Honoring Holocaust Victims Using Animation

PART 1 - THE RISE OF HOLOCAUST ANIMATION IN POLAND

The Holocaust is one of the most disturbing subjects in history; however, animated Holocaust films are not like the upsetting live-action documentaries that show Nazi atrocities. Instead, these are fine biographies of people who survived, as well as inspiring stories about those who perished. Others tell us about historic events, including stories about the underground resistance. There is also a humorous film about a Holocaust denier, and an excellent drama about tracking down a wanted Nazi war criminal. 

These films are being applauded and winning prizes at international film festivals. One impressive example, Letter to a Pig by Tal Kantor from Israel, received an Oscar nomination in 2024. At present, there are over 50 of these films. 40 were created since 2010, and over half of them have been released since 2020. Several were made with the support of TV networks (BBC, PBS and others), Holocaust museums, and nonprofit foundations.

It appears animators had avoided this subject matter for many years. Perhaps it was seen as too disturbing, or it was avoided out of respect for people who experienced it in some way. For decades, most survivors preferred not to discuss their painful memories, and the awful images shown in live-action documentaries horrified viewers.

It is understandable why some of the abhorrent things the Nazis did were a taboo subject for many people. I remember a cousin once asking our grandmother a very general question – what life was like in Europe before she came to America? All she would say was life was awful, why talk about that? I grew up wondering what happened to Jewish relatives and friends of my grandparents who didn’t leave Europe. I was told that was too painful to discuss. 

Now there is a growing interest in learning about some of those horrors from the past, “lest we forget.” We don’t want history to slip away, to be forgotten, or to repeat itself. Also, there are antisemitic people who deny that it happened. Now time is running out for the survivors to speak out.

Fortunately, animation has turned out to be an effective way to depict the miserable conditions that existed. Artwork distances the viewer from feeling the pain we feel seeing photographs. Our minds seem to interpret drawn characters as symbols of humans, rather than as real people.

The first films were made by Polish artists, which is not surprising, since that country experienced some of the worst moments of WWII. Germany’s aggression became a world war when they invaded Poland on September 1, 1939. Then, on September 3, Great Britain and France declared war on them and the Soviet Union. The USSR, which had a nonaggression pact with Germany, invaded Eastern Poland on September 17. When Poland surrendered on September 28, it was divided up between their invaders.

Poland suffered throughout the war. Almost 30% of the population of Warsaw, their biggest city, was Jewish. The Germans crammed the Jews of Warsaw into less than 3% of the land in that city in 1940, an area that became the Warsaw Ghetto. The ghetto was sealed off with a ten-foot wall topped with barbed wire, and guards were told to shoot to kill. Then, in 1942, Germans started to send Jews from Warsaw to Treblinka, Auschwitz and other concentration camps in Poland. (Auschwitz would become the Nazis’ largest extermination center.) Some who resisted armed themselves, which resulted in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943. They were poorly armed, but they chose to fight and die as heroes. The Nazis responded by burning down the ghetto.

Poland suffered again when our allies, which now included the Russians and the remaining Polish freedom fighters, started to push the German military back towards Berlin. Some of the battles on the Eastern Front in 1944-45 were fought in Poland.

One Polish animator who saw the horrors of WWII close up was Yoram Gross (1926-2015). He says his parents were on Oskar Schindler's list, but they avoided being captured during the war by moving 72 times from one hiding place to another. After the war, he found work assisting both live-action filmmakers and animators in Poland. Then, in 1950, he moved to Israel, where he created We Shall Never Die in 1958. It is a personal, three-minute abstract experimental short without dialog or human characters. It doesn’t clearly state it is about the Holocaust, but the drawing of barbed wire on the title card, the repeated sound of soldiers marching, images of prayer candles burning, and footage of broken eyeglasses and a child’s doll lying on the ground are symbolic hints that something awful was underway.

When Gross moved to Australia in 1968, one of his first projects was Sarah (1968), about a young girl who lives alone in a forest after the rest of her family was arrested and taken to a concentration camp. When she witnesses a group of Polish resistance fighters trying to blow up a railroad bridge, they are captured. She decides to try and destroy the bridge, even though she lacks the tools to do it. Both of Gross’s films can be seen online.

Note: Gross became well-known as Australia’s Walt Disney. He produced 16 animated features for children, produced shows for television, published a series of books, and created lots of merchandise.

The most powerful film made in Poland in the 20th century is Apel (1970). When a group of concentration camp prisoners refuses to perform gymnastic exercises ordered by a guard, the guard responds as a savage with a gun. Using animation can somewhat remove the viewer from feeling too empathetic towards the pain and suffering of the people being gunned down. Had this film been made with actors, it would have been too uncomfortable to watch. When Apel was shown in New York at the Museum of Modern Art in 2003, the show’s catalog listed it as one of the “Ten Films That Shook the World.” It can be viewed on YouTube.

