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um ma um mir Nam ow gm ma or am
L
FRAN HELLER
Special to the Jewish News
ook at these children. Look at them
hard. Betrayed while they lived.
Forgotten when they died."
Thus begins Marion Wiesel's
moving narrative of a new documentary
short focusing on the Holocaust's youngest
.victims. Titled Children Of The Night and
only 18 minutes long, the HBO feature,
debuting Thursday, May 25, captures in
word and image the collective sorrow and
loss in the slaughter of more than 1.3 million
innocents by the Nazis.
While many still photographs of the mur-
dered children exist in Holocaust repositories
worldwide, movie footage, as shown here, is
quite rare, according to the documentary's
writer/narrator and wife of Nobel laureate
Elie Wiesel.
Created from archives in Israel, Europe
and the United States, the quality of the clips
ranges from excellent to fair. The elegaic
tones of Bach performed by cellist Yo Yo Ma
and Wiesel's sobering commentary set the
stage for the sad-eyed procession of visages
crowding the screen in numbing repetition.
There are no smiles in this relentless sea of
anguished, fearful and trembling faces.
Though mere children, their emaciated fea-
tures and hollow eyes betray their youth, for
these are the eyes of men and women grown
old before their time.
Torn from their mothers and fathers, most
look bewildered and uncomprehending as
they march arms to shoulders in snake-like
queues. The older-looking figure in a later .
scene of an overcrowded ghetto cellar is no
more than teen-aged. In another image, a
child sits.crying on the sidewalk, his tears
unnoticed, while another crouches listlessly,
with limbs like matchsticks. -- -,
Orphans of the street, they survive by beg-
ging or hiding, but only until the Gestapo
routs them out, as the brief film indicates in
graphic detail. Powerful as these images are,
even more wrenching is what is missing and
the lingering silent question: Where have all
the parents gone?
The short ends with photographs of actual
identified children from Italy, Poland,
France, Ukraine, Hungary and elsewhere
who were either shot, burned alive or died in
the concentration camps.
Immediately following Children of the
Night is The Last Days, winner of the 1999
Academy Award for Best Documentary
Feature. Produced by Stephen Spielberg, this
extraordinary film recounts the harrowing
tales .bf five Hungarian Jews who survived
Hitler's final Anschluss, the invasion and
occupation of Hungary and the brutally swift
decimation of the largest remaining Jewish
population in Europe.
Fran Heller is a Cleveland-based freelance writer.
■
■
■
■ Children of the
• Holocaust are the •
•
■
subject
of
a
new
•
■
■ documentary
■
• short that will be
■
■
.• aired on HBO.
Fifty years later, the
film chronicles the return
of these five survivors to
their Hungarian homeland
— to the small villages,
urban Budapest and. the
labor and concentration
camps where they were
incarcerated. Archival
footage of cattle cars, cre-
matoria, mass graves, deci-
mated bodies and piles of
shoes are interspersed with
their personal tales of woe.
This exceptional doc-
umentary also features
commentary from three
American liberators and a
rare interview with a for-
mer Nazi doctor who per-
formed medical experi-
ments at Auschwitz. One
of the survivors interviews
the doctor who performed
experiments on her sister,
but he remains evasive.
Another survivor
confesses how he had to
choose between survival
and betrayal of a friend in
order to survive
Buchenwald. One woman
salvages her mother's dia-
monds by continuously
swallowing and retrieving
them.
Images of skeletal
bodies and mass graves
never cease to churn the
stomach and deaden the
soul.
Yet, despite the tragic
and painful subject matter,
sensitivity, restraint and intel-
ligence are the hallmarks of
this not-to be-missed film.
❑
....
...............
•
Tap to bottom:
■
■
Three scenes from "Children of
the Night": There are no smiles
in tlhis relentless s - ell ofanoiShed,
Parfill and trembling faces.
•
■
■
A showing of the Academy:
AwardT wifining" .The Last
Days' Jo' flows "Children of
the Night!' Pictured here is
survivor Irene Zisblatt, right, •
with her childhood houseZecper.
Children Of The Night
airs 8-8:30 p.m.
Thursday, May 25, on
HBO. Other playdates:
2 p.m. Saturday, May
27; 2 p.m. Tuesday, May
30; and 9:30 a.m.
Monday, June 12.
HBO's presentation of
The Last Days debuts
8:30 - 10 p.m. Thursday,
May 25. Other play-
dates: 3:30 p.m. Sunday,
May 28; 1:30 p.m.
Wednesday, May 31; 8
a.m. Monday, June 12;
and 6:30 p.m. Thursday,
June 22.