"These are questions about his identity" | Pol …

Two years ago, the director Poly Martinez Kaplun created his documentary Lea and Mira leave their mark. It traces the moving story of Mira Kniaziew of Stuptnik and Lea Zajac of Novera, two nonagenarians living in Buenos Aires and who, being Polish Jews, were sent to the Auschwitz death camp as girls. By retrospectively reflecting on every detail reported, there is no other way to call these two people – and millions of others who have been wrenched from their lands and their families – inborn fighters, pbadionate about life . What held them up, no doubt, was the hope of just breathing fresh air. In good health. Transparent The film was emotional where he watched it and saved the value of memory. Now the filmmaker presents her new documentary, The house of Wannsee. With that, he continues with the affirmation of memory as an indispensable tool. But now Martínez Kaplun entered fully into his own family life, composed of German Jews who escaped Nazi persecution and extermination. In her new film, the director traces the family photos of the nineteenth century, the lifestyle of this era and the meeting with his mother and aunt filming traces of memory, resilience and forgetfulness. resources to face the present. The house of Wannseepremieres this Thursday at Gaumont.

Poli Martinez Kaplun is, in addition to cinematographic director, a graduate in communication sciences. He followed several courses of specialization in television and cinema, at the tertiary school of the Channel 13 school and then at the National Audiovisual Institute of France (INA), where he lived for two years. years. Upon his return to Argentina, he opened his agency and producer of audiovisual communication, where he produced documentary videos, training and products for companies in the country and Latin America. He regularly co-produces documentaries with French television. His first opera, Lea and Mira leave their mark, has been selected in official competition at 12 international festivals and has received three Best Director, Music and Publishing awards from the Hollywood International Independent Documentary Awards. The house of Wannsee It's his second documentary.

The starting point of The house of Wannsee is the director herself speak in except while the image of her son, who fills the screen, makes her think when the boy decides to do his Barmitzva. Because Martínez Kaplun has never been a practitioner. His family has never been defined as Jewish and there is no trace of Judaism in his upbringing. However, your child's decision prompts him to question his origins. She thus enters the family's history and discovers that Jewish identity has deeply penetrated their lives. Discover the photo albums and the 8 mm films where the images of the early twentieth century appear of his great-grandfather, Otto, secular German Jewish philosopher, persecuted by Nazism. Eighty years later, the filmmaker decides to return to Germany to visit the home of his grandmother, Wannsee Street, a few meters from the place where the final solution for all Jews of Europe was decreed .

The house of Wannsee It is a kind of continuity with regard to the theme of memory. "There is also one thing in common: what happens during the Second World War.The cases of Lea and Mira are those of two people who were in Auschwitz, were taken to extermination camps and miraculously In this second film, I tell the story of my family, who managed to leave Europe in 1936, that is, after Hitler took power and started persecuting the Jews, but before they start moving them in the fields, "says the director. .

-This film also talks about the need to survive, is not it?

-The persecution began when Hitler took power in 1933, especially in Germany. The Gestapo entered the house of my great-grandfather in Berlin and burned some of his work. Philosopher and psychologist, he has conducted applied research in psychology. They destroyed the job and threw it out of the university. That is to say, the persecution was lived. Then, in the year 35, the Nuremberg laws came into force and each time, it became more and more difficult for the Jews. And then all that came, those who did not leave, already on 37, were deported to the fields. Later, Hitler began to invade the rest of Europe and deported Jews from the rest of Europe to concentration camps.

– What brands remained in the family as a result? Because your movie is a bit of a discovery you make …

-Yes, I'll look for these marks in the movie. I ask myself about these brands that make each represent its past, how it represents its history, where it comes from. These are questions about his identity. I vaguely knew that he had a Jewish background. I had no education or Jewish tradition at home. All my life, I found myself facing the question of whether I was Jewish or not and the truth is that I did not know what to answer: if it was but it had stopped being , or if it was practicing or not, and, in fact, I was having questions that are still difficult to answer today. The rabbinical schools themselves ask and discuss what it means to be Jewish. There are hundreds of definitions about what it means to be Jewish. The trigger was the Barmitzva that my son had made. At the age of 13, he spoke to me about a decision he had thought of.

