After two postponements due to the pandemic, a ten-member group of final students from the Film Department of AUTH is leaving tomorrow, Thursday, October 21, 2021, for Auschwitz for the final filming of the documentary about the extermination of the Jewish population of Thessaloniki during World War II.
The documentary is based on the manuscripts of the Jew Marcel Natzari, one of the few survivors of the Zonderkommando, the "special group" of the gas chambers and crematoria of Auschwitz-Birkenau, who was born in Thessaloniki in 1917 and died in 1971 in New York, where he had immigrated in 1951. His parents, Avraam Natzari and Luna Pelozof, came from old bourgeois families of Thessaloniki.
Filming has taken place in Thessaloniki, specifically in the house where Natzari lived on 28th of October Street (formerly of Italy), in Limani and in Aretsou - he loved the sea, had very good sailing performances and was a member of the "Friends of the Sea Group" - and in Athena. Natzari's daughter, Nelli, also speaks in the documentary, while for financial reasons it was impossible to shoot in New York, where he spent the last years of his life.
An important part of the documentary will be filmed in Auschwitz and the group of final students of the AUTH Film Department, together with their professor Dimitris Goulis, are preparing for the trip. "After so many postponements, we hardly believe that we are going," student Giorgos Pantsios notes to the Athens/Macedonian News Agency, while his fellow student Archontia Apostolidou, who has also visited Auschwitz in the past, believes that "because the atmosphere in crematoria are very heavy, we have to expel some emotions very difficult. Let's see it as a job and not let it get inside us."
Giorgos will oversee the sound design of the documentary and write the music, while Archontia will do the editing. The script and direction are written by their fellow students Ioanna Kyriakou and Sotiria Papantoniou, and the documentary is also worked on by: Dimitra Tsilia, Dimitra Seferidis, Ilias Avramidis, Vassilis Kartas, Stamatina Rupalioti and Ioanna Loura.
After filming in Auschwitz, they will look for narrators - in the documentary Natzari himself, his daughter and son will narrate the events - and editing and editing will follow. The approximately 40-minute film is expected to be completed in mid-2022 and as the creators emphasize, they want to see it travel to documentary festivals around the world, starting with the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival.
As they explain, the subject of the Holocaust may have been presented over the years in many ways in cinema and television, but the new dimension that this work gives is the contrast of Natzari's manuscripts with the Thessaloniki of today. “So many of us walk every day among these fragments of memory and pay no attention to them. We don't think about the history of the city and to a large extent, its history is its people, such as the Jews", says Giorgos Pantsios.
The only Holocaust course in Europe
The documentary is the fruit of the course that Dimitris Goulis started teaching two years ago at the Film Department of AUTH, the first undergraduate course "in Greece and possibly in Europe", as he notes, that connects the Holocaust with cinema and TV. An offshoot of this course was a tutorial for making documentaries about the Holocaust, and that's where this particular film began to be "born".
As part of the course, Mr. Goulis spoke to the students about the manuscripts of Natzaris and the book "Manuscripts 1944-1947. From Thessaloniki to Auschwitz Zonderkommando" and suggested to them if they want to make a documentary about them. The children's response was immediate and warm.
"Through this course it was like seeing Thessaloniki, from the beginning in a different way", explains Archontia and Giorgos adds that he now sees pieces of history everywhere in the city.
"It is a kind of honor to a very important part of the city's history, which connects the academic part with the historical adventure of Thessaloniki", Mr. Goulis points out. He adds that this year, when Greece holds the presidency of the IHRA, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, the documentary "in some way contributes to the preservation of memory".
The production is financed by the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and as Mr. Goulis emphasizes, the rector Nikos Papaioannou has been a helper in this effort from the beginning. "It is shocking to learn that the university is built on top of Jewish cemeteries," Archontia notes.
Sponsored by an American university
Dimitris Goulis has been involved in the teaching of the Holocaust for many years and has participated in numerous related seminars. "Anyone who was born and grew up in Thessaloniki always finds something related to the topic", he notes, while his post-doctoral research entitled: "From Rezi Vardar to Xirokrini (1926-1934) is expected to be published in the next period." . The study of an area through its school record. Didactic suggestions for teaching local history".
The impact of the course at AUTH has already gone beyond the Greek borders and has been sponsored by the American Northwestern University, which sponsors university courses around the world that promote the teaching of the Holocaust.
Thanks to this grant, by the middle of next year, the Film Department is expected to have a rich library and film archive specialized in the subject. "I dare to say that we will be one of the few university departments in Europe with such material", notes Mr. Goulis.
SOURCE: AMNA.GR, 20.10.2021
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