The Malaysian Insider :: Features
The Malaysian Insider :: Features |
| Restoring the Nazi-decimated heritage of Lithuanian Jews Posted: 28 Sep 2013 12:52 AM PDT Now, individuals and state institutions alike are trying to revive the memory of this Jewish heritage by harnessing the global reach of the Internet and launching a series of interactive websites. It is a way to restore a lost chapter in the history of this Baltic country with a controversial past as some Lithuanians collaborated with the Nazis during the 1941-1944 occupation. "There is... a terrible lack of commemoration in modern-day Vilnius," says Menachem Kaiser, an American Jew who set up a website about the Jewish ghetto after spending a year in the capital. "If you're there, walk around — there is virtually nothing to commemorate the rounding up and murder of 80,000 Vilnius Jewish residents." It has been 70 years since the Nazis liquidated the ghetto on September 23, 1943. Learning of its existence prompted Kaiser to create the English-language website www.revilna.org, a reference to the city's name in Yiddish, Vilna. "Finding out about the ghetto was very difficult, very frustrating, and I wanted to create something so that even the non-scholar could get a sense of what the ghetto was like," he told AFP in an email. "By doing this project as a website, as opposed to a book, I was able to make something dynamic, that allows the user to quite literally explore." 90% of Jews perished Jews settled in Vilnius in the 16th century and accounted for around one third of its population before World War II. But around 200,000 Lithuanian Jews — more than 90 percent of the country's pre-war Jewish population — died at the hands of the Nazis and local collaborators. That complicity makes the Holocaust a sensitive issue in Lithuania, which has in the past come under fire for being slow to prosecute collaborators. Central to the issue is the one-two blow that hit Lithuania during World War II. The country was occupied by the Soviet Union in 1940 under Moscow's secret pact with Nazi Germany, and the Soviets killed and deported thousands of its citizens. Germany then drove out the Red Army in 1941 and its arrival was seen as a relief to some Lithuanians, who believed the Germans would guarantee a return to independence. Lithuania has taken steps to address its role in the Holocaust. Last year the government approved a special compensation fund for Jewish property seized by Nazi Germany and then kept by the Soviet regime. Today, some 5,000 Jews live in the Baltic state of three million people. "We talk too little about the history of the Jewish community, of its daily life and contributions — and yet that would bring a better understanding of this great tragedy," says Lithuanian historian Jurgita Verbickiene, who runs the history site www.zydai.lt. Educating about 'this shameful stain' Vilnius was once home to prominent Jewish intellectuals and artists, and Yiddish, the shared language of eastern European Jews, was widely spoken. The late famous residents included Moyshe Kulbak, writer of Soviet satires; poet Avrom Sutzkever, who testified at the Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals; violinist Jasha Heifetz and historian Simon Dubnov, who wrote a comprehensive account of the Jewish people. Lithuanian author Milda Jakulyte-Vasil runs the "Holocaust Atlas of Lithuania", a bilingual site with an interactive map of where Jews died. "The website was first thought of as a complement, a way to promote the book, but ultimately it became the main medium," said Jakulyte-Vasil, who works at The Vilna Gaon Jewish State Museum. "The advantage is that the information becomes accessible to everyone, and for free." The site www.holocaustatlas.lt, whose exact geographic coordinates help those looking for traces of their vanished kin, was co-funded by the Austrian embassy in Vilnius and the European Holocaust Research Infrastructure. To mark the 70th anniversary of the Nazi atrocity, Jakulyte-Vasil also set up the site www.holocaustnames.lt, which compiles the names of all Lithuanian Jews who died in the Holocaust, as well as those who survived. Funded by the office of Lithuania's prime minister, the site will eventually allow visitors to complete the database by adding biographical information and additional names. The Lithuanian Special Archives, which stores documents from 1940 to 1991, has also joined the trend. Since late August, their website features a virtual exhibition devoted to the Vilnius ghetto. "It's mostly a way for us to better disseminate the archives," co-curator Nijole Maslauskiene told AFP. Last month, Israeli President Shimon Peres — who was born near Vilnius — paid a visit to a memorial on the outskirts of the city in tribute to the slain Lithuanian Jews. Peres praised Lithuanian efforts to remember and "educate its youth about this shameful stain, so as (to) never allow it to happen again". — AFP, September 28, 2013. |
