Son of Saul is a film about a member of the Sonderkommando (Jewish prisoners forced to aid in the killing process and clean up) at Auschwitz.  What sets Son of Saul apart from most films that deal with the Holocaust is that it is not presented in a traditional narrative structure. Hungarian director László Nemes upon accepting his Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film said “over the years the Holocaust has become an abstract. It deserves a face.” Certainly he does this immediately as the camera never leaves Saul; we are either looking directly at his face in close-up or over his shoulder. We experience events with Saul as he goes about his work and later his self-imposed mission, the burial of a boy. The movie is a visceral experience — there is very little dialogue, and we only see and hear what Saul sees and hears.  Nemes gives us very little to go on, we know nothing about Saul’s past, who he once was, prior to landing in Auschwitz.  Saul is introduced to us as he emerges from a combination of mist, smoke and sound. We are immersed in a world that is out of focus and filled with a cacophony of sounds, some so sharp and real one turns to look for the offending speaker in the audience.  Nemes and his sound designer Tamas Zanyi, recorded over eight different languages speaking dialogue to create aural chaos, these layers of sound combined with the close-ups and long takes are intended to disorientate, forming a psychological experience with Saul. Nemes does not use any sentiment or melodramatic devices to tell his story. We never form an emotional bond with Saul as one might to other characters in other films on the Holocaust.

How does Son of Saul measure up against Shoah?

 The film does owe a small debt to Claude Lanzmann’s masterpiece documentary Shoah (1985), especially as it engages resourcefully with the limits of representation. Nemes has the horror take place at the edge of the frame, mainly in the shadows, out of focus, or through sound. It is relentless, but respectful. The scene involving our first encounter with the gas chamber is only reflected in the litany of expressions upon Saul’s face and the soundtrack of voices. The experience is left to our imagination. It is our knowledge of the Holocaust that creates the visual. In fact what we imagine is certainly far worse than anything he could recreate. Lanzmann in an interview given to French magazine Telerama on May 24, 2015 gave the film a positive endorsement claiming Son of Saul the “anti-Schindler’s List.” Lanzmann, was highly critical of Spielberg’s dramatic choices, especially the scene involving women entering the showers.

 What Source Material was used to write Son of Saul?

Nemes and his writing partner Clara Royer, based their script on Voices from Beneath the Ashes, a collection of testimonies written by the Sonderkommandos that was hidden away in 1944. Nemes’s grandparents also perished in Auschwitz. It was personal, and is one of the reasons why he does not tell a tale of survival. Like Shoah, Son of Saul is a film about death.

Where was it filmed?

The gas chamber and crematorium were all sets built on a sound stage in Hungary by production designer Laszlo Rajk, an architect and political activist who was responsible for the creation of the Hungarian exhibition at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial Museum.  That exhibition was one of the most jarring exhibitions I have ever encountered; it was described by a fellow participant at an educational conference as a “blitzkrieg” on the senses.  Like Son of Saul you are immersed and disorientated, by layers of sounds and visuals, reminding the visitor of the swiftness and violence of the murder of 400,000 Hungarian Jews in a few short months in 1944. The small exhibition leaves you completely depleted in the knowledge of those deaths and stays with you long after you exit.

Is this a film an educator can use in the classroom?

It is always imperative that we look at the film as a cinematic experience first. Not every film dealing with the Holocaust should be used in the classroom. Nemes, when questioned about the film, has said he has no interest in providing a manual for the film — the film is ambiguous on purpose, and that it is an artistic choice.  Not everything needs to be explained, it is a choice that leads the audience think about the film long after leaving the theater.

One always has to consider the level of knowledge the students have before showing any film.  Son of Saul relies on a higher level of knowledge to convey its meaning. It is not an easy film to watch, it is a film that asks you to consider the brutality, the victimization and the possibility of retaining ones humanity as a Sonderkommando at Auschwitz.

Will it win an Academy Award?

Probably, based on the Academy’s track record and the long running joke that if there is a Holocaust film nominated in any category, it will win an Oscar. It has already won the Grand Prix at Cannes and a Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film so the odds are good. All that aside, from a cinematic point of view it is a very artful film. The layering of sound, the camera techniques and the acting of Géza Röhrig, certainly make it a legitimate contender.

