1 00:00:02,000 --> 00:00:07,000 Downloaded from YTS.MX 2 00:00:08,000 --> 00:00:13,000 Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX 3 00:04:39,960 --> 00:04:46,720 These three minutes of life were taken out of the flow of time by David Kurtz in 1938. 4 00:04:47,320 --> 00:04:51,633 His grandson Glenn Kurtz discovered them in 2009 5 00:04:51,820 --> 00:04:55,464 in a closet in Palm Beach Garden, Florida. 6 00:04:58,720 --> 00:05:01,600 My grandfather was born in Poland in 1888. 7 00:05:02,640 --> 00:05:06,600 So my grandfather was only four years old when he came to the United States. 8 00:05:06,720 --> 00:05:10,640 He grew up feeling himself to be American. 9 00:05:12,920 --> 00:05:16,680 By the mid nineteen thirties he and my grandmother had a family... 10 00:05:16,800 --> 00:05:22,200 and they were living in Brooklyn and they began to travel a little bit. 11 00:05:22,320 --> 00:05:26,640 The trip that they took to Europe I call it the 'grand tour'. 12 00:05:26,760 --> 00:05:33,080 I think that like prosperous Americans the thing to do... 13 00:05:33,200 --> 00:05:37,280 when you achieved a certain socio-economic level, 14 00:05:37,400 --> 00:05:42,480 was you went to Europe and so on this trip my grandparents were in Paris, 15 00:05:42,600 --> 00:05:46,920 they were in Amsterdam, they were in Zurich and Geneva, 16 00:05:47,040 --> 00:05:49,640 they went to the south of France, they were in London. 17 00:05:50,960 --> 00:05:55,680 And the trip to Poland was an extraordinary detour. 18 00:06:00,160 --> 00:06:03,000 In Warsaw, David Kurtz rented a car. 19 00:06:03,480 --> 00:06:06,640 Where did he go? What do we see? 20 00:06:07,360 --> 00:06:10,640 It is possible to locate a place solely from looking? 21 00:06:11,000 --> 00:06:14,560 If you don't see the Eiffel tower, how do you know you are in Paris? 22 00:06:14,680 --> 00:06:20,680 They say 'one picture is worth a thousand words', but for that phrase to make sense, 23 00:06:20,800 --> 00:06:23,640 you do need to know what it is you are looking at. 24 00:06:23,960 --> 00:06:29,600 David Kurtz rented a black sedan. Where did he get out? 25 00:06:35,600 --> 00:06:40,400 When I discovered the film I didn't know at all where it was taken... 26 00:06:40,520 --> 00:06:43,200 and I asked my father and my aunt 27 00:06:43,320 --> 00:06:48,400 and they both said that they thought it was my grandmother's hometown, called Berezne. 28 00:06:48,600 --> 00:06:51,600 It was on the Polish-Ukrainian border. 29 00:06:51,720 --> 00:06:55,480 It was a town of about three thousand Jews. 30 00:06:55,600 --> 00:07:02,320 And in august of 1942 the entire Jewish population was murdered. 31 00:07:02,440 --> 00:07:08,520 It took me about six months to find a survivor and eventually I did find a man... 32 00:07:08,640 --> 00:07:12,029 who lived in Florida and within a second of 33 00:07:12,080 --> 00:07:16,120 looking at this film he said: "It's not my town". 34 00:07:18,160 --> 00:07:19,680 Like any recording device, 35 00:07:19,800 --> 00:07:25,080 film by itself preserves detail without necessarily conveying knowledge. 36 00:07:25,640 --> 00:07:29,440 Solely from these images we cannot determine the place, 37 00:07:29,598 --> 00:07:35,718 but we can establish the time of day. This must have happened before this. 38 00:07:35,960 --> 00:07:39,360 The shadow under the balconies cuts at perhaps a fifty degree angle. 39 00:07:39,412 --> 00:07:41,372 It is around eleven in the morning. 40 00:07:51,600 --> 00:07:56,520 The Meteorological Institute in Warsaw recorded at 11 AM on that day: 41 00:07:56,640 --> 00:08:04,560 temperature 24.1 degrees Celsius, light north-east wind, with slight cloud cover. 42 00:08:12,040 --> 00:08:14,954 I assumed if it wasn't my grandmother's hometown 43 00:08:15,005 --> 00:08:17,920 it was almost certainly my grandfather's hometown. 44 00:08:18,280 --> 00:08:23,320 I was able to find a photograph of one of the buildings, 45 00:08:23,440 --> 00:08:29,400 in fact of the synagogue in the town and it showed the doors of this synagogue... 46 00:08:29,520 --> 00:08:32,574 and actually there is a carved panel on the upper 47 00:08:32,625 --> 00:08:35,680 left panel of one of the doors there is a lion, 48 00:08:35,800 --> 00:08:39,520 the lion of Judah and its very distinctive... 49 00:08:39,640 --> 00:08:42,725 and on this photograph which was clearly 50 00:08:42,776 --> 00:08:45,120 marked as being of the Nasielsk synagogue... 51 00:08:45,240 --> 00:08:49,640 there's that lion so it was from this that I was able to confirm... 52 00:08:49,760 --> 00:08:53,680 that the town in the film is Nasielsk. 53 00:08:59,280 --> 00:09:03,320 It is Thursday, the Fourth of August 1938. 54 00:09:03,440 --> 00:09:06,789 A black Sedan drives five Americans to the small 55 00:09:06,841 --> 00:09:10,200 town of Nasielsk, 30 miles north of Warsaw. 56 00:09:11,400 --> 00:09:16,720 The town had 7000 inhabitants in 1938, of whom 3000 were Jewish. 57 00:09:17,240 --> 00:09:20,720 Fewer than 100 of them survived the Holocaust. 58 00:09:30,560 --> 00:09:35,080 Nasielsk was not an important town unless you lived there. It was just a town. 59 00:09:35,400 --> 00:09:38,240 But of all the Polish towns destroyed in the Holocaust, 60 00:09:38,360 --> 00:09:41,920 Nasielsk is among the very few that exist in moving pictures, 61 00:09:42,040 --> 00:09:44,760 among just a handful preserved in colour. 62 00:09:58,080 --> 00:10:00,224 Nothing I learned about the people in my 63 00:10:00,275 --> 00:10:02,920 grandfather's film could prevent their death... 64 00:10:03,040 --> 00:10:05,200 or bring them back to life. 65 00:10:05,320 --> 00:10:09,534 No film, no memorial and no recollection could 66 00:10:09,585 --> 00:10:13,800 restore, retrieve, recover or revive this world. 67 00:10:27,120 --> 00:10:30,480 All I could do. All anyone could do 68 00:10:30,623 --> 00:10:34,583 was to piece together the few fragments of their lives that remained, 69 00:10:34,680 --> 00:10:37,560 to show their edges and absences, 70 00:10:37,680 --> 00:10:40,880 defining the loss of that world 71 00:10:40,932 --> 00:10:44,240 by detailing the little of it that had been preserved. 72 00:10:44,360 --> 00:10:50,000 In this way, we might succeed in keeping the memory of the dead alive, 73 00:10:50,120 --> 00:10:54,400 of remembering them, despite the fact that they are dead. 74 00:11:44,600 --> 00:11:47,314 The film by David Kurtz was found and restored 75 00:11:47,365 --> 00:11:50,080 just before it would have been lost forever, 76 00:11:50,200 --> 00:11:52,480 due to damage and decay. 77 00:11:53,047 --> 00:11:56,715 The material had shrunk, curled in on itself, 78 00:11:56,766 --> 00:11:59,887 and eventually fused into a single mass. 79 00:12:00,000 --> 00:12:01,832 If it had been found a month later, it would 80 00:12:01,883 --> 00:12:04,440 have been impossible to restore at all. 81 00:12:04,560 --> 00:12:09,360 Just in time the Holocaust Museum in Washington send it to a Colour Lab, 82 00:12:09,480 --> 00:12:12,080 where they set about saving what they could. 83 00:12:12,200 --> 00:12:15,920 Among other issues, the celluloid suffered from vinegar syndrome, 84 00:12:16,040 --> 00:12:21,120 from shrinking, crazing, edge weave, cupping and buckling. 85 00:12:22,687 --> 00:12:24,367 Sklep spożywczy (Grocery store) 86 00:12:24,655 --> 00:12:31,055 My first purpose in researching the film was to try to identify the people. 