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units. The 'Job" was done almost entirely by Jewish "task forces." And from
Paris to Bialystok, from Amsterdam to Salonika, Christian Europe stood by
and watched the disappearance of the Jews-and kept silent.
Some of the Polish peasants in Lanzmann's film explain the silence bet–
ter than
all
the philosophers and their theories. They, the Jews, always knew
it would come, that this was bound to happen to them someday. And we, the
peasants, knew it was bound to come. And in their hearts, they, the Jews,
knew that they had it coming to them. And we, the peasants, also knew they
had it coming to them, because they were all rich, and very, very dishonest,
and they always had a bad smell about them, and they weren't even Polish,
•
but held all of Poland in their hands, and they had exploited Poland and
handed Jesus Christ over for crucifixion, and even agreed, in front of Pontius
Pilate, that his blood would be on their heads and on the heads of their chil–
dren. So why the wonder that it finally happened? The Jews weren't
all
that
surprised and neither were we. Even so, it's a bit of a shame about them.
Even Jesus didn't want
to
take vengeance this far. It would have been much
better
if
they'd
all
gone to Palestine and been done with it.
Paradoxically, horrifyingly, this last sentence is a kind of Zionist
consensus on the whole film: It would have been better if they had all gone
to Palestine and been done with it.
It
seems that this sentence would have been endorsed by all those in–
terviewed: the survivors, the Polish peasants ofChelmno, the Nazi murder–
ers in the film; indeed, almost
all
the characters, perhaps even Claude Lanz–
mann
himseI£
But Lanzmann lives in Paris, and most of the Jews he interviewed are
scattered
all
over, from Switzerland to New York.
First scene: Simon Srebnik, the "Chelmno nightingale," returns to the
place of the mass killing forty years later. A Polish peasant rows him in a
boat down a lovely little river, and Simon sits there and sings. He survived
mostly because of his melodious voice. At the age of thirteen, after the Lodz
ghetto after the death of his parents, he was brought to the camp to serve
the overlords with his toil and his songs. This Simon must have been an ex–
traordinarily sweet child: even the aged Polish residents of Chelmno and the
wife of the local Nazi German schoolmaster clearly remember the charm of
his Polish and German singing. And they unanimously say how happy they
are that this lovely child was saved from death. The Gestapo apparently
treated him like a talisman or mascot of their unit: His legs were put in iron
chains, and he learned to hop with his legs tied and to sing for them the sen–
timental kitsch songs from the regions of their birth, thus soothing their nos–
talgia and easing the pangs of their homesickness.
"It was always this peaceful here," Simon says. "Always. When they
