The Long Way Home

For the majority of Jewish Holocaust survivors, the nightmares and trials did not end with liberation. Without homes or possessions, the survivors wandered the blasted European landscape, in search of families and shreds of their former lives. Many times the violence against them continued ("our return was a painful surprise...they thought of us as ghosts; no one loves ghosts"). In a brutally misguided attempt to restore some semblance of social order, large numbers of DPs--displaced persons--were shunted by the Allies into squalid, overcrowded detention camps in Germany, Austria, and Poland. In the midst of this unimaginable pain and despair, one ray of hope continued to shine weakly through--the hope for a new life in a Jewish homeland, Palestine. The Long Way Home is the hugely moving story of the struggle for this homeland and for Jewish statehood between 1945 and 1948, told largely through the use of remarkable archival footage (editor Kate Amend deserves as much credit for the video's effectiveness as director Mark Harris). Narration is ably provided by Morgan Freeman (an interesting choice!), augmented with additional first person accounts, and emotional readings from diaries and other written sources. If there's a central weakness to this work, it's the tendency to rather carelessly gloss over the complex history of Arab/Jewish relations which preceded partitioning of Palestine in 1948, and to give Arab concerns egregiously short shrift. Despite these shortcomings, it's a highly recommended acquisition for any library collection interested in Jewish history or Middle Eastern studies. Those seeking a more coolly academic and comprehensive treatment of Palestinian history (and one reflecting definite pro-Arab sympathies) should check out the two volume French production Palestine: History of a Land (First Run/Icarus Films). Aud: H, C, P. (G. Handman)