Ukraine: The Documentary
Friday, June 22, 2007
I am in Odessa right now, about to finish an interview with a Holocaust survivor. I have decided to start updating the blog again in regards to the documentary. Filming has been going really well despite some hiccups, and I finally feel like I will have an end product worth watching, and so feel like I should acually start writing about it. I have been documenting the experience in emails and in my journal, but not on this blog. That will change, but it will take a while to catch everything up. So this comes from an email dated June 22, and as I get more time, more will get posted until the story up untill now has been posted.
***
I feel like filming on the documentary has finally started. I had shot some stuff in Ukraine earlier and an interview with an expert in the states, but the main course has begun. I interviewed a friendbeside some mass graves today. She told of how, when she was fifteen,she and classmates had to rebury the bones churned up by gravediggerslooking for jewlery they had heard the Jews had swallowed prior tobeing led away from their homes, not knowing (or refusing toaknowledge) that they were going to be killed. This had only been sixyears ago: with no money after the collapse of the Soviet Union, thisis what people had been driven to.And horrific as all that is (and, sadly, the more horrific the thingsI find, the more compelling the documentary becomes), it onlyreinforces a whole new angle I'm finding on this. Those casualantisemites [I wrote earlier of some friends I had dinner with who, when I mentioned the topic of the film, started ripping into Jews, but not in an angry manner] I had dinner with? Well, let's put it this way: we had totake turns at their little table. It's four people and a dog livingin a two room (not two bedroom, two room) apartment: the parents of myfriends' sister, the sister (very pregnant and due in two weeks) andthe sister's husband (who has invited me hunting with him). Soon itwill be five with the arrival of the baby. With my friend, me, andher daughter there, there simply weren't enough chairs and we tookturns eating dinner in the kitchen. This is their life. Much of theconversation centered on the impossibility of finding an apartment.The husband is in the army, the wife will finish university next year. They will continue living this way, with the addition of a baby, forthe forseeable future, disgruntled by every moment of it. So is itany wonder when they casually blame Jews for this and that? I askedthem, would any of them attack a Jew given the opportunity? No. Butthat doesn't mean they like or trust them. They don't even lump allJews together. There's Jews and then there's "Zhidi", which I took tomean Hassidic Jews from their description of the ear curls (by theway, one of the founders of Hassidism was born in Ukraine; smallworld) [NOTE: I later learned that Zhidi is the slang for "kike", so they were telling me the differences between Jews and kikes the way someone might tell you "there's differences between blacks and niggers". Those Jews, they said, they stay seperate, go to seperateschools, are told they are special. And of course they found thatthreatening. With as fucked up as the government is here, as corruptare the cops and judicial system, can't they wonder, believe, thatthere is something behind all this, profiting from all this? I can'tblame these people for how they feel. As they spoke, it seemed liketheir views were completely reasonable, save for the fact that, youknow, I knew that they were completely, morally WRONG. But as Ilistened, their story seemed as important as that of those sufferingfrom the violent results of this undercurrent of dislike.Being Jewish, you might not see it that way, but what it comes down tois that this hate doesn't spring fully-formed, that the cycles ofpoverty, oppression and hate have spun together for the entire historyof this country and it comes back again now, viciously as every hopethey had with the Orange Revolution has collapsed (to me at least, theskyrocketing of antisemetic incidents seems to coincide exactly withthe revolution's collapse)I can't speak for antisemitism in the world in general, but here Ifeel that there might be a chance to, I don't know, EXPLAIN it alittle, or a least peel back some of the layers over the motives.It just feels as if it all weaves together: strands of Judaism bornhere, being murdered here, casual poverty, casual hate. I have aninterview with the Zhytomyr rabbi tomorrow, who was, along with hisfamily, was beaten in broad daylight by skinheads. His assistant'sassesment of antisemitism in Zhytomyr when we talked yesterday? "Ne ochen ploha" (not too bad) People telling me there is no problem, people tellingme they have a problem, people just not caring either way. I feellike there's something here, compelling, worth documenting, even ifonly for me, even if only to teach myself HOW to to document suchthings on film (or HD digital, whatever). I've felt a trepidation fora while about all this, that it was going to overwhelm me, that I wasdiving into a project I didn't have the skills for (making adocumentary) and now I don't care if the end result turns out to beshit because I feel like I am in the middle of something right now, anexus of so many different ideas and images and opinions and factsand--despite all the horror--I feel glad to be here.
