Posts
 | |||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||
| |||||||||||||
Wednesday, April 30, 2014
An Analysis of Parshat Hamo'adot (Ch. 23)
Rosa and the Executioner of the Fiend
http://dvdreviewsandmore.blogspot.com/2010/03/rosa-and-executioner-of-fiend.html
Rosa and the Executioner of the Fiend
I have always said that the best movies are those made in one location, with as many actors as necessary, and a good, solid story that keeps you glued to the screen until the very end. It is truly an art to accomplish this, to entertain people without big budgets, special effects, etc. Films following these principles that come to mind are “Twelve angry men” (1957), “The Incident” (1967), and “Deterrence” (1999). Now we have to add the passionate and penetrating “ Rosa and the Executioner of the Fiend” to this small, incomplete, but impressive list.Helmed by Iván Acosta with a visibly low-budget, and based on his own play with the same name, the story takes place in one apartment, which happens to be located in front of the United Nations building in New York City. It is the year in which this important institution is celebrating its fiftieth anniversary and many world leaders are making their presence felt at such an historic celebration. The apartment is inhabited by Rosa Mandelbaum (Graciela Lecube), an 80-year old Jewish woman, who has been living by herself for quite some time.
One day, an intruder takes Rosa hostage in her own place. He goes inside her home claiming to be the grocery delivery clerk. He calls himself Amaury (Gabriel Gorces), a young Cuban man, who wants to kill Fidel Castro with a rifle from Rosa ’s place. The Cuban leader was invited to the United Nations anniversary. However, it is not as easy as we might think, because both Rosa and Amaury share a Cuban connection with similar life paths.
“Rosa and the Executioner of the Fiend” (Rosa y el Ajusticiador del Canalla) is intelligent, educational, and at times funny. We learn some episodes – dark, if you will – of Cuban history that otherwise would have been unknown to us until we watch the film. Whether or not you agree with the Cuban revolution, I am certain that you will enjoy this movie. The acting is superb and Lecube and Gorces were well- selected for the main roles. ( USA , 2009. color, 102 min.) Reviewed on March 21, 2010. MVD Visual
Death Wish 3
Plot[edit]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_Wish_3
http://books.google.gr/books?id=7s99TPwNPTMC&pg=PA72&dq=%22Death+Wish+3%22&hl=el&sa=X&ei=ZSv3UsK6GsGBywPHqYLwDw&ved=0CDsQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=%22Death%20Wish%203%22&f=false
Paul Kersey (Charles Bronson) has come back to Brooklyn after being banned since the events of the first film to visit his Korean War buddy Charley, who is attacked by a gang in his apartment. The neighbors hear commotion and call the police. Paul arrives as Charley collapses dead in his arms. The police mistakenly arrest Paul for the murder. At the police station, Lieutenant Richard Shriker (Ed Lauter) recognizes Paul as "Mr. Vigilante". Shriker lays down the law before Paul is taken to a holding cell. In the same cell is Manny Fraker (Gavan O'Herlihy), leader of the gang who attacked and killed Charley. He and Paul fight. When he is released, Manny threatens Paul. Manny arrives on his “gang turf” and slashes fellow gang member Hector (David Crean), possibly for betrayal. The police receive daily reports about the increased rate of crime. Shriker offers a deal to Paul—to kill all the punks he wants, as long as he informs Shriker of any gang activity he hears about so the police can get a bust and make news.
Paul moves into Charley's apartment in a gang-turf war zone. The building is populated by elderly tenants terrified of Manny's gang. They include Bennett Cross (Martin Balsam), a World War II veteran and Charley’s good buddy, plus Mr. and Mrs. Kaprov, an elderly Jewish couple, and a young Hispanic couple, Rodriguez (Joseph Gonzalez) and his wife Maria (Marina Sirtis). After a few violent muggings, Kersey goes into action. He buys a used car as bait. When two gang members try to break into the car, Kersey shoots them with a .38 Colt Cobra revolver. Kersey twice protects Maria from the gang, but is unable to save her a third time. She is assaulted and raped, later dying in hospital from her injuries.
Kersey orders a new gun, a .475 Wildey Magnum. He spends the afternoon with Bennett handloading ammunition for it. He then tests the gun when The Giggler (Kirk Taylor) steals his camera. Paul is applauded by the neighborhood as Shriker and the police take the credit. Kersey also throws a gang member off a roof. A possible love interest develops with public defender Kathryn Davis (Deborah Raffin). She is moving out of the city and Kersey offers to take her to dinner. While waiting in his car, Kathryn is knocked unconscious by Manny and the car is pushed into oncoming traffic. It slams into another car and explodes, killing Kathryn. (After a slight variation in Death Wish II, this re-establishes the murder of Kersey's love interest by gang members as a firm series tradition).
