Dan Reich on Pier Marton's Contribution

(Some of the) Holocaust Related Films Selected and Introduced by Pier Marton [for the St. Louis Holocaust Museum and Learning Center Sandra and Mendel Film Series]

It is with great enthusiasm that I write the following: a highly valued friend and colleague of my predecessor, the late historian Dr. Judith Doneson, Pier Marton has been an integral part of our institution for more than ten years. Since accepting my position at the Holocaust Museum in St. Louis in 2000, I have continued to rely on his many skills in a variety of ways.
Because of his expertise in film, Pier has been a participant in the museum’s monthly film program; every year of my tenure, Pier has introduced and created discussions around our monthly film screening. His choices are invariably intriguing and his comments continuously illuminating and, even if at times provocative, always accessible to the audience.
He is truly one of our community’s favorite speakers, as indicated by the attendance numbers for the programs he introduces.
Pier has also served on the museum’s permanent exhibition committee, a group that we greatly depend on for their knowledge of the history of the Holocaust and their competence regarding aesthetic decisions.
Pier’s has also lent his wide-ranging expertise to our annual city-wide Yom HaShoah (Holocaust commemoration) program, where he has served as a speaker and created a large number of graphic panels describing his parents and other resistance fighters’ struggles.
Pier has presented Holocaust related themes at programs nationally and internationally and he has built and sustained a reputation for excellence. Because of his record and experience, he was recently invited by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum to participate in a Midwest consortium of Holocaust educators.
Pier is a person of integrity and honesty; I always feel I can depend on his constructive and honest opinions and reactions. He has been, and continues to be, a distinctive and exceptional resource for the Holocaust Museum and Learning Center.
Dan Reich – Director of Education and Curator, Holocaust Museum and Learning Center

LAST PROGRAM
— the monthly screening series with discussions —
at the
St. Louis Holocaust Museum & Learning Center Theater
WAS
Sunday June 27, 2021
THE BLACK BOOK (VIE ET DESTIN DU LIVRE NOIR)
Directed by Guillaume Ribot, France, 2020.
92 minutes. In French with English Subtitles
The Black Book, drafted during World War II, gathers numerous unique historical testimonies, in an effort to document Nazi abuses against Jews in the USSR. Initially supported by the regime, the Black Book was eventually banned and most of its authors executed on Stalin’s order. Told through the voices of its most famous instigators, soviet intellectuals Vassilli Grossman, Ilya Ehrenburg and Solomon Mikhoels, this award-winning documentary provides a detailed account of the tragic destiny of this cursed book and puts the Holocaust and Stalinism in a new light.
This film discussion marked the United States premiere for this film.
____
Post-screening discussion facilitated by Pier Marton (piermarton.info), presently the “Unlearning Specialist” at the School of No Media. Besides Yad Vashem, he has lectured on his artwork at the Museum of Modern Art, the Carnegie Museum, and the Walker Art Center. He has taught at several major U.S. universities. Marton’s father, photographer Ervin Marton, was in the French Résistance.

MOST RECENT SCREENINGS
2020
13 Minutes
Directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel
Germany, 2015, 114 minutes
This award-winning film, by Oscar-winning director Oliver Hirschbiegel, traces the true story of Georg Elser, a carpenter from Konigsbrönn who, after becoming politically radicalized, unsuccessfully attempts to assassinate Hitler in 1939. Until today, Elser remains a largely unrecognized hero of German resistance to Hitler.

2019
The Yatzkan
Directed by Anna-Célia Kendall-Yatzkan
France, 2014, 75 minutes
“What to do with all of my mother’s stuff and that beat-up piano?” asks the filmmaker… With playful tenacity, Anna-Celia Kendall’s documentary traces her family’s journey across war-torn 20th century Europe. Searching through her deceased mother’s effects leads her to discover that her grandfather was the founder of Haynt, a major Yiddish paper. The persecution of European Jewry thus becomes a central element in the Yatzkan’s story and the Holocaust takes an increasingly prominent place in the film.

2018
Bogdan’s Journey
Directed by Michal Jaskulski and Lawrence Loewinger
Poland, USA, 2016, 90 minutes – Polish, English and Hebrew with English subtitles
In a story that begins with murder and ends with reconciliation, one man persuades the people of Kielce, Poland to confront the truth about the darkest moment in their past: Kielce was the site of Europe’s last Jewish pogrom.
In 1946, 40 Holocaust survivors seeking shelter in a downtown building were murdered by townspeople. Communist authorities suppressed the story, leaving the town deeply embittered.
Conflict over the pogrom was still a festering wound when Bogdan Bialek, a Catholic Pole, moved to Kielce in the late 1970s…
Cf. Interview with one of the co-directors, Lawrence Loewinger

2017
U.S. Premiere!
Judgment In Hungary [AVAILABLE FOR RENTAL ONLINE!]
Directed by Eszter Hajdu
Hungary, 2013, 108 minutes – Hungarian with English subtitles
Filmmaker Eszter Hajdú spent two and a half years following the trial of four men charged with killing Roma children and adults, motivated by “racial hatred.” The filmmaker and his crew documented the 167 days of hearings in this intense, award-winning drama set in a small court room in Hungary.

2016
Mr Klein
Directed by Joseph Losey
France, 1973, 123 minutes
In French with English subtitles
[a Brechtian approach] Alain Delon stars in the suspenseful film, set in 1942, Paris. By taking advantage of French Jews who need to sell artwork, the Catholic art dealer, Robert Klein, thrives under Nazi occupation… until he realizes there is another “Mr. Klein,” a Jew who is using his identity to cover anti-Nazi resistance activities. This homonymy attracts the close and menacing attention of the police. The award-winning film co-stars Jeanne Moreau.

2015
Diplomacy
Directed by Volker Schlöndorff
France/Germany, 2014, 84 minutes
In French and German with English subtitles
During the night of August 24 1944, with the Allies at the gates of Paris, General von Choltitz has been ordered by Hitler to blow up the city. Raoul Nording, the Swedish consul, has come to his hotel room to try to dissuade him from moving forward — the film is based on von Choltitz diaries and features two major French actors, André Dussolier and Niels Arestrup.

2014
As A Young Girl of Thirteen – Simone LaGrange Remembers Auschwitz
A film by Elizabeth Coronel, Florence Gaillard and Arnaud de Mezamat
France, 2011, 88 minutes French with English subtitles. In this inspiring documentary, survivor Simone Lagrange recounts her life before the war, her deportation to Auschwitz-Birkenau, and her role in bringing Nazi war criminal Klaus Barbie to justice. The extended conversation, interspersed with archival images and earlier footage of Ms. Lagrange from Barbie’s trial, reveal a strong, determined woman who refuses to let her spirit be broken.

2013
Blinky and Me by Tomasz Magierski – Shown also at the UN in January 2014 for Holocaust Remembrance Day] Sunday December 28, 2014