To learn more about the film or watch the trailer, visit Son of Saul’s official site.

If you’re in the Twin Cities, Son of Saul is playing now through the end of the week at the Uptown Theater and opens Friday, January 29th at the Edina Cinema.

Jodi Elowitz is an adjunct professor of the Humanities at Gateway Community College in Phoenix, Arizona and the Content Coordinator for the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies (CHGS) at the University of Minnesota. Ms. Elowitz’s area of expertise is artistic representation of the Holocaust in the visual arts with an emphasis on work done in the camps and ghettos. Current research is on Holocaust memory in animated film and the Holocaust in Polish Memory, particularly in film and tourism. Her most recent article “Seven Minutes in the Warsaw Ghetto: Representing the Unimaginable through Animated Film” was published in Short Film Studies Journal Volume 4, Number 2, 2014.

On December 15^th, the Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission issued its final report. It documents the treatment of indigenous children in Canadian residential schools over the course of more than twelve decades. More 150,000 youth were sent to the schools. The report estimates that more than 3,200 never came home. In June, Beverly McLachlin, chair of the TRC commission, labelled the residential schools cultural genocide.

To many, the report and its finding are an astounding admission to the culpable role the Canadian government played in the destruction of several generations of indigenous culture. The release of the report raises an interesting question: can this be a positive sign of Canada coming to grips with its troubling past?

When I’ve asked Canadian scholars why the perception of how Canada has treated its indigenous communities is so much better than the United States I’m generally met with a laugh. “Only because the relationship in your country is so much worse,” is the usual response. While on the surface, the Canadian TRC process appears to be a positive sign its origins give less cause for optimism.

In the years preceding the Commission, it was estimated that more nearly half of Canadians had little to no understanding of the residential school system.  The TRC process was only initiated after survivors of the residential school system successfully organized the largest class action lawsuit in Canadian history when they sued the government and the churches that operated the schools. The truth and reconciliation process was something the survivors pushed to include in the settlement. Its inclusion likely staved off further litigation. Stephen Harper, the former Prime Minister ousted after this fall’s election, has had a long history of troubling interactions with Canada’s indigenous peoples. While the TRC process was initiated under his premiership, his lack of leadership to address the challenges facing First Nations people was seen by many as a contributing factor to the Conservatives heavy losses in the recent election. Clearly, the TRC process is not the product of a benevolent approach to reconciling Canada’s troubling past we might think of it being.

Troubles aside, how can Canada move forward? A report can only go far to address the injustices of the past. It remains to be seen what effect the TRC will have on the relationship between the government and its indigenous people. The report issued 94 calls to action that address issues in the report, targeted at a number of continuing challenges, including access to healthcare, education and the legal system.  These solutions will take years to have an impact.  However, with its focus on the residential school system the report does not fully explore the other abuses committed against Canada’s indigenous people.  Allegations of forced sterilization of indigenous women continue to come out, despite forcible sterilization being explicitly outlawed in the Genocide Convention.

The Canadian government under Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is making a concerted effort to change the country’s relationship with its indigenous communities. Forming the most diverse cabinet in Canadian history, promising to address the issues of missing indigenous women and releasing the full Truth and Reconciliation Report are positive moves. With these actions, the path to Canada’s reconciliation may be a clearer one.

Joe Eggers is a graduate student at the University of Minnesota, focusing his research on cultural genocide and indigenous communities. His thesis project explores discrepancies between the legal definition and Lemkin’s concept of genocide through analysis of American government assimilation policies towards Native Nations.

This year, the University of Minnesota will be hosting Sam Grey, a Fulbright Scholar from Canada. Sam comes to campus to continue her research in the field of reconciliation, specifically in settler-colonial states. While in Minnesota, Sam will be exploring the resistance to reconciliation in Minnesota a century and a half after the Dakota conflict of 1862.

Coming from the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Sam is well suited to exploring Minnesota’s relationship with its indigenous communities. Her doctoral research focuses on political theory and comparative politics, primarily from a non-western political perspective. Sam’s research interests have included, in addition to indigenous rights, gender equality, food politics and solidarity politics.  As a Canadian scholar in Minnesota, Sam is in a unique position to compare Canada’s recently completed Truth and Reconciliation process with the United States’ own attempts to understand its own relationship with its indigenous population.

