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.Ostensibly Dealing with Historic Trauma 49Figure 1.5 Marek Kondrat as PaweÅ‚ in Weiser (2000), directed by WojciechMarczewskihe returns to live in a newly liberated, postcommunist Poland, butin reality he is prompted by a desire to find out what happened onemomentous day when he was 13 years old.On that day he was playingwith a group of four friends near a disused railway tunnel, including asmall Jew, Dawid Weiser, who previously proposed to blow up the tun-nel.The children were meant to wait outside with the explosive device,but Weiser and the only girl in the gang, Elka, entered the tunnel (Figure1.6).Weiser was never found, dead or alive; Elka was subsequentlydiscovered near the tunnel, unconscious and lacking any memoryabout what happened.The school headmaster, the local priest and thelocal representative of the secret services all tried to force the childrento admit that they killed Weiser, but they failed.In order to establishthe facts, the adult PaweÅ‚ approaches the three remaining witnessesof Weiser s vanishing.These encounters demonstrate that they neverovercame the trauma caused by this event and the subsequent inter-rogations.Szymek, a musician who, like PaweÅ‚, gave up playing in anorchestra, is practically a wreck of a man, debilitated by alcoholism andmental illness.Proof of that is his admission to PaweÅ‚ that Weiser (orhis ghost) keeps visiting him.His story is reminiscent of some cases ofsurviving Nazi concentration camp inmates who tend to lose their senseof reality and who experience the past as if it was the present (Felmanand Laub 1992; Caruth 1995; Hirsch 2004). 50 European Cinema and IntertextualityFigure 1.6 Elka and Weiser in Weiser (2000), directed by Wojciech MarczewskiSzymek dies during the course of the film, most likely from suicide:a belated response to his original trauma.Piotr, a successful business-man, first pretends that he does not remember the incident and doesnot even remember who Weiser was.However, pressed by PaweÅ‚, whochallenges him to tell the truth, he reveals that for many years he dideverything he could to forget about Weiser and advises PaweÅ‚ to dothe same.Yet, his final distress and taking to alcohol during PaweÅ‚ svisit show that he was unsuccessful in his attempt to forget.Trauma, itappears, cannot be forgotten.Finally, Elka, who is now the mother ofa girl who looks just like her, except for different coloured hair (playedby the same child actress, Olga Frycz, who played Elka in the flashbacksequences), provides PaweÅ‚ with various details about the momentousday, but ultimately refuses to tell him what happened in the tunnel.Again, it feels like the memories are too disturbing for her to relive.A sign of Elka s trauma is her almost physical pain suffered at the soundsand images of a firework display which are part of the New Year festivi-ties.No doubt they remind her of a different kind of firework : thatproduced by Weiser and herself.PaweÅ‚ also attempts to look for traces of Weiser s life by visiting thehousing register office and the antique shop where somebody sold arecord which most likely belonged to the Jewish boy.Here too he drawsa blank.The house where Weiser once lived does not exist any moreand the antique dealer does not remember the person who sold him Dealing with Historic Trauma 51the record.This unwillingness of almost everyone PaweÅ‚ encounters todiscuss the disappearance of a young Jew can be regarded as emblematicof Polish unwillingness to come to terms with its own part in the perse-cution of Jews, both during the Second World War and in more recenthistory, such as the end of the 1960s, when many prominent Jews wereforced to leave the country, and during which the retrospective part ofMarczewski s film is set.Equally, in his effort to overcome the silencesurrounding Weiser, PaweÅ‚ counters the trend of forgetting the Jews per-taining to Polish postwar history and, in a sense, is symbolic of the diffi-cult postcommunist attempts to investigate Polish Jewish relationships.This very shameful part of Polish history gained in prominence thanksto the publication of two books by a Polish-born historian working inthe USA, Jan Tomasz Gross, Neighbors (2001) and Fear (2006), analysingPolish anti-Semitism during and after the Second World War (see alsoChapter 4).Weiser could be seen as a hypertext in relation to Gross s hypotexts , in which events described in