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Helena Pietyra - Auschwitz

Film | Digitized | Accession Number: 1996.166 | RG Number: RG-60.5055 | Film ID: 3448

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    Helena Pietyra - Auschwitz

    Overview

    Description
    Helena Pietyra describes her experience living near the city of Auschwitz, Poland.

    FILM ID 3448 -- Interview Auschwitz Pietyra -- Camera Rolls #1-3 -- 01:00:04 to 01:24:13

    Roll 1 Madam Pietyra sits in the living room of the apartment she occupies in Auschwitz. Pietyra is citizen of Auschwitz. She was born in Auschwitz and has never left. She recounts that Auschwitz was a predominantly Jewish city before the war. Most of the city was occupied by the Jewish citizens, including the apartment Pietyra lives in, while only a few buildings belonged to Catholic citizens. Overall, the Jews were liked. The non-Jewish citizens liked their Jewish neighbors because they allowed customers to purchase goods on credit and did not charge any interest. There was a synagogue and a Jewish cemetery in the city. Both were damaged during the war, and while the synagogue was completely destroyed the cemetery remains, though it is no longer in use. The Nazis destroyed the graves in the cemetery, and then the houses.

    01:06:49 Roll 2 Deportation of the Jews of Auschwitz started in 1940. According to Madam Pietyra, they took with them only what they could carry. This explains the presence of furniture from the Jewish inhabitants when Pietyra moved into her apartment in 1940. The Jews who were deported from Auschwitz, as well as Jews from all over Europe, were brought to Auschwitz camp for extermination. Madam Pietyra and the citizens of Auschwitz knew that Jews were being gassed in the Auschwitz concentration camp, because Polish railway men who worked there would leak information. Sometimes when Pietyra took the train, she would pass train carriages in which Jews were being transported to Auschwitz. She remembers seeing the barbed wire in the windows and the faces of the Jews behind. When the wind blew from the west, the citizens of Auschwitz could smell the odor of burning bodies. Yet if an outsider visited the city and inquired about the smell, the citizens would not tell them what the cause was, as it was dangerous to speak the truth. The resistance was active and Pietyra's brother was a member. After the Jews were deported, the Polish population made up the majority of the city. The Germans lived in houses.

    01:17:23 Roll 3 Lanzmann asks Madam Pietyra if she knew at the time how the Jews were being killed. Pietyra states that at the time she and other citizens of Auschwitz knew Jews were being gassed and killed in other ways. They knew the extermination of the Jews was on a large scale, since convoys arrived all the time to the camp. Though it was painful to stay in the city after the war, Pietyra claims that almost everyone stayed in order to make a living. Catholic cemeteries were bombed by the English during the war, as there were munition stores underneath. The camp itself was never bombed. The city of Auschwitz remains very similar to how it was before the war, except for a German bunker which was turned into a store. A member of Lanzmann's camera crew says at 01:23:28 "Auschwitz marketplace general sound atmosphere." Sounds from the street.
    Duration
    00:24:09
    Date
    Event:  March/April 1979 (Pologne II)
    Production:  1985
    Locale
    Auschwitz, Poland
    Credit
    Created by Claude Lanzmann during the filming of "Shoah," used by permission of USHMM and Yad Vashem
    Contributor
    Director: Claude Lanzmann
    Interpreter: Barbara Janica
    Camera Operator: William Lubtchansky
    Biography
    Claude Lanzmann was born in Paris to a Jewish family that immigrated to France from Eastern Europe. He attended the Lycée Blaise-Pascal in Clermont-Ferrand. His family went into hiding during World War II. He joined the French resistance at the age of 18 and fought in the Auvergne. Lanzmann opposed the French war in Algeria and signed a 1960 antiwar petition. From 1952 to 1959 he lived with Simone de Beauvoir. In 1963 he married French actress Judith Magre. Later, he married Angelika Schrobsdorff, a German-Jewish writer, and then Dominique Petithory in 1995. He is the father of Angélique Lanzmann, born in 1950, and Félix Lanzmann (1993-2017). Lanzmann's most renowned work, Shoah, is widely regarded as the seminal film on the subject of the Holocaust. He began interviewing survivors, historians, witnesses, and perpetrators in 1973 and finished editing the film in 1985. In 2009, Lanzmann published his memoirs under the title "Le lièvre de Patagonie" (The Patagonian Hare). He was chief editor of the journal "Les Temps Modernes," which was founded by Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, until his death on July 5, 2018. https://www.newyorker.com/culture/postscript/claude-lanzmann-changed-the-history-of-filmmaking-with-shoah
    Some women central to the production of "Shoah" (1985) include Hebrew interpreter, Francine Kaufmann; Polish interpreter, Barbra Janicka; Yiddish interpreter, Mrs. Apflebaum; assistant directors, Corinna Coulmas and Irena Steinfeldt; editors, Ziva Postec and Anna Ruiz; and assistant editor, Yael Perlov.

