Friday (3/23) in New York at the Cinema Village.

The Decent One: Heinrich Himmler, In His Own Words

It is sort of like watching Hell’s production of A.R. Gurney’s Love Letters, because its correspondents have certainly earned damnation. Utilizing a cache of previously unseen letters and documents written by Heinrich Himmler and his family, documentarian Vanessa Lapa paints an uncomfortably intimate portrait of the Holocaust architect. Himmler proves just how banal evil can be in Lapa’s The Decent One (trailer here), which opens this Wednesday at Film Forum.

The U.S. servicemen dispatched to retrieve whatever documents remained in the Himmler family safe kept them as souvenirs instead. Through some circuitous route, they eventually came into Lapa’s possession. For a historian, they represent a wealth of primary sources, but they should not stoke revisionist fears. Despite Himmler’s conscientious concern for their young daughter Gudrun, Himmler’s letters to wife Margarete never ameliorate his guilt.

There are moments when their domestic business is interrupted by shockingly off-hand anti-Semitic pronouncements (often on Margarete’s part), but the first half of the film largely consists of maddeningly prosaic correspondence and journal entries. Still, when Himmler suggests he and Margarete should number their letters, it arguably foreshadows his sinister efficiency (but it must have been a great help to Lapa and her research team).

Not to be spoilery, but Lapa eventually uses Himmler’s own words to establish his knowledge and culpability with respects to the Holocaust. Of course, all reasonable people of good conscience understand that already. She also exposes the hypocrisy of his outward righteousness through letters to his longtime mistress, but those are the least of his sins.

Frankly the tangential approach of documentaries like Decent One risk losing sight of the big picture’s enormity. Perhaps this generation really needs a documentary that launches a frontal assault, overpowering the viewers with the scale and severity of suffering caused by the National Socialists, especially considering the rise of anti-Semitism in Western Europe and the Middle East.

Lapa’s film is skillfully constructed and undeniably well intentioned, but it is unlikely to inspire many epiphanies. It is good that greater historical background and context is now easily available, but it probably should not be the first or last film students see on National Socialist crimes against humanity. Respectfully recommended for viewers who already have a strong grounding in Holocaust history, The Decent One opens this Wednesday (10/1) at New York’s Film Forum.

Tribeca ’13: Reporting on the Times (short doc)

In the 1930’s, Walter Duranty, The New York Times man in Moscow, systemically misreported or ignored Stalin’s crimes, including the notorious show trials and the Ukrainian famine.  He is considered an unfortunate but isolated case.  Yet, throughout the war, the Times consistently buried stories about the Holocaust.  Emily Harrald examines the “Paper of Record’s” questionable coverage (again as a discrete phenomenon) in the documentary short Reporting on the Times, which screens as part of the History Lessons short film program at the 2013 Tribeca Film Festival.

Harrald’s opening graphics speak volumes.  From 1939 to 1945, the Times ran 23,000 front page stories—11,500 of which were about World War II.  26 were about the Holocaust.  What is most disturbing is the nature of the coverage that did run, typically relegated to the middle of the paper.  Midway through European round-up pieces, the Times would matter-of-factly report on the “liquidation” of the ghettoes, with no illusions regarding what that euphemism meant.

Rather bizarrely, Harrald spends a good portion of Reporting excusing the Times’ dubious Holocaust reportage.  Viewers will never forget publisher Arthur Hays Sulzberger was himself Jewish, but presented a fully Americanized and secularized image to readers and the press, partly out of concern over the rise of anti-Semitism.  Perhaps this explains why he would be personally reluctant to run front page stories on the plight of European Jewry.  However, he employed a full editorial staff to make sure the paper did not bury its lede.

Throughout Reporting, moral clarity is provided by a Holocaust survivor whose mother was convinced the world would come to their aid once they knew the magnitude of the National Socialists’ crimes.  For whatever reason, the Times obviously did not do its part.  Yet, when considered in light of Duranty’s Moscow dispatches, the under-reporting of the Holocaust appears more systemic than Reporting would like to consider.  Harrald’s film earns credit for beginning the conversation, but its interpretations of media history are far from definitive.  It screens again today (4/23), Friday (4/26), and Sunday (4/28) as part of the History Lessons short film block at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival.

