Untitled - Memorial University of Newfoundland
Untitled - Memorial University of Newfoundland
Untitled - Memorial University of Newfoundland
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testimony to the Holocaust We read piles <strong>of</strong>Jewish detritus as significant testimony <strong>of</strong><br />
those who can no longer speak. Related to these piles. at the 1997 Toronto Jewish Film<br />
Festival. Seth Kramer's short film, Unrifled was screened. In an attempt to understand the<br />
enormity <strong>of</strong>the Holocaust, Kr.uner documented the counting out <strong>of</strong>six million grains <strong>of</strong><br />
rice; it is a visual representation <strong>of</strong>every life taken by the Nazis. Kramer noted in the<br />
Question and Answer session foHowing the screening <strong>of</strong>his film.<br />
I might also add that I did take a nip to Poland. And to Auschwitz. And<br />
one thing that served as an inspiration for (making this film] was my<br />
experience seeing the shoes - I don't know ifanyone is familiar with this<br />
- but they have. still at Auschwitz, which is now a museum. shoes from<br />
- <strong>of</strong>the victims. It's about 800.000 pairs <strong>of</strong> shoes. And you walk in a<br />
bunker. and there they are in these kind <strong>of</strong> metal cages. It takes you about<br />
five minutes to walk lhrough the bunker to see all the shoes. And you<br />
leave the bunker and you walk into the next bunker. and there's yet again.<br />
still more shoes. And again you walk for five minutes. Staring at these<br />
thousands and thousands <strong>of</strong>shoes <strong>of</strong> the victims. So you leave the second<br />
bunker. and you enter the third. Again more shoes. And a founh bunker<br />
and a fifth bunker and a sixlh bunker. And nothing has really impressed<br />
upon me the enormity <strong>of</strong> the Holocaust more than just seeing the victims<br />
in one place kind <strong>of</strong> physically represented (Kramer. Question and Answer<br />
session. 5 May. 1997.9707).<br />
The piles <strong>of</strong>detritus in Lanzmann's film gives similar testimony.<br />
Coding is also significant in Exodus. Because director Ono Preminger made it<br />
outside <strong>of</strong>an independent Jewish context for consumption by a mass audience. the film<br />
needed to address itself to its Jewish spect3lors differently. The Jewish specificity <strong>of</strong>the<br />
film emerges from a deconstruction <strong>of</strong>its encoded icons. I noted in Chapter Six. that<br />
Exodus encodes its Jewishness in its use <strong>of</strong> artifacts (like those used in Dev's initiation<br />
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