“Slavdom Shakes Hands with the Ghetto”: The Filmmakers

From the beginning of the twentieth century, Kazimierz on the Vistula was quite popular among artists because of its mixture of typical and atypical features. The town was a place where an urban landscape merged with the surrounding countryside, where centuries-old buildings stood against the background of gentle rolling hills. Kazimierz boasted a picturesque market square, an impressive assemblage of churches and synagogues, and the winding Vistula River, with its sandy shore and vast woods beyond. The ruins of the legendary king’s castle watched over the city from the hills. ⁴

In 1939, the poet Andrzej Wolica mentioned a specific “psychological climate” that characterized the little town. ⁵ At the same time, Karol Siciński, the well-known Polish architect, declared that in Kazimierz, “Slavdom shakes hands with the ghetto.” ⁶ Echoing the myth of King Kazimierz and Esterke, Siciński interpreted the space as a place where Polishness and Jewishness merged singularly in a way that gave the town a grand, charming, and unpretentious touch.⁷ Kazimierz was an ideal place of reference for writers and artists who themselves merged Slavic and Jewish elements and who worked in what might be termed a social “third space.” ⁸ Occupants of that space embodied the polysemic character of the interwar Polish Jewry; they created art on the border between the two cultures and belonged simultaneously to both. ⁹ Most Yiddish filmmakers came from that group. ¹⁰ They worked in both Yiddish and Polish and depicted on-screen worlds in both languages. ¹¹ From a socioeconomic standpoint, these filmmakers belonged to Warsaw’s Jewish middle class, which had undergone a process of acculturation or transculturation over a period of several decades. ¹² Some of these figures of Yiddish cinema moved back and forth between the two worlds of Yiddish and Polish filmmaking. For instance, during the 1920s, Leo Forbert produced about ten films, half of them “Jewish,” as it were. ¹³ Henryk Szaro’s body of work was similar to Forbert’s in this regard. There were those who tended to work more in Yiddish, like Aleksander Marten (director of On a heym in Yiddish and O czym marzą kobiety in Polish). Others, like Michał Waszyński, the director of Der dibuk, one of the best-known Yiddish films, made only occasional incursions into Yiddish filmmaking. ¹⁴ Waszyński worked with Anatol Stern, a famous poet and leading futurist, whose work in Yiddish film was sporadic as well. ¹⁵ The filmmakers’ attitude toward their own works in both languages was balanced. Waszyński, for example, was especially proud of his Yiddish film, Der dibuk. ¹⁶ However, he considered both that film and his Polish-language Znachor to be his best work. ¹⁷ Stern mentioned in the same breath writing the screenplays for both of those films. ¹⁸ Jan Nowina-Przybylski, a Christian film director, was quoted as saying that of all his films, he was most pleased with two, his Yiddish Yidl mitn fidl (shot on location in Kazimierz, 1936) and Manewry miłosne (1935), in Polish. ¹⁹ Both of these films were based on screenplays by Konrad Tom, whose work in Yiddish cinema was outstanding. (He was part of the teams of Yidl mitn fidl and Mamele [1938]), as were his Jewish characters in Polish films; for example, consider Moniek, alias Mieszek Oszczep-Sardinenfisz, in Sto metrów miłości [1932]).

Because we are speaking about filmmakers who worked in the “third space” of the encounter between Polish and Jewish cultures, I would like to explore their representation of a space that has served as an icon of that encounter—Kazimierz on the Vistula. After all, these filmmakers had visited Kazimierz and were quite familiar both with the symbolic legacy of the town and its river and with its reality. ²⁰