prose are poetically evoked.10Unable to find Weiser in the present, PaweÅ‚, like Proust s Marcel andGodard s Edgar, has to find him in the past: in his private memory andin the collective memory of the Poles.In both the past and the presentparts of the film the mise-en-scène is dominated by trains, especiallyfreight trains, which during the war were used to transport Jews to theconcentration camps.Such trains pass near the tunnel which the chil-dren attempt to blow up and on one occasion they travel on the freighttrain.Images of passing trains catch the attention of the adult PaweÅ‚too.He also spends a large part of his stay in WrocÅ‚aw at the railwaystation: waiting for his girlfriend, or for a train to take him to meet hisold school pals.Weiser s attempt to blow up the railway bridge can be viewed as abelated and symbolic attempt to prevent the war trains from reachingtheir destination: the concentration camps.The adult PaweÅ‚ also pon-ders on Weiser blowing up a building, most likely an old factory, withtwo tall chimneys.This image, the ontological status of which is unclear,because we are not certain whether PaweÅ‚ remembers or imagines thisevent and what was really blown up, brings association with the upris-ing in Auschwitz and its remembrance by traumatised witnesses.Forexample, Dori Laub refers to the story of a woman who witnessed fourchimneys explode during the Auschwitz uprising, while in reality onlyone chimney was destroyed.But, as she argues, as a recollection of aparticular psychological state, this memory is truthful, as it testifies notto what happened then (this cannot be remembered correctly), but towhat this woman experienced at the time of the event (Felman and 52 European Cinema and IntertextualityLaub 1992: 59 63).Other symbolic attempts to relive the past includechildren finding a pistol from the Second World War and firing it, aswell as organising fake executions.It is worth adding that the imagesof children and sometimes also the adults playing war, with pretendshootings and executions, appeared in some earlier Polish films, such asJerzy Skolimowski s Rysopis (Identification Marks: None, 1964) and RÄ™ce dogóry (Hands Up!, 1966) [ Pobierz caÅ‚ość w formacie PDF ]
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.Ostensibly Dealing with Historic Trauma 49Figure 1.5 Marek Kondrat as PaweÅ‚ in Weiser (2000), directed by WojciechMarczewskihe returns to live in a newly liberated, postcommunist Poland, butin reality he is prompted by a desire to find out what happened onemomentous day when he was 13 years old.On that day he was playingwith a group of four friends near a disused railway tunnel, including asmall Jew, Dawid Weiser, who previously proposed to blow up the tun-nel.The children were meant to wait outside with the explosive device,but Weiser and the only girl in the gang, Elka, entered the tunnel (Figure1.6).Weiser was never found, dead or alive; Elka was subsequentlydiscovered near the tunnel, unconscious and lacking any memoryabout what happened.The school headmaster, the local priest and thelocal representative of the secret services all tried to force the childrento admit that they killed Weiser, but they failed.In order to establishthe facts, the adult PaweÅ‚ approaches the three remaining witnessesof Weiser s vanishing.These encounters demonstrate that they neverovercame the trauma caused by this event and the subsequent inter-rogations.Szymek, a musician who, like PaweÅ‚, gave up playing in anorchestra, is practically a wreck of a man, debilitated by alcoholism andmental illness.Proof of that is his admission to PaweÅ‚ that Weiser (orhis ghost) keeps visiting him.His story is reminiscent of some cases ofsurviving Nazi concentration camp inmates who tend to lose their senseof reality and who experience the past as if it was the present (Felmanand Laub 1992; Caruth 1995; Hirsch 2004). 