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Story
Behind
In the beginning, we got hold of a book. Just by accident. The book,
published somewhere in Brooklyn, was describing the activities of the
Working Group of
Bratislava .
Even though at first glance the book was more of a heroic tale then a
serious historical work, we were shocked by the fact that we never
heard about the Working Group, and that it is hardly mentioned in any
of the Holocaust literature available in
Czechoslovakia .
In Prague
and also
Bratislava
,
the town where the Working Group came into being, nobody knew anything
about the Working Group. This strange latency sparked our interest and
we decided to look into the history of the Working Group in more
detail.
We attempted to contact the author of the book, but from all sides we were told that he had passed away long time ago, as did all the witnesses of the Working Group activities mentioned in the book.
It seemed that we, two young students of the
Prague
Film
Academy
,
could never even start our attempt to uncover this forgotten history.
Only much later did we realize that our partial naivete and ideological
unaffiliation were the only possible ticket for entering the murky
political waters surrounding the Working Group.
Besides the complete destruction of physical monuments of Jewish presence in
Slovakia
during the past 50 years, the collective Jewish memory was also erased
by migration and emigration. Such simple questions as where the
war-time Jewish self-administration was located or from where did the
deportation transports leave were transformed into unsolvable riddles
in
Bratislava
. In
Nitra
,
not a single photograph or a painting existed of the "Jewish Vatican",
the area where the
Nitra
yeshiva was located. Of course, the whole Jewish quarter of
Nitra
was leveled after the war. Even the director of the Jewish Museum in Bratislava
had to admit, that besides five photographs from
Israel
he has no other information about the Working Group. We simply had to
search somewhere else.
Despite numerous assurances that they are dead, we have found the first witnesses of the Working Group activities with the help of the Israeli Society of Former Czechoslovaks. The same institution helped us with finding pupils of rabbi Weissmandl, a key member of the Working Group. Gradually we succeeded in establishing a network of contacts within the orthodox communities of Slovak Jews in the US, Canada and Israel, and we attempted to gain their trust and support. This mostly meant convincing these deeply religious Jews that they could share their memories with us, and that our project is worth crossing the line of tradition and agreeing to being filmed by a video camera.
In the West, the reasons for the silence surrounding the Working Group were different from those that applied to Slovakia. In the West, the reasons were purely political. The theme of Jewish negotiations with the Nazis is still very hot in the countries with substantial Jewish communities, and it is sometimes used as a battle tool in the power struggles between the various political wings of modern Jewry: the theme of the Working Group is mostly abused in the Zionist-Orthodox conflict. In this connection, we have found out that Claude Lanzmann was planning a whole segment about the Working Group for his famous project "Shoah". But there is not a single mention of the Working Group in the final cut of the film. Why, when he contacted most of the then living witnesses of the Working Group activities, when he even visited the Nitra yeshiva in Mount Kisco? Why did he keep writing letters to the survivors assuring them that in his film, the Working Group will be finally given the credit it deserves? Why did he finally break all lines of communication with these interviewees? We don't know. The witnesses themselves claim that this was caused by the Zionist money entering Lanzmann's project upon condition that Weissmandl's name and any mentions of the Working Group would be erased.
After roughly a year of work, we have located Andre Steiner, the last living member of the Working Group. This changed our attitude altogether. We had a direct witness, he was 89 years old, and we needed to interview him. As it was impossible to receive any independent financial assistance, we filmed the Andrej Steiner interview and the Gellis interviews in Toronto using our families' savings. The script which already included portions of these interviews received a financial grant of some 2.5 million Czech crowns from the Czech State Fund for Support and Development of Czech Cinematography. At that moment, Anna Beckova, a Czech TV producer, could join in, and thanks to her support we were finally able to start the actual realization of the whole Among Blind Fools project.
In the film, the viewers could see quite a number of unique archival materials - photographic, textual and film ones. For example, the originals of the letters written by rabbi Weissmandl. These original letters were thought to have been lost until we located them last year. The film also contains a unique recording of rabbi Weissmandl's speech about his war-time activities. Many of the photographs featured in the film were not supposed to exist at all, as photography is not very common within the orthodox community. The most valuable photographs are probably the ones taken in the war-time Nitra yeshiva. Quite impressive was also the find of the originals of false passports of rabbi Weissmandl and Gisi Fleischmann, as these documents were though to have been destroyed before the war ended. From the archival film materials worth mentioning is the color footage from the Munkacs ghetto, filmed in the summer of 1944. Of interest is also the amateur footage of an unknown Hungarian soldier filmed during the deportations from Gyor, and the footage capturing the Budapest Rakoczi utca death march. Last but not least, there is the private 8mm film showing the Nitra yeshiva in 1948. This film has probably the only known film footage of rabbi Weissmandl himself.
