Fiction Traces: The Ideal Community and Historical Sabotage

Abstract

After failure of all communisms it seems quite appropriate and necessary to rethink supposed homogeneity of community and to propose new readings, outside of canonical point of view. To discuss conventional ideas linked to community we should explore their subversive possibilities. This paper tries to discuss some of these assumptions through critical analysis of a so-called documentary made by Nazi government, intended to prove to international community that Jews were well treated in concentration camps. This example can be helpful to reformulate some of categories associated with concept of community and the politics of memory.To Make a FilmIn summer of 1944 Nazi government perpetrated a hoax against Danish Red Cross by taking them on a torn of Theresienstadt concentration camp in occupied Czechoslovakia. From 1942, Nazis promoted Terezin as a model camp where elderly Jews would be sent to live and work in comfortable circumstances in a pleasant community. The entire camp became a propaganda scheme designed to deceive Jews of Reich and to fool outside world about true fate of Jews. Famous musicians, artists, and painters were imprisoned in Terezin where they were forced to work on Nazi propaganda. It goes without saying that Terezin was a grim place: barracks used to house more than 50,000 Jews, and disease, hunger and cold ravaged prisoners. 140,000 Jews were sent to Terezin: 33,430 died there and 87,000 were shipped to death camps in East.In order to deceive Red Cross delegation, in summer of 1944, Nazis cleaned camp, and arranged cultural activities to give appearance of a happy community. To cover up endemic overpopulation of camp, numerous inmates were deported to Auschwitz before arrival of Red Cross delegation.The trick was so successful that SS commanders decided to make a documentary-style film about camp, with inmates as actors, to assure audiences that they were not being abused. They took Jew Kurt Gerron as a filmmaker-he was an important director in Germany before Second World War and he had been making anti-Nazi films in Amsterdam-, and in return they promised him that he would live. The film was shot between August 16 and September 11, 1944, requiring eleven days of shooting in all. Shortly after he finished shooting film, Gerron and cast mem- bers-including all of those who participated in production-were evacuated to Auschwitz where they were gassed on arrival.The movie was intended to be screened for different audiences (International Red Cross, Vatican, German population...) to show them that Nazis were not mistreating Jews. Following first screening in early April 1945 to high-ranking government and SS officials in Prague, there were at least three more screenings for international humanitarian emissaries in Theresienstadt itself, twice on April 6 and again on April 16, 1945. Plans for a further distribution to broader audiences in neutral states never materialized due to progression of war.The documentary footage was titled: The Fuhrer Gives a City to Jews. It depicts life of Jews in concentration camp as harmonious and joyful. These images talk to us about what they hide. However, we should ask ourselves some questions: are these images concentration camps images? Are these images documenting reality? We will think about what film shows and what we are able to see.From Fiction to FictionalityI would like to begin here with a quote from Derrida that appears in an interview published in Cahiers du cinema in April 2001 (De Baeque). this interview philosopher says: In cinema, we believe without believing, and this believing is still a belief. This statement is obviously related to verisimilitude: in films, several beliefs coexist and in spite of fictional nature of film images, we deal with some apparitions that, in a certain way, become real only if we trust them. …