87 00:12:31,160 --> 00:12:38,120 But without enough information it is impossible to identify the people. 88 00:12:38,304 --> 00:12:40,418 If you don't know who they are or if you don't 89 00:12:40,485 --> 00:12:42,600 have someone who can tell you who they are... 90 00:12:42,720 --> 00:12:46,400 there is almost no way to find out their name. 91 00:12:46,760 --> 00:12:52,160 So I had to look in the frame at all the other information that was visible... 92 00:12:52,280 --> 00:12:57,920 and all that information I thought might possibly lead to an identification. 93 00:12:58,040 --> 00:13:01,360 And one of the signs that immediately caught my attention... 94 00:13:01,480 --> 00:13:05,960 its over the doorway of what appears to be some kind of shop. 95 00:13:06,080 --> 00:13:10,520 And there's a woman who steps out of that doorway and looks down the street. 96 00:13:11,040 --> 00:13:14,277 And I thought if I could learn what that sign 97 00:13:14,328 --> 00:13:18,080 says perhaps I could identify this woman. 98 00:13:18,123 --> 00:13:19,949 Sklep spożywczy (Grocery store) 99 00:13:20,000 --> 00:13:22,880 When I looked at the second line and played with the letters... 100 00:13:23,000 --> 00:13:24,960 and spoke with a polish speaker... 101 00:13:25,080 --> 00:13:30,160 I was able to come up with at least the first number of letters... 102 00:13:30,212 --> 00:13:36,320 which hinted at what it probably meant, and the words means grocery. 103 00:13:36,886 --> 00:13:38,619 Spożywczy (Grocery)) 104 00:13:38,680 --> 00:13:42,105 While the third line almost certainly gives the name 105 00:13:42,156 --> 00:13:45,040 of the person whose grocery store it was. 106 00:13:45,400 --> 00:13:48,200 But the third line is the hardest to read. 107 00:13:48,320 --> 00:13:54,800 And I captured that frame; I altered the saturation and the contrast. 108 00:13:54,920 --> 00:13:57,280 I did everything I could do. 109 00:13:57,400 --> 00:14:01,280 Ultimately I send the film back to the laboratory... 110 00:14:01,400 --> 00:14:05,720 and they looked at the original frames under a microscope. 111 00:14:06,160 --> 00:14:11,120 And their conclusion was that the letters cannot be made out. 112 00:14:24,640 --> 00:14:29,920 In all languages, after black and white, red was the first colour to be named. 113 00:14:30,040 --> 00:14:35,080 In some languages the word for red is still the same as the word for blood. 114 00:14:35,440 --> 00:14:41,960 Here we see a red flower, a red dress, a red bow, a red headscarf, a red belt, 115 00:14:42,080 --> 00:14:47,320 a red sweater, a red hat, a red cheek, a red lip. 116 00:14:47,440 --> 00:14:52,040 All colours fade, but the colour red fades the slowest. 117 00:14:56,000 --> 00:14:59,077 The colours we see here are the result of a complicated 118 00:14:59,129 --> 00:15:03,440 chemical process involving silver, plastic and cellulose. 119 00:15:06,360 --> 00:15:10,600 The film emulsion is made of gelatin, the same gelatin you eat, 120 00:15:10,720 --> 00:15:15,920 made of the bones and skin of cattle, a very nineteenth century recipe. 121 00:15:20,960 --> 00:15:25,560 Around the square in Nasielsk we see trees. A very generic word, trees. 122 00:15:25,680 --> 00:15:30,200 Christmas trees, palm trees, beeches, birches, bonsai. All trees. 123 00:15:30,320 --> 00:15:33,294 Here we clearly see a deciduous tree, 124 00:15:33,345 --> 00:15:36,320 found on many streets but never given a second thought, 125 00:15:36,440 --> 00:15:40,080 like birds can stay simply 'birds' for years, 126 00:15:40,200 --> 00:15:44,400 maybe they never even become blackbirds, or raven, or jackdaws. 127 00:15:44,902 --> 00:15:47,406 The Director of the Botanical Garden in. 128 00:15:47,468 --> 00:15:50,473 Poznan states that the trees are linden trees, 129 00:15:50,560 --> 00:15:54,840 'little leaf' linden trees even, or Tilia cordata... 130 00:15:54,960 --> 00:15:59,120 according to the determination system invented by botanist Carl Linnaeus, 131 00:15:59,240 --> 00:16:04,040 whose name in his native Swedish, Linn, also means linden tree. 132 00:16:06,560 --> 00:16:09,000 They are quite common in the western hemisphere. 133 00:16:09,120 --> 00:16:14,120 These are the trees that gave the Unter den Linden boulevard in Berlin its name. 134 00:16:14,240 --> 00:16:19,640 David Kurtz sent a postcard from this very boulevard to his children in Brooklyn, 135 00:16:19,760 --> 00:16:25,080 two days after visiting Nasielsk, on the sixth of august 1938. 136 00:16:25,200 --> 00:16:31,600 He wrote to them from a café called Linden, located on Unter den Linden number 44: 137 00:16:31,720 --> 00:16:36,200 'Here we are in Berlin, enjoying a nice glass of beer'. 138 00:16:45,080 --> 00:16:48,280 There are also things in the film that have not been named yet. 139 00:16:48,400 --> 00:16:51,760 What is this 'thing' hanging from the wall for example? 140 00:16:51,880 --> 00:16:54,960 Some sort of tank? A samovar? 141 00:16:56,760 --> 00:17:01,360 And this 'thing' slung over a blind? A bicycle tire? A part of a horse harness? 142 00:17:03,520 --> 00:17:08,480 Maybe this one was referred to as a 'recz', which is Polish for 'thing'. 143 00:17:08,600 --> 00:17:12,680 Or someone asked: get me that 'zakh', in Yiddish. 144 00:17:15,600 --> 00:17:18,040 What you see is what you know. 145 00:17:18,160 --> 00:17:22,320 Who has spotted the little rectangular shapes on the doorposts? 146 00:17:22,440 --> 00:17:25,676 A mezuzah is a small ritual object traditionally 147 00:17:25,727 --> 00:17:28,547 affixed to the doorway of a Jewish home. 148 00:17:28,720 --> 00:17:34,480 The case contains a piece of parchment with a prayer written on it in Hebrew. 149 00:17:34,600 --> 00:17:36,640 This fulfils the biblical commandment: 150 00:17:36,760 --> 00:17:41,680 'to write the words of God on the gates and doorposts of your house'. 151 00:17:52,160 --> 00:17:54,551 A lion of Judah frequently appeared on the doors 152 00:17:54,602 --> 00:17:56,840 of synagogues before they were destroyed... 153 00:17:56,960 --> 00:17:59,788 or turned into warehouses, garages, 154 00:17:59,839 --> 00:18:03,480 observatories, cinemas or stables, like this one. 155 00:18:05,502 --> 00:18:10,222 The Synagogue of Nasielsk, located just north east of the market square, 156 00:18:10,320 --> 00:18:12,920 was demolished only after the war. 157 00:18:13,080 --> 00:18:16,120 Fragments of the building are still found today. 158 00:18:27,680 --> 00:18:31,320 There were originally two lions, one on each door. 159 00:18:33,520 --> 00:18:37,600 The Polish historian Zdzislaw Suwinski, Head of the School in Nasielsk, 160 00:18:37,720 --> 00:18:39,840 knows what happened to the one on the right, 161 00:18:39,960 --> 00:18:42,700 already before the war, when Polish nationalists 162 00:18:42,751 --> 00:18:45,360 frequently harassed Jewish citizens. 163 00:18:46,454 --> 00:18:51,669 In 1938, during one of the riots in Nasielsk, a 164 00:18:51,720 --> 00:18:56,936 riot that involved, among others, Polish youth, 165 00:18:57,226 --> 00:19:00,964 a door of the synagogue was destroyed. 166 00:19:01,312 --> 00:19:05,366 One of the lions was ripped off from it and 167 00:19:05,762 --> 00:19:10,973 since then, the door has only one lion left. 168 00:19:11,093 --> 00:19:15,268 Upon hearing about these events, even the Minister 169 00:19:15,319 --> 00:19:19,238 of Internal Affairs in Warsaw spoke about it. 170 00:19:27,360 --> 00:19:32,440 When I found the film I donated it to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. 