At the turn of this century, it appeared there wasn’t much interest in animated films that referenced the Holocaust. I couldn’t find any examples released between 1999 and 2009. Perhaps the world’s attention was too concerned with other military conflicts that sprang up in the Middle East, Africa and around Afghanistan and Pakistan. I suspect that, as the conflicts dragged on and on, people began to get disgusted and frustrated with hearing about these “forever wars.” The old adage that the last justifiable war was WWII began to surface again, along with an interest in making animated Holocaust films.

A Polish director whose more recent work really stands out is Daniel Zagórski (born 1949). He uses surrealism to express his feelings about the Nazi use of forced labor. He has two works dealing with that subject online that illustrate how his work has matured.

The Fable of Hansel and Gretel (2012, 18 min.) is set in a dark, somber, black and white, surreal world. The music is weary and there are guards that carry whips and other weapons. They are overseeing children with blank, joyless facial expressions, who are forced to performing boring, repetitive work. There is no sense of hope in this story.

Amelia & Saturnin (c. 2019, 15 min.) is also on the internet. Zagórski says the film refers to his grandparents being sent to a forced labor camp. He writes that his grandfather didn’t survive the experience and, while his grandmother lived until she was 98, she never got over the trauma. The work is in color and is more mature in its composition and pacing. His improved skills creating computer images is quite evident. Some of the activities are similar to ones in The Fable of Hansel and Gretel, such as showing them doing repetitive labor, but the tone isn’t as unpleasant and the story is more complex. There are also fascinating-looking buildings, impressive-looking religious icons, and other unusual details in this unfamiliar surreal world. The film won several awards. https://filmfreeway.com/AmeliaandSaturnin

According to Eva Staczyk’s book "Commemorating the Children of WWII Poland," Zagórski lived near the Broken Heart Monument in Łódź, which was close to the location of the city’s WWII labor camp. Stanczyk wrote that when streets were repaired in Łódź, crews sometimes dug up human remains, even two decades after the war. The crews would leave the bones by the side of the road. At one point, Zagórski had a skull that had been dug up.

Shielding The Flame (2023, 19 min.), directed by Artur Mikulski, is an important, hard-hitting short. It is a tribute to Dr. Marek Edelman, who was the last surviving commander of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. After the war, he became a medical doctor. In the film, he shares being witness to the inhabitants of the Warsaw Ghetto boarding the trains to the death camps. They walked like sheep going to the slaughterhouse, but, he adds, they went with dignity. He was there to pull people out of the line if they looked too ill or too weak to make the trip, but he doesn’t say what happened to them. Apparently, he was assigned to work at the ghetto hospital. 

He also talks about the armed resistance in the Warsaw Ghetto, including the Nazis setting the buildings on fire in order to kill those who were hiding in them (some people managed to escape through the city’s sewer tunnels). He shares his philosophical thoughts about those who chose to stay and were willing to die as heroes. He also ponders how one can think about the extermination of 400,000 people. (Note: The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising began on the evening of Passover, April 19, 1943, when the Nazis sent soldiers to arrest Jews. They didn’t expect to meet any resistance. Instead, they retreated when armed resistance fighters opened fire. The burning of the ghetto in early May ended the resistance.)

When Edelman shares his thoughts about his becoming a heart surgeon after the war, he says his role in life was to save lives. In the film, he says, while lighting a prayer candle, “The lord wants to extinguish the candle, and I have to promptly shield the flame… When a man escorts others to death trains, he may have a few things to settle with God afterwards. Everyone passed me by… Everybody, 400,000 passed me by.” On a website, he said, “When one knows death so well, one has more responsibility for life.”

Dr. Edelman’s observations about dying as a hero are similar to those declared in the "Ghetto Manifesto," dated January 1, 1942, by Abba Kovner. He was a member of a Jewish resistance group in Vilna, Lithuania. He was 23 when he wrote, “Doubters! Cast off all illusions. Your children, your husbands, and your wives are no longer alive… They shall not take us like sheep to the slaughter… It is true that we are weak and defenseless, but resistance is the only reply to the enemy! It is better to fall as free fighters than to live by the grace of the murderers. Resist! To the last breath.” 

End Note: If you are interested in seeing a powerful Oscar-winning short on the damage that starvation caused during WWII, see Seeds Of Destiny (1946), made by the U.S. Army. It is said to have raised $200,000,000 for the United Nations’ War Relief Fund. The images look somewhat similar to what we see happening in Gaza today. The film is an example of the “upsetting live-action documentaries.” 