Hunting Monsters: Elusive Justice—the Search for Nazi War Criminals

If there is a distinction between justice and revenge Joseph Harmatz has no time for it. The former Jewish-Lithuanian partisan brought thousands of National Socialists to justice, permanently. He certainly got results, but his targets were the exception rather than the rule. Jonathan Silvers documents how so many Nazis evaded judgment for their crimes and the dogged efforts to finally capture and prosecute them in Elusive Justice: The Search for Nazi War Criminals (promo here), which premieres on PBS tomorrow night.

It was an incident the U.S. government still keeps tightly under wraps. Acting on inside information, Harmatz and his comrades poisoned a shipment of bread destined for SS officers in an American POW camp. According to Elusive, over 2,200 of the prisoners were executed as a result. Yet, tens of thousands of culpable National Socialists emerged from the war relatively unscathed. Many continued living in Europe with impunity, while thousands escaped to Latin America, where Juan Perón (Evita’s husband) was particularly welcoming.

At times, Elusive is a bit judgmental, particularly during the first half, which clearly blames the American government for not energetically pursuing war criminals until the 1980’s, when there was a sea change of policy. Yet, former Army prosecutor and current International Criminal Court official Benjamin Ferencz argues extensive prosecutions would have been nearly impossible if the allies were to keep Germany functioning on any level as a civil state.

Perhaps the strongest sequences establish the corrosive influence the fugitive war criminals had in Perónista Argentina. Uki Goñi, the eloquent crusading journalist who exposed the secret mass immigration of Nazi war criminals to Argentina, estimates their numbers in the thousands. Indeed, Elusive interviews some a number of relevant expert witnesses, including Goñi and Ferencz, with former U.S. Attorney and New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani probably being the most prominent.

In general, Elusive is more compelling depicting the hunt and the hunters, rather than second-guessing the allies’ post-war conduct, as shortsighted as some decisions might have been. Indeed, there are stories of intrigue and retribution far more incredible than anything concocted in films like The Debt. If nothing else, viewers will gain a keen appreciation for the Israeli intelligence services. Revealing some fascinating under-reported history, rife with irony, Elusive is often eye-opening stuff. Overall quite educational and galling, it is well worth seeing tomorrow night (11/15) on most PBS outlets, including New York’s Thirteen, with a subsequent DVD release scheduled for December 13th.

The Collegiate Chorale’s Remembrance through Music

Alexander Kulisiewicz was not Jewish. A political prisoner at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp and a songwriter in his own right, Kulisiewicz witnessed the final rehearsal of Martin Rosenberg’s clandestine inmate chorus. It would be disrupted by the SS, who were to transport Rosenberg and his chorale to the certain death of Auschwitz. Rosenberg implored Kulisiewicz to remember their music, which he did. Indeed, the efforts of survivors like Kulisiewicz made possible the Collegiate Chorale’s concert of solemn remembrance, We Remember Them: Choral Music from the Camps and the Ghettos, which was greatly appreciated by a capacity audience last night at New York’s Central Synagogue.

Given the subject matter and fates of most of the composers, the proceedings had an inescapable heaviness. Often the audience seemed unsure if applause was appropriate after each selection. However, the power of the program was equally undeniable. It was also quite enlightening, thanks to the well thought-out commentary provided by Chorale conductor James Bagwell and Central Synagogue’s senior cantor Angela Warnick Buchdahl, who served as the evening’s host.

In addition to Rosenberg, the audience heard the story of Lea Rudnitska, a Lithuanian Jewish poet who cared for the orphaned babies of parents murdered or forcibly removed to the death camps. Her lullaby “Dremien Feygl,” which she set to Leyb Yampolsky’s music, served as a starkly powerful opener.