171 00:19:32,560 --> 00:19:38,040 They were able to restore it and digitized it and they put in on their website. 172 00:19:39,160 --> 00:19:42,560 During this time I had begun searching for survivors... 173 00:19:42,680 --> 00:19:45,800 and I had been unsuccessful in locating... 174 00:19:45,920 --> 00:19:51,840 anyone who could tell me anything about the people that we are seeing. 175 00:19:52,680 --> 00:19:58,560 Two years after I donated the film I got an email out of the blue... 176 00:19:58,680 --> 00:20:02,960 from a woman in Detroit and she told me in this email... 177 00:20:03,080 --> 00:20:07,840 that someone had brought the film to her attention and she viewed it online... 178 00:20:07,960 --> 00:20:12,920 and as the camera pans across the crowd and all the children are jumping and waving... 179 00:20:13,040 --> 00:20:19,240 she suddenly saw a face and recognized her grandfather as a thirteen year old boy. 180 00:20:22,040 --> 00:20:27,600 I saw my grandfather's face! And I heard my dad on the phone saying to my mum: 181 00:20:27,720 --> 00:20:30,720 There is your father! I said: It's grandpa! 182 00:20:32,480 --> 00:20:33,800 It's him. 183 00:20:34,000 --> 00:20:37,800 My father's face is so recognizable... 184 00:20:37,920 --> 00:20:41,212 because of the full cheeks that I think a lot 185 00:20:41,263 --> 00:20:44,480 of us in the family inherited from my dad. 186 00:20:44,600 --> 00:20:48,680 When my daughter called my father the first thing he said was: 187 00:20:48,800 --> 00:20:51,480 Now you know I'm not from Mars. 188 00:20:54,240 --> 00:20:57,640 I recognized myself immediately. 189 00:20:58,240 --> 00:21:01,560 But I couldn't remember what was the occasion. 190 00:21:06,040 --> 00:21:08,840 This was my cap that I wore. 191 00:21:09,560 --> 00:21:14,520 We had to... this was what we wore the yeshiva boys. 192 00:21:15,040 --> 00:21:21,120 I remember I took my cap off just to be defiant... 193 00:21:21,717 --> 00:21:25,440 and when I came home I had to put it on. 194 00:21:25,600 --> 00:21:31,080 I remember my grandfather one time I think he saw me without a hat. 195 00:21:31,400 --> 00:21:37,200 He went berserk, he talked to my mother: look he has gone without a hat! 196 00:21:37,560 --> 00:21:40,856 I mean that is such a craziness you know when 197 00:21:40,907 --> 00:21:44,600 I look back but this is what ther life... 198 00:21:44,720 --> 00:21:52,240 they lived the religion to such a degree, ah they had such standards. 199 00:21:52,920 --> 00:21:55,640 When we first watched the film together. 200 00:21:55,760 --> 00:22:01,640 Mr Chandler was most excited to describe the differences between the hats. 201 00:22:01,760 --> 00:22:07,480 At the top of the socioeconomic spectrum there were these black caps 202 00:22:07,600 --> 00:22:14,640 with a small brim that signified that the boy was in cheider, the religious school. 203 00:22:16,600 --> 00:22:19,689 Next to him in the film there is a boy wearing 204 00:22:19,740 --> 00:22:22,760 a cloth what we would call a newsboy cap... 205 00:22:24,640 --> 00:22:30,720 By his hat wearing he was not in my circle. 206 00:22:30,840 --> 00:22:36,120 And this kid was somebody my parents would not allow me to associate with. 207 00:22:36,880 --> 00:22:40,400 And the fact that he is standing next to him in the film... 208 00:22:40,520 --> 00:22:44,563 is a sign of how mixed up the community became 209 00:22:44,615 --> 00:22:47,640 as a result of my grandfathers presence... 210 00:22:47,760 --> 00:22:52,960 and the fact of the movie camera having scrambled the social hierarchy. 211 00:22:55,040 --> 00:23:02,960 Nobody had cameras like that. It was like a novelty, like a magic moment. 212 00:23:03,400 --> 00:23:07,960 Look he holds like this this and it goes and makes pictures... 213 00:23:08,080 --> 00:23:13,480 you know nobody ever was familiar with it. It was a great novelty. 214 00:23:13,600 --> 00:23:18,200 A man goes around with this and how does he take pictures. 215 00:23:21,040 --> 00:23:25,200 My grandfather was an amateur filmmaker, a very amateur filmmaker. 216 00:23:25,800 --> 00:23:30,080 I learned from my aunt that he had only purchased the camera in June of 1938, 217 00:23:30,200 --> 00:23:32,440 the month before they set off on this trip. 218 00:23:33,760 --> 00:23:38,000 The camera was a Magazine Ciné-Kodak that could be loaded alternately with 219 00:23:38,120 --> 00:23:41,280 a black and white or with a Kodachrome full colour magazine. 220 00:23:41,920 --> 00:23:45,480 My grandfather had probably never used it before he went on this trip. 221 00:23:45,600 --> 00:23:49,640 In fact, I am almost certain that these are the first films that he took with it. 222 00:23:49,760 --> 00:23:52,560 So he didn't know anything about the camera itself, 223 00:23:53,320 --> 00:23:56,520 in fact in the black and white scenes I'm almost certain he is trying 224 00:23:56,640 --> 00:23:59,960 to shoot above the heads of the children in order to show the buildings; 225 00:24:00,080 --> 00:24:02,640 he wants to show: this is where we are. 226 00:24:02,880 --> 00:24:05,200 But the children get in the way and so he kind 227 00:24:05,251 --> 00:24:07,520 of gives up and allows them into the frame. 228 00:24:12,880 --> 00:24:18,120 Perhaps you have noticed, his walking stick keeps waving. 229 00:24:18,520 --> 00:24:23,080 I tried to imagine what must have happened because he had his cane in one hand... 230 00:24:23,211 --> 00:24:25,851 he always had a walking stick with him 231 00:24:25,960 --> 00:24:28,934 but the camera needs two hands to operate and so 232 00:24:28,985 --> 00:24:31,960 it keeps going back and forth, back and forth... 233 00:24:32,080 --> 00:24:37,320 in front of the lens as he is trying to move the camera around. 234 00:24:49,000 --> 00:24:51,560 All the kids around were Jewish. 235 00:24:54,560 --> 00:24:58,400 This kid I know. His name was Talmud. 236 00:24:59,520 --> 00:25:03,920 I think I identify him as... - Chaim Talmud. 237 00:25:04,040 --> 00:25:09,160 What do you remember about him? - He was a kid I went to cheider with. 238 00:25:10,320 --> 00:25:12,720 Nothing special. 239 00:25:14,760 --> 00:25:17,840 Yes. Him I remember very well. 240 00:25:20,440 --> 00:25:23,480 And there is the woman from the shul again. 241 00:25:24,680 --> 00:25:29,200 This one? And would she be the mother of the girl with the brown braids? 242 00:25:30,720 --> 00:25:33,254 This girl appears frequently in the film, moving 243 00:25:33,305 --> 00:25:35,840 with my grandfather's lens to remain on camera, 244 00:25:35,960 --> 00:25:39,160 and popping up in almost every scene of the colour section. 245 00:25:39,280 --> 00:25:41,600 But her face was not familiar to Morry. 246 00:25:41,720 --> 00:25:44,040 I wondered, because of his strict religious upbringing, 247 00:25:44,160 --> 00:25:47,240 whether Morry would recognize any of the girls in the film. 248 00:25:47,600 --> 00:25:50,074 'No, that would be beyond my scope', he'd said, 249 00:25:50,125 --> 00:25:52,600 'looking at girls'. Another thing not allowed. 250 00:26:25,160 --> 00:26:29,400 The dresses of the women and girls are the most colourful things on show. 251 00:26:29,520 --> 00:26:34,160 According to costume historians the fabrics were quite common at the time. 252 00:26:34,520 --> 00:26:37,840 You could have bought the same patterns in Prague or Amsterdam. 253 00:26:41,105 --> 00:26:42,972 German fashion from Zichenau. 