Nana, a documentary by Serena Dykman; French language with English subtitles; First Run Features; 1 hour 40 Minutes.
By Donald H. Harrison
SAN DIEGO – “Nana,” as many of us know from the time as children we were mouthing our first words, means “grandma” and, in this case, “Nana” refers to Maryla Dyamant Michalowski, z”l, a Holocaust survivor who emigrated to Belgium, where she was the subject and co-author of a memoir, and was a frequent interviewee on television shows dealing with the Holocaust.
Her daughter, Alice, and granddaughter, Serena Dykman, culled through much of the television footage about Maryla, and to it added interviews with her friends and with the interviewers who had been on the other side of the cameras from Maryla. Additionally, they traveled in her footsteps from the town of Bedzin, Poland, which lay about two miles from the German border, to Auschwitz, and to the German concentration camps at Ravensbruck (after the infamous Death March at the end of the war) and Malchow. The journey took the filmmakers through invasion, ghettoization, concentration camp survival, liberation, marriage, and immigration to Belgium.
Why did Nana survive when so many millions of other Jews perished? She used to ask herself that question frequently, never coming up with an answer better than “luck.” Nana was neither smarter nor more clever than other Jews; murder was random; she was lucky that her number didn’t come up – although twice it almost did.
Once, she was to go to the gas chambers, and she pleaded with an SS man who had been nice to her upon her arrival at Auschwitz to please do what he could to intervene. He responded that he had little power in such situations, but when the time came for her group to be marched to the chambers, her number was not called.
Perhaps she cheated death a bit longer because she was fluent in German, Polish, and Latin, which the Nazis had her take examinations in. They asked if she also spoke Russian, and because she knew two words, she said ‘yes.’ That exaggeration may have saved her life. She was directed to be a translator for the camp’s infamous doctor, the Angel of Death, Dr. Josef Mengele, for a group of Ukrainians. Luckily, one of the leaders of the group spoke French. When the woman told Maryla to tell Mengele he was a rotten murderer, she wisely declined, instead telling him the woman thought one of the Ukrainian children had pneumonia. Mengele wanted to know why it took that long to simply say the child had pneumonia. Maryla said it was because not being a medical doctor, she had to have it explained to her.
Her own family was murdered at Auschwitz, and in one interview Maryla recalled how her sister in law was scheduled to go with her block to the gas chambers. She told how she bartered 100 cigarettes for the sister-in-law’s life, and how when she visited her at her block, the sister-in-law was so traumatized by her impending death, she was like an uncomprehending animal, unable to even relate to others. Two days later, the women in that block were all gassed — their reprieve having expired.
She also told of a day toward the end of the war when the Germans ran low on poison gas, and threw Hungarian Jewish children into fire where they burned alive. How did she know they were still alive? she was asked. Their screaming, she replied.
Her day of liberation was one of the saddest in her life, because she realized that she was all alone, that there was no one left who cared whether she had lived or died, and she was cold, and hungry. Perhaps, she thought, it would have been better if she had died with the others. A young Polish man, Jerzy Michalowski, asked if she had a blanket to withstand a cold evening. She shook her head, and he came back with one. That act of kindness led to their long marriage.
In the documentary, Maryla and Jerzy’s daughter, Alice, was shown being interviewed as a young woman on how the stories of the Shoah had impacted her. She described the impact of hearing about Auschwitz, gas chambers, so many corpses, and began again to cry, even as she had as a young girl. She would have liked to forget, to put it out of her mind, but there are others in the world who are suffering from brutality and when her own daughter, Serena, decided to make a documentary about the life of her Nana (who had died when Serena still was in elementary school), Alice resolutely joined in her quest.
This is a multi-tiered story, relating some of the events of the Holocaust, and the impact they’ve had so far on three generations. Additionally, the documentary includes the reflections and opinions of students of the Holocaust, ranging from the elementary school pupils to whom Maryla used to speak, to more cynical older students, to serious scholars and documentarians upon whom Maryla had an enchanting impact.
This 1 hour 40 minute documentary is scheduled for release September 18 on DVD and on iTunes. Even those who have spent a lifetime studying the Holocaust are likely to find some new information in this well-researched biography.
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Harrison is editor of San Diego Jewish World. He may be contacted via donald.harrison@sdjewishworld.com