Sands of Sorrow

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Movie
Original title Sands of Sorrow
Country of production Egypt , Jordan
original language English
Publishing year 1950
length 28 minutes
Rod
script Theodore A. Murders
production Council for Relief of Palestinian Arab Refugees
camera Don Senick
occupation
  • John S. Martin (Speaker)
  • Dorothy Thompson
  • Hind al-Husseini

Sands of Sorrow is a 28-minute documentary film made in 1950 about the situation of Arab refugees after the war in Palestine . It is part of the 2009 UNESCO World Document Heritage UNRWA - Photo and Film Archives of Palestinian Refugees . This film is highlighted among the UNRWA archives because it contains the first ever film material about the situation in the refugee camps . Slightly didactic in tone, Sands of Sorrow was primarily aimed at Christian institutions and aid organizations.

Making the film

The film was produced by the Council for Relief of Palestinian Arab Refugees , an umbrella organization for several American Christian aid organizations. Theodore A. Morde was the director of the recordings, Don Senick was the cameraman and John S. Martin was the spokesman. In 1950 the film was mainly shot in Gaza , the Jerusalem area and the Amman area .

The filmmaker, journalist and adventurer Theodore Morde was no stranger. In 1940 he had returned from a five-month expedition in the Honduran jungle with various artifacts that he had allegedly discovered in the "City of the Monkey God". He did not reveal the location of this archaeological site until his suicide (1954), and it remained and will not be found. Later Morde was a representative of Reader's Digest in Cairo , which was apparently the cover for his secret service activities. With the backing of OSS and military circles, he traveled from Cairo to Istanbul in 1943 and met the German ambassador Franz von Papen to promote him as a central figure for the resistance against Hitler. After the war Morde worked as an advisor to the Egyptian government and the Egyptian ambassador in Washington . (The benevolent portrayal of Egyptian policy towards the Palestinians is evident in Sands of Sorrow .)

Cinematographer Don Senick had worked as a war correspondent for Fox Movietone News . In 1943 he accompanied a US Marine Corps landing in Tarawa and was wounded in the process.

aesthetics

The film pursues a concern that was relatively new in 1950, it promotes global humanitarian commitment and also relies on aesthetic means. It is, according to Lyndsey Stonebridge, “a film that really knows how to bring grief to life - there is no lack of visual cues for empathy . It's a beautiful film ... tents in the sand, like by Paul Klee , monochrome rows of people standing in line for food, a montage of interiors and faces, ruins and sanctuaries: modernist techniques and ethnographic detail are masterfully combined by ... Theodore A. Morde. "

content

The film does not provide information about the reasons why people are in refugee camps under such miserable conditions. You are there as if by some evil doom. “There are no perpetrators, causes, politics or history for this film, only consequences, people and suffering.” The word Israel does not appear at all; literally it says: "The tragedy of war came down on this land and made them wanderers."

Framing

The documentary is framed by a speech with which the journalist and human rights activist Dorothy Thompson addresses the audience. At the beginning she pointed out that film recordings could only depict part of reality. At the end of the film, she emphasizes that the internationally active, mainly Christian aid organizations have already done a lot for the Palestine refugees, but also have other fields of activity. Everyone who learns about the situation of the refugees, especially the children, is obliged to answer the biblical question “Shall I be my brother's keeper?” With “Yes!”.

In Sands of Sorrow , Thompson emphasizes that she has just returned from a trip to the Middle East, so speaking to the audience under the impression of what she experienced. This is incorrect insofar as, for practical reasons, her address was recorded prior to her trip. With the support of the State Department , Thompson approached the Arab side in the Middle East conflict and founded American Friends of the Middle East , an anti-Zionist organization.

While Thompson was happy to use her name and notoriety in favor of the film Sands of Sorrow , she did not share the apolitical focus on charity, the message of the film, and was interested in the political implications of the refugee problem. As a result, she lost much of the sympathies she had acquired in World War II and was also accused of anti-Semitism .

Documentary film recordings

Gaza

The first shots of the film show a very improvised tent camp in the desert. Close-ups give the impression that it is mainly women, small children and the elderly who live here. A truck approaches. Goods are being unloaded. The spokesman interprets the scene: The Egyptian military is distributing aid to Palestine refugees who are living in a camp in the Gaza Strip (then Egyptian) under very unsuitable conditions. The camera shows how people line up for the distribution. The film goes into great detail on how relief supplies, e.g. B. from UNESCO , Egypt how they are unloaded, transported and processed ( milk powder ). People depend on these food rations for their survival in the desert, but there is no regular supply of army trucks. There is such a housing problem in the Egyptian cities that there is no alternative to the camps in the Gaza Strip. Egypt is overwhelmed by offering the refugees more than this precarious care.

