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Analysis Of Image Before My Eyes

Decent Essays

Throughout the film Image Before My Eyes, directed by Josh Waletzky, viewers are shown videos, pictures, and interviews regarding European Jewry from the late 1910’s to the 1930’s. Though this is a film explaining the events and upheavals that led up to the Holocaust, the word Holocaust is rarely ever mentioned. It is through the use of multimedia in this film that the devastating history of the Holocaust becomes illuminated. The film allows the viewer to begin to fathom the destructive events that occurred between the two World Wars as well as the secularization of daily life for Jews throughout this time period. The first section of the film highlights how Jews lived a very religious life around the early to mid 1910s, before the start of World War I. There were very few Jews in the villages of Poland and the Jewish children did not often play with other children around them. An interviewee remarks on this as being quite a lonely life, but her religion made her content nonetheless. She even states that there was a Jewish star on the roof of her childhood home because her family was very proud to be Jewish. It is also explained that wooden synagogues would be prided upon since they would take a great deal of money and skill to complete (Waletzky). Jews had also lived a relatively normal life with social class, education, and political differences, where they were free to differ in opinions and make their own decisions. Chiena Kossowsky gives viewers insight into her life

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