Several selections involved chorale adaptations of poems, including Hannah Senesh’s stirring “Blessed is the Match.” An Israeli national hero, the Hungarian-born Senesh left the safety of what was then the British Mandate to serve as a paratrooper and a liaison between the British and the Eastern European Jewry. Tragically though, she was quickly captured by the National Socialists, who imprisoned, tortured, and eventually executed the young poet. Yet, the brief quatrain she handed to a surviving comrade would hold special significance for generations of her countrymen.

Unlike typical concerts, varying the tone and tempo of We Remember Them would be nearly impossible. However, Paul Epstein’s arrangements of “Two Partisan Song (Yidishe Brigades/Zog Nit Keynmol)” allowed for a more muscular piano accompaniment from Kenneth Bowen, as well as a brief but beautiful solo by Buchdahl. It also offered an opportunity to celebrate Jewish resistance, in addition to commemorating the lives lost during the Holocaust. Fittingly, the sensitively conceived program ended on its most dramatic note, Maimonides’s prayer “Ani Ma’amin,” which became known as “hymn of the camps.”

Frankly, performing such meaningful music is an intimidating proposition, but the Collegiate Chorale handled it with grace. It was a truly impressive show, clearly inspiring all participants. Boasting a rich history, the Chorale was founded by Robert Shaw and has performed with some of the world’s great conductors, including Toscanini, Bernstein, and Mehta. Those who missed the previous concerts of their 2010-2011 Season can make up for it at their finale and spring benefit show on May 19th, featuring an evening of Broadway with Deborah Voigt and special guest Paulo Szot.

(Photo: Erin Baiano)

On-Stage: All Through the Night

Nobody exists in a moral vacuum, especially not the German citizens living under the Third Reich. Though not technically on the frontlines, several German Gentile women confront very difficult moral choices that may well take them into harm’s way in the Red Fern Theatre Company’s production of Shirley Lauro’s All Through the Night, which opened last night at the Marjorie S. Deane Little Theater.

Following the National Socialist rise to power, the Germany educational system has become a willing instrument of Nazi indoctrination. Two girls were skeptical of the force-fed propaganda, while a third embraced it wholeheartedly. With the help of Ludmilla, the matronly neighborhood baker, the three women, now grown adults, relive their experiences coming of age while the atrocities of the Holocaust unfolded around them.

As a young woman, Angelika is not overtly political, but when her baby son is vaguely diagnosed as either physically or mentally handicapped, she receives harsh lesson in the nature of the regime. Friederike harbors few illusions about National Socialism, having married a Roma man. Now she must bribe the camp guards to allow her furtive visits. By contrast, Gretchen is a blind follower, enthusiastically working on behalf of Fuhrer and Fatherland in the Nazi Women’s Auxiliary. As for our narrator, though Ludmilla does small acts of mercy for the emaciated prisoners she sees marching through the streets, she pines for victory so her husband can finally return to her.

Lauro’s fundamental point comes through loud and clear. While all four protagonists are unexceptional middle or working class women, they still know more than enough to fully comprehend what was happening. They are not allowed the excuse of ignorance. ATTN is also notable for addressing some lesser known horrors of the National Socialist era, including their ideological contempt for disability and aggressive “euthanasia” policies. Unfortunately, Lauro’s text can be a bit awkward at times, requiring actors to speak a fair amount of set description, literally telling the audience: “I see . . .” Still, there are some passages of sharp insight, as when observing how quiet the American soldiers are compared to the boot-clicking Germans.

Ultimately, ATTN’s strong (all women) cast overcomes the play’s occasional wordiness. Andrea Sooch strikingly projects the smugness of evil in the play’s collected authority figures, including Gretchen’s commanding officer (and sexual harasser) in the Nazi Women’s Corp. Michelle Lookadoo brings a fair amount of nuance to the resistance-minded Friederike, while also courageously playing a truly disturbing scene of abusive humiliation at the hands of the Nazis. Yet it is Hana Kalinski who really delivers the dramatic goods as Angelika, the heartbroken mother.