    Physical Details

    Language
    French Polish
    Genre/Form
    Outtakes.
    B&W / Color
    Color
    Image Quality
    Good
    Time Code
    01:00:04:00 to 01:24:13:00
    Film Format
    • Master
    • Master 3448 Video: HDCam - NTSC - small
      Master 3448 Film: negative - 16 mm - color - silent - original negative
      Master 3448 Film: full-coat mag track - 16 mm - magnetic - sound - workprint
      Master 3448 Film: positive - 16 mm - color - workprint
      Master 3448 Video: HDCam - NTSC - small
      Master 3448 Film: negative - 16 mm - color - silent - original negative
      Master 3448 Film: full-coat mag track - 16 mm - magnetic - sound - workprint
      Master 3448 Film: positive - 16 mm - color - workprint
      Master 3448 Video: HDCam - NTSC - small
      Master 3448 Film: negative - 16 mm - color - silent - original negative
      Master 3448 Film: full-coat mag track - 16 mm - magnetic - sound - workprint
      Master 3448 Film: positive - 16 mm - color - workprint
      Master 3448 Video: HDCam - NTSC - small
      Master 3448 Film: negative - 16 mm - color - silent - original negative
      Master 3448 Film: full-coat mag track - 16 mm - magnetic - sound - workprint
      Master 3448 Film: positive - 16 mm - color - workprint
    • Preservation
    • Preservation 3448 Film: positive - 16 mm - polyester - color - silent - interpositive - A-wind - Kodak - 3242
      Preservation 3448 Film: positive - 16 mm - polyester - color - silent - interpositive - A-wind - Kodak - 3242
      Preservation 3448 Film: positive - 16 mm - polyester - color - silent - interpositive - A-wind - Kodak - 3242
      Preservation 3448 Film: positive - 16 mm - polyester - color - silent - interpositive - A-wind - Kodak - 3242

    Rights & Restrictions

    Conditions on Access
    You do not require further permission from the Museum to access this archival media.
    Copyright
    United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Yad Vashem, State of Israel
    Conditions on Use
    Third party must sign the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's SHOAH Outtakes Film License Agreement in order to reproduce and use film footage. Contact filmvideo@ushmm.org

    Keywords & Subjects

    Administrative Notes

    Film Provenance
    The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum purchased the Shoah outtakes from Claude Lanzmann on October 11, 1996. The Claude Lanzmann Shoah Collection is now jointly owned by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and Yad Vashem - The Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority.
    Note
    Claude Lanzmann spent twelve years locating survivors, perpetrators, and eyewitnesses for his nine and a half hour film Shoah released in 1985. Without archival footage, Shoah weaves together extraordinary testimonies to render the step-by-step machinery of the destruction of European Jewry. Critics have called it "a masterpiece" and a "monument against forgetting." The Claude Lanzmann SHOAH Collection consists of roughly 185 hours of interview outtakes and 35 hours of location filming.
    Film Source
    Claude Lanzmann
    File Number
    Legacy Database File: 5781
    Record last modified:
    2024-02-21 08:04:42
    This page:
    https:​/​/collections.ushmm.org​/search​/catalog​/irn1004812

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