Trimph of the Spirit

Elie Wiesel has written: “A great Hassidic Master, the rabbi of Kotsk, used to say: ‘There are deeper truths which can be communicated by the word, there are deeper truths that can be transmitted only by silence, and, on another level, there are those which cannot be expressed, not even by silence’. And yet they must be communicated…By what right would we neglect the mass media, by what right would we deny them the possibility of informing and educating, sensitizing the millions of men and women who would normally say, ‘Hitler who’s he?’ But on the other hand, if we allow total freedom to the mass media, don't risk seeing them profane and trivialize a sacred subject?  Certain productions dazzle with their authenticity, other shock with their vulgarity. Night and Fog on one side Holocaust on the other. Up against Hollywood super productions can poetic memory hold its own? Me, I prefer it. I prefer restraint to excess, the murmur of documentary to the script edited by tear-jerk specialists. To direct the massacre of Babi Yar smells of blasphemy. To make up extras as corpses is obscene.  Perhaps I am too severe, too demanding, but the Holocaust as filmed romantic adventure seems to me an outrage to the memory of the dead, and to sensitivity”.