Combining elements of the memory play with the multi-character drama, ATTN is a thoughtful examination of the moral dilemmas and very real consequences faced by averages women during a period of national insanity. Effectively directed by Melanie Moyer Williams, it features some very fine stage performances by its small ensemble cast. Now officially open, ATTN is a worthy night of theater that runs through October 25th at the Marjorie Deane in the Westside Y.

(Photo credit: Nathan Johnson)

As Seen Through These Eyes

The same talents that eventually lead to work in the Warner Brothers and MGM animation studios literally saved Dina Gottliebova Babbit’s life in Auschwitz. The sadistic Dr. Mengele spared the nineteen year-old girl so she could serve as his personal artist, painting portraits for the Nazis guards and documenting his cruel experiments. For many young Jewish and Roma artists, maintaining their creative voices during the Holocaust was a means of spiritual and sometimes even physical survival, and their work now serves as solemn testimony to the crimes of the National Socialists in Hilary Helstein’s documentary As Seen Through These Eyes (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Babbit and her mother came to Auschwitz via Theresienstadt, a temporary camp dressed up like a benevolent Potemkin village to successfully fool guileless Red Cross inspectors in an episode that will forever shame the organization. As part of the Nazi ruse, prisoners were actually encouraged to participate in artistic endeavors, before their eventual deportation to the death camps. Of course, children like Ela Weissberger were also part of the elaborate illusion. Now a resident of New York State, she was one of only two cast members of Brundibar, a children’s opera produced and filmed for propaganda purposes, to survive.

Laudably, Eyes does not ignore the frequently overlooked Roma Holocaust. In fact, Helstein clearly tries to unite the Jewish and Roma experiences by presenting Babbit as the film’s touchstone figure. Bizarrely obsessed with the Roma people, Mengele initially forced Babbit into his service in order to better capture their skin tones through her paint brushes than was possible (in his judgment) with photography. She made a point of painting one young Roma girl, in hopes of saving (or at least prolonging) her life. Years later, Eyes shows her emotional meeting with Karl Stojka, a Roma artist who survived Auschwitz as Mengele’s errand boy, who did indeed know her short-lived friend.

The thoughtfully selected art displayed in Eyes runs the gamut from Babbit’s sensitively rendered portraiture to the grimly surreal. Some is the work of obviously accomplished fine artists, while other pieces have the blunt power of so-called outsider art. Further heightening the poignancy, the soundtrack features contributions from harmonica player and survivor Henry Rosmarin, who was spared thanks to his ability to play Schubert on his instrument.

Eyes is a respectful film that deserves credit for recording the stories of both Jewish and Roma artists. However, much of the material covered in Eyes might be familiar to some from other somewhat recent documentaries (such as Clarke and Sender’s Prisoner of Paradise about the Theresienstadt camp; Alexandra Isles’s Porraimos specifically documenting the Roma-Sinti Holocaust; and Berge, Newnham, and Cohen’s Rape of Europa, a truly outstanding film that illuminates the strange National Socialist preoccupation with art). Still, most viewers will find Eyes quite informative and at times genuinely moving. It opens Friday (10/2) at the Cinema Village.

On-Stage: Way to Heaven

In 1944, representatives of the International Red Cross paid a visit to the Theresienstadt concentration camp that will be an everlasting stain on the organization’s honor. Tragically, they were completely fooled by the “beautified” Potemkin village the National Socialists had stage-managed for their benefit. The hoax of Theresienstadt inspired Spanish playwright Juan Mayorga’s Way to Heaven, whose premiere New York production officially opened last night at Teatro Circulo.

As the play opens, an unnamed Red Cross Representative wanders on stage, appearing disturbed and disheveled. A man shattered by guilt and self-doubt, he has returned to the site of his undoing, a concentration camp not unlike Theresienstadt, which he indeed gave a clean bill of health to in his official report. In a monologue, he explains the fateful events from his point-of-view.

The play then steps backward in time, showing the audience vignettes of prisoners rehearsing their parts to emphasize the artificial nature of this “play within a play.” A little girl sings sweetly, two boys have difficulty with a simple toy top, and a young couple quarrels, tripping over their stilted lines. Yet, it was all sufficient to fool the man from the Red Cross, which well pleases the superficially cultured camp Commandant, as he relates the same events in his own monologue.

