The essays below retrace some of filmmaker Claude Lanzmann’s main steps around Poland during the making of his epic Holocaust film, Shoah, in the 1970s. The essays are based on the author’s trip to the country in June 2018.
#16 – BEŁŻEC
I spent my last full day in Poland on an excursion from Lublin to the former site of the Bełżec extermination camp, eighty-five miles southeast near the Ukrainian border. The journey began with a cab ride from Jacek’s apartment to Wieniawa, Lublin’s university neighborhood, where I picked up a rental car at a local hotel.…
#15 – MEDITATIONS FROM LUBLIN
I began my last full day in Poland sitting on the floor of Jacek’s apartment. A sheepskin mat cushioned me on the parquet wood—a fleecy comfort I brought from California whose snowy whiskers were forever entangling themselves in my suitcase zipper each time I packed up for a new destination. The drowsy sunlight of early…
#14 – FROM WARSAW TO LUBLIN & MAJDANEK
During my long weekend in Warsaw, I often lingered at dusk looking out the window. Leaning on the sill of my third-story perch at the corner of Nowolipki and Karmelicka streets, I studied the tree-lined sidewalks and drew imaginary constellations from the curtained glow of neighboring apartments. The world just beyond my room’s picture window…
#13 – TREBLINKA (PART II): A WALKING TOUR
At the end of the platform, at right-angles to the tracks, nailed to two posts set in concrete, was a signpost bearing the name Treblinka on either side so travelers could see it from either direction. Treblinka was nothing but a ghost station: as I stood petrified on the platform, attempting to come to terms…
#12 – TREBLINKA (PART I): THE TRAIN TO MAŁKINIA
“Why are you going to Małkinia? It’s a village with nothing.” His weary tone tugged at me like the hand of a skeptical navigator attempting to rouse sense before the final lurch toward some forsaken shoreline. “Come to Białystok, instead,” he implored. Beside him sat a young woman in a summery, short-sleeved t-shirt with images…
#11 – CHEŁMNO
The Church of the Birth of the Virgin Mary in Chełmno nad Nerem, Poland I hovered the key chain around the dashboard but the car wouldn’t start. It seemed an inauspicious beginning to my first international car rental and my second full day in Łódź, Poland. After a few moments of dancing the key…
#10 – A NORTHEASTERN SUMMER INTERLUDE
Bike riding in Brooklyn, New York Walking down Bedford Avenue with eyes trained to a digital map and a steeply declining phone battery charge, I breezed right passed the Apple Store. My gently respiring, blue-dotted avatar had become misaligned with a red pin drop. As I retraced my steps and crossed the street, I noticed…
#9 – FROM KRAKÓW TO ŁÓDŹ AND ITS JEWISH CEMETERY
The interior gate of Łódź’s Jewish Cemetery (above) and a restaurant near Piotrkowska Street (below). On the morning of my fourth day in Kraków, I shared an unexpectedly convivial breakfast with my final set of roommates at the hostel—a pair of Belgian friends and a young woman from Russia—along with a middle-aged couple from Chile…
#8 – AUSCHWITZ-BIRKENAU (PART III)
Broken tombstones in the Jewish Cemetery of Oswieçim, Poland Note: In this post, I am returning to June 17, 2018 to complete my account of the day I spent in Oswieçim, Poland. * * …
#7 – FALL INTERLUDE: NEW FILMS & COMMUNITIES
Working with the Archives of the Holocaust at Cal State Fullerton. Hello again…Happy New Year…Where did the time go? The short answer is teaching…lots and lots of teaching. Although the past few months have been a detour from blogging, they were still very productive for the Shoah project. I…
#6 – AUSCHWITZ-BIRKENAU (PART II) – A PHOTO ESSAY
During my initial moments in the Auschwitz I camp, I felt confronted by the alterity of the past. As I retraced the steps of Lanzmann’s movie camera around the gas chamber and the crematorium, the words of Filip Müller echoing in my thoughts, an eerie, uncanny sense of familiarity flickered in my mind, like the furtive…
#5 – AUSCHWITZ-BIRKENAU (PART I)
My phone murmured at 4:30 a.m. I stirred and rolled onto my back, scrolling with an index finger for any Sunday evening messages and pings from the United States. With as much surgical care as a hostel bunkroom allows, I extracted my clothes and toiletries from a cupboard and headed to the washroom as the…
#4 – REMEMBERING CLAUDE LANZMANN (1925-2018)
At the end of my week-long reprieve in Hyères, Claude Lanzmann unexpectedly passed away on Thursday, July 5th, some five-hundred miles to the north in Paris. He was 92 years-old. The cause of his death is unclear; Gallimard, his publisher, has only reported that he had been ill and very weak in recent days. I…
#3 – DEPARTURE FROM KRAKÓW: TIME TO REFLECT
A disappearing latte and free WiFi at Glonojad Greetings from Kraków. I’m writing from one of the many vegetarian restaurants that became my unwinding space during two weeks of travel around Poland. The physical journey into Shoah is complete for the time being: four cities (Kraków, Łódź, Warsaw, and Lublin), five camps (Auschwitz-Birkenau, Chełmno, Treblinka,…
#2 – ARRIVAL IN KRAKÓW: A PHOTO ESSAY
In the early morning of Saturday, June 16th, I boarded a flight from Geneva, Switzerland to Krakow, Poland having recently spent two weeks visiting family. The plane soared over the Alps before eventually touching down in the Polish countryside. I took a train from the airport to Glowny, the main train station…
#1 – “WRITE A GUIDE TO SHOAH”: THE PROJECT
The voice spoke during a predawn meditation in Southern California. Its statement brief, scarcely five words, A calm, self-assured observation, Arising matter-of-factly in a reflective stream, Like a small wave lapping at the edge of my consciousness, Then dissolving into silence. …Two months later, I landed in Kraków. * * * * * Shoah (1985)…
KURT MACMILLAN, PhD 