Film review by George Robinson, with a critical letter in response by Peter Kubicek

Movies Around The Clock -- film reviews by George Robinson, Special to the Jewish Week in New York (with a critical letter in response by Peter Kubicek)

2012-01-27T19:43:00.000-08:00

[From wristwatch metaphors in ‘Restoration’ to the cross currents of past and present in ‘Remembrance,’ a recent Jewish film fest meditated on the passage of time, writes George Robinson on January 10,2012. A letter to the editor by Holocaust survivor Peter Kubicek, critical of Robinson's piece, is printed below, too. Be sure to read it as well. -- Editor's note.]

Mr Robinson wrote:

Jewish thought tends to classify time in highly specific quantities: seven days from Shabbat to Shabbat, 49 days of counting the Omer, generation to generation.

The second week of this year’s edition of the New York Jewish Film Festival is filled with films that ponder the nature of time, and though they tend to see it in terms of the passing of generations — there are a lot of fathers and sons and daughters and surrogate offspring in the films — there is plenty of the precise compression of time that is the hallmark of the successful suspense film and the expansion of time that enriches the comedy of social embarrassment.
...
The time travel of “Remembrance,” a German film by Anna Justice, is of a sort more familiar to Jewish filmgoers. Hannah Silberstein, a German Jew (Alice Dwyer), and Tomasz Limanowski, a Polish Catholic (Mateusz Damiecki), meet and fall in love in Auschwitz.

By the time the film opens, she is pregnant and he has a plan for their escape. The plan is executed with admirable precision, and Justice films it with equal deftness, in a series of carefully orchestrated cuts on movement that keep the action moving swiftly.

But once the pair is out of the camp, we are suddenly taken to New York City in 1976 where an older Hannah (Dagmar Manzel) is married to a prominent scientist (David Rasche). While picking up her dry cleaning, Hannah sees a seemingly familiar face being interviewed on the store’s TV, and the film begins moving restlessly back and forth between the young lovers, torn apart by Tomasz’s anti-Semitic mother and the forces of Polish history, and the older Hannah, struggling with her feelings for two men, caught in the cross-currents of past and present.

Justice handles this material fairly gracefully, gradually lengthening her takes as we get past the escape and into the more complex emotional reefs and shoals, and the film has a stunningly effective last shot.

LETTER TO THE EDITOR OF JEWISH WEEK BY PETER KUBICEK:

Conversation: Your Film Review of "Remembrance"

Subject: Your Film Review of "Remembrance"

To The Editor:

I quote from the review by George Robinson.

“Remembrance,” a German film... is of a sort more familiar to Jewish filmgoers. Hannah Silberstein, a German Jew, and Thomasz Limanowski, a Polish Catholic, meet and fall in love in Auschwitz. By the time the film opens, she is pregnant and he has a plan for their escape. The plan is executed with admirable precision...”

... and they more or less live happily ever after.

There is so much wrong with this neat summary that one does not know where to begin. Upon arrival of a transport in Auschwitz, the dazed arrivals faced the familiar command, “Men to the right; women and children to the left.” Thereafter, the men and women who were picked for labor in the camp, rather than the gas chamber, never saw each other again. The men’s and the women’s camps were strictly separated. The idea that the two protagonists would meet in the camp, fall in love, and would be able to have sex and to conceive a child there is utterly and completely preposterous.

From my perspective as a survivor of six German concentration camps, let me tell you that there simply was no sex in the concentration camps. Our starvation diet was a guaranteed killer of the libido. As a result, women lost their menstrual period after a few weeks (which may have been a blessing in disguise). In prisons, in the evenings inmates talk of sex. In the concentration camp, we talked of food.

As for their meticulous, easily accomplished plan for escape... There are very few documented and verified successful escapes from Auschwitz. During the past few years stories started appearing about such escapes — I guess that’s why Mr. Robinson writes that this story may be “more familiar to filmgoers.” All such stories that surfaced during the recent past are suspect and unverifiable. They appear to be pure fiction. I have no doubt that “Remembrance” merely adds another fictional story to the list.