254 00:26:43,605 --> 00:26:45,814 Zichenau, October 30. 255 00:26:47,098 --> 00:26:49,832 From Polish work to German quality 256 00:26:50,423 --> 00:26:54,932 in between lies a distance that is not easy to bridge. 257 00:26:55,368 --> 00:26:57,340 But the German Reconstruction has among 258 00:26:57,391 --> 00:27:00,067 many other things also managed this miracle. 259 00:27:02,600 --> 00:27:06,920 In October 1941, three years after these images were filmed, 260 00:27:07,040 --> 00:27:11,280 Nasielsk is mentioned in an article in the German press. 261 00:27:11,880 --> 00:27:16,000 'But even when one is aware of the miracle of the German rebuilding of the East, 262 00:27:16,120 --> 00:27:20,080 one is still amazed that in the region Zichenau, of all places, 263 00:27:20,200 --> 00:27:22,760 products of the highest quality are made. 264 00:27:22,880 --> 00:27:26,840 But the valuable buttons that serve as jewellery on expensive dresses... 265 00:27:26,960 --> 00:27:32,800 indeed come for a considerable part from the small East Prussian town Nasielsk. 266 00:27:32,990 --> 00:27:36,880 The Nashelsker button factory already existed in Polish times. 267 00:27:37,000 --> 00:27:39,840 But then it was a workshop filled with dust that mocked... 268 00:27:39,960 --> 00:27:42,674 even the most primitive standards of hygiene. 269 00:27:42,725 --> 00:27:45,440 And what was made there was the cheapest trash. 270 00:27:45,880 --> 00:27:49,960 Now the buttons that are produced here go to the big firms in the empire, 271 00:27:50,080 --> 00:27:54,160 and when the eyes of women admiringly look up at the new creations, 272 00:27:54,268 --> 00:27:56,826 nobody will guess that the buttons, so masterfully 273 00:27:56,877 --> 00:27:59,668 crafted, come from a factory in the East, 274 00:27:59,800 --> 00:28:03,720 that two years ago still was such a real Polish pigsty... 275 00:28:03,840 --> 00:28:06,800 that nobody would have predicted a future for it.' 276 00:28:10,022 --> 00:28:12,363 The Filar Factory was one of the most renowned 277 00:28:12,414 --> 00:28:15,780 button factories in Poland. Very modern. 278 00:28:16,138 --> 00:28:19,339 They also made a new type of plastic. They made pieces for radios. I can 279 00:28:19,390 --> 00:28:23,390 guarantee that in the movie some people are wearing buttons from the factory. 280 00:28:23,449 --> 00:28:27,723 I found a case with samples that they used on worker’s clothes. 281 00:28:32,560 --> 00:28:35,320 I remember we used to walk by, 282 00:28:35,440 --> 00:28:39,640 we heard the presses tchu tjoem tjoem all day. 283 00:28:39,760 --> 00:28:42,614 We were afraid we looked into the windows we 284 00:28:42,665 --> 00:28:46,160 saw machines that they made special buttons. 285 00:28:46,280 --> 00:28:53,040 I think it was from mother of pearl and bakelite. 286 00:28:55,280 --> 00:29:01,120 The Germans took over the button factory from the Jewish owners in September 1939. 287 00:29:01,240 --> 00:29:03,840 It did not reopen after the war. 288 00:29:04,600 --> 00:29:06,840 We used to play, but what did we play with, 289 00:29:06,960 --> 00:29:10,173 with little rocks you know something like. 290 00:29:11,240 --> 00:29:14,820 Every year they had something they 291 00:29:14,871 --> 00:29:17,720 collected so they come in different sizes... 292 00:29:17,840 --> 00:29:24,960 little ones big ones, so we used to collect and we would trade big ones little ones. 293 00:29:25,080 --> 00:29:30,040 And then came a year we were collecting buttons. 294 00:29:31,160 --> 00:29:33,640 So buttons. They were galore. 295 00:29:33,760 --> 00:29:37,680 All the women have buttons and every man has buttons... 296 00:29:37,800 --> 00:29:43,400 and than one day we were in the stibl, on a winter day. 297 00:29:43,520 --> 00:29:48,640 Everybody wore heavy coats with a dozen buttons this big. 298 00:29:48,760 --> 00:29:52,080 So I said to Leslie, I said Leslie... 299 00:29:53,280 --> 00:29:59,320 there is a goldmine here of buttons they are all hanging on the wall... 300 00:30:00,040 --> 00:30:04,120 and he says what do you mean? Cut them off! 301 00:30:04,360 --> 00:30:11,040 I said we will be the richest, the kids are gonna envy us with all these buttons. 302 00:30:11,720 --> 00:30:14,377 So he said ok. And while they were all 303 00:30:14,429 --> 00:30:17,240 praying we were standing against the wall... 304 00:30:17,360 --> 00:30:20,760 with a razor blade and we're cutting buttons. 305 00:30:23,120 --> 00:30:26,840 At the end of the service everybody is wishing good sjabbes and this and that... 306 00:30:26,960 --> 00:30:34,640 and they start putting on the coats and they are going up and down, up and down... 307 00:30:35,560 --> 00:30:41,720 on a winter day oh my god I remember my grandfather knew right away: 308 00:30:42,440 --> 00:30:44,480 there he is and we have the big Shabbat meal... 309 00:30:44,600 --> 00:30:51,080 take him and he can't sit at this table look what he did... 310 00:30:51,200 --> 00:30:57,360 look as if I had killed somebody and so on. I mean these are memories that I have. 311 00:30:59,440 --> 00:31:02,880 What was in my mind at that time? 312 00:31:05,377 --> 00:31:11,680 There was you know the stuff that came later didn't exist then. 313 00:31:11,800 --> 00:31:18,120 I had no fear about it. I felt very comfortable in this society, in the group. 314 00:31:18,680 --> 00:31:21,000 Everything was routine. 315 00:31:21,120 --> 00:31:25,520 We had my parents, my brothers and my uncles... 316 00:31:25,640 --> 00:31:29,880 everybody was there it was a very comfortable existence. 317 00:31:32,080 --> 00:31:37,360 And I said to myself if somebody had told me what a couple of years later... 318 00:31:37,480 --> 00:31:42,880 I was gonna have to do, I wouldn't believe it probably. 319 00:31:46,000 --> 00:31:52,040 And that smile I don't know what I must have been happy or something. 320 00:32:16,840 --> 00:32:20,800 In the Ringelblum Archives in Warsaw, a document has been preserved... 321 00:32:20,920 --> 00:32:25,880 that describes what happened on this square in December 1939. 322 00:32:26,000 --> 00:32:29,309 'On december 3, 1939, at 7.30 in the morning the 323 00:32:29,360 --> 00:32:32,600 sound of a bell rang out through the village. 324 00:32:32,920 --> 00:32:37,320 The town official announced that all Jewish men, Jewish women and children... 325 00:32:37,440 --> 00:32:40,400 must gather in the town square within 15 minutes. 326 00:32:40,520 --> 00:32:42,480 No-one knew what was happening. 327 00:32:42,600 --> 00:32:46,080 It could be sensed that something menacing hung in the air. 328 00:32:46,200 --> 00:32:49,280 At the same time words spread that the Volksdeutsche... 329 00:32:49,400 --> 00:32:53,760 where barging into Jewish homes, looting them and devicting their inhabitants. 330 00:32:54,480 --> 00:32:56,360 A terrible chaos arose. 331 00:32:56,480 --> 00:32:59,680 Frightened Jews began gathering in the square. 332 00:32:59,800 --> 00:33:03,680 Some brought with them small satchels, carrying them on hunched backs... 333 00:33:03,800 --> 00:33:05,627 and others brought their own karts on which 334 00:33:05,678 --> 00:33:08,240 they had placed a portion of their belongings. 335 00:33:08,360 --> 00:33:12,120 In addition to the Jews, they were in the square. 