Sjabbos | Friday Night (1932) avant garde film documentary made by dutch filmmaker Jan Teunissen (G.J. Teunissen) on the Amsterdam Jewish Quarter when sabbath starts.
It’s the first film presented by the dutch jewish film producer Loet C. Barnstijn – and as and artistic documentary , different from his later films. Sound by Polygoon Haarlem and Tobis-Klangfilm, Studios Éclair Paris-Èpinay-sur-Seine.
Pre-war Amsterdam’s Jewish quarter at the start of the shabbat: street life with shops and market, the Zuidertoren tower strikes 4 o’clock and the sabbath starts. The shops are closing, businesses are being shut down, employees are rushing home.
While the women at home put the finishing touches to the meal, carefully set the table and light the candles, the men hurry to the synagogue. Chazan Blanes enters the Snoge (Portuguese Synagogue) through the side gate, cantor Maroko greets the shabbat in the Grote Synagoge (Great Synagogue).
Jan Teunissen joined the National Socialist Movement in the Netherlands in 1940, benefactor member of the dutch SS in 1941 and head of the Filmgilde – the film section of the dutch ‘Kultuurkamer’ – the NS propaganda organisation in Holland during WW2.
Fragments of this film where used in 1941 in the dutch version of the Nazi antisemitic propaganda film “The eternal Jew”.
After the war Jan Teunissen was detained 3 years and subsequently prohibited from working in the Dutch film industry for ten years.
① memo 20190815 ~ Mokum Market ~ Amsterdam Jewish Quarter 1931 ~ New version of yesterday’s (20190814) film – slowed to 75%*. Sunday outdoor market in the ‘Nieuwe Uylenburgerstraat’ street in the Jewish quarter of Amsterdam (Mokum). Dutch Polygoon cinema newsreel 25 January 1931. The market on the Uilenburgerstraat specialized in second-hand goods fish, and other food products, including the ever-popular ‘Jewish pickles’. The Depression in the 1930s led to unemployment in many trades, including the diamond industry, where many Jews had worked. As a consequence, the number of market vendors and peddlers increased in the 1930s. In September 1941 the Nazis prohibited Jews from trading at public markets. Special markets where only Jews were allowed to trade opened nearby. Very few Jewish market and street vendors survived the war. The Uilenburgerstraat market never reopened (info source https://www.joodsmonument.nl/en/page/671/jewish-market-and-street-vendors-in-amsterdam ). Footage thanks to Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision (Open Images).
* Note – Yesterday’s film (Mokum Market version 20190814) seems sped up – probably because of a wrong play speed when scanned for digitalisation). Thus , I post this new version today, sloweddown to 75% speed at play back – based subjectively on how motion of people looks , and based on other writings that silent films are often distributed with instructions for the projectionist to be run at 18fps , rather then the modern 24 frames per second – thus requiring a 18/24 = 75% fps.
Sunday outdoor market in the ‘Nieuwe Uylenburgerstraat’ street in the Jewish quarter of Amsterdam (Mokum). Dutch Polygoon cinema newsreel 25 January 1931. The market on the Uilenburgerstraat specialized in second-hand goods fish, and other food products, including the ever-popular ‘Jewish pickles’. The Depression in the 1930s led to unemployment in many trades, including the diamond industry, where many Jews had worked. As a consequence, the number of market vendors and peddlers increased in the 1930s. In September 1941 the Nazis prohibited Jews from trading at public markets. Special markets where only Jews were allowed to trade opened nearby. Very few Jewish market and street vendors survived the war. The Uilenburgerstraat market never reopened (info source https://www.joodsmonument.nl/en/page/671/jewish-market-and-street-vendors-in-amsterdam ). Footage thanks to Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision (Open Images).
① memo 20190814 ~ Mokum Market .
Update 20190815
Film playback seems sped up. Thus , I posted a new version the next day, slowed-down to 75% speed at play back – see post 20190815.
RIOD 1948 ~ National Institute for War Documentation in Holland ~ In the first years after the war, the National Institute for War Documentation in Holland , known as the ‘RIOD’ – Rijksinstituut voor Oorlogsdocumentatie – started collecting original documents about the Netherlands and the Dutch East Indies during the Second World War. In addition to collecting and organising all these documents RIOD also did research, performed historical studies into the Second World War and the Holocaust. In 1946 the RIOD started the collection of the footage filmed by the Jewish camp prisoner Rudolf Werner Breslauer spring 1944 in the Westerbork transit camp.
Here in this Polygoon cinema newsreel week 3 in 1948 the RIOD’s director Loe de Jong gives the dutch cinema public a look behind the scenes of the RIOD institute.
Credit info :
RIOD 1948 ~ National Institute for War Documentation in Holland
Source 1948 Polygoon newsreel week 3, 1948 (WEEKNUMMER480-HRE0000DED7_1757240_1937680) courtesy of Polygoon Hollands Nieuws (producer) / Nederlands Instituut voor Beeld en Geluid (OpenImages, public domain).