As a Holocaust survivor, as a long-time student of same, and frequent commentator on the subject, I find these fictions to be distortions of history and part and parcel of the continuous trivialization of this subject. We Holocaust survivors are a dying breed: within the next couple of decades we will be extinct. What concerns those of us who are still around is that the testimony about the Holocaust we leave behind is accurate and true. Every word of your review of the film is a disservice to Holocaust history.

Respectfully,

Peter Kubicek
New York

The letter writer is the author of a Holocaust memoir titled “1000:1 ODDS – Memoir of a World War II Childhood”

The Washington Post's Mensa Invitational

2011-11-25T20:35:00.000-08:00

The Washington Post's Mensa Invitational once again invited
readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it by adding,
subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition.>

>
Here are the winners:
>
> 1. Cashtration (n.): The act of buying a house, which
> renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period of time.
>
> 2. Ignoranus : A person who's both stupid and an asshole.
>
> 3. Intaxicaton : Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which
> lasts until you realize it was your money to start with.
>
> 4. Reintarnation : Coming back to life as a hillbilly.
>
> 5. Bozone ( n.): The substance surrounding stupid people
> that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately,
> shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.
>
> 6. Foreploy : Any misrepresentation about yourself for the
> purpose of getting laid.
>
> 7. Giraffiti : Vandalism spray-painted very, very high
>
> 8. Sarchasm : The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit
> and the person who doesn't get it.
>
> 9. Inoculatte : To take coffee intravenously when you are
> running late.
>
> 10. Osteopornosis : A degenerate disease. (This one got
> extra credit.)
>
> 11. Karmageddon : It's like, when everybody is sending off
> all these really bad vibes, right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and
> it's like, a serious bummer.
>
> 12. Decafalon (n.): The grueling event of getting through
> the day consuming only things that are good for you.
>
> 13. Glibido : All talk and no action.
>
> 14. Dopeler Effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem
> smarter when they come at you rapidly.
>
> 15. Arachnoleptic Fit (n.): The frantic dance performed
> just
> after you've accidentally walked through a spider web.
>
> 16. Beelzebug (n.): Satan in the form of a mosquito, that
> gets into your bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.
>
> 17. Caterpallor ( n.): The color you turn after finding
> half
> a worm in the fruit you're eating.
>
> The Washington Post has also published the winning
> submissions to its yearly contest, in which readers are asked to supply
> alternate meanings for common words.
>
> And the winners are:
>
> 1. Coffee, n. The person upon whom one coughs.
>
> 2. Flabbergasted, adj. Appalled by discovering how much
> weight one has gained.
>
> 3. Abdicate, v. To give up all hope of ever having a flat
> stomach.
>
> 4. Esplanade, v. To attempt an explanation while drunk.
>
> 5. Willy-nilly, adj. Impotent.
>
> 6. Negligent, adj.. Absentmindedly answering the door when
> wearing only a nightgown.
>
> 7. Lymph, v. To walk with a lisp.
>
> 8. Gargoyle, n. Olive-flavored mouthwash.
>
> 9. Flatulence, n. Emergency vehicle that picks up someone
> who has been run over by a steamroller.
>
> 10. Balderdash, n. A rapidly receding hairline. (Everyone
> having a high forehead appreciates this concept.)
>
> 11. Testicle, n. A humorous question on an exam.
>
> 12. Rectitude, n. The formal, dignified bearing adopted by
> proctologists.
>
> 13. Pokemon, n. A Rastafarian proctologist.
>
> 14. Oyster, n. A person who sprinkles his conversation with
> Yiddishisms.
>
> 15. Frisbeetarianism, n. The belief that, after death, the
> soul flies up onto the roof and gets stuck there.
>
> 16. Circumvent, n. An opening in the front of boxer shorts
> worn by Jewish men

Polar Cities to Save Mankind from Climate Chaos?

2011-11-25T20:08:00.001-08:00

Okay, call me Noah or call me Jonah, or just call me a blooming idiot, but I must tell you before I depart these shores that I am embarked on a one-man campaign to get people to seriously consider a worst-case prediction of the British chemist and inventor James Lovelock: life in “polar cities” arrayed around the shores of an ice-free Arctic Ocean in a greenhouse-warmed world.

Lovelock, who in 1972 conceived of Earth’s crust, climate and veneer of life as a unified self-sustaining entity, Gaia, foresees humanity in full pole-bound retreat within a century as areas around the tropics roast — a scenario far outside even the worst-case projections of climate scientists.