336 00:33:13,160 --> 00:33:16,960 Each of them held in his hand a braided whip, a horse whip... 337 00:33:17,080 --> 00:33:19,920 a cat o' nine tails or a steel bar. 338 00:33:20,280 --> 00:33:24,440 The sight in still terror. Right away they got to work. 339 00:33:24,560 --> 00:33:29,240 They chopped of beards, cut out sections of hair in order to disfigure... 340 00:33:29,360 --> 00:33:32,360 then they photographed their victims. 341 00:33:32,480 --> 00:33:35,760 In the meantime others were searching Jewish homes... 342 00:33:35,880 --> 00:33:39,120 to see if by any change anyone had stayed in the town. 343 00:33:39,880 --> 00:33:43,240 The fun in the square lasted about two hours. 344 00:33:43,920 --> 00:33:48,600 Then the Jews were arranged in rows. All those sitting on karts had to get off them. 345 00:33:48,720 --> 00:33:51,840 The first four rows were ordered to march away... 346 00:33:51,960 --> 00:33:55,520 and the few thousand Jews marched in the direction of the station... 347 00:33:55,640 --> 00:33:57,720 four kilometers from the city. 348 00:33:57,840 --> 00:34:02,080 The remaining few thousand were led through the city to the synagogue. 349 00:34:02,200 --> 00:34:04,800 It was already 11 in the morning. 350 00:34:04,920 --> 00:34:06,932 It was announced that the Jews were going 351 00:34:06,983 --> 00:34:09,560 have to sit here until 6 am of the next day. 352 00:34:09,680 --> 00:34:11,840 There was one huge room. 353 00:34:11,960 --> 00:34:16,240 Crowded the Jews sat on the floor, one on top of another. 354 00:34:16,360 --> 00:34:18,520 A guard stood near the door. 355 00:34:18,640 --> 00:34:22,440 Once in a while they would come here to look, but they didn't beat. 356 00:34:23,480 --> 00:34:28,120 When one of the Jews had to leave to relief himself, he had to report it. 357 00:34:28,240 --> 00:34:31,560 When he left, the guard would beat him with a leather whip. 358 00:34:31,680 --> 00:34:34,160 And the same happened when he returned. 359 00:34:34,280 --> 00:34:36,654 They sat like this until the end of the day. 360 00:34:36,717 --> 00:34:40,171 All night, without food, drink, in the dark. 361 00:34:41,000 --> 00:34:46,360 At dawn someone noticed that in the hallway of the synagogue stood about 100 whips. 362 00:34:47,120 --> 00:34:50,800 At 6 am it was announced that it was time to leave the synagogue. 363 00:34:50,920 --> 00:34:54,120 Near the door everyone was whipped wherever possible. 364 00:34:54,240 --> 00:34:57,040 Across their heads, backs, legs... 365 00:34:57,160 --> 00:35:00,280 In rows they marched towards the station. 366 00:35:01,520 --> 00:35:06,080 The very ill were placed on plank-beds that four Jews each would carry. 367 00:35:06,200 --> 00:35:10,800 Along the way Polish neighbors stood on both sides of the road laughing. 368 00:35:11,240 --> 00:35:14,840 There were a few isolated incidents where Poles crapped up to the Jews... 369 00:35:14,960 --> 00:35:17,480 to give their close friends bread and money. 370 00:35:17,600 --> 00:35:22,640 The Jews were not lead to the station along a straight path, but a circuity one. 371 00:35:23,520 --> 00:35:27,320 There was a lot of mud here, swampy ground, one kilometer. 372 00:35:28,200 --> 00:35:33,040 Along this stretch, for the entire length of the road, they stood on both sides. 373 00:35:33,960 --> 00:35:38,240 The Jews were ordered to run, mud, and sing. 374 00:35:38,760 --> 00:35:42,120 Whips held down on the Jews' heads this entire time. 375 00:35:42,240 --> 00:35:45,920 The patches of mud where so large that shoes sank into the clay. 376 00:35:46,040 --> 00:35:50,320 But it was necessary to run farther and farther, because they kept beating. 377 00:35:50,440 --> 00:35:53,480 The screams of the women and children where horrible. 378 00:35:53,600 --> 00:35:57,080 Blood streamed from heads, particularly the men's. 379 00:35:57,200 --> 00:36:00,880 Backpacks where disguarded along the way in order to continue running. 380 00:36:01,000 --> 00:36:04,160 The karts, bearing belongings, got stuck along the way. 381 00:36:04,520 --> 00:36:06,920 Finally the Jews reached the station. 382 00:36:07,040 --> 00:36:09,960 Here they were arranged into two rows. 383 00:36:10,080 --> 00:36:14,000 Now a new began. Frisking. 384 00:36:14,840 --> 00:36:16,640 They looked everywhere. 385 00:36:16,760 --> 00:36:19,600 The better looking ones were ordered to strip down completely... 386 00:36:19,720 --> 00:36:22,720 and the naked women where particularly examined. 387 00:36:23,000 --> 00:36:25,840 Other's clothes were torn apart at the seams. 388 00:36:25,960 --> 00:36:29,240 Those who were found to have something hidden, particularly the men... 389 00:36:29,360 --> 00:36:31,520 had to role naked in the mud. 390 00:36:31,640 --> 00:36:35,720 Those who had been searched where packed into train cars waiting at the station. 391 00:36:35,840 --> 00:36:37,720 Which were then sealed shut. 392 00:36:37,840 --> 00:36:41,040 There were at least 25 people in each compartment. 393 00:36:41,160 --> 00:36:43,800 The cars were deprived of water and light. 394 00:36:43,920 --> 00:36:47,400 The windows had to stay closed and during the day obscured. 395 00:36:47,520 --> 00:36:51,160 In these conditions the journey lasted 36 hours. 396 00:36:51,360 --> 00:36:55,680 It went through Ciechanów, Wawal, Königsberg... 397 00:36:55,800 --> 00:37:00,760 Ostroleka, Navinykai, from there to the East-station in Warsaw. 398 00:37:01,240 --> 00:37:04,080 The train stopped at some of the stations for a few minutes... 399 00:37:04,200 --> 00:37:07,120 but no-one from the public was allowed near it. 400 00:37:07,520 --> 00:37:10,400 From the East-station the Jews were taken further... 401 00:37:10,520 --> 00:37:14,600 to Minsk-Mazowiecki, Siedlec, and then to Luków. 402 00:37:15,760 --> 00:37:17,520 Here the train was stopped. 403 00:37:17,640 --> 00:37:22,080 The cars were opened and they came around asking how many corpses there were. 404 00:37:22,200 --> 00:37:24,360 That day everyone was still alive. 405 00:37:24,480 --> 00:37:27,920 But in the coming days a few people died each day. 406 00:37:28,680 --> 00:37:33,000 Soon the local Jews came to the station in their company. 407 00:37:33,680 --> 00:37:36,320 The newcomers were allowed to be given water. 408 00:37:36,800 --> 00:37:39,960 Then all the Jews were ordered into the town. 409 00:37:40,080 --> 00:37:43,840 The local people distributed them among various empty buildings. 410 00:37:43,960 --> 00:37:46,760 And many of them took them into their homes. 411 00:37:46,880 --> 00:37:49,400 The general attitude was very warm. 412 00:37:49,880 --> 00:37:52,080 They held however they could. 413 00:37:52,560 --> 00:37:57,280 The first division of Jews from Nasielsk had been transported in an analogous way... 414 00:37:57,400 --> 00:38:00,640 but the endpoint was Miedzyrzec. 415 00:38:02,080 --> 00:38:07,840 This testimony was hidden in the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw by Emanuel Ringelblum. 416 00:38:08,640 --> 00:38:12,960 He collected reports from eyewitnesses from all over Poland 417 00:38:13,080 --> 00:38:15,880 to preserve the history of the Holocaust. 418 00:38:16,600 --> 00:38:24,000 He hid the papers in milk cans and tin boxes and buried them beneath the ghetto. 419 00:38:35,440 --> 00:38:37,844 The deportation of the Jewish inhabitants of. 420 00:38:37,895 --> 00:38:40,640 Nasielsk is also described in a German document, 421 00:38:40,760 --> 00:38:46,120 assembled by the German army commander of Poland, general Johannes Blaskowitz. 422 00:38:46,680 --> 00:38:50,320 He complained about the brutality of the German troops in Poland. 