After sharing the news of the plunder of yet another Jewish cemetery in Slovakia with my unmatched, unrivalled filmmaker friend Katya Krausova, I remembered this 1965 Czechoslovak Oscar-winning cinematic masterpiece, The Shop on Main Street.
Then I reflected on how quickly we forgot the 2015 Shabbat shooting by Amedy Coulibaly at the Jewish supermarket Hypercacher at the Portes de Vincennes in Paris.
How quickly we moved over the fact that Coulibaly’s wife and accomplice Hayat Boumeddiene is still on the run.
Is there anyone who still remembers the words of Le Monde journalist Patrick Jarreau: “There was no hostage-taking by Coulibaly, but a massacre of Jews… Killing Jews in Paris in 2015 doesn’t make headlines in the media. It’s as banal as killing children in Ecole Ozar Hatorah in Toulouse in 2012, or people in Musée Juif de Belgique or shouting “death to the Jews” in the streets, or attacking a Jewish family in Créteil.”
More examples followed, rarely making it to the international media outlets.
But in 2015, the people of France marched in the streets of Paris holding banners « je suis juif », « morts parce que juifs » and « je suis Hyper Cacher » singing La Marseillaise. Merely 9 years ago.
Now Europe’s streets are dominated by another kind of marches and banners with no Marseillaise sung by the crowd.
This masterful Czechoslovak film featuring the Oscar and Golden Globe nominee Ida Kaminska (herself expelled from her native Poland in the 1968 “anti-Zionist” purges along with 25,000 other Polish Shoah Survivors) tells a story of an unlikely spiritual affinity forged between the victim and the oppressor, something unimaginable in contemporary Europe.
I’m hoping to be proven wrong. I’m waiting to be proven wrong. Please prove me wrong.
Meanwhile, watching this film is a must.
P.S. And best of luck to Katya Krausova with her Last Folio at the Biblioteca Brasiliana in São Paulo!
