FRONTLINE: SHTETL {PARTS 1 AND 2 OF 3} (TV)
Summary
One in this documentary series. Parts one and two of this three-part program chronicling the journey of Marian Marzynski in his search for the shtetl. Accompanied by footage from his 1969 trip to Poland, Marzynski describes the way his mother saved him from death camps in 1942 and his upbringing in a Christian orphanage. Marzynski notes the reasons that Kaplan, an American-born Jew, is accompanying him to Poland. Kaplan has maintained a two-year correspondence with a young Polish historian, Zbyszek Romaniuk, who lives in his family's old shtetl in Bransk and yearns to uncover the region's suppressed Jewish history. Once Kaplan and Marzynski meet with Romaniuk, the three travel around the surrounding area, visiting relevant historical sites and interviewing local villagers about the Jewish citizens and culture before the war. Highlights of their investigation include: a visit to the last standing synagogue in the region; the unearthing of dozens of headstones that Germans had turned into paving stones, and their return to the original Jewish cemetery; interviews with two elderly men accused of killing or turning in Jews during the war; and a talk with the daughter of a man convicted of killing Jews. This segment ends with Marzynski's accounts of his years in the orphanage and his reunion with his mother after the war. In part two, Romaniuk travels to the U.S. to conduct further research on Jewish life. After a visit with Kaplan, who has arranged an itinerary, Marzynski and Romaniuk visit a New Jersey woman whose mother was from Bransk. During the visit, questions arise as to whether Romaniuk, a Polish Christian, is qualified to document this history properly. Next, they visit a woman in Atlanta whose family left Bransk in 1938 when she was a teenager: she reminisces about Bransk and her cherished memories of the shtetl life that was destroyed. In Baltimore, they visit a small group of Jewish Holocaust survivors and people who left before the war. At this gathering, faces and personal stories become linked with the data that Romaniuk has compiled on the Jews of Bransk, and in Philadelphia, Romaniuk speaks at a class entitled "Shtetl" at Gratz College and at a Polish-language radio station. Finally, at the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C., they meet a Holocaust survivor and scholar who has created an exhibit on the shtetl: she offers a moving account of events she and her family experienced when they tried to return to their hometown after liberation. Continues with T:51092.
Cataloging of this program was made possible by The Hearst Corporation, 1998.
Details
- NETWORK: PBS WNET New York, NY
- DATE: April 17, 1996 8:00 PM
- RUNNING TIME: 2:55:56
- COLOR/B&W: Color
- CATALOG ID: T:51000
- GENRE: Public affairs/Documentaries
- SUBJECT HEADING: Bransk, Poland; Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945); Jews - Politics and suffrage; Poland - History - 1939-1945
- SERIES RUN: PBS - TV series, 1983-
- COMMERCIALS: N/A
CREDITS
- David Fanning … Executive Producer
- Robin Parmelee … Coordinating Producer
- Michael Sullivan … Senior Producer
- Marian Marzynski … Producer, Director, Narrator
- David E. Simpson … Associate Producer
- Mason Daring … Music by
- Ilya Levinson … Music by
- Nathan Kaplan
- Zbyszek Romaniuk