– Even in a house where religion was not spoken daily.

-No. We have not made traditions. In addition, he attends a secular school. So that required a question from me and a position from me: what did I tell him about it, why did he make that decision and what do I want to pbad on to him and how do I want him to? 39; accompany. And what do I want to tell him about this decision he's making? There, I started to unite the ends of other problems that, throughout my life, challenged me for my family's past. My mother, for example, was born in Alexandria. I've always found it very exotic. My grandparents lived in Switzerland and not in Buenos Aires. I have cousins ​​in many countries. It's a very disintegrated family. The film has given me a lot of answers about it. In addition, there is currently evidence that I may have from the family history of my mother and aunts, who were the closest witnesses to this story of my grandparents and the Second World War . There, I also came across the question of the relationship between stories and personal subjectivities. There is not a single story. Everyone has their own representation of history.

-You call your aunts. Only one of them said, almost at the beginning of the film: "The past does not interest me." This comment is very strong. What did you think when your aunt expressed this, just that you are so interested in your origins?

-I was when I started to understand that there was no way to see the past. Each has its forms. And his psychological ways of approaching his past. Many times, when the past is traumatic, as in the case of my family (because they were finally banished and had to leave their place of residence), this leaves a mark. It was a traumatic episode in the life of my grandparents. In the film, I discover what happened in the next generations. It seems to me that my aunt's commentary has to do with that. One of the ways to deal with a painful and traumatic past is to try not to talk about it, not to look at it, to think about the present and the future. This happened to many genocide survivors, this one and other genocides. These are situations so traumatic that it is better not to talk about it and try to connect to the good of the existence and leave it behind.

-And the house gives a title to the film. Are you another member of this family so disintegrated?

– The house is a great symbol because, in a way, it starts there. There is a life before the persecution. A life, in addition, very fruitful. When I start looking, I find very strong traces and very whole characters at the time of the prewar period. For example, my great-grandfather, who was a philosopher, contemporary university professor of leading intellectuals from Europe before the war. He also speaks a lot about what was this booming time in Germany before World War I or between the wars, between the laws of emancipation of the Jews and the First War and between the end of the First and the Second. of the Second War. Jews in Germany and in big cities like Vienna and Budapest have been integrated into the life of the "Gentiles". As in the case of my family, they were German like the others. Then this barbarism began to distinguish the German who has pure blood from that of the non-pure. Even stirring in the boxes of my family, I found not only pictures of that time, but also photos of a family tree of 15 generations. My great-grandfather had a family tree and was 15 generations old. Even the first five were great rabbis. I have found a very rich past. And the house is an emblem of this past. It is also an emblem of all that was to remain. Berlin has been left, this culture has been left, this family, these friends have been left and this house that has remained today is still standing. So, it's to see what happened. He went to this house to see what was left of this rich life there.

– So when you started with the movie, you did not know that your ancestors had been persecuted by the Nazis?

-I knew it, but I did not know the circumstances. I did not know what time, how, when. By making the film, I learned a lot about the genocide. I just made the movie of Read and watchwhat is true is a continuity because I was already asking questions and entering the Second World War. And with them, I also immersed myself in the reality of the German Jews, who were the first to feel anti-Semitism in Europe, the first to suffer.

-What does it mean to be Jewish now?

-I always had a non-Jewish surname, Martínez. Bearing this name, those of us who do not have a Jewish name suffer less from anti-Semitism here and in many parts of the world. I think unfortunately – and that's why I also think that this film is very valuable and has a political stance taken about it – discrimination still exists. In fact, there were several genocides, after the great genocide of the Second World War, in which 6 million people died in the death camps and are updated in different ways. Today, the far right is ruling in several countries in Europe. That is to say that the problem of discrimination with respect to the different still exists. In all this research, what is being questioned is what is Judaism. And with the one that has marked me the most and that has pleased me the most is that of the Israeli writer Amos Oz. He said that it is ultimately a Jew who feels and considers himself a Jew. There are hundreds of definitions of what it means to be Jewish: if it is by religion, by people, by origin, by Jewish mother … But whoever feels Jewish and, in addition, the one who feels that if there is another Jew to whom they persecute, we will feel identified with the one they persecute. And I feel identified in this definition.