PART 2 - THE SPREAD OF HOLOCAUST ANIMATION TO OTHER COUNTRIES

The Most Precious of Cargos (2024), by Michel Hazanavicius, France. A poor woodcutter and his wife live in a forest. One day, the woman finds and rescues a baby girl thrown off a train bound for a Nazi concentration camp. It was the opening night feature at Annecy 2024.

The first animated Holocaust films were from Poland. At times, the works were quite intense; however, since they were drawn, not photographic, they are easier to look at. It wasn’t until the end of the 20th century that animated Holocaust films began to appear in other countries. At least two films explored Holocaust-related subject matter in the 1990s, without the anger or harshness found in the Polish works, which makes them more appealing to look at.

The Diary of Anne Frank (1995, Japan), a feature directed by Akinori Nagaoka, is a family film that used the rotoscope technique to trace over live-action footage to draw the characters in the film. The film depicts Anne’s life up until the family is escorted away at gunpoint to concentration camps. That is followed by a title card that says she died of typhus shortly before the camp was liberated. The film won an award at the Chicago International Children’s Festival. Both the trailer and complete feature are on YouTube. 

Silence (1998, UK, 19 min.), by Sylvie Bringas and Orly Yadin, is also a gentle work that honors a woman who didn’t survive. The story was inspired by the life of director Tana Ross’s mother before she was taken to Auschwitz in 1942. The short was shown on Channel 4 TV in the UK and it is on YouTube.

As mentioned above, there wasn’t much interest in animated films referring to the Holocaust between 1999 and 2009. Of the films made since 2009, many were adequately funded by well-established institutions, which shows that there is an audience for serious animated films for adults. Many were produced to be shown on TV in several countries, including the U.S., Canada, the United Kingdom, Israel and Italy. Most are educational and are visually quite creative. Some have won awards at major film festivals.

You can’t stereotype animated Holocaust films. Most are based on factual accounts and are made to educate the public. As for the stories, some are firsthand accounts by either those who were interned and survived, or by people who had loved ones who were taken away and were never heard from again. Oher films depict specific events or places, including the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and the wretched “death trains.” There are also unique, sophisticated, impressive works of art with messages woven into them. Discovering these films can be fascinating, including those with unusual plot twists and other surprises. 

The films are entertaining stories about human rights, social injustices, and other issues that may make you reflect on and confront your own beliefs and values. These are defiantly socially significant films.

The Personal Stories

The largest category of animated Holocaust films are personal stories.

Ruth: A Little Girl's Big Journey (2021, U.S.). Directed by Eyal Resh, this award-winning animated short is narrated by the film’s subject, the late Dr. Ruth Westheimer. She tells how, as a young Jewish child, she escaped Nazi Germany and survived by being sent to a Catholic boarding school in Switzerland. She lived on, but her parent, who stayed behind to care for her ailing grandmother, died in a concentration camp. Ruth became a famous sex therapist, TV talk show host, author and professor. The film was produced by the USC Shoah Foundation. The short is online at https://sfi.usc.edu/ruth.

The Story of Aharon Barak: A Holocaust Story (2021). Parts of the film are animated. Barak was born in Lithuania in 1936, and survived the Holocaust by being smuggled out of the ghetto in Kovno in a food sack. He eventually became president of Israel’s Supreme Court. The film was produced by the International School for Holocaust Studies in Jerusalem. 

Charlotte (2021, France/Canada). Directed by Tahir Rana and Éric Warin, Charlotte is an independently produced biography of German-Jewish artist Charlotte Salomon (1917-1943). The feature-length film ends with her death in Auschwitz. A trailer is posted online. 

The Number on Great-Grandpa’s Arm (2017). Directed by Amy Schatz, rotoscoped animation by Jeff Scher, produced for HBO. This film is a conversation between a boy and his great-grandfather, an Auschwitz survivor. The great-grandfather recalls an enjoyable childhood in Poland, until the Nazis took control of the country. First, the Jews were forced to wear yellow stars. Then they were confined in crowded ghettos. Ultimately, families were separated and sent to Auschwitz and other camps. He also mentions a notorious death march (see note below), and that vast numbers of people didn’t survive the ordeal. It ends with his starting a new life in America. It was made to introduce a new generation to the Holocaust. The opening sequence is online for free and it can be rented online or purchased.

(Note: Death marches were forced evacuations of concentration camps that happened as the allied forces advanced. Some writers speculate that the Nazis didn’t want the world to know about the deplorable treatment of prisoners, they wanted to retain prisoners to continue production of war materials, and/or they may have thought the prisoners could be used later as hostages to trade for their safe passage.)