Shriker places Kersey under protective custody, fearing he is in too deep. Bennett takes matters into his hands with a German MG-42. After his taxi shop is blown up, he tries to get even but his gun jams. The gang cripples Bennett. Kersey is taken by Shriker to the hospital, where he escapes after Bennett tells him where to find a .30 Browning M1919 machine gun. Kersey and Rodriguez collect weapons. They proceed to mow down many of the criminals before running out of ammo. Other neighbors begin fighting back as Manny sends in more reinforcements.
Shriker decides to help and he and Kersey take down much of the gang together. Kersey goes back to the apartment to collect more ammo, but Manny finds him there. Shriker arrives just in time and shoots Manny, who falls to the floor, apparently dead. Shriker is wounded in the arm (but his life is saved by a bulletproof vest). As Kersey calls for an ambulance, Manny rises (he was also wearing a bulletproof vest) and turns his gun on the two men. As Shriker distracts him, Kersey uses a mail-ordered M72 LAW rocket launcher to obliterate Manny. As Manny's girlfriend screams in horror, what remains of the gang rush to the scene and see Manny's smoldering remains. One of the other gang members attempts to retaliate, but Manny's girlfriend stops him. Surrounded by the angry crowds of neighbors ready to fight back even more, the gang realizes they've lost and flee the scene. As the neighbors cheer in celebration and with police sirens in the distance, Shriker gives Kersey a head start. Kersey gives a look of appreciation and takes off.
Benjamin Murmelstein’s pact with the devil.
http://www.aish.com/ho/i/Nazi-Collaborator-or-Hero.html?s=rab
Claude Lanzmann, the French documentary filmmaker who directed Shoah, the 1985 widely praised nine and a half hour movie on the Holocaust presenting testimonies by selected survivors, witnesses, and German perpetrators, has once again returned to the same theme that continues to fascinate him, but from a totally different perspective.
This time he focuses on one man – and on one profound question relating to the moral ambiguity of evil.
The Last of the Unjust is the product of lengthy conversations Lanzsmann had with a remarkable survivor. Benjamin Murmelstein, a Viennese rabbi, clearly brilliant and extremely capable, was first drafted by Adolf Eichmann to write reports to the Nazi authorities. Later he was put in charge of a program ostensibly to permit Jews to emigrate but primarily intended to financially fill Eichmann’s pockets. Eventually he was made an “Elder of the Jews” at the notorious concentration camp at Thereseinstadt, where he himself was prisoner, following the two Elders preceding him who were both brutally executed with bullets to the backs of their heads.
To follow his story, as the film does – admittedly from Murmelstein’s point of view as there is no one else interviewed to contest him – is to come face-to-face with perplexing challenges to our clearly defined concepts of morality.
Murmelstein helped the Nazis as they ingeniously used Theresienstadt, a cruelly fictional paradise, in propaganda films to the world.
Murmelstein was a collaborator. It is he himself who chose as self-description the words of the film’s title,The Last of the Unjust, an obvious wordplay on the title of André Schwarz-Bart’s powerful award-winning novel The Last of The Just about the 36 righteous souls whose existence justifies the purpose of humankind to God. Murmelstein helped the Nazis as they ingeniously used Theresienstadt, a cruelly fictional paradise, in propaganda films to the world, deceptively depicting it as a Potemkin like village given by Hitler as a gift to the Jews in which they could enjoy all the amenities of a prosperous, fulfilling and beautiful life. Used as a showcase for a visit by the Red Cross, and the site of a film showing happy Jews at work and play, it was in reality a concentration camp where disease and starvation killed nearly 100,000 Jews due to horrible overcrowding and appalling sanitary conditions and for many but the first stop in “relocation to the east” where they would be brutally exterminated.
These facts were enough to have Murmelstein fiercely condemned by many after the war. Though acquitted on the charge of collaborating with the Nazis by a tough Czech court, he never set foot in Israel in order to avoid facing a second trial. Gershom Scholem, the renowned Israeli historian and philosopher, publicly called for him to be punished by hanging – although, as pointedly noted by Murmelstein in the film, Scholem ironically pleaded that Israel spare Eichmann’s life after the court found him guilty of his role in planning and carrying out the Nazi “final solution.”