| Ivory Coast puts hope in first feature film on conflict years Posted: 28 Sep 2013 12:40 AM PDT Chased by a lynch-mob, a young man runs for his life — closely watched by director Philippe Lacote who is shooting the first feature film on the bloody chaos that rocked his native Ivory Coast from 2002 to 2011. Run, both the film title and the main character's name, chronicles the slide from innocence to violence and crime in this resource-rich country that was once a beacon of stability in west Africa. Today, the wounds of war remain raw, politicians still trade crude insults and the former president awaits trial for crimes against humanity. "The film's main question is, 'How did we come to such violence?'" said the Franco-Ivorian director, lamenting the thousands of people killed during a decade of rebellion, civil war and post-election violence. Lacote, who finished shooting in September, hopes his film will be both cathartic for victims of the crisis and instructive for younger Ivorians, but also revive cinema in a country where only two of the 80 movie houses are still in use. His project drew attention when presented in pre-production at the 2012 Cannes film festival. And while the film has touched some nerves at home, the state has agreed to finance 7% of the $2.4 million budget (RM7.75 million), with the rest coming from France and Israel. The buzz has also brought native son Isaach de Bankole — who appeared in the 2006 James Bond thriller Casino Royale and Lars von Trier's 2005 film Manderlay — back home for the first time in 17 years to play a role in Run. The story centres around a peaceable teenager who is on track to become a village "rainmaker" or sorcerer but instead joins the Young Patriots, followers of the former president Laurent Gbagbo who are capable of extreme violence. "When I was filming the Young Patriots, I asked one of the youths how he came to join them," says the 42-year-old Lacote of an earlier documentary. "He answered, 'I have three lives!' — and that became the basis for writing the film." Although fiction, Lacote's film is grounded in real events. "There are scenes that remind me exactly of what I lived through during and after the war," says Abdul Karim Konate, 32, who plays the role of Run. 'Slippery ground' Some 3,000 people lost their lives in the violence triggered by Gbagbo's refusal to admit defeat in 2010 elections to his arch-rival Alassane Ouattara, who finally took office in May 2011. "I was there in Yopougon (a Gbagbo stronghold), there where things really got hot," said Konate. "We are telling the story. We need to tell it to those who have not seen it." Run is Lacote's first full-length feature film. He calls it "indirectly political" and asserts his "right to approach the subject matter via fiction" while admitting that he finds himself on "slippery ground". "We have already had problems," the director conceded. "We were filming in a former headquarters of the FPI (Gbagbo's Ivorian Popular Front party) occupied now by the Ivorian army. The FPI press accused us of making a film to gather evidence against Laurent Gbagbo," who is jailed in The Hague awaiting trial by the International Criminal Court. "My objective is not to say who is right or wrong. It is to recount the crisis seen through an individual prism," Lacote said. Officials in charge of the country's film industry also hope Run will help get Ivory Coast cinema back on its feet. The film business here is currently "flat on its face", said Mamidou Coulibaly-Diakite, who manages public funds earmarked for Ivorian cinema. Prominent Ivorian directors such as Henri Duparc, Gnoan M'Bala, Yeo Kozoloa and Fadika Kramo-Lancine have either died or have not worked in more than a decade. "We have to start everything again from scratch," he said. In the long run, Coulibaly-Diakite said he dreams that Ivory Coast, formerly the economic and financial hub of west Africa, can rival Nigeria's thriving cinema scene. Run is due to be released in 2014 and distributed in France and Germany, and to be screened at several festivals, according to the film's French producer Claire Gadea. — AFP, September 28, 2013. |
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