A contemplative journey through a bleak present and the relationship between Czech society and its Jewish history. Some people who live here believe they occasionally encounter "ghosts." Others, including the mayor, would rather avoid the past and the remembrance thereof. The solitary individual who leads us through the town, one which was turned into a ghetto for several years, reflects on how, after the Second World War, hardly anyone spoke about the Jewish victims of the former concentration camp. During the Cold War the socialist narrative, with its claims that, together with fascism, anti-Semitism had been eradicated, predominated. The victims were understood to primarily have been communist prisoners. Should this message continue to prevail in today’s Czech Republic, a sense of continuity with the country’s Jewish past will have been lost.
Director Victor Portel about his film:
„As part of the NGO Memory of the Nations, we have filmed many testimonies of witnesses and created a series of documentaries for Czech Television, focusing on the fate of the Jewish community. This film, however, is my first original documentary in which I return to the subject from a personal perspective and explore not only the past of Terezín, but also how we look at it today.“
Text: Production announcement / adapted and edited by Bernd Buder
Supporting film for THE COMMUNITY(Alex Osmolovsky, IL, UA 2025, 64 min)
