Beyond Brave Little Blighty II: The Truth
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The breadth and length of the Second World War means that it was inevitably experienced in greatly varying ways. Unsurprisingly, this diversity of experience is perceptible in the distinctly contrasting ways in which nations remember the conflict. Perhaps it’s obvious that the British war narrative differs from the Polish, the German from the Japanese, the Dutch from the Spanish, but it is easy to fall into the trap of assuming our interpretation of the war is the only one that exists or matters. Beyond the blitz, evacuees and Dunkirk, there is a wealth of other stories of heroism and suffering, and in a world where the memory of World War Two is being successfully employed as propaganda for renewed hostilities, it seems beyond doubt that we should be better-versed in the legacies that prevail on the other side of the Channel. This column considers post-2010 cinematographic non-Anglophone interpretations of the war, and seeks to centre narratives which are simply not part of the British war story.
In my last column, I explored what it meant to be under occupation, a phenomenon that entailed a broad range of experiences which were time and location dependent. However, I did not approach arguably the most devastating condition of that phenomenon - the concentration camps. Much as we learned about the brutality of occupation after the war’s end, the conflict had drawn to a close before most Britons had to come to terms with what had taken place behind the fences of places like Bergen-Belsen, Auschwitz and Westerbork.
Debates rage over how much the Allies knew in connection to the concentration camp system, but a fixation for foreign films has been the attempts made by individuals to ensure that this knowledge was spread.
In keeping with my theme of focussing on the testimonies as yet unheard, it seems fitting to consider one described by the Guardian as “the most extraordinary Holocaust story you’ve never heard”. Sprava (The Auschwitz Report), is a 2020 Slovak-directed film that follows the true story of two Jewish Slovaks, Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler, who escaped from Auschwitz and typed up their recollections for the Slovak resistance once they have crossed the border, before meeting with a Red Cross representative (played by John Hannah) who is incredulous at their testimonies.
A similarly unknown story is told in El fotografo de Mauthausen, in which Spanish Civil War veteran Francesc Boix collects and conceals photographs taken at the camp with the intention of showing them to the Allied powers. The film also chronicles the camaraderie of Spanish Communists in the camp system, whose pride is based on their being the first to enter the camp system.
The tension of both films is impossible to convey, yet the urgency and desolation of Sprava is somewhat more extreme. Although the protagonists of both films share the common goal of publicising the atrocities, Boix appeals to his comrades by questioning whether they want the camps to be forgotten, whilst Vrba and Wetzler’s mission aims to stop the brutality. Thus whilst El fotografo deals with themes of trauma, historical memory and the struggle between the imperative to remember and the impulse to forget, Sprava focuses on the impact individuals can have on global events (the report prevented the deportation of over 100,000 Hungarian Jews) and human resistance to believing in the horrifying.
Like most films depicting the events of the Second World War, El fotografo has a distinctly national dimension aside from its more philosophical questions. It’s impossible to consider this film without the context of the culture of ‘olvido’ or forgetting of Francoist excesses, as it clearly expresses its opposition to the 1975 decision to legally sweep the past under the carpet through Boix’s repeated concerns about history glossing over the inmates’ suffering. An idealisation of the historical Spanish Left is occasionally visible, either through the characters’ intense devotion to one another, or through their determination to commit heroic deeds. Indeed, Boix’s decision to protect Anselmo (a fictionalised young boy), is touching if somewhat predictable in his assumption of a brotherly, if not fatherly role.
Usually completely ignored by male-dominated stories of heroism, a woman is given a brief role in Boix’s plots. Dolores, the resident prostitute, consigned to a life of sexual abuse due to her crimes of anarchy in Spain, is finally granted some agency as she agrees to hide some of Francesc’s negatives. So rarely do we see the plight of women portrayed in the camps, but in El fotografo not only brings light to an uncommonly known story of suffering, but brings women into the narrative of justice to which all were a part.
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The most striking difference between Sprava and other films that depict national resistance movements is the rejection of glorification. The Slovak couple with whom the escapees stay are largely silent and only appear briefly, whilst the leader of the resistance in Zilina claims they cannot do anything to help after hearing about the atrocities at Auschwitz. But heroism is not purely left to the Wetzler and Vrba - the other prisoners, left behind but in on the plot of escape, are arguably the true sources of inspiration in the film. Forced to stand for days in freezing conditions in shots that emphasise the barren nature of their surroundings, as well as their simultaneous claustrophobia and loneliness, they refuse to denounce their colleagues, knowing that the mission cannot save them, but will prevent the deaths of others.
One man shrugs ‘don’t worry about us, we are already dead’, as he helps to conceal Vrba and Wetzler under a wooden board, conveying not only the prisoners’ painful condition of accepted doom, but also a sense of the revelation of the truth as a communal effort, rather than a heroic deed enacted by only the two escapees. In fact, the film ends with the murder of one of the prisoners left behind, before text explains the real impact of the Vrba-Wetzler report, suggesting that this victim was as much part of the halt to deportations as the escapees.
Although El fotografo de Mauthausen reveals more about the legacy of the Second World War in Spain than Sprava in relation to Slovakia, both touch on broader historical questions which had to be answered by each nation individually after the war. These films are a tribute to immense suffering and a warning of the capacity of human evil, but crucially focus on the power of the collective, and foreground a commitment to truth and selflessness in two very different contexts. Despite dealing with universal questions, both films are revelatory of the highly specific national legacies of World War Two, which differ so dramatically from our own.