Penciling in history
The tale of secret love in a Nazi concentration camp is brought to life in Michèle Ohayon’s documentary Steal a Pencil For Me
By Beth Capper
Published: September 14th, 2007 | 1:46pm
Among the many films addressing the Holocaust, Alain Resnais' Night and Fog is one of the most powerful ones, coupling ghostly images of empty concentration camps with war footage of mass graves and the multitudes of dead. Unable to describe these scenes in words, all Resnais can do is quietly observe through his camera lens with the hope that his audience can fathom something meaningful from the horror.
While Resnais' film focuses on showing the sheer amount of lives lost at the hands of the Nazis instead of delving into the stories of individuals affected by the Holocaust, academy award–winning director Michèle Ohayon puts a more intimate spin on the subject in her compelling documentary Steal a Pencil For Me. Centering on the plight of Dutch Jews in WWII, Ohayon uses archival footage, interviews with Holocaust survivors and visual reconstructions to tell the story of Jack Polak and Ina Soep, a couple who had an affair under the watchful eye of Jack’s wife Manja while all three were imprisoned in the same barracks at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
Ina and Jack recount their story to Ohayon in much the same way that Art Spiegelman’s father Vladek recalls his own internment in Auschwitz in the Pulitzer Prize–winning graphic novel Maus. They help the audience to understand the tactics the Nazis used to obtain maximum compliance from Dutch Jews as they were gradually made to give up their homes and possessions, as they were segregated from the rest of the population, and as they were sent off to live in the transit camp Westerbork.
Ohayon takes us inside the walls of the camp, where the only thing that sustained Jack and Ina were the passionate love letters they wrote to one another — the film's title comes from Jack’s request to Ina in one of these letters. In reconstructing their story, Ohayon tows a fine balance, on the one hand looking at the sadder factual aspects of Jack and Ina's experiences, while at the same time embellishing the lighter subject of their love for each other.
Unlike many films about this subject, where we are often observers looking in from a point outside, Ohayon gives us a unique insight into Jack and Ina's lives inside Bergen-Belsen, so that we can almost imagine being there with them.
Sixty years on, Jack and Ina are like 20 years old, newly in love, giving frequent educational talks on the Holocaust at schools and universities, and to the crowds of tourists that now flock to Bergen-Belsen. Steal a Pencil For Me is a monument to what they went through together and to the love they found in the madness of Nazi Germany.
Issue #35
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