However, the real crux of the play comes in the central fourth scene, as the Commandant scripts out and directs his charade with the reluctant help of Gershom Gottfried, whom the Germans consider a leader among their Jewish prisoners. Gottfried faces a fundamental Prisoner’s Dilemma: should he cooperate for the sake of short-term survival or sabotage their efforts in hopes of exposing the truth, most likely at the cost of his own life?

In sharply drawn scenes, Gottfried repeatedly asks the seemingly affable Commandant uncomfortable questions, like why do they constantly hear trains arriving, but never encounter any new prisoners. Well written and translated, what is left unspoken in this scene is just as important as what they do say. As a result, the nightmarish reality of the camp remains inescapably present, even though Way never shows any of the atrocities on-stage.

Although Francisco Reyes and Shawn Parr (as the Commandant and Red Cross man respectively) forcefully deliver their monologues, the two early scenes devoted to their point-of-view recollections give the play an unavoidable staginess. However, the dramatic confrontations between the Commandant and Gottfried are absolutely electric. Reyes chillingly portrays the banality and cold-bloodedness of the supposedly humanistic Commandant. While as Gottfried, Mark Farr conveys not only fear and confusion, but also anger. It is an intense, tightly-wound performance, perfectly capturing the anguish of someone in an unimaginable situation.

Way is an important, truly tragic play. Its strong cast overcomes the structural awkwardness, giving it a truly human dimension. Initially somewhat demanding, but ultimately quite haunting, Mayorga’s Way to Heaven runs through May 24th at Teatro Circulo.

Primo: Tonight or Next Week

Fatigue for the recent proliferation of one-person shows would be understandable, but exception should be made for Great Performances’ broadcast of Sir Anthony Sher’s Primo, debuting tonight on New York’s WNET 13 and next Thursday, the 24th, for most of the rest of the country. Masterfully adapting and performing Primo Levi’s memoir, Survival in Auschwitz (If This Is a Man), Sher uses the format of solo performance to capture the fundamental contradiction of life in the death camps—despite cramped spaces, constant new arrivals, and the ever-present terror of SS guards, prisoners like Levi were in fact, alone in a very existential way.

Levi was captured with a group of Italian anti-fascist partisans in 1943. He assumed it would be better to identify himself as an Italian of Jewish descent, rather than as a member of the political resistance. As a result he was deported to Auschwitz in early 1944, spending eleven months in Hell before the camp’s eventual liberation.

Levi was a chemist, and numbers would be grimly significant in his story. He would be one of twenty two Jewish Italians out of 650 in his transport to survive the death camp. His very identity would be reduced to a mere digit: 174517. Sher’s Levi explains: “While the habits of freedom still made me look for the time on my wristwatch, my new name appeared instead: one hundred and seventy-four thousand, five hundred and seventeen.”

Primo is particularly effective when explaining the every-day horrors of life in Auschwitz. In a particularly gripping sequence, Sher’s Levi explains:

“Death begins with your shoes—your wooden soled shoes. At first they’re like instruments of torture. After a few hours marching you already have painful sores. These quickly become infected and then you are forced to walk with a kind of shuffle as if dragging a convict’s chain . . . In the lager [camp], the average life expectancy of a high number is about eight weeks. If you last longer, it is because you‘ve mastered two things. One, you’ve learned to obey orders in a language that you don’t understand. Two, you have a pair of shoes that fit.”

Levi attributes his survival against the odds to several factors. Most notably is his cooperative friendship with another prisoner, Alberto. In powerful scene, Sher’s Levi decries that prisoners are “ferociously alone,” but they “will conduct an experiment, a chemical experiment in a way. Is there not more strength in two?”

Also significantly contributing to his survival was an Italian civilian laborer, Lorenzo Perrone, who smuggled soup to Levi, and Alberto by extension. Levi the chemist is able to calculate precisely how the calories of Perrone’s soup are able to make up for the deficit of the camp’s inadequate rations. That chemistry training would ultimately lead to Levi’s assignment to a laboratory, likely saving him from the perilous conditions of winter labor.

