The cinematic city and the destruction of Lublin's Jews

ABSTRACT

They took me up, up. Very far, maybe 300 miles, until we came to Lublin. (Art Speigelman, Maus¹)

With the words cited above, in Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel Maus (1980-1991), Holocaust survivor Vladek Spiegelman remembers his journey from Częstochowa to Lublin as a Jewish prisoner of war in 1941. The name of the city of Lublin resounds as a distant place on map of Europe during the Second World War and, insofar as the study of film and the Holocaust is concerned, Lublin has entirely slipped under the radar as an understudied subject of investigation. This article aims at filling this gap and discusses the role of this city in the Final Solution by means of a study of its cinematic image and that of the concentration and extermination camp of Majdanek, at the outskirts of Lublin.

KEYWORDS:

• Lublin
• Majdanek
• film
• Holocaust
• city

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Maurizio Cinquegrani is a Lecturer in Film at the University of Kent. He has published widely on issues of space, place and memory in film. His first monograph, Of Empire and the City: Remapping Early British Cinema, was published by Peter Lang in 2014. Maurizio is now working on a book titled Journey to Poland: Documentary Landscapes of the Holocaust for Edinburgh University Press.

Notes

1. Speigelman, Maus, 230.

2. Hay, “Piecing Together,” 219.

3. Penz and Lu, “Introduction,” 9.

4. Ibid., 12.

5. Ibid., 14.

6. Cf. Haltof, Polish Film and the Holocaust.

7. Hay, “Piecing Together,” 212.

8. Steinlauf, Bondage to the Dead.

9. Haltof, Polish Film and the Holocaust.

10. Miron, The Yad Vashem Encyclopaedia, 421.

11. One and a half million Jews were murdered at these death camps between 1942 and 1943 as part of Aktion Reinhard. Named after the deceased SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich, this was the most deadly phase of the Final Solution.

12. Black, “Rehearsal for ‘Reinhard’?”

13. The square and the adjacent streets became recurring locations for political and military demonstrations and parades, and were often filmed in Polish official newsreels. For example, Helena Lemańska's 5 marca 1953: roku zmarł Józef Stalin (5 March 1953: Józef Stalin is Dead) portrays the memorial services held in several Polish cities on the occasion of Stalin's death, and includes images of a large crowd gathered in Litewski Square to commemorate the Soviet dictator. On this occasion the square previously known as Adolf Hitler Platz was officially renamed after Józef Stalin. This film includes a panning long shot of the square which is followed by medium shots of an image of Stalin hanging from the balcony of Lubomirskich Palace and the commemorative banners prepared and held by the men, women, and children of Lublin. The funeral was staged as a tribute to Stalin and a further acknowledgment of his role as a commander in the Red Army's offensive against the Nazi occupation of Poland. Lemańska's film, however, confirms the repression of the memory of Lublin's Jewry. In 1953, anti-Semitism was on the rise both in Poland and the Soviet Union, with Jewish doctors accused of poisoning Stalin, and on that day no banners or speeches acknowledged the specific role of the Red Army in the interruption of the Nazi extermination of Jews in the Lublin district (Steinlauf, Bondage to the Dead, 67).

14. Liquidated between 17 March and 11 April 1942, the ghetto of Lublin was hardly ever filmed during the occupation. The only existing original footage of the Lublin ghetto was filmed in 1940 by Fritz Hippler for his anti-Semitic propaganda documentary Der ewige Jude (The Eternal Jew). Based on a book published in 1937 by the Nazi Party, this film includes footage from several Polish ghettos; here the Jews are presented as uncivilized and parasitic people, often engaged in what are presented as barbaric religious rituals and ceremonies. Its message is well exemplified in the opening commentary: “The civilized Jews that we know in Germany give us only an incomplete picture of their racial character. This film shows genuine shots of the Polish ghettos. It shows the Jews as they really are, before they conceal themselves behind the mask of the civilized European” (cited in Taylor, Film Propaganda, 175). This commentary introduces the viewer to the overcrowded, narrow alleys of the ghettos, bustling with trade, and claims that Jews had always lived in ghettos and had chosen to appear poorly dressed and unhealthy despite their wealth. As Robert Reimer suggests, the film is effectively showing the result of Nazi rule in Poland, while claiming to display the natural depravity of the Jews (Reimer, Cultural History, 135). By the end of 1939, Jewish stores were marked with Stars of David and Jews were ordered to wear a white armband with a blue Star of David. The Judenrat of Lublin was established in January 1940, during a particularly harsh winter which contributed to the suffering of the Jews; one year later, on 24 March 1941, the ghetto was established in the designated area of the city. It was sealed with a barbed wire fence at the end of that year and, despite the high mortality rate, its population continued to grow as a result of continuous relocation and infiltration of Jews from other parts of Poland (Miron, The Yad Vashem Encyclopaedia, 422–5).