The Star of Andra and Tati (2019, 26 min.). Produced by Rai Ragazzi and Larcadarte, directed by Rosalba Vitellaro and Alessandro Belli, with drawings by Annalisa Corsi. The film tells the story of two Italian sisters, Andra and Tatiana Bucci, ages 4 and 6, who survived Auschwitz. An article about the film said that, of the 200,000 children taken there, only 50 returned home alive. The film also includes recent footage of kids visiting Auschwitz with their teacher. It aired on TV in Italy and Israel, and has been used in schools. It is not online.

My Father’s Secrets (2023, France/Belgium, 74 min.) Directed by Véra Belmont, My Father’s Secrets has been described as “a heartrending, yet deeply uplifting tale of remembrance, love and the triumph of the human spirit” and “an intimate, thought-provoking feature that focuses on a family’s journey to reconciliation after facing the trauma of the Holocaust.” It is based on the autobiographical novel by author/cartoonist Michel Kichka , whose father survived Auschwitz and returned to his native Belgium, where he married and raised four children. The story focuses on his family learning to understand their father’s past as they grow up. Elliott Gould is one of the voice actors. 

Eva Kor: The Holocaust Survivor who Forgave the Nazis (c. 2018, 7 min., BBC). Kor’s family was arrested in 1944, and she and her twin sister were subjected to medical experiments by the notorious Dr. Mengele. Both sisters were eventually freed from Auschwitz by the allies, while Dr. Mengele became a hunted war criminal, who eluded capture. He died in Brazil in 1979. 

Traces: Portraits of Resistance, Survival and Resolve was a BBC program that aired in 2022. It featured three animated films: Voices in the Void, Two Trees in Jerusalem, and My Father’s War. The BBC promotion called them “first-hand testimonials from the Holocaust, stories and lessons learned during one of humanity’s darkest chapters and to demonstrate their relevance to the present.” Humanity in Action produced the series.

Voices in the Void (2022, 18 min.). As a teenager, Rabbi Bent Melchior went into hiding with his family to escape Nazi deportation. The rabbi’s story is about heroism, survival, and the Danish citizens who took exceptional steps to save their neighbors. 

Two Trees in Jerusalem (2022, 27 min.). An animated documentary that profiles the remarkable lives of Eberhard and Donata Helmrich, who together saved the lives of countless Jews during the Holocaust. The trailer and the complete film are posted online. 

My Father's War (2022, 26 min.). The film focuses on the lives of Peter Hein and his son David. “As a Jewish toddler in the Netherlands in the 1940s, Peter was separated from his parents, Jewish refugees from Germany. They moved from hiding place to hiding place to escape deportation and death. They were lucky, but, of the 25,000 Jews who hid in the Netherlands, about a third were eventually betrayed by Nazi collaborators. Decades later, after David’s father's mental health buckled under the weight of his memories, David attempted to forge his own path, fighting genocide in the Balkans. The film reveals the hereditary trauma of the Holocaust: the deep emotional wounds of forefathers passed on to their children and grandchildren. Narrated by both Peter and David, the film depicts an inter-generational conversation, reverberating across the decades.”

Children of the Holocaust: Drawn from Memory (2023). Made for BBC 2, shown by PBS in the U.S. The production used live action, photos, drawn art, and minimal movement. “Meet Susan, Manfred and Ivor, some of the Holocaust’s last living survivors. When they were young, they were among the millions of people sent to labor and concentration camps.” The film includes their escape to Britain.

https://www.pbs.org/video/children-of-the-holocaust-drawn-from-memory-gctvvg/

Why This Soldier Actually Volunteered for Auschwitz (2020, 6 min.). Produced by Encyclopedia Britannica. The soldier volunteered to get arrested so he could be sent to a camp and send intelligence reports back to the allies. The artwork is quite simple and it isn’t clear when the story took place. Auschwitz opened in 1940 as a forced labor camp. The extermination facilities went into service in 1942.

I Was a Child of Holocaust Survivors (2010, National Film Board of Canada, 15 min.) Directed by Ann Marie Fleming, the film is set after the war, when Fleming’s father has died. It reflects on her parents’ life during the war and how, after the war, their experiences influenced Ann’s later life. There are wonderful moments in it when her parents get together and celebrate with fellow survivors.

The Ghettos

A Jewish Girl in Shanghai (2010). Written by Wu Lin and based on her graphic novel of the same name, this feature explores living in the Shanghai Ghetto in Japanese-occupied Shanghai during WWII. It tells the story of two Jewish refugees, who escaped Europe without their parents, and how A-Gen, a Chinese orphan boy, helps them survive. 

(Note: About 20,000 to 30,000 Jewish refugees, who escaped the Nazis, lived in a crowded section of the city before and during WWII. It was called both the Shanghai Ghetto and Shanghai's Little Vienna.)

