Zsuzsanna Varga: Once They Were Neighbours by Erzsebet
Bori [borie]
Published in Magyar Narancs (Hungarian printed weekly) 2005. 05. 05
On the sidelines
Finally: a Hungarian version of The Sorrow and
the Pity. - With this statement, by no means do I wish to subtly disparage
Zsuzsanna Varga director-cinematographer and Bori Kriza reporter of Once
They Were Neighbours. If another country has a similar history to ours,
and has similarly failed to come to terms with it, then it makes sense -
it gives us a measure of security and dignity - for us to use the tried-and-true
route already taken by the other.
Once They Were Neighbours is both the counterpart and antithesis of such
earlier films as the series Private Hungary by Péter Forgács, True people
(András Sipos, 1993), Dangerous land (András Kisfaludy, 1998) or Nice, flat
stone (Irén Kármán, 2004). In his 1971 film The Sorrow and the Pity, Marcel
Ophuls cross-examines the eyewitnesses about their experiences in Clermont-Ferrand,
an average town in Vichy France.
Once They Were Neighbours is set in Koszeg, on Hungary's western border
with Austria, where the fate of the Jews was both typical and extreme. Because
Koszeg is a border town, people remember two stories: one of the local Jews,
whom they knew personally, and one of the anonymous masses who were brought
here by train or death-marched from other parts of the country. The local
Jews (including those from the surrounding villages) numbered no more than
120, and fit into a single house designated as the ghetto. Within a few
weeks, they were taken away, never to be seen again. One witness says that
18 of them eventually returned - not a bad statistic, he says, attributing
this to Horthy's efforts. - As for the other category of Jews, their number
cannot even be estimated: tens of thousands? hundreds of thousands? In any
case, uncounted numbers were crowded into two local concentration camps,
at the brewery and the brick factory, while still others were sent into
forced labor. They were treated like animals; many of them died of starvation,
exposure, or were finished off by epidemics. To this day, thousands lie
in unmarked mass graves in the surrounding woods.
These stories are told by people from Koszeg who, to various extents, took part in these events. Among them: a former Levente charged with patrolling the forced-labor gangs and death-march; a woman who as a young girl delivered lunch to Jews she knew; one person who lived near the brick factory; another who lived near the railway; yet another who was summoned to do electrical work in the camp…. They know that the homes and shops of the local Jews were robbed - of whatever was left after the official confiscation and unofficial distribution of the wealth, though naturally these witnesses did not take part in this. They saw the crushed bodies falling out of the jam-packed cattle cars after several days' travel, but they weren't the ones who rushed and robbed them on the order of the Hungarian Nazis.
The reminiscences of these now elderly people are juxtaposed with - and occasionally contradicted by - the testimony of Jewish survivors recorded in 1945-46. Not surprisingly, the reminiscences of the elderly witnesses sometimes contradict each other, too. The local old-timers get into a heated debate over whether a gas chamber ever existed in Koszeg. (The question is not answered in the film- let's assume that it is unlikely.)
Understandably, as good patriots, the witnesses defend their town's reputation, but what is really striking is how the interviewed witnesses seem relieved at making their statements. At other times in their remembrances, they choose their words carefully, and only occasionally does a prejudiced remark slip out. They won't make eye contact; there are embarrassed half-smiles, unfinished sentences. They end their statements with a question seeking confirmation: "it's so, isn't it?" These people feel ashamed. Not for something that they did - they have no idea whether they even did anything, whether they are to blame for anything - since they were children or, at least, very young at the time. Their shame and embarrassment can only come from what they did not do. They just watched, or failed to notice, or considered the events inevitable; after all, it is not their fault that they were born during "that" time. They list all the usual excuses: Hitler, the Germans, the Hungarian Nazis, the life-threatening danger, "we didn't know". For their part, the filmmakers do not make judgments, do not rub the witnesses' noses into the inconsistencies, the euphemisms and the pious memories. Instead, they approach the witnesses with straightforward intentions. Many of the witnesses confess that they do not like to recollect those times; it is painful to remember and talk about. Yet they agreed to lend their voices and faces as testimony to what occurred in another era - inasmuch as it is possible to tell such things - for in retrospect, what they lived through seems almost inconceivable.