50 European Cinema and IntertextualityFigure 1.6 Elka and Weiser in Weiser (2000), directed by Wojciech MarczewskiSzymek dies during the course of the film, most likely from suicide:a belated response to his original trauma.Piotr, a successful business-man, first pretends that he does not remember the incident and doesnot even remember who Weiser was.However, pressed by PaweÅ‚, whochallenges him to tell the truth, he reveals that for many years he dideverything he could to forget about Weiser and advises PaweÅ‚ to dothe same.Yet, his final distress and taking to alcohol during PaweÅ‚ svisit show that he was unsuccessful in his attempt to forget.Trauma, itappears, cannot be forgotten.Finally, Elka, who is now the mother ofa girl who looks just like her, except for different coloured hair (playedby the same child actress, Olga Frycz, who played Elka in the flashbacksequences), provides PaweÅ‚ with various details about the momentousday, but ultimately refuses to tell him what happened in the tunnel.Again, it feels like the memories are too disturbing for her to relive.A sign of Elka s trauma is her almost physical pain suffered at the soundsand images of a firework display which are part of the New Year festivi-ties.No doubt they remind her of a different kind of firework : thatproduced by Weiser and herself.PaweÅ‚ also attempts to look for traces of Weiser s life by visiting thehousing register office and the antique shop where somebody sold arecord which most likely belonged to the Jewish boy.Here too he drawsa blank.The house where Weiser once lived does not exist any moreand the antique dealer does not remember the person who sold him Dealing with Historic Trauma 51the record.This unwillingness of almost everyone PaweÅ‚ encounters todiscuss the disappearance of a young Jew can be regarded as emblematicof Polish unwillingness to come to terms with its own part in the perse-cution of Jews, both during the Second World War and in more recenthistory, such as the end of the 1960s, when many prominent Jews wereforced to leave the country, and during which the retrospective part ofMarczewski s film is set.Equally, in his effort to overcome the silencesurrounding Weiser, PaweÅ‚ counters the trend of forgetting the Jews per-taining to Polish postwar history and, in a sense, is symbolic of the diffi-cult postcommunist attempts to investigate Polish Jewish relationships.This very shameful part of Polish history gained in prominence thanksto the publication of two books by a Polish-born historian working inthe USA, Jan Tomasz Gross, Neighbors (2001) and Fear (2006), analysingPolish anti-Semitism during and after the Second World War (see alsoChapter 4).Weiser could be seen as a hypertext in relation to Gross s hypotexts , in which events described in prose are poetically evoked.10Unable to find Weiser in the present, PaweÅ‚, like Proust s Marcel andGodard s Edgar, has to find him in the past: in his private memory andin the collective memory of the Poles.In both the past and the presentparts of the film the mise-en-scène is dominated by trains, especiallyfreight trains, which during the war were used to transport Jews to theconcentration camps.Such trains pass near the tunnel which the chil-dren attempt to blow up and on one occasion they travel on the freighttrain.Images of passing trains catch the attention of the adult PaweÅ‚too.He also spends a large part of his stay in WrocÅ‚aw at the railwaystation: waiting for his girlfriend, or for a train to take him to meet hisold school pals.Weiser s attempt to blow up the railway bridge can be viewed as abelated and symbolic attempt to prevent the war trains from reachingtheir destination: the concentration camps.The adult PaweÅ‚ also pon-ders on Weiser blowing up a building, most likely an old factory, withtwo tall chimneys.This image, the ontological status of which is unclear,because we are not certain whether PaweÅ‚ remembers or imagines thisevent and what was really blown up, brings association with the upris-ing in Auschwitz and its remembrance by traumatised witnesses.Forexample, Dori Laub refers to the story of a woman who witnessed fourchimneys explode during the Auschwitz uprising, while in reality onlyone chimney was destroyed.But, as she argues, as a recollection of aparticular psychological state, this memory is truthful, as it testifies notto what happened then (this cannot be remembered correctly), but towhat this woman experienced at the time of the event (Felman and 52 European Cinema and IntertextualityLaub 1992: 59 63).Other symbolic attempts to relive the past includechildren finding a pistol from the Second World War and firing it, aswell as organising fake executions.It is worth adding that the imagesof children and sometimes also the adults playing war, with pretendshootings and executions, appeared in some earlier Polish films, such asJerzy Skolimowski s Rysopis (Identification Marks: None, 1964) and RÄ™ce dogóry (Hands Up!, 1966) [ Pobierz caÅ‚ość w formacie PDF ]