Shoah and other books and films that brought about this “ Return to Poland ”. Historians of the Shoah sensitive to visual sources have helped me to think about and accept this palimpsest that characterises the unique way we grasp a landscape , because the landscape of the metropolis of death of which you speak was for me that of experience and learning about life more than anything . It is a living “ picture ” ( obraz ) that has built my sensitivity to nature and my deep joy in touching the clay , caressing the humus of the trees and even experiencing the stings of nettles .
This is also what I appreciated in your film Sheol : you make room for those who continue to live around the forests of Sobibor , for the Sunday cyclists who stop before the archaeological excavation site for a few moments before resuming their walk . In your film , the Poles are no longer just those people who smiled in front of Lanzmann and announced the extermination of the Jews with actions that have become metonymical of the Shoah .
This leads me to ask you a delicate question : the characters you chose in your film have unique relationships to “ what happened there ” during the Second World War . This past roughly lives in their present and also guides their professional activities in the memorial institutions that you explore . But it seems to me that your approach suspends judgment towards them . Is this suspension even possible and under what conditions can it take place ?
Arnaud Sauli : When we approach a place as full of death and dead people , loaded with affects and history as Sobibor , and we wish to perceive it in the present , in what it summons in us and in the interactions that it provokes with the beings who pass by there , stay , work or are simply in the vicinity , we must first “ see ” these different kinds of presences , the gazes that these people exert in all their nuances . Because for me , it is about successfully seeing and then showing what Sobibor continues to create in us . To succeed in this , I must accept that Sobibor produces things in others that I would not have even imagined possible , so I must shift my gaze . If we then imagine a mental and emotional map of a place such as Sobibor , we realise that the mass graves are at its centre and that the crossing of the land from the ramp at the edge of the railway line towards the gas chambers at the immediate proximity of the graves is its backbone . Everything literally revolves around this centre , like a vortex that sucks the thoughts , emotions , opinions and projects of those revolving around it into a whirlpool . This vortex of pain is the subject of very strong conflicts in what men wish to do with it to remember what took place there , and the form they wish to give it for the future . They are rabbis like Michael Schudrich and want us to think of the place above all as a cemetery where we leave the dead in peace , finally protected from desecration , looting or damage caused by wild animals . They are architects like Piotr Michalewicz and Marcin Urbanek , members of the new intellectual and artistic Warsaw bourgeoisie who are in charge of conceptualising a new memorial-museum . Their perception of the event and the place is based on a left-liberal political and moral opinion on how Poland is not mourning its Jewish community lost in the Shoah . It also has to do with performative issues specific to a plastic project in such a place ; the proposed architectural plan takes precedence over the place itself in creating its message , while aiming to express humility and self-effacement . It is also part of a certain spirit of the times through its desire for emotional distancing , promoting modern educational enlightenment for future generations who will no longer have living contact with witnesses of the time . They are also archaeologists like Wojtek Mazurek and Yoram Haimi , who have been working on the site , “ in ” the site , in its bowels , for almost twenty years . They have dug thousands of objects out of the ground , silent witnesses to mass murder , most of them coming from rubbish pits left by the Nazis . They have identified mass graves and uncovered the foundations of the gas chambers . They have both a material and hands-on relationship to the place because touch plays a central role in their perception . Their relationship to it is also romantic due to the emotional power of working in specific , daily contact with horror . And yet , these archaeologists with incredible enthusiasm and dedication would like to see the improbable idea of a virtual reality Sobibor
Deep VIEW
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