For the Living

Even before it opened in April, 1993, Washington's Holocaust Memorial Museum was the subject of a deeply divided controversy over issues regarding America's right to house such a museum, as well as the form that museum was taking. But you'd not suspect any of that from watching For the Living, a distinctly non-investigative report on the history of the museum's construction. The program opens with cameras following Ralph Applebaum and Martin Smith, the project's guiding lights, as they visit Auschwitz and run their hands along the bunkbeds ("For Ralph and Martin, it took only a single visceral visit; reality would be anchored by palpable evidence.") It wasn't just the purple prose delivered in solemn tones, nor even the occasional jarring cheap organ notes that sounded very much like out-takes from a cheap "B"-horror flick, which set me against this documentary early on, it was the business-like air which pervaded the proceedings. As I watched the "showcases" being built, and listened to management argue over the number of video monitors to use, and cringed over the script (Danish Jews heading for boats to take them to safety are described, in what seems a parody of alliteration, as "stark, silent passengers snaking down to the seashore"), I kept thinking I don't want to see this. Except for the matter of issuing "identity cards" of Holocaust victims to museum visitors (which will either result in empathy or represents the current pinnacle of gruesomeness in interactivity), the nearly wordless walk-through of the museum during the final ten minutes came as almost a relief. Here, the power of mute photographs cut through all the lame verbiage that had gone before. Made by WETA in Washington, D.C., one suspects that the rigorously non-questioning aspect of For the Living may have been at least partially inspired by the hope that the documentary would encourage viewers to come visit. Call me greedy, but I expected a little more than this from public television. Not a necessary purchase. (R. Pitman)