Sher portrays Levi with restrained dignity. He is dressed in the shirt, tie, and sweater vest of a celebrated author and public intellectual, not in camp uniform—this is a memory play, not a docudrama. Primo is a deeply humanistic work that celebrates the spirit of people like Alberto and Perrone. Yet in a few devastating scenes, Sher’s Levi literally passes judgment on the causal inhumanity of his captors.

Finely nuanced, Sher’s performance is remarkable. With little more than a chair for a prop, he commands the stage and screen. He is aided by effective lighting and the haunting incidental cello music of Robin Thomson-Clarke. Recorded at London’s Hampstead Theatre the production enjoyed a critically acclaimed limited run on Broadway. It premieres on Channel Thirteen in the New York market tonight at 8:00 and on most PBS stations next Thursday (making the timing of this review difficult). It is a powerful production, strongly recommended.

Opening Soon: Imaginary Witness

Glamour, escapism, and sentimentality—all are strong suits for Hollywood, but completely uncalled for when addressing the Holocaust on film. Perhaps it is not surprising then that the American film industry was long reluctant to dramatize the Holocaust, as director Daniel Anker illustrates in the documentary, Imaginary Witness: Hollywood and the Holocaust.

Originally broadcast on AMC and soon to screen at art houses and on campuses, Witness is more than a Chuck Workman-like compilation of film clips. Frankly, with its scope limited to American produced dramatic features (excluding documentaries) the list of potential source films is relatively small. Within that list, many films, particularly those produced during or shortly after the war, were clearly uncomfortable in their handling of the historical issues involved. Yet as filmmakers became bolder in their depictions, some like Elie Weisel, would challenge the very morality of any attempts to dramatize the Holocaust.

Witness does document some fascinating episodes in Hollywood history. According to the film, prior to WWII, Germany accounted for ten percent of the foreign market, explaining why few films were produced criticizing the rise of National Socialism. One such film was MGM’s Mortal Storm starring James Stewart, which led to the prohibition of all MGM films in Germany. That Warner (which controls the classic MGM library through Turner entertainment) has yet to make this historic film available on DVD is quite disappointing.

A particular revelation for most viewers of Witness will be the remarkable reception in Germany for the NBC miniseries Holocaust (which again ought to be available on DVD). Evidently, it was eye opening for younger Germans who did not live through the war and led to a legitimate national dialogue. However, Weisel was referring to this miniseries as “morally objectionable and indecent” when he criticized fictionalizations of the Holocaust.

It is ethical questions like this that Witness is particularly interested in exploring. However, some interview subjects offer more to the film than others. Branko Lustig’s interview segments may well be the strongest aspects of the film. Lustig was the producer of Schindler’s List and was involved with the productions of Sophie’s Choice and War and Rembrance. He is also a Holocaust survivor. To say he brings insight to the subject would be an understatement. When he speaks of being the last survivor working in Hollywood who can advise on questions of authenticity, it is a heavy moment. Audiences could probably watch an entire film of his interview.

Also contributing much through their participation are Steven Spielberg, and The Pawnbroker’s Sidney Lumet and Rod Steiger. Although Neil Gabler is an acknowledged authority on the original Hollywood moguls, he is such a glib TV talking head, that he lacks gravitas of other participants and seems to have a disproportionate amount of screen time.

Like the film oeuvre it surveys, Witness is uneven, but it does have some powerful moments, most notably Lustig’s contributions. My greatest complaint might seem trivial—its actual title. People of good conscience can certainly understand the meaning of Imaginary Witness, but there are a frightening number of unhinged deniers in the world today. Putting the words “imaginary” and “Holocaust” together in the same title seems to be handing them a rhetorical device, which is obviously the furthest from the filmmaker’s intentions. That such people are out there reinforces the need for Witness and the films it analyzes. It opens in New York at the IFC Film Center on Christmas Day.