423 00:38:50,440 --> 00:38:54,680 Harassing the population made the occupation more difficult. 424 00:38:55,800 --> 00:39:01,480 Shortly before Christmas 1.600 Jews were supposed to be deported from Nasielsk. 425 00:39:02,000 --> 00:39:06,480 The police locked them in the synagogue and beat the victims there with dog whips. 426 00:39:06,600 --> 00:39:10,440 Several Jews were immediately shot next to the synagogue. 427 00:39:10,560 --> 00:39:13,720 As the majority of Jews was brought to the train station, 428 00:39:13,840 --> 00:39:15,955 they were driven by whip-blows through a 429 00:39:16,006 --> 00:39:18,840 particularly dirty area known as the Red Sea. 430 00:39:18,982 --> 00:39:22,026 Twenty four Jews that later returned in secret 431 00:39:22,077 --> 00:39:24,862 got five loafs of bread daily as nourishment... 432 00:39:24,960 --> 00:39:27,640 and were locked away in an ice-cold room, 433 00:39:27,760 --> 00:39:31,320 of which the windows were hammered closed with wooden boards. 434 00:39:31,440 --> 00:39:36,840 The police took their coats from them and locked them in at 9 degrees below zero. 435 00:39:37,400 --> 00:39:39,652 The shouting and crying of the freezing Jews, 436 00:39:39,703 --> 00:39:42,680 including women, could be heard in the streets. 437 00:39:43,320 --> 00:39:46,320 The commander of the troops that were stationed in Nasielsk... 438 00:39:46,440 --> 00:39:50,760 had to go to the Landrat and Kreisleiter Gäblich to get the Jews transported. 439 00:39:51,400 --> 00:39:53,800 The matter was conveyed to the Gauleiter. 440 00:40:06,720 --> 00:40:09,400 The square in Nasielsk still exists. 441 00:40:09,520 --> 00:40:14,000 You hear what it sounds like now, more than 80 years later. 442 00:40:14,120 --> 00:40:17,680 It is not a market square anymore, like in the 1930's. 443 00:40:17,960 --> 00:40:20,560 The cobblestones have been replaced by asphalt. 444 00:40:20,680 --> 00:40:23,750 In the middle is a small park, that culminates 445 00:40:23,801 --> 00:40:26,680 in a statue of pope John Paul the second, 446 00:40:26,800 --> 00:40:31,360 the Polish bishop that became head of the Catholic Church in 1978. 447 00:40:31,960 --> 00:40:34,460 Linden trees still line the square, although they 448 00:40:34,511 --> 00:40:36,960 seem too small to have been there in the 30's. 449 00:40:37,360 --> 00:40:39,520 Most houses are still there too. 450 00:40:39,640 --> 00:40:44,080 But of the Jewish inhabitants of Nasielsk nothing remains: 451 00:40:44,200 --> 00:40:47,680 no statue, no memorial, no sign. 452 00:40:48,840 --> 00:40:51,680 The only thing left is an absence, 453 00:40:51,800 --> 00:40:56,080 a dent in the wood on a doorpost where once a mezuzah was placed. 454 00:41:07,080 --> 00:41:10,352 The Jews from Nasielsk were deported in 455 00:41:10,403 --> 00:41:13,280 December 1939 to ghettos in different towns. 456 00:41:13,800 --> 00:41:19,480 Three years later they were brought from these ghettos to the death camp Treblinka. 457 00:41:20,200 --> 00:41:23,040 There they were immediately murdered. 458 00:41:33,640 --> 00:41:36,861 Moszek Tuchendler, Maurice Chandler, managed 459 00:41:36,933 --> 00:41:40,141 to survive the war in Poland, on false papers. 460 00:41:40,880 --> 00:41:45,600 The other Nasielskers who survived, like Chandlers school friend Leslie Glodek, 461 00:41:45,720 --> 00:41:50,640 had fled to the part of Poland that was occupied by the Soviet-Union. 462 00:41:50,760 --> 00:41:56,440 In 1940 most of these refugees were deported to Siberia. 463 00:42:02,360 --> 00:42:06,720 Of the hundred people who had been still living in '45, 464 00:42:06,840 --> 00:42:12,480 I found seven still living in, well, 2012. 465 00:42:12,960 --> 00:42:15,960 Two of them appear in the film; 466 00:42:16,080 --> 00:42:20,520 one is Mr Chandler and then Faiga Tick. 467 00:42:20,640 --> 00:42:25,400 She is standing with her husband, or the man who would become her husband. 468 00:42:25,520 --> 00:42:29,920 He also survived the war but he is no longer living. 469 00:42:31,560 --> 00:42:35,520 Glenn Kurtz and the few survivors managed to identify... 470 00:42:35,640 --> 00:42:39,320 eleven people of the many that appear in the film. 471 00:42:39,720 --> 00:42:42,720 Moszek Tuchendler, now known as Maurice Chandler. 472 00:42:44,120 --> 00:42:45,760 Avrum Kubel. 473 00:42:46,400 --> 00:42:48,080 Simcha Rotstein. 474 00:42:50,000 --> 00:42:51,720 Avrum Kubel. 475 00:42:54,040 --> 00:42:55,600 Simcha Rotstein. 476 00:42:58,040 --> 00:42:59,720 Chaim Talmud. 477 00:43:01,080 --> 00:43:02,320 Boortz. 478 00:43:05,080 --> 00:43:07,080 Chaim Nusen Cwajghaft. 479 00:43:09,440 --> 00:43:11,360 Chaim Nusen Cwajghaft. 480 00:43:13,360 --> 00:43:14,600 Chezkiah. 481 00:43:16,520 --> 00:43:18,040 Szmuel Tick. 482 00:43:19,840 --> 00:43:21,120 Szmuel Tick. 483 00:43:22,360 --> 00:43:23,680 Szmuel Tick. 484 00:43:26,200 --> 00:43:27,720 Faiga Milchberg-Tick. 485 00:43:29,720 --> 00:43:31,360 Faiga Milchberg-Tick. 486 00:43:35,360 --> 00:43:36,920 Czarna Myrla 487 00:43:38,000 --> 00:43:39,600 Miriam Myrla. 488 00:43:42,280 --> 00:43:44,040 Czarna Myrla. 489 00:43:50,054 --> 00:43:52,187 Sklep spożywczy (Grocery store). 490 00:43:52,241 --> 00:43:53,909 Sklep spożywczy (Grocery store) 491 00:43:53,960 --> 00:43:57,800 Polish researcher Kasia Kascprzak tried to identify the woman... 492 00:43:57,920 --> 00:44:00,640 that steps out of the grocery store. 493 00:44:01,680 --> 00:44:07,360 The big puzzle was the sign in the bottom. So the family name. 494 00:44:07,480 --> 00:44:12,920 I just took the method of going letter by letter... 495 00:44:13,040 --> 00:44:16,800 and then seeing what it could give us probably. 496 00:44:16,920 --> 00:44:21,520 So first thing is that I could see that there were 8 letters. 497 00:44:21,640 --> 00:44:27,000 Then the first letter had a belly on the top 498 00:44:27,120 --> 00:44:33,840 so if there is a belly on the top you have either P or B or R. 499 00:44:34,160 --> 00:44:37,520 Then the second letter I couldn't really tell. 500 00:44:37,640 --> 00:44:43,400 The third letter was T and this was for sure. 501 00:44:43,520 --> 00:44:47,280 Then the fourth letter... I would never guess. 502 00:44:47,520 --> 00:44:55,040 And the fifth letter had the same kind of shadow like the letter W... 503 00:44:55,197 --> 00:44:57,880 in the spozywczy, name of the store. 504 00:44:58,240 --> 00:45:02,280 The sixth letter I couldn't figure it out. 505 00:45:02,411 --> 00:45:07,571 Then the seventh letter, a letter having two arms at the top 506 00:45:07,680 --> 00:45:12,640 so it could be either Y or K, most probably. 507 00:45:13,040 --> 00:45:18,280 And than the last letter, the shape of it was a bit like A. 508 00:45:18,520 --> 00:45:25,040 And than I checked the directory book for Poland from 1929. 509 00:45:25,160 --> 00:45:29,895 I just went through all of the names of 510 00:45:29,946 --> 00:45:33,640 people who had the grocery store in Nasielsk. 511 00:45:33,760 --> 00:45:41,200 So than I end up with a lady called CH Rotowska. 512 00:45:41,360 --> 00:45:47,480 I went on a page with the indexes of the Jewish vital records... 513 00:45:47,600 --> 00:45:51,443 and than the name not Rotowska 514 00:45:51,494 --> 00:45:55,800 but Ratowska or Ratowski came out. 515 00:45:55,920 --> 00:45:59,769 The third place to check was the index of the 516 00:45:59,820 --> 00:46:03,400 businesses in Warsaw from the Warsaw Archives. 