And yet… Here is where the film forces us to begin the tortuous process of reevaluating moral choices in the face of competing options that offer no satisfactory resolution. How can we find the correct balance between heroism and expediency? How much should the crime of collaboration be mitigated if its purpose is to achieve the better of two nightmarish solutions? Is there room on an ethical balance sheet to vindicate assisting the wicked in order to attain a somewhat more favorable outcome for at least some of the innocent?
In short, can we forgive or perhaps even to some extent approve the choice Murmelstein made to respond to the Nazi regime’s goal of genocide by assuming the persona of “a calculating realist”- making a pact with the devil in order to somewhat diminish his power for evil?
Through his efforts – and his cooperation with Eichmann – he saved the lives of 120,000 Jews.
Slowly but quite effectively we become drawn in by Murmelstein’s justifications for his actions. It is true that through his efforts – and his cooperation with Eichmann – he saved the lives of 120,000 Jews by arranging their emigration to Palestine and other places of haven. He recounts with gusto how he was able to get 2,000 inmates out of the Dachau concentration camp and send them to Portugal and Spain via occupied France. Though he could easily have emigrated to London himself, he stayed behind in Vienna because he felt he “had something to accomplish – a mission.”
Given the impossible task of serving as “King of the Jews” in Theresienstadt, Murmelstein worked to “embellish” its facilities, helping to eradicate typhoid and somewhat improving its structure for the sick and the aged – even though that meant the perpetuation of a lie for the sake of propaganda. Putting glass in windows, he insisted, kept the people inside warmer. As to the propaganda film he cooperated with, Murmelstein says, "If they showed us, they wouldn't kill us. That was my logic, and I hope it was correct."
By the end of the film, it is clear that Lanzsmann has become convinced. The closing scenes show him putting his arm around Murmelstein, telling him he considers him a friend.
But it is we, the viewers, who must make our own judgments.
Jewish Taskmasters
Walking out of the theater I heard a couple, taken by Murmelstein’s powerful charisma and intellect, saying they could not understand why, instead of being condemned, he wasn’t proclaimed a hero. To my mind that was a severe overreaction.
There is a biblical precedent to the Nazi genius of appointing Jews over other Jews to be complicit in their own enslavement. The Torah tells us that when the Egyptians forced the Hebrews to make bricks for their construction projects, they set over them taskmasters and officers. The taskmasters were Egyptians, the officers Hebrews. The ones directly in charge of the Hebrew slaves and tasked with making certain the full quota of work was produced were taken from their own people.
The text goes on to tell us: “And the officers of the children of Israel whom Pharaoh's taskmasters had appointed over them were beaten, saying, 'Why have you not completed your quota to make bricks like the day before yesterday, neither yesterday nor today?'" [Exodus 5:14] The Midrash explains that the Hebrew officers refused to comply with the strict orders of their masters. They would not beat the workers assigned to them to make them fulfill the terrible burden of their quotas. They chose to be beaten themselves rather than to oppress their brethren.
The Sages tell us that a remarkable thing happened years later to reward them: These were the very people who merited to be selected as members of the first Sanhedrin. It was upon them that “some of the spirit that was upon Moses was taken and placed on them – as it is said ‘Gather to me 70 men of the elders of Israel’[Numbers 11:16] of those about whom you know the good that they did in Egypt, i.e. the officers who preferred to suffer themselves rather than to impose pain upon others.” [Commentary of Rashi, Exodus 5:14]
Murmelstein was the first to admit that he was no saint in administering the harsh edicts imposed by the Nazis.
Jewish heroes cannot persecute fellow Jews, no matter the consequences. That is what earns for them the respect and admiration of our people. And any trade-offs for personal security or special privileges cast their actions into serious question.
Murmelstein was the first to admit that he was no saint in administering the harsh edicts imposed by the Nazis. In a memorable line in the film he quotes Isaac Bashevis Singer as saying “There were no saints in the Holocaust; only martyrs.” But that is not true. Those who are familiar with Holocaust literature know of many thousands of holy and pious souls whose deeds were saintly beyond any human comprehension. The truly heroic figures could never have complied with the commands of their oppressors, no matter how much could be gained from compromising with evil.
There is no doubt that aiding an evil to subvert a greater evil cannot leave us unstained by the crime committed, no matter how noble our intentions. Murmelstein understood that when he referred to himself as the last of the unjust.
More, we will always be left to wonder whether the murder of six million could have become possible without any cooperation from its victims.
But truth be told the bottom line is that the Holocaust, being unfathomable, makes it impossible for us to offer a fair judgment. In this Murmelstein was correct: “We may condemn but we cannot judge.” And what Claude Landzmann in this unforgettable film has shown us is the profound difficulty of impugning guilt to any survivors – because there is no way we can possibly put ourselves in their place or realistically answer how we might have acted in their stead.
