Cinema
Because of That War
בגלל המלחמה ההיא
Orna Ben-Dor Niv · 1988
Synopsis
In 1988, the singer Yehuda Poliker and the lyricist Yaakov Gilad, sons of Holocaust survivors, release an album, Ash and Dust, whose songs touch on what their parents went through. The film follows the making of the record and brings them face to face with these parents and their stories: Jacko Poliker, born in Thessaloniki, who lost his whole family in the camps, and Halina Birnbaum, who was ten when Poland was occupied and who passed through the Warsaw ghetto, Majdanek and Auschwitz. Interviews and songs alternate, and two ways of living with the past answer each other: speaking or staying silent.
Context
The film was produced by the Israel Film Service, with Oren Schmukler as cinematographer. The album, released on 27 January 1988, for which Gilad wrote almost all the lyrics, went platinum by November and is regarded as one of the most important in Israeli music; the song that gives it its title tells of Halina Birnbaum's journey back to Poland. The documentary, which has fed a debate on what survivors pass on to their children, is still shown in secondary schools on the recommendation of the Yad Vashem school.
Who it is for
About an hour and a half, in Hebrew. It is worth knowing the songs on the album, which the ceremonies commemorating the extermination often take up.
Prizes and reception
Prize of the Israeli critics; distinguished at the Berlin festival and at the Leningrad documentary festival; shown in cinemas in Israel and Germany.