Ukraine: Documenary, July 22

The film finally has a working title:

Black Earth: the Holocaust and Antisemitism in Ukraine

"Black Earth", of course, refers to Ukraine's famed black earth, but possibly people won't know that. I like the associations with the sins and the mass graves, but I can also see someone thinking it's about African-Americans.

Interviewed the director of the Zhytomyr branch of MAUP, theuniversity that puts out the antisemitic lietrature. It was a he, now it's a she. I don't know why he was suddenly replaced, but at least she was willing to talk. We talked aboutMAUP having its accredidation pulled, but when I moved onto theliterature, she said she never actually read the stuff THAT THEYDISTRIBUTE AT THEIR SCHOOL.

Interviewed the cop who is responsible for the rabbi attack case. Hedidn't want to talk on camera, but the camera was on my shoulder andpointing off at an angle, so I switched it on anyway. He doesn'tthink they'll catch the guys who did it, but said they were steppingup patrols near the synagogue.I interviewed the rabbi who had been attacked the next morning. Allthe Jews have been cautious about saying anything bad about theauthorities on camera, but he was so livid that he was tearing intotheir lack of effort and their constant denial that any attacks areantisemitic vs. acts of hooliganism. The problem: Daniel didn't havethe camera switched on. I had turned it on during set-up because hewas working on his computer and I figured I could use it for cutshots, but when I had the mic ready and was starting the interview, Imust have instinctively hit the record but (no memory of doing this,but it's what must have happened) because next thing I know the camerais powering down from being left idling too long and when I switch itback on I notice only a minute of tape has rolled (the minute from set
that, but I missed his initial outburst about the cops. Grr.

He andI are still supposed to have a lengthy sit down interview about a broad number of topics, so maybe I can get him to say it again. Went to Kyiv yesterday and was taken on a personal 3 hour tour of Babyn Yar by the head of the Judaica institute. She talked so much it took up 2.5 hours of tape and ran my battery into the ground. I thought it would be much briefer and left my back-up battery in Zhytomyr (I had forgotten to charge it the night before anyway) and as I watched the battery tick down I started to go to manual on everything, including the focus, to save power. Thing is, she standing still. We're walking all over Babyn Yar and I'm shooting handheld, monitoring sound, keeping focus, trying to understand her Russian and trying not to fall on all the rocks and branches (it's a big ravine). I was mentally exhausted by the end, but got a lot of good information. More to the point, she gave me permission to dig throughtheir archives. She says they have a number of photos from the war, which I should be able to scan myself. This is good, because the Holocaust Memorial Museum in DC wants $15 for EACH PHOTO that they give me on disk. Fuck that.

I'm also getting slightly raped by the archives here in Zhytomyr. FINALLY, after a whole lot of wrangling, I got access to the archives and it's a treasure trove. Page after hand-written page of tesitmonies and findings that the Soviets compiled on any bit of paper they could find (some of it is on the back of German maps), documenting what had happened in Zhytomyr and Berdichev during the war and then locking it all away. It even looks visually good: this thick folder of aging paper, and the writing is in various colors: blue, purple, red, black, with notes in the margins.

Problem is, I have yet to get permission tophotograph it (technically I should not be allowed to at all, but I'mholding out hope), and I couldn't even photocopy it because--had thephotocopier not been broken anyway--I need permission from thedirector for each PAGE copied, and when I do get that permission, eachone will cost me 7 UAH ($1.40) (so much for me planning on copyingeverything to have a small archive of my own). Marina and I jokingly concoted a plan for taking turns in the bathroomphotographing them with a digital camera, but we're not so stupid as to actually try it.

Still, that moment was a long time coming. I'd seen parts of thetexts already: there are microfiche copies of some of it in Yad Vashemand the Garrards (the authors who wrote the Bones of Berdichev)reference them in their book, but even they haven't seen the actualcopies, and there I was, with them in my hands, sitting at a desk andflipping through them. I didn't even want to give them back becausesome paranoid part of me worried that the next time I came back I'dhave lost permission to see them or that they'd have dissapeared.It's hard to explain how important these pieces of paper are to me.They aren't even typed Soviet reports or anything. It's thehandwriting from 60 years ago of a handful of NKVD officers goingaround saying "what happened here? what happened here?", andscrawling it down. It's as raw a first-hand account as we're going toget, completely untainted by the passage of time (as survivor'smemories are), although, of course, taininted by the politics of theday...