Behind The Scenes - Plonsk - Identifying a town

There are as many stories as there are films. It has already happened that someone just brought me a box and said, "We found this in the…" someone brought me ten films and said, "We found this in the loft," "I'm selling my house and I found this in the loft. Take it." It's not known where it was filmed, or by whom. In our research into original footage we ask a number of basic questions: Who was the filmmaker? Why did he make the film? When was the film taken? Where was it filmed? Has it ever been screened? Is it possible to identify anyone? Original footage contains many levels of information and it is very important to try to examine the various aspects of every layer and the information that can be gleaned from every film. It's important to try to date the film, to identify places that appear in the film and geographic area, to try to identify events and people; everything in order to expand our knowledge of history and to commemorate the victims. The more information that we have about each film, the more that its importance and value as an historic document will be increased. Occasionally we receive films and we do not know where they were filmed, or we cannot be certain. There are films where the location that they were filmed is supposedly known, but sometimes we have to reexamine the information that we receive from the original archive or from the person who gave us the material because it turns out that the information is sometimes incorrect. In the new Holcaust History Museum at Yad Vashem there is a map of the ghettos within which appears a film taken in 1940 by Horst Loerzer who entitled it "The Jew in the Ciechanów Administrative District, 1940." Because of this title, the location filmed is identified in various archives as Ciechanów But it is referring to an administrative district and not the city of Ciechanów as it is according to the title it was given by Loerzer. In order to include the film in the map of the ghettos We had to be very, very precise And to find the exact location and could not assume something more general. And this raises the question Is it the city of Ciechanów or another city in the administrative district of Ciechanów ? In order to investigate this matter It was necessary to see if anything within the film could give us any indication of location. In the film there are four shop signs: One for a hatter named Hersh Pokorski, One for a grocery store named after Hersch Mendel Dancygier, One for a cobbler called Szymon Fater And a tailor called Chaim Grinberg. These shop signs were the key to answering the question. A search in the Central Database of Shoah Victims' Names only brought up Pokorski's name. A Page of Testimony had been completed by his sister and it states that Pokorski, a hatter, was born and lived in Plonsk, a town in the Ciechanów region. This was the starting point for identifying the place Not as Ciechanów but as Plonsk. This raised two further questions: Could we verify the identification? And was it just this section that was filmed in Plonsk or was the whole film taken there? Pokorski's name appears under "Plonsk" in the Polish business directory from 1929 as a hat maker, and his father, Yisrael Nakhman, is listed as a resident of Plonsk in records from the 19th century. But the identification could not be based solely upon the information that we had about the Pokorski family. We also found the shopkeeper Dancygier's name in the business directory. In the memorial book for Plonsk and the surrounding area Pokorski, Dancygier and his family are listed as residents of Plonsk that perished in the Holocaust. Accordingly, we could determine that at least the first part of the footage was filmed in Plonsk. Our question was now whether the whole film was of Plonsk or just this section. The closing scene was filmed in the cemetery. One of the gravestones seen in the film is of Ester, the wife of Beniamin Jakubowicz, who died in 1935. There is no location inscribed on the gravestone, But a search in Yad Vashem's Central Database of Shoah Victims' Names found that her son Eliasz (Eliahu), his wife and their children were from Plonsk and that all died in the Holocaust. This was the final piece of the puzzle And helped to confirm that the entire film was recorded in Plonsk. It is clear from the title that Jews were the subject of the film and indeed, almost the whole film documents the Jews in Plonsk. But most of it seems at least, on the face of it, objective although it is clear that the filmmaker chose who to film and who not to film. However, there is one passage of the film that clearly shows the filmmakers attitude towards the Jews. In one scene he stands the Jews in a manner which is known to us from the Nazi propaganda and shows the "Jewish physiognomy". He has the Jews stand facing the camera and in profile, and here the filmmaker really shows his antisemitic approach. Films from the Holocaust provide additional information to that which is found in other documentation and also new information which doesn't exist in other sources and they build the visual memory of the history of the Holocaust. It is very important to research archive footage in depth, the more that we deepen the research, the more that we find more information about the footage, the more that we will increase its importance as an historic document.