Lodz Ghetto

An excellent, memorable work
I have been using this video in my courses since it was released. The film tells the story of the Lodz ghetto through a well-crafted mosaic of first-person accounts and archival films and photos. The former include ghetto diaries, chronicles, speeches by Rumkowski, posted SS "announcements," and similar. The latter include occasional images of contemporary Lodz overlaying images from the time of the ghetto. The voices, including Jerzy Kosiniski who "speaks" Rumkowski (what better choice?), are conveyed with power and precision. The selections read are as various and well-chosen as could be imagined. The work as a whole is somewhere between a documentary and a stark meditation, treating the unique complexity of the Lodz ghetto's history with both restraint and clarity.

Powerful and unique
Very powerful, moving chronicle of one Polish Jewish ghetto in WWII. As we watch,
its population shrinks from 200,000 souls to only 800 left by the liberation.
All the narration is taken from the diaries and writings of those who were actually
there, and the visuals include some amazing film and stills from the time. A few
historical details are frustratingly sketchy, and intense thought it was, in the end
I wasn't quite as emotionally overwhelmed as I expected. But overall one of the more
accessible and unique holocaust documentaries. I'd imagine it's intimate 1st person
narratives would help make the stories more 'real' for students, making this an
invaluable teaching tool.



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