Published: February 15, 2014
Tuesday, April 29, 2014
Defeating Evil
My story begins and ends with a prophecy uttered by my grandmother at the moment I was born. “This child,” she said, “because she was born on the first day of the Jewish New Year, will be lucky her entire life.”
Six months later the Nazis invaded Lithuania and the word “luck” disappeared for all of us Jewish people living in that country.
By the time I was 8 months old we wore a yellow Star of David and at 10 months we were prisoners in the hard labor/concentration camp known as the Kovno Ghetto.At the age of 1, I survived the selection in which one third of the population, mostly children and the elderly, were taken away and shot.
In the two years that followed, disease, famine, hard labor, lack of firewood and the constant terror of not knowing what was going to happen next decimated another third of the population. Then came the “Kinder Aktzie,” the raid where the SS went house by house, pulling out all children under the age of 12, and any adult deemed unfit for labor.
Because of my father’s boss, a Nazi with a conscience, we were forewarned, hurriedly built a hiding place and stayed hidden in the newly excavated bunker.
On the second day they came to our house. I remember my terror in the darkness of the hole, as my mother’s hand kept pressing against my mouth so that I wouldn’t cry and give us away. Luckily the Nazis and their dogs did not sniff out our hiding place, but from there on I had to remain inside the house, for there were no children visibly left in the ghetto.
With each passing day my parents, Riva and Solomon Baicovitz, grew more desperate and as the chance of their own survival became nil, they made a decision no parent should ever have to make: They gave me away.
On May 11, 1944, my parents told me they loved me, that if they could they would come back for me, but that I could never ask for them, for if I did, the bad guys would kill them and me. I was giving a sleeping potion and when it took effect I was put into a potato sack.
A Harrowing Escape
Outside, a cart awaited. My sack was loaded atop of the other sacks and then the cart travelled alongside the ghetto fence. At a pre-arranged time and place, I was thrown over the barbed wire. Two women who had been waiting ran to the fence pulled me out of the sack and placed me in a baby carriage. I remained asleep as they wheeled me away to what everyone hoped was a chance to live. I was 3½ years old.
My fate had been entrusted to someone my parents had never met. Miriam Shulman was Jewish herself, from a prestigious rabbinical family. She had gone undercover, placing her own and other people’s children with the few Lithuanians who were willing to take us in.
Within 8 weeks, the fewer than 6,000 remaining inmates of the ghetto were marched through the city to the train depot. There they were loaded onto the cattle cars and sent to concentration camps: the men to Dachau in Germany, the women to Stuthoff in Poland.
A few months later the Soviet Army liberated Kovno and we came out of hiding. But the ghetto had been liquidated, dynamited and burned to the ground and the people, including my parents, were gone and presumed dead. Luckily for me, instead of placing me in the orphanage, Miriam took me in and when she decided to leave Kovno, she took me with her and her own children. In January of 1945, we started our dangerous journey through the snow and devastation of Europe. We had no documents, food or money and the next 10 months were a nightmare. Somehow we made it to Romania and there, on the month of my fifth birthday, we boarded a ship to Israel.
Although I had never asked for my parents, I had never forgotten them. I cried all the way to Jerusalem as I faced the fact that I was an orphan and that same night I started calling Miriam “Ima,” Hebrew for mother.
Half a year later, when I had totally adapted to my new situation, Ima showed me a photograph that had come in the mail. “Do you know who these people are?”
My heart skipped a beat. “This was my Mamma, and this was my Papa.”
Miriam hugged me and, with tears in her eyes, she told me that my parents were alive and that my mother was coming to get me!
My Grandmother’s Prophecy
Both my parents had survived, by miracle and by a hair, the horrors of the camps and the Death Marches. My mother had been liberated by the Russian Army and by word of mouth she had found out that I had survived. Although her body was ravaged from malnutrition and frostbite, she escaped the camp in order to search for me all over Europe.
Out of the 40,000 Jews in Kovno, about 2,000 survived.
A month before my sixth birthday, I came running around the bend of our house in Jerusalem and ran smack into my mother’s arms.
Five months later, my papers allowing me to enter Cuba arrived and I had to say goodbye to Miriam and my foster siblings. On February 6th, 1947, we arrived in Havana and I was reunited with my dad.
Three years had gone by. 27 of our close family members had perished. And out of the 40,000 Jews in Kovno, about 2,000 survived.
My grandmother Minda did not make it. But her prophecy did, for here I am, so many years later, living proof that evil can be defeated by the actions, small and large, of a few good people.
