Please, No More Holocaust ‘Stories’

Since 1993’s “Schindler’s List,” there have been 73 narrative (or fictional) films involving the Holocaust.

Although many are earnest in intent, exceptionally well-made, and capable of evoking powerful emotional responses, thought leaders have promoted one school of thought that contends that narrative films about the Holocaust should be secondary to documentaries. Some believe they should not be made at all.

Well before Spielberg’s famous film, Nobel Peace Prize winner and Auschwitz survivor Elie Weisel penned a seminal essay for the New York Times. Entitled, “Art and the Holocaust: Trivializing Memory,” Weisel expressed his disdain for such fictional storytelling.

“How can one ‘produce’ the machine-gunned, the gassed, the mutilated corpses, when the viewer knows that they are all actors, and that after the filming they will return to the hotel for a well-deserved bath and a meal?”

Weisel revealed the inevitable pitfalls that occur when creating narrative films about the Holocaust, explaining they “defeated art, because just as no one could imagine Auschwitz before Auschwitz, no one can now retell Auschwitz after Auschwitz. The truth of Auschwitz remains hidden in its ashes.”

This prompts the question: Have too many Holocaust narrative films been made? If so, are any films about the Holocaust acceptable to its memory, the memory of the dead, or the memory of the survivors?

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By design, the Holocaust was meant to transcend imagination, to be literally unimaginable. The evil was intended to be so depraved that it was inconceivable. So twisted were the events of the war that even those with earnest intent fell into the trap of recreating the experience as a mode of catharsis.

Weisel claims these recreations only serve to insult by oversimplifying. No matter how the narrative is delivered, it can never represent the truth. It cannot even enter the same universe, and becomes a distorted reflection of what actually happened.

The editing process is itself an affront. One cannot “edit” the Holocaust. To do so immediately takes a moment out of context, when the context of the Holocaust must remain entirely intact. Our perspective must simultaneously be of both the forest and the trees, and of the lands surrounding.

Likewise, one cannot “score” the Holocaust. The work of John Williams and Itzhak Perlman are moving, but they are not authentic. These musicians may be brilliant, but didn’t live the horror. They are able to induce an emotional reaction, but it’s not sufficient. Are our souls so frozen so as to even need this “help?” The events alone should be enough to provoke an endless stream of tears.

Yet, Spielberg and others certainly deserve credit for raising awareness of the Holocaust. Once something is pushed into popular culture, it is practically etched into the public consciousness. When pushed into popular culture by one of cinema’s greatest filmmakers, it transcends time.

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And there are undoubtedly practical benefits, too. The film launched the Shoah Project, devoted to the recording of survivors’ stories, and this is surely invaluable to those younger generations who were only being initiated into the subject. Is there not some benefit to be had by at least lifting the curtain, even if what is revealed is but an inadequate representation?

Weisel’s assertion is fair. Only via documentary film and texts can we even hope to contextualize the events, the dynamics, the history, and the memory. In this format, and only in this format, is it possible to name the unspeakable events and communicate the unimaginable horror of an era.

There, in the true words and image, that which is trivial and superficial is removed.

However, Weisel may be short-sighted in not fully appreciating the value that experimental film brings to the subject. In communicating the unimaginable, films that attempt to contextualize the subject using oblique content may be just as vital. Some events of the Holocaust are simply so grotesque, they cannot possibly be captured literally.

While the narrative form of storytelling can be sincere, it can never be as authentic as a documentary format. Documentaries, on the other hand, should be maximized. As the sands of time erode our memory and the subjects available for comment, the value of these films are increasingly precious.

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According to Weisel, “Auschwitz is something else, always something else. It is a universe outside the universe, a creation that exists parallel to creation.”

As such, it is, on the one hand, infinite. On the other hand, the impetus for documentary films has never been so critical. There is only so much time left to cull the heartbreaking and extraordinary accounts of the men and women who can retell the horror first-hand.