Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on November 23, 2021

Show Art for "Show It Was Not" Featuring an image of Franz Wunsch and Helena Citron

Love it Was Not is a stunning documentary by Israeli director Maya Sarfaty about a romance between young Franz Wunsch, an Austrian SS Guard, and Helena Citron, a Jewish prisoner in Auschwitz. Based on her Student Academy Award-winning documentary The Most Beautiful Woman, Sarfaty investigates Franzs obsession with Helena after he first hears her sing a popular German song at his birthday party in the Kanada facility, where women worked sorting through the personal items of people who have died in the gas chambers. At one point, Helena recalls a moment when Franz asked her to sing the song again politely, like a human being.

Their unusual story questions the validity of a connection involving such a brutal power dynamic. Citron was fighting for survival, and her romance with Wunsch gave her and her loved ones some level of protection within the camp, drawing jealousy from her fellow prisoners, but it also came with the risk of execution if they were ever caught. Their relationship continued for two and a half years until the camp was eventually liberated. Both Franz and Helena eventually moved on with their lives, despite his failed attempts at contact. It isnt until 1972, when Franz is put on trial for War Crimes, that Citron (living in Israel at the time) receives a desperate letter from his wife, asking her to testify on his behalf.

Love it Was Not begins with a jarring photograph of Helena in the camps. She looks healthy and happy, smiling while wearing her prison uniform. Franzs daughter Dagmar explains in one of the films captivating interviews that her father would cut Helenas head out of the photograph and arrange it in romantic nature scenes with an image of himself. Sarfaty, inspired by this concept, uses artful photomontages from historical images and archival photographs, employing the same idea. This imaginative storytelling is interspersed with interviews Sarfaty obtained after a thorough investigation into the archives of Israels Yad Vashem and Steven Spielbergs Shoah Foundation for the records of women who also worked at the Kanada facility or any references to Helena and Franz in their personal stories. From there, Sarfaty was able to locate and interview seven of these women, all octogenarians, with clear memories and their own honest opinions of what the relationship between Franz and Helena really was.

I spoke to Sarfaty about her in-depth research for Love it Was Not. We also discussed what she learned from the differing perspectives shared in the various interviews and how she and her team created the riveting images used in the film.

An image from the film "Love It Was Not"

Risa Sarachan: What drew you to this story?

Maya Sarfaty: The thing that most fascinated me in this story was the ambivalence of the two main figures, the SS officer andthe Jewish victim. You can't really speak about Franz as pure evil. He was a sadistic SS officer in Auschwitz; there is no arguing about that. But he also was quite romantic, a tender man that is capable of pureloveand compassion. Helena is alsonotthe classic imaginary victim. She's a strong woman with a strong survival drive, willing to do whatever she needs in order to save herself and to save her sister. These gray zones between evil and pure are the areas that drive me as a storyteller.

Sarachan: How did you obtain your interview subjects?

Sarfaty: I spent 2016 and most of 2017 at the Yad Vashem Archive in Jerusalem. [I was] looking for testimonies of womensurvivors who were among the first transports to Auschwitz or worked in the Canadian facilities. I watched dozens if not hundreds of shocking testimonies of Auschwitz survivors, hoping they would remember and mention Helena, Rosa and Franz.I used to come back home devastated from these long and miserable days. I used to wake up in terror in the middle of the night, haunted by horror stories. One thing for sure - I cried more than usual back then.

But there were also moments of light in these days, at least from a script writers point of view. To my surprise, quite a few of the survivors devoted precious minutes of their personal testimony to this story. Those few minutes werea kind of a window. Through it, I could peek into the buried history. Their words helped me understand what is the real day-to-day meaning of the bombastic headline "An affair between an SS officer and Jewish prisoner in Auschwitz. They gave color, smell and sound to the story. They gave it life.

I was able to locate seven of the women and interview them myself. Two of them are no longer alive and have not seen the film. The rest of the testimonies in the film are a product of the important and valuable effort of recording testimonies by Yad Vashem and the Shoah Foundation by Steven Spielberg.

I call these brave and beautiful women in the film - the Chorus of Thousand Women. For me, all of them together are the fourth protagonist of the film - Helena, Rosa, Franz and the women's chorus.

As in the classical Greek tragedy, the chorus accompanies and unfolds the story with one big difference - here, the chorus does not speak in one voice. On the contrary, each and every one of them brings a different voice and a different gaze at Helena and the whole story. I love each and every one of these women. They are brave, honest, nasty, empathetic and full of envy. They are wonderfully human and fearlessly honesty.

Sarachan: I loved the way the film used paper cutouts to tell the narrative. What inspired you to use those, and how did you go about creating them?

Sarfaty: For most of his life, Franz made these weird photo-montages of Helena, placing her in different clothing and different backgrounds. I believe it was a way for him to imagine an alternative life they could have had together. Franz did it in order to see the pictures he wanted to see. And I borrowed and developed the technique to see the pictures I wanted to see. I worked with two wonderful Israeli artists, Shlomit Gopher and Ayelet Albenda. We worked with real archival photos from the period, from the war and the camps. And we made this kind of 3d multi-layered photo montage. It was all handmade and shot in a studio. It was intentionally made quite roughly. In this way, I thought that the audience would be able to distinguish between a real valid historical document and an imaginary illustration of my creation. It was very important to me that in every moment of the film, it will be very clear what is real and what is imagination.

Sarachan: What do you hope this story offers viewers today?

Sarfaty: I think the power of the story lies in its relevance to our lives today. It offers a uniquely female perspective and raises fundamental ethical and moral questions regarding relationships, authority and exploitation. Is it even possible to speak in terms of love regarding an SS officer, and a Jewish victim under the horrific conditions of Auschwitz? Can you talk about free will or free choice? The film offers various answers to these questions, I believe. I hope that by watching it, you will be able to choose for yourself the right answer.

Sarachan: Have the families connected with the story seen the film?

Sarfaty: Yes, and I was happy to find out the responses were very good.

For Helena's and Rosa's children, watching the film was not easy, but they loved it and were very proud of it. Dagmar, the daughter of Franz Wunsch, had a more difficult and complex experience, but she too felt that the movie was fair and presented her father as he was, on the sadistic sides of his personality, together with the good sides of him.The reactions of the survivors I interviewed were most emotional to me, as they validated and confirmed the historical accuracy of the film. Some of them invited me to screen the film in their nursing homes, all of them watched the film in the company of their families, and I received a lot of warm responses from children, grandchildren and even great-grandchildren.

Sarachan: What are you working on next?

Sarfaty: Right now, I'm finishing my second son's maternity leave.

On my desk, there are a couple of projects in development: a documentary about the Israeli dance world, a series about education, and a script for a feature film that depicts exploitation in a romantic relationship between an older woman and a young man. I dont know which project I will pursue first, but one thing is for sure, I need a break from Auschwitz.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Love It Was Not is now available on demand and in theatres.

Read the rest here:

'Love It Was Not' Documents An Unlikely Love Story In Auschwitz - Forbes

Category: Shoah
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