The Double Legacy of Arbeit Macht Frei

Israeli nonfiction film has sought, in the past decade, to come to terms with the Shoah and survivor experience through the personal testimonial film, emanating from the second and third generations of Israelis born after the Shoah. One such film, Asher Tlalim's Don't Touch My Holocaust (1994), whose conception had given rise to German filmmaker Andres Veiel's 1993 film for German television, Balagan (Chaos), recounts the work of the experimental troupe of the Acre Theater Center in creating Arbeit macht frei fun toitland Europa, a five-hour, semi-improvised stage performance devoted to survivor experience in Israel and its relation to the unresolved cultural and political tensions within Israeli society and between Israelis and Palestinians. Examination of the play and the two films yields rich insights into a process Marianne Hirsch has characterized as "postmemory," mediated not through recollection but through imaginative investment and creation.