Director: Stefano Di Pietro
Writer: Stefano Di Pietro
Running time: 13mins
The Kinder-KZ Litzmannstadt in Łódź was a Nazi concentration camp for Polish Christian children in occupied Łodź during the Second World War. Established in December 1942, an estimated 3,000 children passed through the camp, with more than 100 dying there from disease, starvation, emaciation and exposure, according to the camp’s records.
Stefano Di Pietro’s short documentary does a good job of bringing the camp to the attention of modern viewers, many of whom are unlikely to have heard about the children’s concentration camp. Indeed, according to one of the witnesses in his film – a survivor who passed through the facility himself – it might not have been recognised as a concentration camp at all, had one girl not been able to preserve her documentation. The personal file, complete with finger-prints, labelled Gertruda Nowak a ‘child terrorist’ – and serves as a chilling reminder that in reality, there are no lines in the sand which protect children from the brutality and dehumanisation meted out to their parents.
Amid Europe’s increasingly unhinged political mainstream, in which a growing number of people favourably termed revisionists (but are more accurately described as apologists) are trying to play down the atrocities of Nazi Germany, that is an important point to make. In 2019, for example, IFL received a troubling UNESCO-backed film named The Cabin, which provided what Tony Moore described as a “celebration of war and the male warrior ethos” – with its entirely invented scenario hinging on a German sniper, who decides to down his weapon to help a child caught between a fire-fight he was having with a US soldier.
With UNESCO nodding on, the story of The Cabin “foregrounds a common white, Christian, western European identity” which even a Nazi would supposedly adhere to, before deploying “European culture as a signifier of peace and civilisation” – in spite of the genocidal backdrop having been crafted by a distinctly European power. It is timely that War is not over should provide a riposte to that hideous reframing of history – especially as such apologism is also creeping its way into the dialogue surrounding the Israel-Gaza war, and the UN’s provisional ruling that there are ‘reasonable grounds to believe the Israeli state is committing genocide against Palestinians there. In the shrinking camp housing Gaza’s surviving Palestinian population, apologists of the Israeli Defence Force have regularly claimed that as an ally of the West, it would never attack schools, or hospitals, or refugee camps. Then, with the slipping of the mask, they have also fallen back into debates around what really is a child, and whether everyone in Gaza ought to be taken as enemy combatants anyway?
Thematically, the themes at the heart of War is not over are timely, but Di Pietro’s film was completed in July, and so does not have anything to say about that particular set of crimes. However, the way in which it tackles another war suggests it might be better left in the subtext anyway. Things fall a little short when Di Pietro turns his lens to the war in Ukraine.
Łódź is now one of many cities in Europe to have taken in refugees since Russian troops invaded Ukraine in 2022. Di Pietro speaks to a couple of children who are living in the town, and who recall their terrifying escape from the warzone – driving past destroyed buildings and empty homes on the way, wondering what became of their inhabitants, and whether a similar fate is awaiting them. But beyond talking to their teacher, who is determined to learn from Łódź’s terrible past, and make sure Łódź becomes a home for those fleeing the horrors of war, there is little information about how life is for them in their new home.
There are no hints as to how the children have been received, either from them, or locals. And there are no moments at which Di Pietro seems to have asked them if they can draw parallels between their own situation, and the children who passed through Łódź’s camp during the Second World War. Meanwhile, even if they have been received well, there is another elephant in the room.
The teacher says that Łódź’s diversity was destroyed by the War – more than 200,000 Polish Jews were murdered in the adjacent Litzmannstadt Ghetto – but that taking in refugees from Ukraine is part of the city recovering some of that history. What would be interesting to explore here is whether Łódź has learned from its horrific past to the extent that it welcomes refugees from everywhere, or just ones who present as white Europeans.
Poland’s 2023 elections were heralded by many centrists as a glowing victory, in which moderates returned to power in the country, with Donald Tusk becoming Prime Minister. But his tactical silence on a migration referendum called by his predecessor calls that into question. Voters at the polls for the general election were also asked to vote as to whether the country should accept the relocation of “illegal immigrants” (refugees fleeing war and famine across Africa and the Middle East) to Poland from the rest of the EU. The utterly biased question predictably yielded a “no” vote of more than 96%.
Sure, most of that happened after the film was completed, but it is not a newly conceived issue in Poland, or Europe. So, who is Poland really a sanctuary for? Have lessons really been learned from the history of Łódź? If they have, how might that inform change in the rest of the country? If not, what can be done to change that, who is doing it, and how can we support them?
These are questions which a documentary tackling such a gravely important chapter of history cannot afford to dodge. But while a film like this has a duty to bring up difficult questions to support the most vulnerable people on the continent, War is not over seemingly has no interest in doing so.
As tightly produced as this story is, and as important an intervention as it is in relation to the revision of Nazi history, it has precious little to say about contemporary issues. Perhaps it might have ruffled a few too many feathers with Germany’s Federal Foreign Office, Study Tours to Poland, the College of Eastern Europe Wrocɫaw, or the European Commission – all of whom appear in the film’s Supported By credits. But linking the story of Łódź with modern Europe’s human rights record, only to warmly affirm a status-quo that is patently opposed to the rights of some people coming to Europe for their safety is a dereliction of duty.