After reading a newspaper column in which Lovelock predicted disastrous warming, I teamed up with Deng Cheng-hong, a Taiwanese artist, and set up some websites showing designs for self-sufficient Arctic communities.

My intent is just to conduct a thought experiment that might prod people out of their comfort zone on climate — which remains, for many, a someday, somewhere issue.
Lovelock has an optimistic view that humans will somehow muddle through the current Long Emergency, albeit with a greatly reduced population.
I am also an optimist.

Lovelock believes taht we must learn how to retreat from the world that we’re in. Planning a good retreat is always a good measure of generalship.
The retreat, he insists, will be toward the poles. Therefore: polar cities?

As you know, there is already an intensifying push to develop Arctic resources and test shipping routes that could soon become practical should the floating sea ice in the Arctic routinely vanish in summers. Sensing the shift, the U.S. Coast Guard has proposed establishing its first permanent Arctic presence, a helicopter station in Barrow, Alaska, the northernmost town in the United States. It’s not a stretch to think of Barrow as a hub for expanding commercial fishing and trade through the Bering Strait.

The strategic significance of an opening Arctic has also made the pages of Foreign Affairs magazine, in an article by Scott Borgerson, a former Coast Guard officer who is now a scholar at the Council on Foreign Relations.

So even if humanity isn’t driven to Arctic shores by climate calamity at lower latitudes, it’s a sure bet that the far north will be an ever busier place. Urban planners, get out your mukluks. In the meantime, scientists, marathon runners, and others are already making the North Pole a busy place.

And I am calling for the immediate construction of 144 polar cities across the northern regions of our planet. I hope I am wrong, but just in case,
Lovelock is right, we just might need polar cities.

''My March to Liberation: A Jewish Boy's Story of Partizan Warfare''

2011-11-25T18:59:00.000-08:00

Paul Strassmann, a Holocaust survivor now living in Connecticut, recently published a book he wrote titled ''My March to Liberation: A Jewish Boy's Story of Partizan Warfare'' -- in paperback.

Paul Strassmann, PhD, is a Distinguished Professor of Information Sciences at George Mason University in the USA, and is the author of 10 books and many articles. He is also the recipient of the Gen. Stefanik Medal for his actions as a guerilla commando from September 1944 through March 1945 in Czechoslovakia.

Readers should bear in mind that this recently re-published Holocaust memoir is, according to some Holocaust historians and other Jewish observers, ''not entirely accurate'', what with the passing of time and the way memory works. Dr. Strassman might have created theses that are contrary to verifiable historical facts,
according to some observers and Holocaust historians in America and Europe. In some ways, his book somewhat distorts Holocaust history, observers say, although given his age and memories, he is to be forgiven for whatever mistakes are in the book, don't you think?. He meant well, and the book does serve a purpose. Read it and weep.

The Newly-edited Book's Re-Publication Date was October 12, 2011.

My March to Liberation: A Jewish Boy's Story of Partizan Warfare is the compelling saga of a young Jewish boy coming of age during World War II. Paul Strassmann was 15 when his family's life in Trenčín, Slovakia, was turned upside down by the war. His memoir tells one man's story of what it was like to be a teenager during World War II -- what he learned, what he lost, and what he had to do to survive, according to the book blurb on Amazon.com

Amazon adds: During the summer and fall of 1944 life became perilous. Strassman's family was deported, and he became a fugitive, but he quickly determined that he was unsuited for a life in hiding. He joined a partizan unit, and took part in military actions and survival efforts during the brutal winter months that followed.Strassmann's memoir reflects on the reasons he chose to take up combat as a means of escaping the Germans. Not only does he provide the reader with recollections of various partizan campaigns, but he also offers tender portrayals of those he loved and eventually lost. In addition, the memoir addresses how the Slovak government methodically organized the impoverishment and then the annihilation of Slovak Jews -- actions that Strassmann describes as the "bureaucratization of genocide."

My March to Liberation will appeal to World War II historians as well as to general readers drawn to gripping memoir, as Strassman brings to life a lesser-known area of World War II history in a vivid way.

NOTE: Distributed for George Mason University Press, which is also the university where Dr Paul A. Strassman has taught.