Jewish Life in Interwar Łódź

Jews and the Polish Spirit: In poylishe velder

Encouraged by the success of Jeden z 36, Forbert subsequently (in late 1928) presented a more complex vision of Jewish involvement in the Polish state-building project. As his vehicle, he chose a historical epic, Joseph Opatoshu’s iconic novel In poylishe velder (In Polish Forests). 30 The enterprise was an ambitious one. Forbert engaged Majer Bałaban, the noted Jewish historian, to ensure historical accuracy. Forbert also sought a location for filming that could symbolize Polish-Jewish brotherhood. The film begins with a shot of some ancient oaks from a Polish forest, with a traditional Polish forest keeper looking at poor children collecting wood. An intertitle follows: “Because the Polish forests are great and wide, they can support the poor people who use them to warm their cold dwellings.” 31 Indeed, the film underscored the character of Poland as a generous home for the dispossessed, recalling the myth of the magnanimous reception of persecuted Jews by Kazimierz the Great. Echoing Forbert, the journal Kino dla wszystkich noted that “the work testifies how close the Polish Jews are to those Polish roads, Polish trees, Polish water, rituals, traditions, ways of life, Polish spirit.” 32

 

The charm of the surrounding non-Jewish culture is highlighted from the film’s outset, when it shows pagan rituals connected with the Vistula from the point of view of the main character Mordkhe. This display recalls the legend of the Princess Wanda, who threw herself into the Vistula because she did not want to be married to a German; instead, she became queen of the river. The film presents the fishermen’s ceremonial offering to her in order to quiet the Vistula’s waves, indirectly recalling the myth of Esterke as elaborated in Yiddish literature. 33 Mordkhe is curious about and attracted to these strange but magnetic rituals.

The film told about Jewish patriotism in the January uprising. 34 Deviating slightly from Opatoshu’s novel, whose first half related Mordkhe’s early life, the film’s main plot developed this theme from the outset, underlining Mordkhe’s activities as a traveling agitator who is perceived alternately as a Jew and a Catholic. Thus, this film emphasized the supremacy of the third space. It praised people active in both Jewish and non-Jewish societies, as well as people who transferred cultural components, bridging the two worlds. Using techniques of melodrama, the film encouraged the spectator to identify with people active in Jewish and Polish simultaneously. In this way, the film recreated the narrative of integration and Polish-Jewish brotherhood that crystallized during the second half of the nineteenth century and urged its acceptance again in the late 1920s, when that narrative had long been under attack. Perhaps it was precisely this fresh assault that led to its resurrection.

  1. According to the director, the book was chosen because “only a film based on remarkable ideals could lead to success.” “W lasach polskich na ekranie: Rozmowa z rez˙yserem Jonasem Turkowem,” Kino dla wszystkich, December 1, 1925, 28.↩
  2. Sh. L. Shneiderman [Emil, pseud. ], “In varshtat fun di poylishe velder,” Film velt 1 (1929): 7. On the identification of the pseudonym, see “S. L. and Eileen Shneiderman Collection of Yiddish Books,” The University of Maryland Libraries and the Meyerhoff Center for Jewish Studies, last modified January 10, 2013, http://www.lib.umd.edu/SLSES/donors/decades.html.↩
  3. Ed. EK. “‘Społeczeństwo polskie a lasy polskie,’” Kino dla wszystkich, December 15, 1925, 18.↩
  4. Shmeruk, Esterke Story, 77–81.↩
  5. Hoberman, Bridge of Light, 143–46; Gross, Toldot ha-kolno’a, 36–40; Sheila Skaff, The Law of the Looking Glass: Cinema in Poland 1896–1939 (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2008), 98–101.↩

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