- Description
- Street scenes of the Warsaw ghetto. Pedestrians cross a bridge over the street. Special attention is given to reverse rickshaws--bicycles with benches on the front--in which people are carted around. Jewish men have their documents examined. Some elderly men then meet in a well-decorated hall, possibly a restaurant. Jewish police, all in jackets and ties, stand at attention in two lines, then march down the street. One is shown chasing children away with a baton. A corpse is shown on a sidewalk; pedestrians pass it by. The interior of a luxurious home, with hardwood-paneled floors, floral wallpaper, lavish furniture; a man is shown lounging and reading. People sit around a table, smoking cigarettes and playing cards. A woman is shown looking out the window of her comfortable home onto the streets below. People are seen buying meat at butchers' stands. Another emaciated corpse lying in the streets while daily business goes on. Scenes of dire poverty. A man digs through a pile of rubbish. In another area, people sit in lawn chairs and relax in the sun. Cut to shots of a tenement apartment; some residents perform household tasks (making soup, knitting), others languish in bed. Cut to shots of a luxurious apartment, with a woman sitting at a mirror, preening herself and having a cigarette.
Street scenes: some pedestrians are well-dressed, others appear quite poor. Children sit in the streets and on the sidewalks while others pass them by without seeming to notice. A man dances in the street while a crowd looks on. An upscale restaurant, with well-dressed couples dancing to music played by a small band. More street scenes. A soldier stops a group of children and appears to make them surrender food that they have stolen.
Inside a tenement: a young, gaunt girl, her legs and arms covered with sores, looks for lice in a young boy's hair. Outside, children hold hands and dance in a circle with their mothers. Inside what is perhaps a very shabby, run-down clinic, emaciated men strip and are inspected for lice, skin diseases, etc. Some very gruesome shots of skin lesions and lice.
A much nicer hospital, with modern architecture and trees around it. Patients lie in separate beds in a sun room and are tended to by a nurse. Others sit in or walk about the garden. We then see people taking lunch in a nice café, having wine, buying baked goods. Cut to people living in utter squalor, eating soup in the courtyard of a tenement building. Crews go around picking corpses up off the streets and placing them in coffins. Corpses are thrown upon each other in heaps, carted away to a mass grave, and pushed down a slide into the pits where they are to be buried. A funeral is held afterward, though it is unclear for whom. A large crowd is gathered outside for the event, though it seems to be attended by well-dressed people, keeping in line with the recurring juxtaposition of well-off Jews and Jews living in utter penury which the film portrays. A religious service. The scroll of the Torah is brought out and read from. A woman buys a chicken from an old man, but it is unclear whether it is in the same location. The man cuts and bleeds the chicken for her, then dons a tallit and prays. A group of men reads from the Torah, then strips and bathes in a mikveh. A group of women, some gaunt and some healthy, enters the mikveh after the men leave. Then a bris is performed.
More street scenes. People peddle their wares. The ghetto's policemen inspect boys in a courtyard. The camera then shows them inside. Most of the boys are quite emaciated; one is so weak he needs assistance from two others to stand up. A young, gaunt girl dances in the street. Cut to a well-dressed couple entering a café, where they join friends in drinking. They then go to the Teatr Nowy Azazel (New Azazel Theater) to see a show, which involves dancers and musicians dressed in exotic costumes. The camera then depicts several Jews in pairs, juxtaposing a well-dressed, healthy person with an emaciated, impoverished one.
- Duration
- 01:02:48
- Date
-
Event:
1942 May
- Locale
-
Warsaw,
Poland
- Credit
- Accessed at United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Bundesarchiv Filmarchiv
- Contributor
-
Camera Operator:
Propaganda Kompanie
