Too much horror

The Goethe Institute is screening a series of German and German co-production films about the Holocaust. Last night I went to see the first of these, In Darkness, made by Agnieszka Holland, a Polish – German co-production. I did ask myself the question: Do I need more depressing Holocaust films? This film was terribly harrowing. It is the story of a group of Jews in Lviv, who survived in the sewers when the ghetto of the city was liquidated. No matter how you tell the story, depicting life in the sewers for over a year, from June 1943, when the ghetto was cleared out, to July 1943, when the Soviet troops liberated Lviv, it is almost unbearably hard to bear. The film also showed scenes of sadistic brutality, which were undoubtedly authentic, but made the film that much harder to watch. Though true, they are almost beyond belief. Yet the film is not about the Jews, but about Leopold Socha, a sewage worker who saved them. For him saving human lives was initially a profitable business arrangement. The Jews paid him, he procured food for them and found them safe hiding places. He risked his life, he gave up the chance to betray them and earn 500 zloty for each Jew handed over to the Germans, and yet the Jews in the sewer just complained and made demands. At one time talking with his wife about how he earned his extra money slipped out. His wife told him that Jews are people just like them. When the priest told them that Jews killed Jesus she dismissed that as church politics. Ultimately Socha stopped thinking of the Jews in his care as just a source of income. They became his Jews. He risked his life for them, put himself at great risk, and when the Jews ran out of money, continues to save them, discreetly, without payment. It is a redemption story. The story of a humble, coarse, simple man, becoming something more than a rapacious, selfish human being, becoming a saviour of others. The film is based on the book The girl in the green sweater by Krystyna Chiger, the last survivor of the group of Jews in the sewer who as a seven year old child witnessed it all. The book was a best seller in Poland, which is not surprising, because it comes to grips with the the ambiguities of being both a victim and a perpetrator, posing 'what would you do if you were in my shoes?' questions, particularly if you were a devout Catholic reared in a climate of antisemitism. And for us, involved with the preservation of the memory of the Holocaust, and talking about it to the next generation, it is important to experience the horror, the unbelievable cruelties and  inhumanity of the perpetrators, otherwise those who claim that the Holocaust never happened, that the horrors were exaggerated would prevail.