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• 1 2015-09-23T17:51:25-07:00 Myth and Reality: On a heym 4 plain 2016-09-29T16:48:14-07:00

  Another film that used the associations awakened by Kazimierz to deal subtly with the question of the Jewish presence in Poland was Aleksander Marten’s On a heym, shot during the frightening final month of 1938. This film, based on a 1907 play by Jacob Gordin, offered a counterpoint to the light and pleasant Yidl mitn fidl as well as to the optimistic message of In poylishe velder. Like the former, it began in Kazimierz (the “beautiful, romantic shtetl,” as Marten himself characterized it when explaining why he shot the film there) and ended in America, juxtaposing the vision of migration with the contemporary Polish Jewish reality. ⁶⁵ ) But, in contrast to the optimistic and unreal solution presented in Yidl mitn fidl, On a heym showed the impossibility of finding any viable solution for Polish Jews.

  Although, like in Yidl, Kazmierz is used to symbolize Poland, in On a Heym it is not Esterke who conjures up past coexistence but the Vistula River and the well-rooted forest, in a fashion more akin to In poylishe velder. The action begins with images of a small town. The iconic Kazimierz images are not presented in the film, and the little town looks as any other small town. A narrator introduces the story as a fairytale: “It was a small town in one country where living people, neither rich nor poor ... earned a living from the fields and from the river.” Ostensibly the place is everywhere; so the spectator understands that it is “Poland.” Slowly the images turn to the Vistula River, presented here as every Polish river. The narrator tells about the city’s (Jewish) fishermen, “strong as oaks, rooted in the soil,” evoking the images of In poylishe velder. Yet soon the peaceful images change: the sky becomes gray and the clouds bring a storm. The narrator explains the image of the flooded small town that now appears on the screen: “Suddenly a storm arises and the old town is shocked. The Rifkin family suffers more than others. The storm has stolen its child.” Indeed, the oldest son of the Rifkins, a Jewish family of fishermen rooted as deeply in the Vistula as an old oak in the Polish forest, is drowned.

  Marten, the film director, explained that the film’s main characters are “representatives of three Jewish generations.” Thus, the director’s notion of the archetypical structure of the three generations is clear: the grandfather is the traditional Jew, the second generation represents modernized Jews, and the two grandchildren represent the Jewish future. ⁶⁶ Here the death of the oldest son of a strongly rooted Jewish family symbolizes the harsh prospects of the Jewish future in Poland. The storm that claimed the Rifkins’ child actually swallowed the Jewish future in Poland. This long prologue, taking place in Poland, is completely absent from the play by Jacob Gordin on which this film was based. This addition by Marten stresses that the situation of homelessness in the film’s title refers to Poland.

  The father, symbolically called Avreymel (like the Biblical patriarch Abraham), is so distraught that he can no longer bear to remain in Poland. “Since Moyshe is gone, part of my heart has left me,” the father says as he prepares to leave his wife Bassheve and their younger son Khonokh for America. His wife and son finally come to America to join him. However, misfortune does not leave them: the family falls apart (due to the destructive power of Americanization), and Khonokh seemingly drowns in the Hudson River. Thus Poland’s Vistula consumed the Jews, and America’s Hudson offers no different fate. There is no future for the children of Abraham. Supposedly Khonokh drowned, but an epilogue shows that he actually escaped to find a new life. He comes back to relieve his mother, who had gone mad from agony and grief. Surprisingly, the whole family reunites. At this happy moment Bassheve, the mother, says: “We will all be together now. You and I and your brother. Do you know where we are? We are underwater.” It is my contention that the director wanted to stress in this way that even such a “happy end” emphasizes destruction and distress.

  In the play by Jacob Gordin on which this film was based, Bassheve wants to return to Poland. In the film adaptation, no such return was suggested. Indeed, the Polish reality of the late 1930s offered no such option. The situation is at an impasse. Consequently, the overall tone of the film is morbid. As film critic J. Hoberman noted, death is illustrated even by the musical motifs. ⁶⁷ According to Marten, these “play a special role.” ⁶⁸

  On a Heym was released in Warsaw in March 1939. It was not well received. The Yiddish-language press complained about its pessimistic evaluation of reality. The distinguished Literarishe bleter was astonished: “What Jew who gets a visa to America will complain that he has no home?” ⁶⁹ However, no critic blamed the film for presenting the sorrowful prospects for the Jews on Polish soil. Even the specialized Polish-language film press, though critical of the film, noted its depiction of “the impetus of the American life dreamed of by the Jewish masses” but did not express any disagreement with its somber representation of the Jewish future in Poland. ⁷⁰

  65. G. M., “A nayer yidisher film: A shmues mitn regiseur Aleksander Marten,” Literarishe bleter (1938): 752. See also Gross, Toldot ha-kolno’a, 60.↩
  66. G. M., “A nayer yidisher film.”↩
  67. Hoberman, Bridge of Light, 293–95.↩
  68. G. M., “A nayer yidisher film,” 752.↩
  69. M. A-S., “Yidisher klangfilm ‘On a heym,’” Literarishe bleter 773 (1939): 145.↩
  70. Film, April 1, 1939, 8.↩