My Response To:

“A Film Unfinished”

            This film was very curious to me on a lot of different levels. It also made me feel a few different emotions starting with anger. It made me sad to see the children put into that situation, and it made me question things I thought I knew about that period of time in that part of the world. I have always been fascinated with World War II and the holocaust, but until now, I didn’t know about the ghettos. I suppose I haven’t done my homework on the subject in the past. I’ve watched documentary after documentary on the war and the holocaust on the History Channel and feel like I haven’t heard the whole story. I’m not sure if they have done a story on the ghettos and maybe I just missed it, but the ghetto needs to be more of the story of the holocaust than it is presently.

            To start with, seeing the children suffer is the foremost thing that made me sad. That in turn made me very angry, but I will get to that part later. It makes me sad to see any human suffer, but to me, children always come first. Seeing the children who are obviously starving and suffering is bad enough, but to see their skinny, lifeless bodies being thrown into a pit was truly heart breaking. It was hard to tell on that film, but just knowing that there were a half million people in what amounts to a few city blocks, was also heart breaking. I suppose people live like that in New York City, but to be there without the resources that people have in New York has to be miserable. Add the starvation, the dead bodies, and the Nazi’s, and that multiplies the misery.

            Now it’s time for me to talk about my anger. To be sure, I am angry that the Nazi’s done this to human beings, it doesn’t end there however. It also made me angry at the Jews in the ghetto. Some of those Jews were better fed than others, and some looked quite healthy. If I would have been one of the better fed ones, less of those children would have went hungry. I

cannot imagine walking those streets with a full stomach, or even a partially full stomach, and walk by a child that is hungry and in tattered clothes without reaching out a helping hand. Obviously, those Jews had little control over what was happening to them, but the one thing they did have control over is how they treated each other. I noticed in the film it was stated that food in the shops was extremely expensive, the problem is however, the shops were owned by other Jews.  I do understand the Nazi’s probably made it to where the food was extremely ridiculously priced. What rubs me the wrong way is the fact that if Christians were ever rounded up by a government and put into that same situation, and I worked in a store that sold food, everyone would eat. If the government were to shoot me for it, so be it. At least I done the right thing.

            This film also made me angry at the United States for not getting involved earlier than it did. I know people say that we just didn’t know what was going on over there, and that’s something I want to research, but I believe Winston Churchill was warning us about the things going on. We might have been able to help all of those people before it got out of hand. We might have saved someone that could have made our lives so much better. Either way, we could have saved some of those children from suffering. The fact that we did not, irritates me.

This film also made me thirsty for knowledge. I want to really study this period of time more than ever now. It left me with answers, but also a lot of questions. As much as I thought I knew about this period of time, I know now that I have a lot to learn.