One of the first assignments in our course was to watch the documentary A Film Unfinished, which tries to contextualize raw footage for an intended Nazi propaganda film about the Warsaw Ghetto that was found in East-German archives after World War II.
The reflections by the students were quite insightful and picked up on a number of details from the film. Some draw connections to the value of archival research. Here I might add that archival research on propaganda is somewhat limited as the Ministry of Propaganda was hit by bombs during the last days of World War II and most of the original files were destroyed. There are some copies available that were sent to other departments, embassies, and regional propaganda offices, so we can reconstruct some of the internal communication about propaganda. For those interested (and speaking German) – those files are under the category number R55 at the Federal Archive in Berlin-Lichterfelde.
On the topic of propaganda, some of the students referred to the footage as “a work of propaganda.” That’s interesting as I would argue that the raw footage alone is not the actual propaganda film yet. It is “a film unfinished.” Without the cut, a narrator, music, and (added) sound, the pointed motivation is missing. Sure, we know from the comments of the survivors and the multiple entries that a large number of scenes of the footage were staged. However, compare this film to the well-known Nazi propaganda film The Eternal Jew (Der ewige Jude – 1940) to see how footage of the Warsaw Ghetto was used for propagandistic purposes.
Or what do others think? When does raw footage become propaganda?
Regarding the lack of sound, something that Sarah pointed out, I started to think that this eerie footage stands metonymically for the voiceless Jews it depicts. Samantha pointed out that she felt it was her duty to finish watching this film to pass on this knowledge. I would take this farther by saying we have to be the voices of the voiceless.
Finally, I was surprised that none of the students could really consolidate the two themes of the film footage, the extremely poor and the staged wealthy. Maybe watching The Eternal Jew will help to understand the intended message. It was not to show the different ways of life and how good the Jews in the Ghetto live. It was intended to show how, when the Jews are left alone, their hereditary greed will make a few rich so they can life in nice apartments and have parties and ample entertainment while others have to die of starvation . This is supposed to serve as a metaphor for how the Jews as a whole have been living in Germany sucking out all the money from the poor hard-working Germans. The lineup at the end of the film, then, serves as an accusation: the rich are placed next to the poor, the ones from which they took everything. Keep in mind that the Nazi ideology propagated a Volksgemeinschaft (a people’s community) without classes where everyone (Aryan) has a place and lives well.