Seven Minutes in the Warsaw Ghetto (2012, Denmark, 8 min.). Directed by John Oettinger, this stop-motion puppet film is set in 1942. In the film, a boy peeks through a hole in the ghetto wall and sees a carrot lying on the sidewalk, just on the other side. He tries to pull the carrot through the hole, unaware that two SS men are following his every move. The dark gothic tones and the cracked skin of the puppet symbolize the boy’s hardship and suffering. The film is based on an actual event and captures the harsh reality of ghetto life, without offering a feeling of relief at the end. It has been in over 120 international film festivals and has won several awards. A clip is available on Vimeo, and it can also be rented for a nominal fee. https://vimeo.com/124043832

The Sleeplessness of Jutka (2023, Poland, 17 min.). Directed by Maria Görlich-Opyd. “Jutka is a rebellious seven-year-old, who assumed she was just visiting her grandparents in Łódz; however, she isn’t able to leave. She is in the Łódz ghetto and she has no idea where her parents are. Her grandfather tries to explain the world to her by comparing it to the story of Minotaur. In his version, Łódź becomes the ancient labyrinth and the Nazis are the monster. When they begin to hunt children in her neighborhood, she must follow the advice of her grandfather in order to escape.” See clips at https://egofilm.pl/en/projects/the-sleeplessness-of-jutka/.

Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass) and its Aftermath

Brutus (2014, 13 min.). Directed by Svetlana Filippova, made at the Shar school-studio in Russia. Before the film’s title appears, we see newsreel footage of a Jew being chased by a crowd, while a policeman seems to pay no attention. The shot of a store with a smashed glass window is a reference to Kristallnacht, an organized night of terror, where thugs were told to smash windows of stores run by Jews and to raise hell to demonstrate their hatred of them. It was a major escalation of the Nazi anti-Jewish campaign, and it foreshadowed things to come. 

The animator used dogs in the film to remind people what happened after Kristallnacht. Jewish people were forced to give up all their beloved pets, a not-so-subtle act of cruelty. The film that follows after the title is an animated work that is open to interpretation. Nancy Denney-Phelps, a friend who told me about this film, said, “I think that it is a powerful Holocaust film because it shows how the Nazi’s were able to turn a nation into a group of haters. Brutus, the dog, is a symbol of how a nation was brainwashed.” The bleak mood of the film is enhanced by the director’s use of charcoal on tracing paper, which gives the characters and space a coarse, rough look. 

Dramas

The Red Driver (2017, U.S. 14 min.), by Rondall Christopher, is an excellent animated true-crime drama set in Argentina in 1960. It follows an Israeli secret agent, Zvi Aharoni, as he hunts for one of the highest-ranking Nazi war criminals. Whom did he discover living in a remote shack in the outskirts of Buenos Aires? He claimed his name was Ricardo Klement. When Ricardo’s true identity was revealed, the capture of Adolph Eichmann made headlines around the world. This suspenseful work has been shown by over 100 film festivals, including Sundance 2018, and it has won 41 awards. It can be viewed for free online.

Aufseherin (2016, 5.5 min.). Directed by Wilbert van Veldhuizen, this drama is based on a true story about a young woman in the Dutch resistance who was arrested by the Nazi police in 1944. It was made as a graduation film at HKU University for the Arts, Utrecht, and it has an unexpected ending.

Where is Anne Frank (Belgium, 2021, 99 min.). Directed by Ari Folman. Kitty, the imaginary girl that Anne wrote to in her diary, seeks out the deceased Anne. That results in Kitty inspiring the public to demand social justice reforms for refugees. “Folman uses a well-known story from a fresh angle, while powerfully placing it in the context of the horrific tragedy that surrounds it.” (from IMDB). Variety said, “The Waltz with Bashir (2008) director examines the Jewish author's legacy, speculating on how Anne Frank might feel about the mistreatment of refugees in Europe today.” It was previewed at the Cannes Film Festival. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3454424/

A Handsome Educational Film for Kids

The Tattooed Torah is a lovely animated short based on a popular book for young children. The story is about a child who lovingly made his own personal copy of the Torah, but the Nazis confiscate it. It has a happy ending, of course. Publicity for the film says it is used to teach about the Holocaust and the importance of the Torah “without frightening kids.” The artwork is quite attractive and the film has won several festival awards. Trailer: 

Serious Works of Animation as a Fine Art

Strings (2017, UK, 3 min.) Directed by Erin Morris, Strings was inspired by the work of Amnon Weinstein, a restorer of violins from the Holocaust. Musicians who use them today are honoring the memory of the artists who created moments of pleasure in those troubled times. The film is a handsome work of art, with curved lines that flow with the music. The images that are briefly formed by the lines might be visual symbols that the viewer is left to interpret. Some images may suggest concentration camp buildings. Others might refer to violin strings breaking, or perhaps to violence or death. This pleasant film was animated using TVPaint software.