While searching for all this material we could take advantage and be successful only because of our youth and obscurity. Nobody knew us, and we had completely independent financial sources. Nobody could suspect us of being ideologically or financially affiliated to any political organization. That is how we were able to obtain testimonies from everybody: from the left wing Zionists to the most right wing orthodox circles. They shared their memories, opened their archives, and helped us in establishing other contacts.
In the end, two former Film Academy students succeeded in completing a project which other, much more prestigious and prominent figures failed to complete. We have broken the barrier of silence surrounding the Working Group since the end of the war. The Among Blind Fools documentary film trilogy will be screened on the Czech TV in autumn of this year, and as most of Slovakia receives the Czech TV signal, we do hope that the Working Group will finally become known even in the country where it existed.
In
We attempted to contact the author of the book, but from all sides we were told that he had passed away long time ago, as did all the witnesses of the Working Group activities mentioned in the book.
It seemed that we, two young students of the
Besides the complete destruction of physical monuments of Jewish presence in
Despite numerous assurances that they are dead, we have found the first witnesses of the Working Group activities with the help of the Israeli Society of Former Czechoslovaks. The same institution helped us with finding pupils of rabbi Weissmandl, a key member of the Working Group. Gradually we succeeded in establishing a network of contacts within the orthodox communities of Slovak Jews in the US, Canada and Israel, and we attempted to gain their trust and support. This mostly meant convincing these deeply religious Jews that they could share their memories with us, and that our project is worth crossing the line of tradition and agreeing to being filmed by a video camera.
In the West, the reasons for the silence surrounding the Working Group were different from those that applied to Slovakia. In the West, the reasons were purely political. The theme of Jewish negotiations with the Nazis is still very hot in the countries with substantial Jewish communities, and it is sometimes used as a battle tool in the power struggles between the various political wings of modern Jewry: the theme of the Working Group is mostly abused in the Zionist-Orthodox conflict. In this connection, we have found out that Claude Lanzmann was planning a whole segment about the Working Group for his famous project "Shoah". But there is not a single mention of the Working Group in the final cut of the film. Why, when he contacted most of the then living witnesses of the Working Group activities, when he even visited the Nitra yeshiva in Mount Kisco? Why did he keep writing letters to the survivors assuring them that in his film, the Working Group will be finally given the credit it deserves? Why did he finally break all lines of communication with these interviewees? We don't know. The witnesses themselves claim that this was caused by the Zionist money entering Lanzmann's project upon condition that Weissmandl's name and any mentions of the Working Group would be erased.
After roughly a year of work, we have located Andre Steiner, the last living member of the Working Group. This changed our attitude altogether. We had a direct witness, he was 89 years old, and we needed to interview him. As it was impossible to receive any independent financial assistance, we filmed the Andrej Steiner interview and the Gellis interviews in Toronto using our families' savings. The script which already included portions of these interviews received a financial grant of some 2.5 million Czech crowns from the Czech State Fund for Support and Development of Czech Cinematography. At that moment, Anna Beckova, a Czech TV producer, could join in, and thanks to her support we were finally able to start the actual realization of the whole Among Blind Fools project.
In the film, the viewers could see quite a number of unique archival materials - photographic, textual and film ones. For example, the originals of the letters written by rabbi Weissmandl. These original letters were thought to have been lost until we located them last year. The film also contains a unique recording of rabbi Weissmandl's speech about his war-time activities. Many of the photographs featured in the film were not supposed to exist at all, as photography is not very common within the orthodox community. The most valuable photographs are probably the ones taken in the war-time Nitra yeshiva. Quite impressive was also the find of the originals of false passports of rabbi Weissmandl and Gisi Fleischmann, as these documents were though to have been destroyed before the war ended. From the archival film materials worth mentioning is the color footage from the Munkacs ghetto, filmed in the summer of 1944. Of interest is also the amateur footage of an unknown Hungarian soldier filmed during the deportations from Gyor, and the footage capturing the Budapest Rakoczi utca death march. Last but not least, there is the private 8mm film showing the Nitra yeshiva in 1948. This film has probably the only known film footage of rabbi Weissmandl himself.
While searching for all this material we could take advantage and be successful only because of our youth and obscurity. Nobody knew us, and we had completely independent financial sources. Nobody could suspect us of being ideologically or financially affiliated to any political organization. That is how we were able to obtain testimonies from everybody: from the left wing Zionists to the most right wing orthodox circles. They shared their memories, opened their archives, and helped us in establishing other contacts.
In the end, two former Film Academy students succeeded in completing a project which other, much more prestigious and prominent figures failed to complete. We have broken the barrier of silence surrounding the Working Group since the end of the war. The Among Blind Fools documentary film trilogy will be screened on the Czech TV in autumn of this year, and as most of Slovakia receives the Czech TV signal, we do hope that the Working Group will finally become known even in the country where it existed.