For context, the CanadianTruth & Reconciliation Commission issued its final findings in June after seven years of examining the legacy of the country’s residential school programs. Unlike other Truth & Reconciliation Commissions, Canada’s held no legal power, which meant that it couldn’t offer amnesty for alleged perpetrators of abuse at the residential schools in exchange for testimony. The result was a commission that primarily focused on recording victim experiences.  Following the conclusion of hearings, the commission published an extensive report of its findings. The report outlined many of the challenges that indigenous people continue to face in Canada as a result of the residential schools and outlined a plan for reconciliation. Most famously, commissioner chair and Canadian Supreme Court Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin labelled the residential schoolsystem cultural genocide .

When asked why Canada has been so forthcoming about its troubling history with indigenous people, Sam is honest. In her assessment, Canada’s relationship with its indigenous communities isn’t actually that positive, though it’s likely that it’s perceived as good when compared to the United States’ relationship its indigenous population. She says the Truth & Reconciliation commission and subsequent report are a positive step, but fall short of addressing many of the systemic issues in Canada. She points to several troubling incidents, including the current epidemic of missing indigenous women in central Canada that demonstrate the amount of work that needs to continue.

When asked about Minnesota, the idea of local reconciliation seems especially difficult to Sam. There are a number of factors that she says make attempts at reconciliation challenging, including that the resentment amongst descendants of the Minnesota settlers who took part in the 1862 conflict and members of the Dakota community is still present. Memories of the conflict represent just one of the hurdles to reconciliation in Minnesota that Sam hopes to explore during her nine months here.

Sam sees the issue of residential schools as the best approach for building a greater understanding of the legacy of colonialism in the United States and Canada. To her, and other scholars, boarding and residential schools represent “philanthropy gone off the rails,” which makes the issue easier to understand and contextualize. As more people gain an understanding the schools as a place of abuse, Sam explains, scholars can build on that awareness to promote a greater understanding of the issues affecting indigenous people today.

Much of Sam’s work can be found on her Academia webpage.

Joe Eggers is a graduate student at the University of Minnesota, focusing his research on cultural genocide and indigenous communities. His thesis project explores discrepancies between the legal definition and Lemkin’s concept of genocide through analysis of American government assimilation policies towards Native Nations.

On Saturday, October 17th, 2015, the Minneapolis Film Society screened Pretty Village at St. Anthony Main theater, a documentary depicting the experience of Kemal Pevranic and his village during the war in Bosnia (1992-95). Pevranic, the main subject of the film, is also the producer and a human rights activist who works to raise awareness and to rebuild his community in Bosnia by working on reconciliation efforts, particularly with young people of all three ethnicities in Bosnia. The Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies co-sponsored the film screening event, in which I participated as the moderator of the post-screening discussion.

Pretty Village is a powerful documentary centered on Pevranic’s home village of Kevljani located in Northern Bosnia in the municipality of Prijedor. The Muslim village became a target during the war by the surrounding Serb villages. Most of the men in the village were either killed or taken into the nearby Omarska concentration camp. Labeled an “investigation center,” Omarska was only revealed as a concentration camp by the media after serious denial on the part of the Serb forces. In the film, we see Pevranic return to Omarska to face the horrific memories, as well as his torturer, who just so happened to have been his high school teacher. In the scene where Kemal directly asks the teacher about the camp, we see a kind of denial on the part of the perpetrator that just makes us cringe as we watch the hypocrisy in the interaction. It makes us wonder if facing one’s torturer cannot bring closure, what can? As one of the village residents and torture victim states in the film, hating one’s torturers can also become a kind of torture in itself, as it is exhausting to hate someone with such intensity.

“Those who didn’t live through war don’t know anything,” says an elderly woman at the beginning of Pretty Village, making us think about what atrocity, fear, and trauma do to us. There is a kind of wisdom that comes from enduring and surviving war that is not comparable with other wisdom we have. At the very least, it makes us question where we belong. After being asked what home means to him now during the Q & A, Pevranic, educated in London after leaving Bosnia, says that his idea of home has changed. While Kevljani will never be the same again, he has rebuilt his home and has returned to live there. However, as those featured in his film mentioned, young people educated outside of Bosnia have no reason to return since they have lives away from their original home.

