Pola's March

Pola Susswein, a sprightly, well-spoken seventy-something social worker living in Tel Aviv travels back to her native Poland in this rendezvous with ghosts, memory, and lost childhood. As a survivor of the Holocaust, Pola has volunteered to join and act as historical witness for The March of the Living, a group of 200 high school and college students who journey to unspeakable hearts of darkness--Auschwitz, Birkenau, Treblinka, and Majdanek. Filmmaker Jonathan Gruber provides a beautifully photographed chronicle of this descent into hell, as well as a record of Pola's return to her childhood neighborhood in Krakow. While Pola's conversations with the students, and the students' reaction to what they see and hear are particularly moving, the subject matter is almost unbearably emotional, and there's an odd, difficult-to-define emptiness at the film's core. Pola seems to have more to say (and to grieve about) concerning the loss of a comfortable childhood, than about the cosmic horrors of the camp. Despite her willingness to share her experiences with students, she has also obviously wrapped herself in a protective coat of reticence and denial about parts of that experience that only allow superficial reflection. In light of these shortcomings then, and given the very large body of filmmaking about the Holocaust and about survivors, one can't help but wonder why Pola's story was singled out to tell. A marginal buy for larger public or academic library collections. Aud: H, C, P. (G. Handman)