***
I feel like filming on the documentary has finally started. I had shot some stuff in Ukraine earlier and an interview with an expert in the states, but the main course has begun. I interviewed a friendbeside some mass graves today. She told of how, when she was fifteen,she and classmates had to rebury the bones churned up by gravediggerslooking for jewlery they had heard the Jews had swallowed prior tobeing led away from their homes, not knowing (or refusing toaknowledge) that they were going to be killed. This had only been sixyears ago: with no money after the collapse of the Soviet Union, thisis what people had been driven to.And horrific as all that is (and, sadly, the more horrific the thingsI find, the more compelling the documentary becomes), it onlyreinforces a whole new angle I'm finding on this. Those casualantisemites [I wrote earlier of some friends I had dinner with who, when I mentioned the topic of the film, started ripping into Jews, but not in an angry manner] I had dinner with? Well, let's put it this way: we had totake turns at their little table. It's four people and a dog livingin a two room (not two bedroom, two room) apartment: the parents of myfriends' sister, the sister (very pregnant and due in two weeks) andthe sister's husband (who has invited me hunting with him). Soon itwill be five with the arrival of the baby. With my friend, me, andher daughter there, there simply weren't enough chairs and we tookturns eating dinner in the kitchen. This is their life. Much of theconversation centered on the impossibility of finding an apartment.The husband is in the army, the wife will finish university next year. They will continue living this way, with the addition of a baby, forthe forseeable future, disgruntled by every moment of it. So is itany wonder when they casually blame Jews for this and that? I askedthem, would any of them attack a Jew given the opportunity? No. Butthat doesn't mean they like or trust them. They don't even lump allJews together. There's Jews and then there's "Zhidi", which I took tomean Hassidic Jews from their description of the ear curls (by theway, one of the founders of Hassidism was born in Ukraine; smallworld) [NOTE: I later learned that Zhidi is the slang for "kike", so they were telling me the differences between Jews and kikes the way someone might tell you "there's differences between blacks and niggers". Those Jews, they said, they stay seperate, go to seperateschools, are told they are special. And of course they found thatthreatening. With as fucked up as the government is here, as corruptare the cops and judicial system, can't they wonder, believe, thatthere is something behind all this, profiting from all this? I can'tblame these people for how they feel. As they spoke, it seemed liketheir views were completely reasonable, save for the fact that, youknow, I knew that they were completely, morally WRONG. But as Ilistened, their story seemed as important as that of those sufferingfrom the violent results of this undercurrent of dislike.Being Jewish, you might not see it that way, but what it comes down tois that this hate doesn't spring fully-formed, that the cycles ofpoverty, oppression and hate have spun together for the entire historyof this country and it comes back again now, viciously as every hopethey had with the Orange Revolution has collapsed (to me at least, theskyrocketing of antisemetic incidents seems to coincide exactly withthe revolution's collapse)I can't speak for antisemitism in the world in general, but here Ifeel that there might be a chance to, I don't know, EXPLAIN it alittle, or a least peel back some of the layers over the motives.It just feels as if it all weaves together: strands of Judaism bornhere, being murdered here, casual poverty, casual hate. I have aninterview with the Zhytomyr rabbi tomorrow, who was, along with hisfamily, was beaten in broad daylight by skinheads. His assistant'sassesment of antisemitism in Zhytomyr when we talked yesterday? "Ne ochen ploha" (not too bad) People telling me there is no problem, people tellingme they have a problem, people just not caring either way. I feellike there's something here, compelling, worth documenting, even ifonly for me, even if only to teach myself HOW to to document suchthings on film (or HD digital, whatever). I've felt a trepidation fora while about all this, that it was going to overwhelm me, that I wasdiving into a project I didn't have the skills for (making adocumentary) and now I don't care if the end result turns out to beshit because I feel like I am in the middle of something right now, anexus of so many different ideas and images and opinions and factsand--despite all the horror--I feel glad to be here.
posted by Daniel Reynolds Riveiro at 12:42 AM
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