ET1: Yourself as Audience

Last Thursday we had our first screening, and I brought snacks to eat. Why did I even think Thursday's screening would be popcorn-material, I don't know. The Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge was okay: dream-like in quality, with a surprising twist in the end. I enjoyed it immensely.

However Night and Fog deeply hit me where it hurts.

It horrifies me that people can be so disrespectful towards each other. And vicious.

I thought I was prepared for whatever the film would throw at me. I've seen pictures (gruesome ones) and studied the Holocaust in History before. I didn't like it, but there was a sense of detachment when you're just reading it.

Watching Night and Fog was like being pulled into the time of which these concentration camps happened. Being pulled in and defenseless against it.

There was one part in the film when I am reminded of a picture I've seen when I was studying the subject. In the film we were only shown the empty wooden beds but this image

kept popping up in my head. I don't remember why this picture stuck so vividly in my mind throughout the years, but it did. Maybe it was because the prisoners looked so indifferent- they had been so used to this ill-treatment that they just sort of lived with it. They didn't fight it anymore.

Honestly I quite enjoyed the film, as gruesome as that sounds. Mostly because the narration is fantastic, both the language and the voice.

Actually I think that was the only thing I liked about Night and Fog. I didn't like the content at all.

Pictures of the mass killings filled me with both disgust and disbelief. Thousands and thousands of bodies being bulldozed away filled me with anger at the disrespect these people have towards lives. Such cruelty that I can never imagine were one by one brought to life again in front of my eyes. Chemical testing? Sure. Tortures? Why not? "Scientific" experiments? Go for it. I was shaking my head for the most part, wanting to look away but not being able to.

The gas chambers particularly terrified me. Desperation sets in and goes mad. The scratches on the ceiling can only hint at what horrors the people inside went through. How did they feel? How did they react? How did they lose their last breath?

Quick deaths would have been more merciful.

Is it ever possible that Jews can relive a normal life?? How is it even possible that such atrocity can be easily forgotten? Or is it simply because such horrors were too terrible, so people wanted to forget? In this sense one can't blame them for trying to forget. I would want to forget, even though no one should.

If I were watching the film alone or with just a few close friends, I would have walked out. Or at least started to scream expletives, because really some things just need to be properly yelled at. This is one of the things.

It is hard to swallow the bitter truth that humanity has been used to such cruelty (to each other!!) for a long time. However the Holocaust brings things into a whole new level of wrong.

This is what I'd like to say to Hitler: