“Who Will Write Our History,” tells the story of Emanuel Ringelblum and the Oyneg Shabes Archive, the secret archive he created and led in the Warsaw Ghetto. With 30,000 pages of writing, photographs, posters, and more, the Oyneg Shabes Archive is the most important cache of in-the-moment, eyewitness accounts from the Holocaust. It documents not only how the Jews of the ghetto died, but how they lived. The film is based on the book of the same name by historian Samuel Kassow.
Roberta Grossman (“Hava Nagila”), is an award-winning filmmaker who has a passion for history and social justice and a knack for storytelling. And we are the lucky beneficiaries of this extraordinary talent. As writer, director, and producer of “Who Will Write Our History,” she brings to life a story that lay hidden – literally under the ground – that was begging to be unearthed. The only question was, who would tell this story?
The Warsaw Ghetto, established in the fall of 1940, confined over 450,000 Jews. But it did not seal their hearts, their spirit nor their minds. While one group resisted with guns and explosives, a secret assemblage of journalists, scholars and community leaders decided to fight back. Not with ammunition but with the pen and paper. What happened in the ghetto would not be told by Germans and their propaganda films, but by the very people who lived and suffered there.
This hybrid documentary opens with a narration detailing what Jewish life in Warsaw was like in the 1930s. With over 100 Jewish schools, 2 Yiddish theaters, 400 working journalists, it was, as one man states, “a state within a state.” Shortly after the confinement began, a covert group, known by the code name Oyneg Shabes, was assembled by historian Emanuel Ringelblum.
The group amassed an arsenal – not of weapons – but of diaries, original artwork, photographs, labels, Jewish armbands, poetry, jokes and articles written on various subjects. They especially placed value on artifacts of ordinary people as proof of their everyday life. Ringelblum was dedicated to the concept that “the Jewish history is not the history of Rabbis…but the whole people….the masses and language.”
Over time, the group altered their focus. When a man who had escaped the Chelmno extermination camp wrote the first eye-witness account from a death camp, Oyneg Shabes had a new mission. They began to gather evidence of these atrocities so that when the war was over, it might help prosecute the killers of the organized extermination. But motivated by the fear that this treasure trove of our history would be discovered and then lost forever, they adroitly buried it.
The words on the pages from the archive come to life with the voices of three-time Academy Award® nominee Joan Allen and Academy Award®-winner Adrien Brody. Their readings are seamlessly woven together with interviews with contemporary historians.
This film tells the story of a brave group of men and women who risked their lives and the lives of their families so that the world would know the real truth. Forget Superman and Wonder Woman – the folks of Oyneg Shabes are the real super-heroes!
“Who Will Write Our History” will be shown exclusively at the Texas Theatre on Sunday, January 27th as part of the International Day Of Commemoration In Memory Of The Victims Of The Holocaust. The film will be shown globally in over 100 venues and followed by a post-screening discussion from UNESCO Headquarters in Paris with director/producer Roberta Grossman, executive producer Nancy Spielberg, and author Sam Kassow. The discussion will be moderated by Stephen Smith, Executive Director of USC Shoah Foundation.
Tickets for this very special event are available on their website at www.thetexastheatre.com or at the box office. Tickets are also available free for members of 3 Stars Jewish Cinema. Contact Maristella at 512.814.9905.
The film is presented in English, Yiddish, and Polish with English subtitles when necessary.
This review is reprinted with permission of the TJP.
