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71 6 The Holocaust at the Lithuanian Film Studio Gott mit Uns (1961) “Manuscripts don’t burn,” wrote the Russian writer Mikhail Bulgakov. This phrase proved to be prophetic many times in Soviet history, when books, films, and other works of art that were seized, banned, rejected, or simply lost in archives came back to life in more liberal times. This chapter tells one of those stories—a banned screenplay that came back from the dead of the archives. The story starts at the Russian State Archive of Literature and Art (RGALI), a depository of, among other materials, lost or forgotten screenplays. I was there in early 2009, going through lists of rejected screenplays, when I came across an unusual title for a Soviet screenplay—Gott mit Uns, German for “God is with us,” a slogan that was imprinted on the belt buckles of Nazi uniforms. The screenplay was written by Vytautas Žalakevičiaus and Grigorii Kanovichus.1 I recognized their names: Žalakevičiaus, probably the greatest Lithuanian director , apparently wanted to make a film about the Holocaust.2 Kanovichus (better known by his Russified name, Kanovich), was a famous Jewish Lithuanian writer who, throughout his life, wrote about the Holocaust of Lithuanian Jewry. I felt compelled to read this screenplay. After requesting the file, with bated breath I waited three days for its delivery––how long it takes to retrieve a file from storage in RGALI. Once I had it, I read the screenplay in a stuffy, crowded reading room, completely transported by the text. From the first lines, it was clear that this was the rare find that I would never have dared to hope for. The screenplay was dated 1961. Files in RGALI come with a sign-up sheet on the first page, and everyone who takes it out must record his or her name and date there. The sign-up sheet for Gott mit Uns had no names. I was the first person in nearly fifty years to read the screenplay. Gott mit Uns: Local Setting—Universal Tragedy The main character is Feliksas, a Catholic priest and self-doubting intellectual, who once was a promising scholar in an academy in Rome and a student of art, stuck now in a dead-end position in a godforsaken Lithuanian village. He is a Dostoevskian character in his agonizing questioning of his every act and motive and in his constant preoccupation with doing the right thing. Under the Nazi occupation, he faces impossible choices in a situation where he has little control, 72 The Phantom Holocaust where saving one life inevitably means sacrificing another. Feliksas is a tragic character of great magnitude, and the fact that this character was never realized on screen constitutes perhaps one of the biggest cultural losses in Soviet film. Feliksas is torn between saving a Jewish boy (whom he named Thomas after rescuing him from a death march) and Monica (a young doctor sent by the Soviets to assist the Lithuanian partisans). Feliksas had not consciously chosen to save either one of them—he rescued Thomas (whose real name is Abraham), on a whim, when he happened upon the column of Jews being marched to their deaths. Monica appeared at Feliksas’s door at night when an unfortunate parachute landing left her immobilized and helpless with a broken leg. Feliksas’s conscience did not allow him to turn her away. His kindness (or weakness of will?) is a disaster for the village. Aware of the landing, Germans take ten hostages whom they will execute if the Soviet parachutist is not given away. This is the main dramatic conflict. The screenplay opens with a scene of Felikas’s escape with Thomas (at that point the screenplay refers to them as a boy and a man). They are stopped by the Nazis, who shoot the boy. Fade out, title roll. Now we know how the story ends. From there, events unfold as a flashback, starting five days earlier. Feliksas is finishing services at his church. After the usual announcements, he reads this to his parish: “The German military command issues a warning: if within a week a Red parachutist hiding in the area is not transferred to the authorities, then the ten hostages will be executed. Captain Rosenberg. 1942. . . .” He quietly continues : “There are four days left.” Meanwhile, the very cause for the hostage crisis—wounded Monica—is staying in the priest’s house. Her wound is badly inflamed and she is in need of surgery...

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