A Film Unfinished

In 1942 the Germans shot a propaganda film inside the Warsaw Ghetto. It was called Das Ghetto, it was never finished, and it turned up after the war without sound. For years it was taken for an authentic record and cut into countless documentaries. Then in 1998 a missing reel surfaced, and it showed the same scenes shot again and again, with the German crew visible in frame. Yael Hersonski's documentary starts from that reel. The wealthy Jews dining at elegant tables, and the same people made to step over bodies in the street, were staged; these are people who were forced in front of a camera. The film sets the testimony of Willy Wist, one of the cameramen, alongside survivors watching the footage now.