Screening Auschwitz: Wanda Jakubowska's the Last Stage and the Politics of Commemoration(Cultural Expressions of World War II)

Screening Auschwitz examines the classic Polish Holocaust film The Last Stage (Ostatni etap), directed by the Auschwitz survivor Wanda Jakubowska (1907–1998). Released in 1948, The Last Stage was a pioneering work and the first narrative film to portray the Nazi German camp. Haltof’s fascinating book offers to English-speaking readers a wealth of new materials and sources, mostly from original Polish sources and obtained through extensive archival research. With its powerful dramatization of the camp experience, The Last Stage shaped subsequent Shoah films, establishing several quasi-documentary themes easily discernible in later Holocaust narratives: the dark, “realistic” images of the camp; the passionate moralistic appeal; and the clear divisions between victims and perpetrators. Jakubowska’s film introduced the images of camp life that are now archetypal—for example, morning and evening roll calls on the Appelplatz, the arrival of transport trains at Birkenau, the separation of families, and tracking shots over the belongings left by the gassed camp victims. These and other images reinforced the depiction of Nazi German concentration camps and are discernible in a number of subsequent American films, including George Stevens’s The Diary of Anne Frank (1959), Alan Pakula’s Sophie’s Choice (1982), and Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List (1993). Haltof discusses the unusual circumstances that surrounded the production of the film on location at Auschwitz-Birkenau and summarizes critical debates surrounding the film’s release. The book offers much of interest to film historians and readers interested in the Holocaust.

About the Author :
MAREK HALTOF is a professor at Northern Michigan University. He has published several books in English and Polish on the cultural histories of Central European and Australian film. His recent books include Historical Dictionary of Polish Cinema; Polish Film and the Holocaust: Politics and Memory; The Cinema of Krzysztof Kieslowski: Variations on Destiny and Chance; and Polish National Cinema.

Review :
"Screening Auschwitz is a short book with a clearly defined focus . . . Haltof's ability to weave so much primary material that would otherwise be inaccessible to non-Polish speaking readers into such a compact study makes Screening Auschwitz a key text for researchers and students working in this field." --Studies in European Cinema "This meticulously researched, very informative and valuable book will make an important contribution to the fields of Holocaust and Polish film studies." --Marat Grinberg, author of "I am to be read not from left to right, but in Jewish: from right to left: " The Poetics of Boris Slutsky "The originality and quality of the scholarship on display in this book is extremely high. Haltof's use of sources greatly expands the frame and depth of his analysis, and few researchers who have worked on Jakubowska's arguably most important work have ever tapped these sources before." --Stuart Liebman, editor of Claude Lanzmann's Shoah: Key Essays "Given the richness of data that Screening Auschwitz is bringing, together, the volume will clearly stand as the major reference point not just for future research on Jakubowska's film, but on research about early Holocaust cinema in general." --Gerd Bayer, Holocaust Studies "Impeccably documented, Screening Auschwitz also boasts stills from The Last Stage that are crisp and evocative." --Annette Insdorf, Slavic Review ". . . Haltof's ability to weave so much primary material that would otherwise be inaccessible to non-Polish speaking readers into such a compact study makes Screening Auschwitz a key text for researchers and students working in this field." --Elizabeth M. Ward, Studies in European Cinema "As this thoroughly researched book convincingly demonstrates, Wanda Jakubowska's classic of 1948 placed a cornerstone in the edifice of how Auschwitz was understood and commemorated on screen in the decades to come. The special value of Haltof's study is in conveying just how problematic a cornerstone Ostatni etap (The Last Stage) is . . . In his thought-provoking book Haltof provides an extensive and stimulating treatment of a seminal filmic work that in light of all the issues raised deserves continued attention." --Christopher Grabowski, The Polish Review