The way is long

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Movie
Original title The way is long
Country of production Germany
original language Yiddish , Polish , with German subtitles n
Publishing year 1948
length 78 minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Herbert B. Fredersdorf , Marek Goldstein
script Karl Georg Külb , Israel Beker ; Template: Israel Beker
production Internationale Film Organization GmbH (IFO.), Munich
( Abraham Weinstein )
music Lothar Bruhne
camera Franz Koch , Jakub Jonilowicz , Herbert Geier
cut Herbert B. Fredersdorf
occupation

Long is the Path is a German feature film from 1947/48. It is the first German feature film of the post-war period that focuses on the fate of Holocaust victims and survivors. It is also the only film produced in Germany in the Yiddish language to date .

The film combines play and documentary scenes into a dramatic overall plot.

action

The film is set in the Upper Bavarian district town of Landsberg am Lech in a camp for displaced persons who were abducted by the Germans from their home countries and liberated from concentration and extermination camps in 1945. In flashbacks, the film tells the story of the Jewish Jelin family, who were first driven from their apartment in Warsaw to the ghetto and from there to the Auschwitz concentration camp . However, the son, David, manages to escape from the deportation train and makes his way to the partisans, where he survives until the end of the war. He meets Dora Berkowitz, who has lost her parents and does not know how to go on living. David also learned of his father's death; the mother is missing. Together with Dora he travels to the American zone of occupation in Germany to look for his mother. They arrive at the completely overcrowded DP camp in Landsberg am Lech and get married. After the mother has finally been found, everyone hopes to be able to leave Germany soon and travel to a Jewish state - which did not yet exist at the time the film was made.

background

Co-director Marek Goldstein was a Holocaust survivor himself. The film was made in the Munich-Geiselgasteig studio, in and around Munich, and in a DP refugee camp. Carl L. Kirmse was responsible for the buildings . The premiere took place on September 1, 1948 in West Berlin .

literature

  • Peter Pleyer: German Post-War Film 1946–1948. (= Studies on Journalism, Munster Series. Volume 4). CJ Fahle, Münster (Westphalia) 1965, DNB 453800513 .
  • Eric A. Goldman: Visions, Images, and Dreams. Yiddish Film Past and Present. UMI Research Press, Ann Arbor 1983.
  • J. Hoberman: Bridge of Light. Yiddish Film Between Two Worlds. Schocken, New York 1991, ISBN 0-8052-4107-8 .
  • Erika Gregor, Ulrich Gregor, Helma Schleif (Red.): Jewish worlds in film. Friends of the Deutsche Kinemathek, Berlin 1993, ISBN 3-927876-06-2 .
  • Nele Mildenberger: Jews in Post-War Germany. The Jewish 'Displaced Persons' in the American zone of occupation and their portrayal in the film 'Long is the Way'. unpublished Master thesis. Bremen 1993.
  • Bettina Greffrath: Images of society in the post-war period. German feature films 1945–1949. Centaurus, Pfaffenweiler 1995, ISBN 3-89085-954-2 .
  • Cilly Kugelmann : The way is long. A Jewish-German film cooperation. In: Auschwitz: History, Reception and Effect. (= 1996 yearbook on the history and effects of the Holocaust ). Campus, Frankfurt am Main 1996, ISBN 3-593-35441-1 .
  • Tim Gallwitz: Strategies in dealing with the National Socialist past: The depiction of Jews in German post-war films against the background of the extermination of the Jews. unpublished Master's thesis, Hamburg 1996, OCLC 258320102 .
  • Sabine Ohnesorge: The depiction of the persecution and extermination of the Jews in German post-war films. unpublished Master thesis. Berlin 2001.
  • Peter Reichel: Invented memory. World War I and the murder of Jews in film and theater. Hanser, Munich 2004, ISBN 3-446-20481-4 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Alfred Bauer: German feature film Almanach. Volume 2: 1946–1955 , p. 26 f.