517 00:46:03,520 --> 00:46:09,680 I could see that Chaja Ratowska had a store, 518 00:46:09,800 --> 00:46:17,200 the grocery store, sklep spozywczy, in the market square of Nasielsk. 519 00:46:17,320 --> 00:46:22,800 So than we had those three people who looked like actually one person 520 00:46:22,920 --> 00:46:28,040 and this was confirmed by Mr Chandler who said that indeed Ratowski 521 00:46:28,160 --> 00:46:32,960 had a grocery store on the other side of his house on the Rynek in Nasielsk, 522 00:46:33,080 --> 00:46:36,239 which was exactly matching the emplacement of his 523 00:46:36,290 --> 00:46:39,800 house and the store which we were looking for. 524 00:46:55,280 --> 00:47:00,760 Nowadays monuments and memorials predominantly centre around names, 525 00:47:00,880 --> 00:47:04,560 because a name is often all that is left of a person. 526 00:47:04,680 --> 00:47:11,960 The last proof of his or her existence. In this case we have faces as traces. 527 00:47:52,920 --> 00:47:56,160 More than 150 people appear in the film. 528 00:47:56,280 --> 00:47:58,994 However, they probably do not form a full cross 529 00:47:59,045 --> 00:48:01,760 section of the Jewish inhabitants of Nasielsk. 530 00:48:01,880 --> 00:48:05,080 The very orthodox hardly appear, for example, 531 00:48:05,200 --> 00:48:08,320 because they would not have wanted to be photographed. 532 00:51:11,280 --> 00:51:14,760 We don't know what they said, but there are words that they must have said, 533 00:51:14,891 --> 00:51:18,611 words that everybody always says, in English, Polish or Yiddish. 534 00:51:49,120 --> 00:51:51,609 Survivor Leslie Glodek remembers there was 535 00:51:51,660 --> 00:51:54,640 dancing in this restaurant on Saturday evenings. 536 00:51:54,760 --> 00:52:00,680 The radio would broadcast the BBC. He remembers Bert Ambrose and his orchestra. 537 00:52:41,800 --> 00:52:44,120 America. - America. 538 00:52:46,200 --> 00:52:50,960 My grandparents travelled with three friends, Mr and Mrs Louis Malina... 539 00:52:51,080 --> 00:52:56,480 and Mr Malina's sister Essie Diamond, who was Mr Malina's older sister. 540 00:52:59,080 --> 00:53:03,360 Just like David Kurtz, his friend Louis Malina was born in Nasielsk... 541 00:53:03,480 --> 00:53:06,640 and emigrated to the United States as a child. 542 00:53:06,760 --> 00:53:10,200 He became a successful businessman in the textile industry... 543 00:53:10,320 --> 00:53:13,480 and lived in a large apartment on Central Park West. 544 00:53:13,600 --> 00:53:19,280 In 1938 he sponsored a woman named Sura Kubel, to come to New York. 545 00:53:20,120 --> 00:53:23,400 He paid for her passage on the SS Pilsudski. 546 00:53:23,520 --> 00:53:29,360 According to the archive of Ellis Island, Sura Kubel, 26, corset maker, 547 00:53:29,480 --> 00:53:33,400 arrived in New York in November 1938, 548 00:53:33,520 --> 00:53:38,680 just three months after Louis Malina visited Nasielsk. 549 00:53:39,080 --> 00:53:42,400 It is probable that Sura appears in the film. 550 00:53:42,520 --> 00:53:44,360 But she has not been recognized. 551 00:53:44,480 --> 00:53:50,720 Maurice Chandler did recognize her brother, Avrum Kubel, on the steps of the synagogue. 552 00:53:55,800 --> 00:53:57,800 According to her daughter, Faith, 553 00:53:57,920 --> 00:54:02,000 Sura Kubel never spoke about her siblings, Avrum and her four sisters. 554 00:54:02,520 --> 00:54:05,394 After Sura died, Faith found a pack of letters, 555 00:54:05,445 --> 00:54:08,320 send to her mother from the ghetto in Warsaw. 556 00:54:08,440 --> 00:54:13,240 In one of the letters her siblings write: 'We are waiting for Ezra's brother'. 557 00:54:13,360 --> 00:54:15,271 This Ezra was not a person. 558 00:54:15,485 --> 00:54:17,667 The letters are full of code words drawn from 559 00:54:17,718 --> 00:54:20,907 Hebrew prayers to evade the German censors. 560 00:54:21,000 --> 00:54:23,520 'Ezra' means help in Hebrew. 561 00:54:34,080 --> 00:54:37,560 Survivor Andrzej Lubieniecki, an actor, 562 00:54:37,668 --> 00:54:44,068 remembers his girlfriend Maria Wlosko was trapped in the synagogue in 1939. 563 00:54:47,069 --> 00:54:50,361 When I come to Nasielsk and they told me 564 00:54:51,522 --> 00:54:54,379 the family from my girlfriend 565 00:54:55,183 --> 00:54:56,783 is in the synagogue. 566 00:54:58,595 --> 00:55:02,233 Other Jewish people are in the synagogue and my girlfriend, 567 00:55:02,379 --> 00:55:03,979 she is in the synagogue. 568 00:55:04,645 --> 00:55:07,155 But in my house where I live, 569 00:55:07,357 --> 00:55:08,357 upstairs, 570 00:55:08,751 --> 00:55:10,961 lives a German officer. 571 00:55:11,944 --> 00:55:14,902 And he is an anti-Hitlerist. 572 00:55:15,561 --> 00:55:19,031 He don’t like when they arrest Jewish people. 573 00:55:19,411 --> 00:55:20,411 And I 574 00:55:22,212 --> 00:55:24,467 say to the officer: 575 00:55:25,293 --> 00:55:26,833 can you help me 576 00:55:27,380 --> 00:55:29,113 to take from the synagogue 577 00:55:30,287 --> 00:55:31,659 my girlfriend? 578 00:55:32,507 --> 00:55:36,122 He says to me: I personally can’t make this. 579 00:55:36,492 --> 00:55:40,130 But we don’t have in the town electricity. 580 00:55:40,454 --> 00:55:42,134 I give you my mantle. 581 00:55:42,413 --> 00:55:43,973 His coat? - Yeah. 582 00:55:44,673 --> 00:55:48,135 Go to the synagogue and say to the guy what 583 00:55:48,186 --> 00:55:51,649 is there and tell him that you want to arrest 584 00:55:52,655 --> 00:55:53,695 Maria Wlosko. 585 00:55:54,574 --> 00:56:00,311 I come to the synagogue and a soldier stand there with a gun you know, 586 00:56:00,423 --> 00:56:04,205 first of all Heil Hitler! Heil Hitler. 587 00:56:04,782 --> 00:56:08,844 I want to arrest a girl her name is so and so, 588 00:56:09,714 --> 00:56:12,839 she is the head of the Jewish library 589 00:56:13,163 --> 00:56:15,641 and she has the keys. 590 00:56:16,189 --> 00:56:18,152 And he calls her: 591 00:56:18,811 --> 00:56:21,914 Maria Wlosko, Maria Wlosko. 592 00:56:22,974 --> 00:56:23,974 She comes 593 00:56:24,603 --> 00:56:27,503 and he says an officer wants to talk to you. 594 00:56:28,386 --> 00:56:29,666 And I take her. 595 00:56:30,093 --> 00:56:31,773 Did she recognize you? 596 00:56:32,460 --> 00:56:35,640 Absolutely not. She didn’t know. 597 00:56:36,255 --> 00:56:40,327 And I went with her to the house of my sister. 598 00:56:41,031 --> 00:56:42,031 When I come 599 00:56:42,348 --> 00:56:46,577 to my sister’s house I take off the hat and she says: 600 00:56:47,949 --> 00:56:51,981 Mein Gott! Ik hab dich nicht derkent (I did not recognize you). 601 00:56:52,694 --> 00:56:55,349 And I say: tomorrow morning 602 00:56:56,104 --> 00:56:57,837 we will run away from here 603 00:56:58,749 --> 00:56:59,749 to the Bug. 604 00:57:01,120 --> 00:57:04,240 The Bug River, yes. Which was the dividing line... 605 00:57:04,396 --> 00:57:09,853 We go to Bialystok and in Bialystok was the Russians. 606 00:57:11,394 --> 00:57:13,893 And I bring her to Bialystok. 607 00:57:14,922 --> 00:57:18,705 And in the end we come back to Poland. 608 00:57:19,374 --> 00:57:20,494 This was about 609 00:57:21,562 --> 00:57:22,912 ’46 610 00:57:23,515 --> 00:57:27,119 and we didn’t find nobody from the family. 611 00:58:02,800 --> 00:58:06,480 Obviously you see there were a lot of people. The whole city. 612 00:58:06,600 --> 00:58:13,280 But I don't remember what the occasion was that they were all in the shul. 613 00:58:13,560 --> 00:58:18,280 It could have been Koussevitzky coming to sing. 614 00:58:18,400 --> 00:58:23,440 He was in Nasielsk only one time. Moshe Koussevitzky. 