Humo (Smoke) (2023, Mexico, 12 min.). Directed by Rita Basulyo. A somber, emotionally moving work of art made using puppets. The innocent young boy is in a concentration camp, where he sees people leave, but they don’t come back. The film is dedicated “to our lost children” and it is an adaptation of the illustrated children’s book "Humo" by Antón Fortes. It was nominated for an Annie Award for best short and was shortlisted for an Oscar nomination. 

Letter to a Pig (2022, Israel, 17 min.). In this Oscar-nominated short by Tal Kantor, a Holocaust survivor is telling students in a classroom how a pig saved his life when German soldiers were searching a barn. A girl listening to the man’s story sinks into a surreal fantasy as he’s telling the story. The images of her dream become a fascinating, twisted journey. The film is primarily black and white. As the dream intensifies, details of eyes and skin wrinkles reveal themselves out of the white background, but then fade away again. Trailer, clips and making-of shorts are available online for free. The short is on Apple TV+ and other pay sites.

Holocaust Deniers

The Basketball Game (2012, National Film Board of Canada, 5 min.). Directed by Hart Snyder, The Basketball Game is an excellent film that promotes tolerance using humor to teach kids about Holocaust deniers, antisemitism, and hate speech. The film is based on an actual event in the director’s life, going to Jewish summer camp for the first time. When he volunteered to be on the basketball team, he didn’t know the camp was going to play kids from a town where their teacher had been fired for spreading antisemitic misinformation. When he finds out, he becomes uneasy confronting a team that had been told the Holocaust was a hoax and other misinformation. Young Hart is terrified that he is about to meet an evil antisemitic enemy. What transpires is “a poignant tale of the power of community as a means to rise above hatred and bigotry.” It is a delightful film and it is posted online.

https://www.nfb.ca/film/basketball_game/ 

PART 3 - THREE ANIMATED DOCUMENTARIES ABOUT OTHER MASS KILLINGS OF CIVILIANS

While most of the animation that exists deals with horrific mass murders by the Nazis, there are now at least three powerful animated works that deal with disastrous events created by other governments.

Body Memory (2011, Estonia, 9 min.), by Ulo Pikkov, is a remarkable film that isn’t about the Germans shipping humans in cattle cars to the slaughterhouses. Stalin used the same method to ship his “enemies” in Estonia to work camps (gulags) in Siberia and to other locations. Pikkov’s powerful work captures the horrific drama of being in a cattle car headed towards a gulag. Without using human voices on the soundtrack, it conveys what the people might have been thinking. The tensions and mental dramas of the people freaking out builds until it explodes. (The smell must have been awful as well.)

When I thanked Nancy Denney-Phelps for introducing me to this film, she said, “If I remember correctly, Ulo told me that he filmed the brief segments of twisted forests on the actual train route that was used to take people from Estonia to the gulags in Siberia. Ulo has a PhD and this year he and his family are living in the U.S., while he is teaching at the Rhode Island School of Art and Design.”

https://www.meetyoolee.com/post/body-memory-2011

Voices from Kaw Thoo Lei (2015, 11 min.), by Martha Gorzycki, brings to light an important underreported story. The short is an impressive experimental documentary that weaves together fragments of interviews that she recorded with members of the Karen (pronounced Kah-Rén) people of Myanmar (formerly Burma). It is a powerful and disturbing film that hints at what they have experienced, including ordeals they witnessed and events that were inflicted on them before they fled their country.

The film is an experience where the animated visuals create a somber mood, rather than depict actions described in the soundtrack. It becomes a meditation, where you have the opportunity to concentrate on the message. It has won awards for its excellence at over 20 film festivals. 

I asked Martha Gorzycki, head of the animation program at San Francisco State University, why she decided to make her remarkable film about the plight of the Karen people. She is not of Asian descent, nor has she been to Myanmar, yet she spent several years developing this work of art.

She said she first heard about the Karen people several years ago from an animator whose wife is Karen. Martha was told that nobody was listening to their tragic story and their pleas for help. Months later, she met other Karen refugees in Minnesota, where a relative was helping them to adjust to living in America. She heard similar statements repeated, that nobody is listening to them or was willing to provide the much-needed humanitarian assistance. 

The Karen migrated to Burma over two thousand years ago, but other groups who arrived earlier had different religious and cultural beliefs. Each claimed parts of the country as their land, so the conflict between groups has lasted for centuries. Their present troubles arose when Burma became an independent nation in 1948. The new government wanted to unify the nation. That resulted in a civil war, with the government’s military slaughtering civilians, and ethnic cleansing has been happening on and off since 1948.

