Language:
German
Year of publication:
2022
Titel der Quelle:
Geschichtsoptimismus und Katastrophenbewusstsein
Angaben zur Quelle:
(2022) 351-373
Keywords:
Donskoĭ, Mark,
;
Ôporajito (Motion picture)
;
Motion pictures Political aspects
;
Motion pictures, Soviet
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945), in motion pictures
Abstract:
Mark Donskoy’s The Unvanquished (USSR, 1945) was the first ever fictional film to depict the killing of Jews in Eastern Europe during World War II. Its crucial and probably most contested scene was shot in Babyn Yar. Although originally meant to be understood as an indignant outcry rather than a deliberate contribution to memory, Donskoy’s brief account of the “Holocaust of bullets” already anticipated some of the peculiar difficulties of subsequent representations of the Shoah. This article explores the history of this exceptional film regarding both its production and reception – or, rather, its vanishing. After being shown in cinemas in Moscow and Kiev, and even in Western Europe, the film was tacitly withdrawn from the Soviet public. In the midst of the “anti-Zionist” campaign, the unspeakable suffering of Jews was to remain unspoken. When The Unvanquished resurfaced in the Khrushchev Thaw, the most important scene in the middle of the film had been cut. To this day, the film remains widely unknown outside Russia.
DOI:
10.13109/9783666317361.351
URL:
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