615 00:58:24,000 --> 00:58:31,080 And he was the top-notch cantor in Poland, he was world-renowned. 616 00:58:31,440 --> 00:58:35,520 But I remember him being in Nasielsk just before the war. 617 00:59:31,520 --> 00:59:37,720 Aneinu in Hebrew means 'Answer us'. You know, we prayed to God. 618 00:59:37,840 --> 00:59:44,280 There were a lot of these prayers and you know I know most of them that he sang. 619 00:59:44,400 --> 00:59:47,480 They were dedicated to God. 620 00:59:47,600 --> 00:59:54,400 So everything, the whole circle of their mindset was around God, you know, 621 00:59:54,520 --> 00:59:57,920 to please God and this and that. 622 00:59:58,600 --> 01:00:04,520 I was raised in a very religious home and the disappointment has been so great, 623 01:00:05,313 --> 01:00:09,880 that when I, you know nights when I can't sleep I think about it. 624 01:00:10,440 --> 01:00:15,320 My belief has been destroyed. The big issue will never be resolved. 625 01:00:15,440 --> 01:00:20,560 That is what Eli Wiesel at the end of his life said: Why? 626 01:00:36,680 --> 01:00:41,880 In one frame of my grandfather's film, at three minutes, 33 seconds, 627 01:00:42,000 --> 01:00:48,800 28th hundreds of a second on the time code, two birds fly over the market square. 628 01:00:50,054 --> 01:00:55,400 In one frame of my grandfather's film, at three minutes, 33 seconds, 629 01:00:55,520 --> 01:01:01,960 28th hundreds of a second on the time code, two birds fly over the market square. 630 01:01:21,960 --> 01:01:25,120 Perhaps you have noticed, the quality of the footage varies. 631 01:01:25,240 --> 01:01:30,200 We had a special effects company clean up the film from 1938 digitally. 632 01:01:30,640 --> 01:01:34,080 Does it make people look more modern, more contemporary? 633 01:01:34,200 --> 01:01:36,120 Does it bring them closer to you? 634 01:01:50,680 --> 01:01:54,160 'No other power on earth can do what a movie camera does', 635 01:01:54,280 --> 01:01:58,120 boasted the Kodak Company in an advertisement in 1938. 636 01:01:58,240 --> 01:02:03,720 'You think your memory will hold it all, but no. It slips away, it grows dim. 637 01:02:03,840 --> 01:02:09,880 Only a movie camera can bring it back to you with all its freshness and thrill.' 638 01:02:11,160 --> 01:02:15,680 Kodachrome's archival abilities, coupled with its comparative ease of use, 639 01:02:15,799 --> 01:02:18,853 made it the dominant film stock for professionals 640 01:02:18,905 --> 01:02:21,640 and amateurs for most of the 20th century. 641 01:02:21,760 --> 01:02:24,840 Now it is no longer manufactured. 642 01:02:28,120 --> 01:02:32,360 We had a 3D model created of the square in Nasielsk. 643 01:02:32,480 --> 01:02:36,200 Could this provide a new way to enter history? 644 01:02:36,386 --> 01:02:38,607 Or should we stay with the people in the film, 645 01:02:38,971 --> 01:02:41,539 secured in the footage by David Kurtz? 646 01:02:54,560 --> 01:02:58,400 We look at these images and think, 647 01:02:58,520 --> 01:03:03,520 in a way that the images show the presence of these people. 648 01:03:03,640 --> 01:03:07,454 But when a survivor looks at these images they 649 01:03:07,505 --> 01:03:11,320 are just tokens of a life that they remember. 650 01:03:11,840 --> 01:03:13,920 Yes, they see these images. 651 01:03:13,972 --> 01:03:17,897 But it is as if they see the world around the 652 01:03:17,948 --> 01:03:22,412 images and outside the frame of the film as well. 653 01:03:22,600 --> 01:03:26,438 And one of the things that I fear most... 654 01:03:26,490 --> 01:03:33,400 in the years to come is that we will forget that absence. 655 01:03:33,920 --> 01:03:36,920 But inevitably, that is going to happen. 656 01:03:37,040 --> 01:03:39,520 Of course. That's what happens. 657 01:03:39,640 --> 01:03:42,440 I think when we look at Greek vases... 658 01:03:42,560 --> 01:03:48,320 we don't think how awful the world that made sense of these vases is gone. 659 01:03:48,440 --> 01:03:51,720 Instead we think how wonderful we have these vases. 660 01:03:51,840 --> 01:03:55,840 But doesn't photography and film differ from other art forms in this respect? 661 01:03:55,959 --> 01:03:58,915 The vase in John Keats' poem Ode on a Grecian Urn 662 01:03:58,967 --> 01:04:01,720 has a different relation to reality. 663 01:04:01,806 --> 01:04:03,879 The fact that a camera recorded them is 664 01:04:03,930 --> 01:04:06,846 evidence that these people really have existed. 665 01:04:06,898 --> 01:04:08,018 Right. 666 01:04:08,480 --> 01:04:10,681 At the same time, it is obvious that these three, 667 01:04:10,733 --> 01:04:13,680 almost four minutes were captured a long time ago. 668 01:04:13,810 --> 01:04:17,850 The images have obtained a patina, like statues or indeed vases. 669 01:04:17,960 --> 01:04:22,880 And you realize that the pictures that show them so alive, for ever young, 670 01:04:23,000 --> 01:04:28,040 are old enough to serve as proof of their probable passing as well. 671 01:04:28,480 --> 01:04:32,520 So you have the absence in a way ín that presence. 672 01:04:32,920 --> 01:04:37,880 That is exactly right and I think that this film really heightens that tension... 673 01:04:38,000 --> 01:04:41,560 which is inherent in film or in photographs in general. 674 01:04:41,680 --> 01:04:46,640 My aunt was exactly the same age as some of the survivors. 675 01:04:47,080 --> 01:04:49,320 She grew up in Brooklyn. 676 01:04:49,440 --> 01:04:54,120 The world that she grew up in has disappeared as well, 677 01:04:54,240 --> 01:04:59,360 and yet looking at the photographs from Brooklyn in 1938, 678 01:04:59,480 --> 01:05:05,000 it's not the same as looking at photographs from Nasielsk in 1938, 679 01:05:05,120 --> 01:05:10,320 Because of the imminence of the danger... 680 01:05:10,440 --> 01:05:14,600 that these people faced and the fact that the world that they lived in... 681 01:05:14,720 --> 01:05:19,120 would be destroyed so quickly and so soon by violence, 682 01:05:19,240 --> 01:05:22,720 rather than gradually just by time. 683 01:06:42,852 --> 01:06:45,544 IMAGES FROM "OUR TRIP TO HOLLAND, BELGIUM, 684 01:06:45,596 --> 01:06:48,613 POLAND, SWITZERLAND, FRANCE AND ENGLAND, 1938" 685 01:06:48,665 --> 01:06:49,877 COURTESY OF IN MEMORY OF 686 01:06:50,212 --> 01:06:53,393 INTERWIEVS WITH 687 01:07:02,477 --> 01:07:05,784 NARRATION WITH THE VOICES OF 688 01:07:08,042 --> 01:07:09,690 MUSIC BY 689 01:07:40,980 --> 01:07:43,655 DESCENDANTS OF THE JEWISH CITIZENS OF NASIELSK ERECTED A MEMORIAL 690 01:07:43,707 --> 01:07:46,289 FOR THE GROUND OF THE JEWISH CEMETERY IN NASIELSK IN MARCH 2021. 691 01:07:46,341 --> 01:07:48,499 THE MEMORIAL INCLUDES THE RECOVERED WINDOWS OF THE 692 01:07:48,551 --> 01:07:50,720 SYNAGOGUE, THE LAST MENANTS OF A 400-YEAR HISTORY. 693 01:07:50,772 --> 01:07:52,547 ALL OF THE GRAVESTONES FROM THE CEMETERY WERE 694 01:07:52,599 --> 01:07:54,429 REMOVED AND DESTROYED DURING THE HOLOCAUST. 695 01:07:54,456 --> 01:07:56,353 THE POLISH GOVERNMENT HAS RECOGNISED NASIELSK'S 696 01:07:56,405 --> 01:07:58,317 JEWISH CEMETERY AS A NATIONAL HISTORIC LANDMARK. 697 01:07:58,402 --> 01:08:00,839 A MURAL COMMEMORATING THE FILAR BUTTON FACTORY, DEVELOPED BY 698 01:08:00,891 --> 01:08:03,339 LOCAL INITIATIVE, WAS UNVEILED IN NASIELSK IN NOVEMBER 2021