Above all, this is a film that questions and collapses the dichotomies inherent in human relations, particularly when genocide takes place. It is no longer clear what is good and what is evil, who is a foreigner and who is at home, as a student and teacher relationship turns into that of the torturer and the tortured, arguably both equally as intimate. Ultimately, this film shows us just how quickly the status quo can change, and one has to change his definition of what normal life is when the circumstances suddenly change, and they can do so at any given moment.

N.B.: For those who have not had the opportunity to see the film, CHGS is working to bring a screening to campus in Spring 2016.

Erma Nezirevic is a Ph.D. candidate in Hispanic Literatures and Cultures at the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities. She specializes in 20th and 21st century Iberian literatures and cultures. Her dissertation studies the way Spain evokes the Balkan Wars of the 1990s in literature and other cultural production such as photography, and how in turn that provides a political, social and cultural understanding of Spain itself. Erma currently works in affiliation with the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, where she coordinates the HGMV Workshop.

A few things have been happening in Burundi this year. The president, Pierre Nkuruzinza circumvented the constitution and ran for a third term. The result of this has been on-going conflict from April. Burundi was not a surprise though. Journalists I spoke to earlier this year all stated that regional coverage of Burundi had pointed to something being afoot as early as last year. None-the-less, here we are, with yet another unfolding atrocity, several deaths, an ever growing numbers of displaced and plenty of hand-wringing by the international community.

There are reports of massive numbers of refugees already running to Rwanda in anticipation of violence at a massive scale. A Kenyan journalist I spoke to in March painted a really grim picture of politicians getting ready to cause havoc. These concerns have now been confirmed by reports emanating from Burundi. The police are engaging in a campaign of brutal suppression of protesters. Several dissenting voices have been thrown in jail accused with the ever nefarious charge of “endangering internal and external state security.”Protesters have been charged, by the state prosecution, with the offence of“participation in an insurrectionary movement.” Not to forget the continual assassinations and assassination attempts by both sides of this unfolding atrocity.

Despite all of this though what is happening in Burundi is not genocide nor is Burundi going to be another Rwanda. Sometimes it feels as though every atrocity in Africa is often seen as the next Rwanda. This does not mean that the government in Burundi is not heinous nor is it in any way excusable. Indeed in May, the International Criminal Court saw it necessary to warn the Burundi’s leaders of possible prosecution should the court deem it necessary. While the word genocide is emotive and seen as necessary whenever world opinion needs to be influenced, it complicates the situation on the ground as well. In Burundi, this complication is been based on how to define the perpetrators and victims; if it’s a genocide, who is the targeted group and who exactly is the perpetrator of said genocide?

There is also an implication (whenever we are quick to label a conflict genocide) that the international community only cares about genocide. Must atrocities in African countries be called genocide for the world to care?

What is happening in Burundi is a power grab by a cabal of politicians who decided to go against the spirit of the Arusha peace agreement of 2000, which was meant to end years of civil conflict. This implies, therefore, that one way to solve it would be through a political process and dialogue. A process that should include targeted sanctions by the international community and a cessation of foreign aid. Another troubling issue has been the inertia by regional bodies, such as the African Union and the East African Community, both of which have been largely peripheral at best. The world needs to pay attention to Burundi, not because it could be the ‘next Rwanda’ or that there is a ‘genocide’ unfolding there. It needs to pay attention because what happens in Burundi and to Burundians also affects its neighboring countries. If there is anything we should know by now, it is that conflicts in this region have historically tended to spill over national boundaries with disastrous effects. Additionally, we should care because of our shared humanity, which is what binds us.

Wahutu Siguru is Badzin Fellow in Holocaust and Genocide Studies and PhD candidate in the Sociology department at the University of Minnesota. Siguru’s research interests are in the Sociology of Media, Genocide, Mass Violence and Atrocities (specifically on issues of representation of conflicts in Africa such as Darfur and Rwanda), Collective Memory, and perhaps somewhat tangentially Democracy and Development in Africa. 