Bethlehem and Jerusalem

Two large refugee camps have emerged near Bethlehem, which are overcrowded and poorly supplied, as in the Gaza Strip. There are no details and close-ups here. The film focuses on a private initiative. It takes in street children who were separated from their families in the Palestinian War and whose identification is only slowly progressing. The parents may have died or were placed in a refugee camp. Here the children find comparatively friendly living conditions. They have school lessons outdoors, plant a school garden, play soccer. These recordings were made in the “Arab Children's Home” Dar Al-Tifl Al-Arabi , which was founded on April 25, 1948 by Hind al-Husseini , a philanthropist from the well-known Jerusalem upper-class Husseini family. The children's home is located in the East Jerusalem district of Sheikh Jarrah . After the Deir Yasin massacre , Husseini took in 55 surviving children here who were helplessly wandering around the old city of Jerusalem. The context of the massacre does not appear in Sands of Sorrow , which means that the film remains true to its line. Rather, it is said that Husseini took in wandering children "after hostilities ".

The camera now shows a group of refugee women at sewing machines that make children's clothing. Some scenes from Jerusalem's old town show the workshops of a shoemaker, a tinkerer and a carpenter, where apparently some young refugees have found work and where everything is produced in piecework for everyday needs in the refugee camps near Bethlehem: shoes, tin cups and furniture.

Surroundings of Amman

The spokesman mentions that not all refugees live in one of the overcrowded camps. The camera accompanies a journey from Jerusalem towards Jericho and Jordan - a biblical landscape, as the film emphasizes when looking at its target audience. Groups of families had found shelter in olive groves or on the banks of the Jordan. The destination of the trip is Amman, capital of the Hashemite kingdom and at the same time the coordination point for refugee aid in the area east of Jerusalem. The camera shows the ruins of a Roman amphitheater , in which some families have set up dwellings that, as the narrator explains, do not want to be filmed up close.

Now the living conditions in a Jordanian refugee camp are shown. School lessons are very elementary given the large number of children; This creates a contrast for the film audience to the offers that were created for the street children in the Jerusalem area. The film focuses on health care at this refugee camp and describes it as completely inadequate. There are vaccination campaigns, but medical help is only available to the seriously ill. A doctor and three nurses - even refugees - are on duty to help 20,000 people. The film shows some emaciated men in sick beds; the spokesman said they had little chance of recovery due to their malnutrition. Two children with bloated bellies are shown and the viewer is informed that these two died shortly after the shooting. The focus is on the high child mortality rate . Only one in five children survive the first few months. If a small child could be successfully helped, it would return to its family and be another small person who had to be cared for as part of the aid programs for Palestine refugees. The future depends on these children, who have seen little else in their lives than war and flight.

literature

  • Lyndsey Stonebridge: Humanitarianism Was Never Enough: Dorothy Thompson, Sands of Sorrow, and the Arabs of Palestine . In: Humanity: An International Journal of Human Rights , vol 8, 3rd Winter, 2017, pp. 441–465. (PDF, online )

The film on the internet

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Memory of the World Register: UNRWA Photo and Film Archives of Palestinian Refugees , p. 4.
  2. ^ Lyndsey Stonebridge: Humanitarianism Was Never Enough , p. 441.
  3. ^ Lyndsey Stonebridge: Humanitarianism Was Never Enough , p. 447.
  4. ^ Douglas Preston: Lure of the Lost City. In: National Geographic. October 2015, accessed July 23, 2019 .
  5. ↑ Jürgen Heideking , Christoph Mauch (Ed.): USA and German resistance. American Intelligence Service Analysis and Operations during World War II . Francke Verlag, Tübingen / Basel 1993, p. 51.
  6. ↑ Jürgen Heideking, Christoph Mauch (ed.): USA and German Resistance , Tübingen / Basel 1993, p. 39.
  7. ^ Lyndsey Stonebridge: Humanitarianism Was Never Enough , p. 448.
  8. ^ The Press: Best-Covered Story. In: TIME. December 13, 1943, accessed July 23, 2019 .
  9. ^ Lyndsey Stonebridge: Humanitarianism Was Never Enough , p. 447.
  10. ^ Lyndsey Stonebridge: Humanitarianism Was Never Enough , p. 449.
  11. ^ Lyndsey Stonebridge: Humanitarianism Was Never Enough , p. 449.
  12. ^ A b c Lyndsey Stonebridge: Humanitarianism Was Never Enough , p. 449.
  13. ^ Lyndsey Stonebridge: Humanitarianism Was Never Enough , pp. 453 f.
  14. ^ DTA History. In: Dar Al-Tifel Al-Arabi Organization. Retrieved July 23, 2019 .
  15. ^ Lyndsey Stonebridge: Humanitarianism Was Never Enough , p. 450.