The first commandment of the Six Million who perished in the Holocaust, whether they had the chance to utter it or not, was to remember that they lived.
Men and women like Alfred Kantor and Ela Weisberger and Samuel Bak and Judith Goldstein, gifted artists who survived the camps, accepted that responsibility. Their powerful work, from raw drawings they sketched under the shadow of death to elaborate canvases they painted in the subsequent decades, confers a kind of immortality on the dead.
Hilary Helstein’s beautifully crafted and ineffably touching documentary, “As Seen Through These Eyes,” revisits the Holocaust through the rare perspective of survivors who were also creative talents. Released on DVD two weeks ago, it is suitable for children, and is worth preserving for posterity.
The film, narrated with enormous empathy and gravitas by Maya Angelou, does not provide much new information, at least for those viewers who’ve seen a few Holocaust documentaries. Helstein employs a tried and true blend of oral history and familiar archival photographs and footage.
The testimony of these self-identified “defiant witnesses” is extraordinary, however. And it is augmented by an unusual and striking element, namely the artists’ harrowing pictures. Distinguished by a collar-grabbing sense of composition, graphic detail and heart-wrenching metaphor, the art possesses an immediacy that commands and demands attention.
Indeed, if one has any quibble about this splendid film, it is that it does not linger as long over each picture as we would like.
“As Seen Through These Eyes” spends the most time in Theresienstadt, the transit camp the Nazis passed off to the Red Cross and the international community as the city Hitler gave to the Jews. The camp housed artists and musicians of all kinds as well as thousands of children, and it was here that the children’s opera “Brundibar” was first performed.
Ela Weisberger, who played the cat in that show and is plainly visible in the middle of the front row in footage from a well-known Nazi propaganda film, relates her experience with touching grace. The film briefly references the 2006 production of “Brundibar” in New York, completing a circle of commemoration that palpably demonstrates that the murdered are not forgotten.
From Theresienstadt we go to the ghetto of Vilna, Lithuania, where 9-year-old Samuel Bak had his first exhibit of drawings. Nearby, in the Ponary Forest, tens of thousands of Jews were annihilated.
The artists who recount Auschwitz include Dina Gotliebova, who painted impeccable portraits at the twisted behest of Josef Mengele. The late Simon Wiesenthal is one of the survivors who describe Mauthausen, where the life expectancy was three days. The famed Nazi hunter was an architectural engineer who made 30 to 40 excellent sketches of camp life during his internment, risking death if they were discovered.
Some of the artists explain that their work has provided a means of channeling excruciating memories and dealing with pain. For others, especially those who make beautiful pieces that defy the horror of the Holocaust, it is their way of honoring the innocents who suffered so cruelly.
Judith Goldstein’s purpose is at once straightforward and profoundly ambitious. “I want to record and preserve history,” she says.
“As Seen Through These Eyes” on DVD (Menemsha Films, $29.95)