Martha responded by recording interviews about the brutal experiences the refugees were subjected to by Myanmar’s soldiers. The hatred is based on generations of ugly prejudices; a hatred among different ethnic-based groups that is a complex mixture of religious, political and social beliefs.

Her next step was to edit together the soundtrack and to figure out how to illustrate it without using images that would distract from the spoken words. The end result is an impressive cry for help that calls attention to this tragic humanitarian crisis that remains unresolved. The visuals are abstract compositions of materials she collected and filmed on a traditional animation stand. They help us imagine the dark and dangerous forests and jungles the Karen people live in.

The Karen people Martha interviewed had once lived in Eastern Burma, near the border of Thailand. They are a different cultural group than the better known Rohingya, who lived in western Burma. Most of the Rohingya fled in the second decade of this century to fields in Bangladesh when the army burnt down their villages. Unfortunately, the fields where they settled flood each monsoon season, destroying property and drowning some inhabitants. Both the Karen and Rohingya have been subjected to horrendous experiences that have led to genocide. The perpetrator was and still is the Myanmar military government.

Waltz with Bashir (2008, Israel, 90 min.). Directed by Ari Folman. The film involves a former Israeli soldier trying to recall his repressed memories of his experiences during the 1982 war with Lebanon. One memory that he is trying to recall and understand is his part in the Sabra and Shatila massacre that took place in two refugee camps. During the massacre, his unit fired flares into the night sky to help the Israeli-allied Lebanese Christian Phalange militia carry out their horrible mission. Between 762 and 3,500 civilians were slaughtered as the Phalange retaliated over the assassination of Bachir Gemayel, a popular general who had just been elected president of Lebanon.

While the Jewish soldiers firing flares didn’t know what the militia was doing until after the atrocity was over, the soldier concludes that the gaps in his memory were a defense mechanism. As he tries to reconstruct his memory, he begins to question the degree that he was responsible, even indirectly. While the massacre is scarcely remembered today, it was briefly a major international news story.

Much of Folman’s documentary depicts war as hell. It shows that, once he and other soldiers entered the war zone, their stress level was elevated 24/7 by their fears of being killed. Tension arises from things such as trigger-happy soldiers shooting in the direction of unseen noises and at unexpected movements created by guests of wind. As the tension builds, irrational behavior becomes more pronounced.

When I interviewed Folman a few days before the film was shown in San Francisco, I asked what he hoped to achieve by making the film. He replied that his target audience was Israeli youths of draft age and that he wanted to dispel the belief that there is pride and glory in being a soldier. He hoped that, by showing them that being in a war is a nerve-wracking experience, they might have second thoughts about participating. He was disappointed that box office reports indicated that the film’s actual audience was an older, more mature audience.

Waltz with Bashir grossed over $11 million worldwide, an impressive amount for an animated documentary. It was the first animated feature to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Film. It won France’s César and received top awards at many major international festivals. It was also banned from being screened in Lebanon and in several other Middle Eastern (Arab) nations.

FINAL COMMENTS

Animated Holocaust films represent a major evolution of the art of animation as a serious medium for communication and persuasion. Animated documentaries in the future will probably explore other difficult issues confronting the world, from social relationships to living on a planet struggling to sustain an inhabitable environment.

People generally think that animation is a light form of entertainment, but these films serve a noble purpose, honoring the millions of people whose lives were disrupted by Hitler, including exposing the lies, misinformation and other dishonorable things that prejudices create. People need to understand what institutionalized hatred has been doing to our world for centuries. Fortunately, animation can confront and expose the negative effects of racism, nationalism, religious indoctrination, and other systems that divide people into stereotyped groups and depict others as inferior. 

The animated Holocaust film is part of a growing body of animated documentaries hoping to influence society in some way. This use of the medium to influence us dates back to Winsor McCay’s Sinking of the Lusitania (1918), which depicts the enormous loss of life caused by a torpedo that was fired from a German submarine. (No newsreel footage of the sinking existed.) The film was propaganda during the Great War, and it is intended to cause the film’s audience to detest the perpetrator of the war, Germany’s Kaiser. Since then, animators have created works supporting or disapproving of other wars, capital punishment, various forms of bigotry, and dozens of other challenging topics. 

During my research of animated Holocaust films, certain basic facts kept resurfacing. Not only did 6 million Jews die in Hitler’s concentration camps, but the Fascists exterminated other individuals for being mentally impaired, homosexuals, or perceived as inferior to members of the master race in other ways. I had assumed the number of non-Jews that Hitler had killed in his gas chambers was significant, but only in the thousands. I was quite stunned to learn that the estimates range from a half million to over five million non-Jewish people who were slaughtered in the camps!