The Twitter account @HistOpinion recently reminded us of the prevailing opinion on raising the immigrant quota for refugees who were fleeing Nazi Germany. Two-thirds of the respondents polled by Gallup’s American Institute of Public Opinion in July 1938 agreed with the proposition that “with conditions as they are we should try to keep them out.”

Comparisons to the Holocaust and the events that led to it have become commonplace when we examine our current events. Although historical events and contexts always have distinct features that make them unique and thus hard to compare, analogies can indeed provide valuable insight into and perspective on the reality in which we are immersed. This is clearly the case for present-day attitudes toward refugees, particularly in the United States. The number of resettled refugees whom the United States has pledged to receive is dismal in comparison with Canada and most European countries. In terms of percentages, the situation is even worse. And immigration restrictions may get even tighter in response to a state of public opinion shaped by the xenophobic language of presidential candidates in the aftermath of the Paris attacks. Here, denigration of an entire group – defined by ethnicity or religion – and identification of the group as a threat also echo the discourses of the historical period we often consider in this newsletter (both in Europe and in the United States, with the wave of racism, prejudice, and ignorance surrounding Japanese Americans during World War II).

Analogies that bridge past and present are also pertinent to the discussion of the long inaction vis-à-vis the atrocities perpetrated by the Islamic State. For more than two years, ISIS has committed war crimes, crimes against humanity with respect to civilians, and genocide against religious minorities in the territories under ISIS control. The international community has a moral and legal responsibility to protect the victims of these crimes – and the upcoming 67th anniversary, on December 9, of the UN Genocide Convention is an explicit reminder. However, it seems that plans for a coordinated operation against ISIS, involving the possible elimination of its stronghold in Syria and Iraq, are taking shape only now, after its terror has struck the heart of Europe.

Refusal to admit more refugees and passivity in the face of genocide seem to be recurring themes across historical periods. What the past teaches the present will always be a disputed matter. But we will certainly draw a correct lesson from the past if we now endeavor to “keep out” the incendiary language of hatred, fear, and suspicion.

Alejandro Baer is the Stephen Feinstein Chair and Director of the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies. He joined the University of Minnesota in 2012 and is an Associate Professor of Sociology.

The Spirit of the Laws: The Plunder of Wealth in the Armenian Genocide 

Taner Akçam and Umit Kurt, Translated by Aram Arkun

Pertinent to contemporary demands for reparations from Turkey is the relationship between law and property in connection with the Armenian Genocide. This book examines the confiscation of Armenian properties during the genocide and subsequent attempts to retain seized Armenian wealth. Through the close analysis of laws and treaties, it reveals that decrees issued during the genocide constitute central pillars of the Turkish system of property rights, retaining their legal validity, and although Turkey has acceded through international agreements to return Armenian properties, it continues to refuse to do so. The book demonstrates that genocides do not depend on the abolition of the legal system and elimination of rights, but that, on the contrary, the perpetrators of genocide manipulate the legal system to facilitate their plans.

Taner Akçam holds the Kaloosdian and Mugar Chair of Armenian Genocide Studies at Clark University. He is the author of many books, including: The Young Turks’ Crime Against Humanity: The Armenian Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing in the Ottoman Empire (Princeton University Press, 2012), which received the Middle East Studies Association’s Hourani Book Prize and was listed by Foreign Affairs as “Best International Relations Books of 2012.”

Umit Kurt is a Ph.D. Candidate in the History Department of Clark University. He is the author of The Great, Hopeless Turkish Race: Fundamentals of Turkish Nationalism in the Turkish Homeland 1911-1916 (Iletisim Publishing House, 2012).

The Great Fire: One American’s Mission to Rescue Victims of the 20th Century’s First Genocide

By Lou Ureneck

The harrowing story of a Methodist Minister and a principled American naval officer who helped rescue more than 250,000 refugees during the genocide of Armenian and Greek Christians-a tale of bravery, morality, and politics, published to coincide with the genocide’s centennial.

Professor Ureneck (Journalism, Boston University) conducted much of his research in writing the book in the U of M Library’s extensive Kautz Family YMCA Archives, highlighting the University’s unique ability to place historic events in context, and provide primary sources for study and scholarship.