15. The castle appears in what is likely to be one of the earliest films of the city; Lublin: Obrazek turystyczny (Touristic Lublin) was filmed in 1914 during the Austro-Hungarian occupation and includes images of the cathedral and Zamek Lubelski. The castle was destined to become a reoccurring location in films of Lublin, for example both in Wanda Jakubowska's 150 na godzine (150 per Hour, 1971), a film focusing on the youth of Lublin in the 1970s, and Gerard Zalewski's Tetno (Heartbeat, 1985), the story of Polish writer Halina Poświatowska, the castle can be seen in scenic long shots taken from Po Farze Square. The building's association with Polish patriotism continued after the communist era and the castle was chosen as a location by Jerzy Hoffman for his film Ognim i Mieczem (By Fire and Sword, 1999), set during the Cossack rebellion known as the Khmelnytsky Uprising (1648–1657). This film includes a scene shot in the Holy Trinity Chapel at Zamek Lubelski: here Catholic convert and patriot Jarema Wiśniowiecki takes an oath in front of the altar. During the communist era Wiśniowiecki was described as an “enemy of the people”; made in 1999, By Fire and Sword presents him as the hero of the battle of Berestechko.

16. Lefebvre, The Production of Space, 37.

17. Ibid., 41.

18. Grodzka Gate, in particular, can also be seen in Andrzej Konic's Czarne Chmury (Black Clouds, 1973), a costume drama made for Telewizja Polska, this time as the set for a street in seventeenth-century Warsaw. In Jerzy Antczak's biopic Chopin. Pragnienie miłości (Chopin – Desire for Love, 2002), Lublin plays both Warsaw and Paris, with several scenes filmed near Brama Grodzska. Lublin is Vilnius in Antoni Bohdziewicz's Rzeczywistość (Reality, 1960). In Adek Drabiński's Kryptonim <PUCH> (Codename “Down,” 2005) Lublin is Rivne, Ukraine. Lublin is Warsaw again in Adek Drabiński's Tajna Sprawa (A Matter of Secrecy, 2005), where it also plays Moscow.

19. Vilnius is located in Wilno Voivodeship, a region of Lithuania which was part of Poland between 1926 and 1939. The Jews of Vilnius shared the same fate as the Jews of Lublin and during the Nazi occupation its almost entire Jewish population was exterminated.

20. Penz and Lu, “Introduction,” 14.

21. Hay, “Piecing Together,” 229.

22. The death toll for the Majdanek camp is difficult to estimate and ranges from early over-estimations suggesting that over a million people died in the camp to a more realistic estimate of 79,000 victims (Kranz, The Extermination of Jews, 70–77).

23. Hicks, First Films of the Holocaust, 253.

24. Ibid., 158–66.

25. Ibid., 165.

26. Alain Resnais's pivotal documentary Nuit et Brouillard (Night and Fog, 1955) notoriously presents the same perspective. Partly filmed on the grounds and ruins of Majdanek, the entire film uses the word “Jew” only on one occasion and Nazi crimes are portrayed as perpetrated equally against a range of victims from different national, political, and religious backgrounds.

27. The same perspective appears in other Polish films. In 1979, the camp at Majdanek was used as a location for Roman Wionczek's Sekret Enigmy (The Secret Enigma), the story of Henryk Zygalski, Jerzy Różycki, and Marian Rejewski, the three Polish mathematicians who cracked the Enigma code used by the Germans during the war. The same story appears in the television series Tajemnice Enigmy (Secrets of the Enigma, 1979) also directed by Roman Wionczek and filmed in Majdanek.

28. Nora, “Between Memory and History,” 19.

29. During the war Majdanek was also used as a storage facility for the belongings of the victims of Aktion Reinhard.

30. Cf. Koslov, “‘Going East’.”

31. The Column of Three Eagles was based on Albin Maria Boniecki's design and made by Polish prisoners in 1943 on the occasion of a visit by the International Red Cross. Prisoners were demanded to decorate the camp in order to create an impression of order and attractiveness (Wiśnioch, Majdanek, 42).

32. Bhabha, The Location of Culture, 55.

33. Soja, Thirdspace, 57.