Nazi Germany is the easiest target as the embodiment of evil; however, there have been other mass murderers of civilians. Stalin was as ruthless as Hitler; one estimate is that he murdered about 5 million people in his gulags, and that between 5 and 9 million died of famine in the 1930s, due to Stalin’s mismanagement of agricultural production in Russia. But Stalin was our ally during the war, so we don’t vilify him for those deaths. Nor do we vilify those who hunted and killed Native Americans as our nation expanded into their homeland. 

We live at a time when right-wing rhetoric has been on the rise, and military activities continue to disrupt the lives of millions of people across the globe. The traditional ways of dealing with hatred and war have to change if civilization is going to survive. The world is too full of weapons that are much too powerful and efficient. They could very well lead to the destruction of the world if they are used. The present destruction of Gaza is a sample of what war is capable of doing. 

We need persuasive works to call attention to the dangers of modern warfare. Hopefully, anti-war propaganda will also present positive ideas on how to improve the world.

I grew up admiring Martin Luther King, Jr., and I was lucky enough to attend two of his speeches. He tried to teach us to do something that seems to be much harder to do – to turn the other cheek, to love our enemy, and to build a better world together. He taught us that we need to put aside our differences and to work harder as a nation to achieve common goals. Today, that includes the problems raised with global warming; with our polluting the land, air and seas; with public health issues; and with the rights of women, minorities, and LBGTQ persons.

Why not give peace a chance? If you want to see a film that might motivate you to think about world peace, see Hugh Harman’s Peace on Earth (1939), which is available online. It was released as a Christmas film the year WWII started. The film received an Oscar nomination and was remade as Good Will to Men in Cinemascope in 1955. If you are concerned about ecology and the problems Planet Earth faces, watch Frédéric Back’s The Man Who Planted Trees (1987, an Oscar winner and one of the finest films ever made.

To combat the negative elements in our world, we need to constantly create positive persuasive works. We need to use all kinds of media to remind us that, for the sake of humanity, we need to change our ways. Aggressive campaigns are needed to combat corporations and industries that spend millions to promote their activities that are harming our planet. Films that remind us about the Holocaust are important; however, campaigns to save our planet and to resolve social issues may turn out to be of far greater importance in the coming years. 

You can do your part by donating to causes you support, by signing petitions for sound ideas, and by writing letters to local and national politicians. If you are involved in animation, this article shows that both short and feature-length films can be effective. If you are a creative writer, submit ideas to groups/studios that might seek funding for a socially responsible project they might produce. Production funding from individuals and nonprofits for important projects about serious issues may also exist. 

If you are an independent animator with a serious project, and have a well-developed proposal, enough funding may be available. Look into fundraising websites. They have raised impressive sums of money for some animators. Also, you might consider the advice of Bill Plympton to get your film made and into festivals. Make it short, make it inexpensively, and make it funny. It really is possible for you to do your part to help save the planet and to help you establish your credentials as a socially conscious artist.

Acknowledgements

Tsvika Oren, who lives and teaches in Tel Aviv, Israel, has contributed very useful information to this study. He is an animation scholar and he has published an animation magazine since 2006.

Martha Gorzycki heads the animation program at San Francisco State University. She is an advocate of animated documentaries, and worked on the animated feature Popol Vuh: The Creation Myth of the Maya (1990), funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Nancy Denney-Phelps lives in Ghent, Belgium and is an animation historian and journalist. Her book "On the Animation Trail: 20 Years of Animation Festival History" will be released in December, 2024. It is full of photos and lots of funny stories. She is a regular contributor to the ASIFA-SF newsletter that I write and edit. She mainly covers the international world of animation.

Piotr Kardas from Poland is the author of "Great Animation Short Documentaries of 2023," an informative illustrated article available at https://www.zippyframes.com/news/awards/top-animation-documentaries-shorts-2023. He is director of O!PLA, Rising of Lusitania Animadoc Festival, and Craft Animation Festival. An interview with him is posted at https://www.zippyframes.com/interviews/video-piotr-kardas-animocje.

Jim Midddleton is an independent animator and writer, the newsletter editor of ASIFA-Central, and a person whom I consult with weekly. He keeps me on my toes.

"Holocaust Representations in Animated Documentaries: The Contours of Commemoration" by Liat Steir-Livny is available as a hardback and as an eBook. It examines representations of the Holocaust and Holocaust survivors and their descendants in animated documentaries. One promotion for the book says that a vast majority of animated Holocaust documentaries marginalize the horrors, and instead focus on bravery, resilience, and hope. The book introduced me to the topic of animated Holocaust films.

Finding Your Roots on PBS, hosted by historian Henry Lewis Gates, Jr., also influenced this study. Guests on the show learn facts about their family’s history, sometimes including facts about relatives who disappeared in the Holocaust, the Armenian Genocide, and in other horrible moments in history.