memorial come into being where we could in situ visualise the buildings “ as they were at the time ” in 3D . Finally , there are the museum employees and their routines , as well as the excavation site workers , building construction workers , neighbours , tourists and visitors . They are almost all Polish and all work to educate about and preserve the memory of the Shoah in Sobibor . So of course I have a different point of view than Lanzmann on “ the Poles ” because Sheol is a film in the Polish language , with Polish faces and Polish bodies . I have a duty to let the image and sound have their nuances , imagination and conflicts . They are neither a group of witnesses leaving a church on a Sunday morning , nor anti- Semitic farmers . They are individual members of a society that confronts its past , sometimes fiercely , each with a unique story and an intimate relationship with Sobibor . It does not matter if they are museum directors , a young unemployed person in Wlodawa , an archaeologist-folk guitarist in Chelm or a hipster architect in a trendy bar in Warsaw .
Ania Szczepanska : In this gallery of characters that you describe , who live and think about the place with different intents , you choose to film some and not others . It seems to me that you give the archaeologist Wojtek Mazurek a central place in your film : the one to which viewers will feel closest and whose point of view they will embrace with the most sensitivity and humanity . Why did you make this choice ? Is it because Mazurek is the one you felt closest to emotionally and intellectually ?
Arnaud Sauli : Wojtek is the first main character from Sobibor who entered into my imagination even before I started writing the script for the film . I learned of his archaeological investigation in an article published in the Times of Israel in 2012 , accompanied by a photograph of him holding a spade at the bottom of a ditch . I wrote to him a few years later to meet him and test out my initial intuition , which never left me . I like characters who can embody and carry the dramatic arc of a film . Wojtek , who is a generous and humble enthusiast , embodies complex issues linked to the Shoah on Polish soil on a daily basis with great humanity : he is not Jewish , but has something of a Tzadik ( the somewhat mystical wise man that is the instrument of moral justice in Ashkenazi tradition ); he is Polish and he is entirely devoted to the memory of the victims of Sobibor . He does not compromise on anything since the integrity of their memory is at stake . He is the one who helps us to read the landscape of extermination by linking the appearance of nettles to a change in soil acidity due to the many human remains . His actions as an archaeologist on the grounds of an extermination centre have the power to make the traces of extermination visible and tangible , which is of course a sensitive subject for the film . The man touched me deeply . We became friends , but his ability to embody these issues in Sheol is due to his inner truth and their staging through cinema .
Naturally I have elective affinities with some of the characters in the film , reluctance with others and frustration about unfinished business with certain individuals , but I always try to treat them fairly , with the same empathy . I do not think that I am suspending my personal judgment in Sheol , or in other films , but I do think that it is neither the essence of the film nor its most interesting aspect for viewers in relation to the people presented to them and to the problems they face . I find it much more interesting to show that each character engaged in Sobibor , or nearby , holds some truth or knowledge , that they propose a possible and unique way to approach the issue of memory in the place , that their necessarily excessive commitment testifies to a certain form of exclusive appropriation of the place and that their conflicts and frustrations belong to them and show issues where egos are at play . So of course I exercise judgment on the moral importance of wanting to give the world a 3D representation of the gas chambers and mass graves of Sobibor . I exercise judgment on the somewhat puffed-up effects that give us the opportunity to emotionally experience not belonging to Sobibor , faced with a concrete wall that obstructs our view of the graves . I also exercise judgment on the public administrations ’ restricted and financial vision of
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Observing Memories Issue 7