Sunday, April 27, 2014
Like Sheep: Why Didn't You Fight?
HOLOCAUST ARTICLES
Like Sheep: Why Didn't You Fight?
A survivor's gives his personal
answer to this often-asked question.
by Sam Halpern
After the war, many people, especially American Jews, including
some members of my own family, asked me why we never fought back. Why, for
instance, when the learned, kind Dr. Bloch was being shot, didn't we start a
rebellion and try to save him? Why did millions of Jews in Europe go passively
to the camps and then to their deaths?
This logical question deserves an answer. When I
was first brought to Kamionka, there were Russian prisoners of war whom the
German army had captured a few months earlier. To make room for the transport
of Jews, some of the Russians were sent to other camps and others were killed.
Killing POWs was against the Geneva Convention, but the Germans were beyond
abiding by any rules of civilized conduct. They had become utterly savage.
With my own eyes I saw the execution of POWs.
Having been raised so close to the Russian border, I understood Russian and
listened carefully to what the Russian POWs were saying as they were being
selected for death. One man, about forty-five years old, was considered too old
for a labor camp and so the Germans decided to shoot him. He stood tall and
looked straight into the eyes of the German soldiers: "I have three sons
in the Red Army. They are on their way. Remember, you will pay for this."
And then the Germans shot him.
There was nothing the Russian could do in the
face of many armed German soldiers. Polish soldiers, whose army had been
swiftly defeated at the start of the war, faced the same situation. I saw four
or five German soldiers control a thousand Polish POWs. Later on in Kamionka, a
small number of Germans did whatever they wanted with Russian soldiers, men who
had been trained to fight battles. High-ranking officers were reduced to
powerless, ordinary men when confronted with the lowliest German soldier and a
gun.
When the tide turned and the Germans began
losing the war, I beheld the same sight in reverse: hundreds of mighty German
soldiers, who only weeks before took life or saved it as their mood dictated,
were now herded about passively by a few Russian soldiers with weapons.
These soldiers had all been trained to fight, to
use firearms, to survive under the harshest conditions. If they could not
resist imprisonment, how were we Jews – a civilian population, with little or
no firearm experience and no weapons, a tribe of merchants, artisans, scholars,
women and children, all weak from starvation and exhaustion – able to rebel
against a well-equipped army? If you are under the gun, there is little you can
do.
Certainly, there were a few, wonderful
exceptions. The Warsaw Ghetto uprising, the first of its kind among a civilian
population in Poland, is the most famous. Even in Warsaw, however, organizing
to fight did not take place when there had been half a million Jews in the
ghetto. Only when almost the entire ghetto had been liquidated and death was at
hand did a few thousand remaining residents – right-wingers, leftists,
Bundists, religionists, atheists, Jews of every political and religious stripe
– band together, under the leadership of Mordechai Anielewicz, to fight since
they knew their days were numbered. They realized they would not be able to
beat the German army. But if they were going to die, they would at least take
some Germans with them.
Those of us in Kamionka who were young and still
strong would have been more than willing to fight in an organized fashion if we
thought we had the slightest chance of making a difference. For months after
learning of the German defeat at Stalingrad, we waited for partisans who were
rumored to be in the vicinity. It would have been a great honor, a tremendous
opportunity, to join them, to fight to save the lives of innocent Jews and
non-Jews under German occupation. We had heard that the partisans liberated a
camp not far from ours. Many Jews had joined their ranks immediately. In the
end, though, the partisans did not come near Kamionka until the camp had
already been liquidated.
One night in April 1943, Ladovsky, Rebel's
Jewish chauffer, came into my barracks and woke me up. He had just returned
from Warsaw with Rebel where they had gone to purchase supplies. In Warsaw
Lasovsky had heard about, and actually seen, the uprising during its second
day.
"Jews," he told me, "are killing
Germans! I saw it with my own eyes, German blood being spilled!"
"Thank G-d I lived to see the day," I
said to him and jumped off my bunk.
The two of us began to sing and dance, crying
and laughing, beside ourselves with joy. After two days of successful fighting,
Mordechai Anielewicz said that killing German soldiers proved that they, too,
were vulnerable, that the Germans were not invincible. Like Jews, they could
bleed, and this resistance saved Jewish honor. Of course, within a few weeks
the Germans had overrun the ghetto, killing almost everyone inside, and shipped
the survivors to the death camps. But the thought of Jews defending themselves
thrilled us beyond description. Even though we knew there were Jewish soldiers
fighting in the Allied armed forces, we had become accustomed to feeling
helpless under German occupation.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)