RIOD 1948 | 20190808 | Michel van der Burg | Settela•Com – CC BY 4.0 .
Memorial to the Sinti and Roma Victims of National Socialism – located between the Reichstag and the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, Germany – filmed in 2013.
The monument is dedicated to the memory of the estimated 500,000 European Roma and Sinti that were murdered during the Holocaust – called Porajmos or Pharrajimos in the Romani language (“the Devouring” or “Destruction”) – the genocide of the European Sinti and Roma peoples by the German Nazis and their fascist allies ( http://www.romasintigenocide.eu/en/home ).
The memorial by the Israeli artist Dani Karavan consists of a circular pool of water with a triangular stone in the center upon which a fresh flower is placed daily.
At the site you hear the sound, a note of a lonely violin from a composition/sound installation titled “Mare Manuschenge” / “Our People” by Romeo Franz, a Sinto musician, composer and politician in Germany.
Karavan : „dem Klang einer einsamen Geige allein geblieben von der gemordeten Melodie, schwebend im Schmerz“
Romeo Franz:
Romani Rose, the chairman of the Central Council of the Sinti and Roma, called me in 2012 and said he was looking for a violinist who could play just one single note at the ceremony. I tried, but at some point I couldn’t stand this note any longer. Instead I imitated a whistle that Sinti often use to call their children. It’s a sound that each of us recognise, it’s a bit like a mark of identification, a signal. Then I transposed it onto the gypsy minor scale. Shortly before the memorial was completed, I met with Dani Caravan, the Israeli architect who designed the memorial, at the construction site, and he said, “That’s it!” For me, it was possibly the most significant thing I’ve ever achieved in my life.
From : The Handreader’s Tale via https://www.kulturstiftung-des-bundes.de/en/magazine/magazine_26-1/the_handreaders_tale.html
Note
Yesterday – August 4, 2019 – a more subjective short film impression of the memorial was posted see ‘Porajmos Memorial Sinti Roma Europe’ ~ https://settela.com/2019/08/04/porajmos-memorial-sinti-roma-europe/ More information on this memorial also in that 20190804 post.
Film: Mare Manuschenge | Music Roma Memorial Berlin | 20190805 | Michel van der Burg | Settela•Com – CC BY 4.0
Memorial to the Sinti and Roma Victims of National Socialism, filmed in 2013 in the Tiergarten (close to other Holocaust memorials) in Berlin – between the Reichstag and the Brandenburg Gate, in Germany.
The monument is dedicated to the memory of the estimated 500,000 European Roma and Sinti that were murdered during the Holocaust – called Porajmos or Pharrajimos in the Romani language (“the Devouring” or “Destruction”) – the genocide of the European Sinti and Roma peoples by the German Nazis and their fascist allies ( http://www.romasintigenocide.eu/en/home ).
August 2 is European Roma Holocaust Memorial Day commemorating this genocide of Roma people during World War II. Declared by the European Parliament in 2015 (Resolution 2015/2615), the day marks the anniversary of the extermination of around 3,000 Roma at Auschwitz-Birkenau during the night of 2 August 1944. The so-called Gypsy Camp in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp was dissolved – or “liquidated,” as the SS called it.
Settela Steinbach (9) was one of those murdered early August 1944, now 75 years ago.
The memorial (by the Israeli artist Dani Karavan) consists of a circular pool of water with a triangular stone in the center (not shown in this film) upon which a fresh flower is placed daily.
Film: Porajmos Memorial Sinti Roma Europe | 20190804 | Michel van der Burg | Settela•Com – CC BY 4.0
Poem “Auschwitz” by Santino Spinelli
In a ring around the pond in English and German – and in two Romani dialects on a stone – are the words of the poem “Auschwitz” by Santino Spinelli (artist name Alexian), a Rom from the Abruzzi region of Italy – a musician, poet, teacher, composer and essayist.
Auschwitz (Original)
Muj šukkó, kjá kalé vušt šurde; kwit. Jilo čindó bi dox, bi lav, nikt ruvbé.
Auschwitz (Deutsch)
Eingefallenes Gesicht, erloschene Augen, kalte Lippen. Stille. Ein zerrissenes Herz, ohne Atem, ohne Worte, keine Tränen.
Auschwitz (English)
Pallid face, dead eyes, cold lips. Silence. A broken heart without breath, without words, no tears.
Music “Mare Manuschenge” by Romeo Franz
At the site you faintly hear the sound, a note of a lonely violin from a composition/sound installation titled “Mare Manuschenge” / “Our People” by Romeo Franz, a Sinto musician, composer and politician in Germany.
The sound in this film I posted is mixed from several video recordings there, with the emphasis on the sound from one video of one of the loudspeakers in the surrounding trees.
Saturday Aug 3, 2019. Funeral prayers Samir Hamdard starts 1 o’clock in the Mosquée Al Khalil in Brussels.
Candles filmed during the afghan refugees camp, March 2014, in the Beguinage church of Brussels.