4. Adamczyk-Garbowska, Odcienie tożsamości: Literatura żydowska jako zjawisko wielojęzyczne (Lublin: Wydawnictow Uniwersytetu Marrii Curie-Skłodowskiej, 2004), 50–54; Adamczyk-Garbowska, Kazimierz vel Kuzmir, 20–28; Renata Piątkowska, “I Come from Kazimierz, the Town of Kazimierz, where Painters Sit...,” in In Kazimierz the Vistula River Spoke to Them in Yiddish: Jewish Painters in the Art Colony of Kazimierz, ed. Waldemar Odorowski and Dorota Święcicka-Odorowska (Kazimierz Dolny: Muzeum Nadwislańskie, 2008); Waldemar Odorowski, “‘Painters Walked this Den of Poverty, as if it Was a Paradise,’” ibid. ↩
5. Andrzej Wolica, “Mój Kazimierz,’” Wiadomosśi Literackie 2 (1939), quoted in Adamczyk-Garbowska, Kazimierz vel Kuzmir, 197, 381. ↩
6. Quoted in Adamczyk-Garbowska, Kazimierz vel Kuzmir, 218, 383.↩
7. Karol Siciński, “Urbanizacja Kazimierza,” Wiadomości Literackie 2 (1939), quoted in ibid., 20, 383.↩
8. Theorists have used the term “third space” in various ways to describe and analyze the situation of ethnonational minority groups whose members live within a majority society that pressures them to acculturate and marginalizes them. I apply this concept to the field of art and media, using the term to denote how the real geographical space creates a symbolic space that contains members of the ethnonational minority who have adopted cultural elements of both the majority and minority groups and are active in both spaces. Following anthropologists Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson, I treat this third space as a dynamic social space based on both “recognition of cultural similarity or social contiguity” and a response to “exclusion and constructions of otherness.” See Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson, “Culture, Power, Place: Ethnography at the End of an Era,” in Culture, Power, Place: Explorations in Critical Anthropology, ed. Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997), 13. For a theoretical discussion of a real third space and an imaginary space, see Edward W. Soja, Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles and Other Real-and-Imagined Places (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1996). For a general discussion of power, space, and identity-building, see Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991) and Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994). See also Bhabha, “The Third Space: Interview with Homi Bhabha,” in Identity: Community, Culture, Difference, ed. Jonathan Rutherford (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1998), 207–21.↩
9. On the polysemic character of Polish Jewry, see the classic paper by Chone Shmeruk, “Hebrew-Yiddish-Polish: A Trilingual Jewish Culture,” in The Jews of Poland between Two World Wars, ed. Israel Gutman, 285–311 (Hanover, NH: Published for Brandeis University Press by University Press of New England, 1989). ↩
10. With a few illustrious exceptions, such as Joseph Green, Alter Kacyzne, Henryk Bojm, Moshe Broderson, and Yekhezkel Moyshe Naiman, who worked only in Yiddish.↩
11. Edward Zajicek, Poza ekranem: Kinematografia polska, 1918–1991 (Warsaw: Filmoteka Narodowa, 1992), 28–29.↩
12. Marcos Silber, “Narrowing the Borderland’s ‘Third Space’: Yiddish Cinema in Poland in the Late 1930s,” Simon Dubnow Institute Yearbook 7 (2008): 236–39.↩
13. In 1922, he produced Ludzie mroku; in 1923, Syn szatana. As Leo Forbert Film, he produced Ślubowanie (Tkies kaf, 1924) and Jeden z 36 (Lamed-vovnik, 1925). As EF ES Forbert Film, he produced W lasach polskich (In die poylishe velder, 1929) and Rywale (1925). The same year he produced a documentary on the foundation of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. In 1926, he produced The Miner’s Daughter in Australia. As Leo Film, he produced Czerwony błazen (1926), Zew morza (1927), Kropka nad i (1928), Policmajster Tagiejew (1929), Uroda życia (1930), Serce na ulicy (1931), Legion ulicy (1932), and 10 procent dla mnie (1933). This last film included few “Jewish motifs” in Lopek’s character. In 1935 he produced a documentary—“Świat, dzieńi noc Palestyny”—in Palestine. Kalendarz wiadomości filmowe 1933 (Warsaw: Rotsztadt-Miastecki Ignacy, 1933), 47, 142–43; “Z żałobnej karty, B. P. Leon Forbert,” Wiadomości Filmowe, August 15, 1938, 2. ↩
14. Although generally he did not pay much attention to Jewish topics, Jewish characters appear in several of his films. For instance, in his Sto metrów miłości, one of the heroes of the film is a Jew, a grotesque patron of sports named Mieszek Oszczep-Sardinenfisz, played by Konrad Tom (who wrote the screenplay for Yidl mitn fidl). In the film Sardinenfisz takes care of gifted street children, who, thanks to his care, are able to get ahead. Despite the grotesque depiction of the man (including his name), this is not anti-Jewish imagery, since it elicits sympathy in the viewer. During the second part of the 1930s, when several Jewish filmmakers were reluctant to deal with Jewish topics because of growing anti-Semitism, Waszyński did not abandon such matters completely. Often he adopted a new strategy. On one hand he minimized the presence of Jewish characters in his Polish films. For instance, in his Co mój maąż robi w nocy? he converted a Jewish role into a non-Jew (a foreigner). Kazimierz Krukowski played not the familiar role of the Jewish Lopek but a ridiculous, though nice, Romanian baron named Lolo Carolescu. In an interview, Krukowski commented on this character with typical cynicism, referring to Hitler and the growing anti-Semitism in Poland: “Under this man’s influence I became an anti-Semite, and in the present film I play a Romanian baron.” “O tym, jak popularny Lopek—gwoli Hitlerowi—antysemita¸ został,” Reporter filmowy, July 19, 1934. What he evidently meant was that antisemitic trends made it hard to play Jewish characters in a film in which a well-known, much-loved Jewish character like Lopek might appear. Nevertheless, unlike his colleges he occasionally presented minor Jewish figures in his Polish films, underlining their marginality (for example, the grain merchant in Ostatnia brygada from 1938). On the other hand, in Der dibuk, he maximized the Jewish presence, showing on screen a complete Jewish society, a kind of Yiddishland. Of course, this film was made in Yiddish. For elaboration see Silber, “Narrowing the Borderland’s ‘Third Space.’” ↩
15. In summer 1939, Stern took part in an evening devoted to poetry written in Polish by Jews. During the evening, the poems were read in the Polish original and in Yiddish translation. Adamczyk-Garbowska, “Jewish Writers on Painters in Kazimierz,” in Odorowski and Święcicka-Odorowska, In Kazimierz. ↩
16. Samuel Blumenfeld, Waszyński’s biographer, quotes various acquaintances in different periods of Waszyński’s life as saying that Waszyński ascribed the greatest importance to Der dibuk, his only Yiddish film. Samuel Blumenfeld, L’homme qui voulait être prince: les vies imaginaires de Michal Waszynski (Paris: B. Grasset, 2006), 80, 100.↩
17. Film, September 1, 1937, 2.↩
18. “Utwórcó w polskiego filmu: Rozmowa z Anatolem Sternem,” Świat filmu, August 1, 1937, 6.↩
19. Tadeusz Naruszewicz, “W polskim świecie filmowym: Artysta i człowiek (wspomnienia pośmiertne o ś. p. Nowinie Przybylskim),” Srebrny Ekran: miesięcznik filmowy 18 (1937–1938): 31.↩
20. See, for instance, Waldemar Odorowski, Artistic Colony in Kazimierz Dolny Centuries 19th–21st [sic]: Guide to the Permanent Exhibition at the Celejowski House (Kazimierz Dolny: Nadwiślańskie Museum in Kazimierz Dolny, 2005), 56–57, 59. ↩