Figure 1.-- .
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Figure 1.-- . |
Otar Iosseliani's "Brigands-Chapter VII" has stories of various thieves
throughout Georgia's (in the Caucases) history. One segment is set at the beginning of the Soviet era, and focuses on a torturer for the secret police who one day brings his son to work with him to see what his daddy does for a living. (I wonder if NKVD officers really did this. To my knowdlefe the NAZI SS never did such a thing.) The actor who played the son looked to be at least 12, yet wore H-bar suspender shorts. It could be that the character was supposed to be younger than the actor who played him. I have seen other images from the Soviet Union of boys wrearing for H-bar suspender shorts, but maybe they didn't have quite the same juvenile connotations at that time in that place. One image depicted a Young Pioneer.I'm not sure who profuced the film, it seems to be an internation production (France, Russia, Italy, and Switzerland).
One reader reports that a NKVD agent bringing his son to work was unlikely, he writes, "Some things are too serious to be treated realistically. The film is a dark comedy. In one scene, a family is arrested as they're about to sit down to dinner. As they're dragged off, another family that is politically better-connected comes in and takes posession of the apartment. They find the food cooking in the kitchen and sit down to dinner! In other words, the filmmaker has telescoped things in a way that is comic, but that also shows the true nature of what has happened. In the same way, by having the torturer show his work to his son, the filmmaker was showing the legacy that the Communists gave to succeeding generations. But this is not a simple-minded
anti-communist screed; it starts with a king in the Middle Ages and ends with
an arms dealer in the 1990s, showing generation after generation of
corruption. It's worth a look, if you can find a video store that carries it."
Personally I would prefer film makers when addressing such serious topics not to make things up, like the NKVD officer taking his son to work. There is plenting of actual incidents that can be used to make pounts like this--it just requires the film maker to do a little historical research which he or she should do any way if they are going to address topics like this.
The film scene raises a question about human nature. SS and SA members who worked in the concentration camps were capable of commiting apaling acts of brutality in the camps. Ye they would go home at night like other fathers with jobs. Many of their wives and children remember them as being loving husbands and fathers. Himmler once addressed the topic in a speech to SS officers in 1943. He mentioned the killing of Jews and the stress upon the SS officers and men in executing the grusome task yet complemented for maibtaining their humanity. I will try to look up the precise quote.
HBC had begun to collect some basic information on the infamous Soviet Gulag.
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