The uprising by Jewish people entrapped in the Warsaw Ghetto 75 years ago has been well documented in art and literature. Here, a look at how the event has served as fodder in films.
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Revisiting the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in film
The uprising by Jewish people entrapped in the Warsaw Ghetto 75 years ago has been well documented in art and literature. Here, a look at how the event has served as fodder in films.
Image: TOBIS STUDIOCANAL
'The Pianist' (2002)
"The Pianist" by director Roman Polanski tells a poignant story of Polish-Jewish pianist and composer Wladyslaw Szpilman, who survived life in the Warsaw Ghetto thanks to the help of a German officer. He is portrayed by Adrien Brody in the movie. The Ghetto Uprising serves as a turning point in the narrative. Polanski's own mother died in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.
Image: imago stock&people
The ghetto as film set
The filming of "The Pianist" took place in Berlin at the Babelsberg studios. Roman Polanski had the set created using a historical template that reconstructed the look of the Warsaw Ghetto, where the Nazis had rounded up and interned the Jewish inhabitants of the city. Polanski similarly experienced this as a child, but in the Krakow Ghetto.
Image: TOBIS STUDIOCANAL
'Roman Polanski: A Film Memoir' (2011)
In this documentary about the life of the French-Polish filmmaker, "Roman Polanski: A Film Memoir," directed by Laurent Bouzereau, Polanski divulges his life's story in highly personal interviews with his friend, producer Andrew Braunsberg. In it, he speaks of life as a young child in the Krakow Ghetto and his mother's deportation to Auschwitz.
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'Korczak' (1990)
Janusz Korczak was a doctor and the director of a Jewish orphanage in Warsaw, who was transferred to the ghetto in 1940. When the SS evacuated the ghetto in 1942, soldiers drove 200 orphans to the station for deportation; Korczak refused to leave them and boarded the train to the extermination camp Treblinka with his children. In "Korczak," Andrzej Wajda (above) re-staged the dramatic story.
Image: picture alliance/PAP
'Jacob the Liar' (1975)
Written by Jewish writer Jurek Becker, the book "Jacob the Liar" was made into a tragi-comic film by director Frank Beyer. In it, he gave a face to the victims of the persecution of the Jews in occupied Poland. Jacob was played by the Czechoslovakian playwright Vlastimil Brodsky (above). The film takes place in 1944, in a ghetto in Poland, shortly before its liberation by the Red Army.
Image: ullstein bild - KPA
'Run Boy Run' (2013)
German director Pepe Danquart turned the novel "Run, Boy, Run" into a historical political drama. The film follows Srulik, a small Jewish boy, who has managed to flee the Warsaw Ghetto just in time. To escape the Nazis and the guards, the nine-year-old flees into the nearby forest, where he has to learn to be on his own and survive in the wild.
Image: Hagen Keller/NFP
'My Life: Marcel Reich-Ranicki' (2009)
The life story of literary critic Marcel Reich-Ranicki, a Jew in Poland who was deported at the age of 18, was filmed in 2009 by the director Dror Zahavi for television. Together with his wife Teofila, Reich-Ranicki barely survived the Warsaw Ghetto. The young Marcel is played by actor Matthias Schweighöfer and Katharina Schüttler (right) portrays his wife, Teofila.
Image: picture alliance/dpa/WDR/T. Kost
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On April 19, 1943, 75 years ago, the inhabitants of the Jewish ghetto of Warsaw started an uprising against their tormentors. They refused to simply let themselves be sent to death.
Between July 1942 and that day, the Nazis had some 300,000 people deported from the Ghetto to concentration camps. The remaining Jews resisted. The Nazis stopped the rebellion by burning down every block of the Ghetto. By May 16, 1943, the Germans managed to crush the uprising; a total of 13,000 Jews died. It was the largest act of revolt by Jews during World War II.
The rebellion in film
"The Pianist," "Jacob the Liar," and "Run Boy Run" are among the best-known films about the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Several film directors, most notably Roman Polanski, adapted the historical events into film.
The renowned French-Polish director personally survived another Jewish ghetto in Poland, in Krakow, and his mother was assassinated in Auschwitz. Polanski's film "The Pianist," a box office hit, received three Oscars.
In his work "Korczak," Andrzej Wajda reminds the world of the Polish pediatrician and educator Janusz Korczak, whose Jewish orphanage was moved to the Warsaw Ghetto in 1940. When the SS stormed the ghetto in 1942, his 200 orphans were driven to the train station. But Korczak refused to leave "his children" in the lurch. He joined them on the train that brought them to the concentration camp Treblinka.
Poland: Warsaw Ghetto Uprising 75 years on
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Schoenberg's musical tribute
Along with the films looking back the events, the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising is also reflected upon in other art forms.
Vienna-born Jewish composer Arnold Schoenberg emigrated to the US in 1934, so he didn't experience the horrors of the Holocaust firsthand. He however composed a cantata in commemoration of its victims. The 1947 work "A Survivor from Warsaw" narrates the story of a survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto and his time in a concentration camp.
An iconic photo
In December 1970, former German chancellor Willy Brandt went down on his knees in front of the monument honoring the Warsaw Ghetto, begging for forgiveness for the atrocities committed there by the Germans. The picture became an icon.
To this day, the Warsaw Ghetto is a symbol of misery and annihilation, and of Jewish resistance against Hitler.
