Product Details

• Directors: Marian Marzynski
• Producers: Slawomir Grunberg, Marian Marzynski, David E. Simpson, David Fanning, M.G. Rabinow
• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, NTSC
• Language: English
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Number of tapes: 2
• Studio: WGBH Boston
• VHS Release Date: March 28, 2000
• Run Time: 173 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6304462670
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #172,802 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

This intelligently conceived documentary is a meditation on a shtetl (a Jewish ghetto), looking at the small Jewish enclave in the town of Bransk, in Poland. The Bransk shtetl disappeared entirely when the Nazis rounded up all the Jews who hadn't somehow managed to escape and murdered them in Treblinka. But decades later the vanquished community lives on in the memories and thoughts of people on the other side of the Atlantic. The film focuses first on an elderly American whose forebears lived in the shtetl and whose interest in the past led him to having an unlikely pen pal, a young gentile Pole who had developed an interest in Bransk's Jewish history. Traveling to Bransk, the elderly Chicagoan visited where the Jews had lived, and conversations he has with elderly residents are sometimes heartbreaking and sometimes horrifying. Troubling questions over whether someone helped Jews or joined in the persecution come up, and seeing these moral issues develop in the course of the film is fascinating. Indeed, the film isn't so much about the past as about how people look back at it, and how the past has created the present. The young Pole, with an unlikely interest in local Jewish history, visits America and meets with those who managed to escape from Bransk, and later visits Israel. And an elderly clothing store owner from Baltimore who survived the Holocaust in Poland returns to where he hid on the outskirts of Bransk, and his confrontations with the past are both heartening and deeply disturbing. This is a brilliant film that quietly builds momentum and makes a powerful statement about history and how we see it. -- Robert J. McNamara

Product Description

The true story of Bransk, a small Polish shtetl that died overnight when all its Jewish residents were transported to Treblinka's gas chambers. A haunting story with tragic consequences emerges through interviews, photographs and personal stories.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Bierman review of Shtetl: A Journal of the Holocaust, September 7, 2009

By 

Joseph C. Bierman (Albany, New York) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Shtetl: A Journal of the Holocaust [VHS] (VHS Tape)

A very interesting, informative and moving documentary of what was apparently a typical shtetl. Perhaps I am biased as my mother and her family spent her formative years in Bransk, but I found this film fascinating throughout. I highly recommend this film for anyone interested in Jewish or Polish history.

12 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A Rendition of the Usual Anti-Polish Biases, June 9, 2005

By 

Jan Peczkis "Scholar and Thinker" (Chicago IL, USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Shtetl: A Journal of the Holocaust [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Marian Marzynski has produced a long and tedious film that not only exhibits a pronounced anti-Polish slant, but fails to inform the viewer about the proper context of the tragic events that took place. A much better and objective source of information about Shtetl life, in my opinion, is Eva Hoffman's book Shtetl.

The content of Marzynski's film is so strongly Judeocentric that the viewer is almost made to think that nothing happened during WWII except the destruction of Jews. The viewer gets no hint of the fact that Poland, which had fallen to the Nazi German and the Soviet Communist aggression, was to suffer the loss of 3 million gentile lives in the hands of the Germans alone. Not a word is mentioned about the large number of Poles (and also some Jews) who had been deported from the Bransk area to horrible deaths in the Soviet gulags, partly the outcome of the large-scale collaboration of local Jews with the Soviets.

Marzynski presents other content in a tendentious manner. For instance, a scene depicts anti-Jewish prejudices in the form of a Polish peasant who supposes that Jews have lots of money. The viewer gets no idea of the economic disparities that had arisen between Poles and Jews, partly the result of centuries of a cozy relationship between Jewish merchants and the foreign rulers of Poland after the Partitions. And, of course, no mention is made of the fact that many Jews had equally distorted (not to mention also negative) views of Poles as that Polish peasant had of Jews.

Marzynski pays a great deal of attention to a small group of Poles who collaborated with the German Nazis against Jews. This completely ignores the fact that Poland had a much lower collaboration rate than most other European countries. Moreover, it ignores the sad fact that the biggest assistants to the Germans in the roundup and sending of Jews to their deaths were none other than the Jewish collaborators-especially the notorious Judenrat.

Marzynski presents a scene involving modern Israeli students. Judging by their questions and the tone and content of their anti-Polish accusations, one is struck by their frightful ignorance of basic historical facts. Not only do they have no idea of what Poles went through: They almost seem to think that Poles lived in freedom and prosperity during German rule. The tenor of Marzynski's scene involving Israeli students is corroborated by the kind of questions asked of Poles by visiting Israeli high school students (e. g., "What kind of pensions are those Polish guards of Auschwitz getting?"). The informed viewer cannot help but ask questions such as the following: "Who is teaching Israeli children such venomous bigotry against Poles?" "Denial of the Holocaust is not tolerated, so why are such Polonophobic prejudices tolerated?" "What kind of portent do the warped attitudes exhibited by Marzynski's sample of Jewish students have for present and future Polish-Jewish relations?"

2 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Looking for your past identy and being surprised by what you discover!, March 1, 2006

By 

BOB and AL COMPONE (new paltz, new york United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Shtetl: A Journal of the Holocaust [VHS] (VHS Tape)

This is a film where all parties are trying to understand and come to terms with their past and having to settle for what they discover. The film maker, Marian Marzynski, a native of Warsaw Poland from before the beginning of WW2 whose mother hides him in a convent to save and protect him from the Nazi's. As an adult, he trys to deal with and understand his Jewish Hertiage through an older searching American whose family comes from a small Polish Shtetl in Bransk, a town that prior to WW2 had 60% Jewish population and lived a prospious and commercial life in this town. Today not a trce of their existence exists.
Marzynski can't deal with his own past directly, but alines with an intelligent 70 year old man who's at the end of his life but wants to learn and understand what Jewish Life was like prior to the Nazi's in this Polish Shtetl, and in particular for his family who is no longer alive. He writes letters to the municipality in Bransk and receives letters with answers from a non- Jewish Bureauacrat who is 29 years old and is a self professed Historian on Jewish Life that remains within this town that presently, has no Jewish population.
Mr. Kaplan along with the film maker Marzynski go to Bransk to visit this young Polish Bureaucrat and begin tracing extinced Jewish life.
This relationship evolves into coming back to Chicago, visiting Kaplan who arranges contacts within the United States of former residents of Bransk. One interesting fact that emerges is entrance to a closed Jewish Community is now openned to this young Polish Breauacrat, and he is along with the film maker welcomed into peoples homes and this painful past is explored; d How Jewish Life was Once upon-time lived.
The two Polish natives later visit Israel at a time where a grathering of former Bransk residents are gathering and holding remmembrances services. After the services, the Young lad is introduced to the Rabbi and he shows him pictures of fallen grave stones and he asks "What is the proper proceedure to replace the broken and fallen grave stones". The Rabbi replys that "it is enough of a Mitsva to just stand up the fallen stones and not important if they are properly replaced."
There is a very weried ending to this journey, which I will not disclose.

I found this film very interesting in understanding maybe a little bit of the preversities of human nature and maybe some of its contridictions!