Nina's Journey is the story of the Swedish writer-director Lena Einhorn's mother, Nina Rajmic, a Polish Jew whose parents were from Russia. Their home was in Lodz, central Poland, but when the war began in September 1939 they moved to Warsaw and into the notorious ghetto where half a million Jewish people were confined behind high walls. Following the construction of the ghetto there would be lulls when life could supposedly go on as usual.
Then after 22 July 1942, the sorting began of who would go east to "work camps" and who could stay and sustain German factories, as "work makes you free". Nina and her mother worked at Schultz and Toebbers, mending uniforms. At first the attitude was, "It is just not possible", but in time everyone knew there was no work in the east, only death in the extermination camps with names like Treblinka and Auschwitz.
By the time of the uprising in 1943 the number of Jews left in the ghetto had been reduced, and the ghetto in size, as it was divided into two parts. Over 360,000 men, women and children had already been shipped east. Nina's family was in the small ghetto, around Novolipie Strasse, cut off from the main events. Her older brother Rudek was most enterprising and courageous - it was through his efforts that Nina and her mother were saved at different points over the six years of the German occupation, until the Russians finally liberated Warsaw on January 17, 1945. At some critical points it was Nina's remembering Rudek's instructions, and warning her parents, that saved them; other times an inner sense of what had to be done to survive took possession of her, a prescience that saved them yet again when the Germans destroyed the city of Warsaw.
There are many films and books about what happened in the Warsaw Ghetto. Nina's Journey is just one more perspective, and one that is worth considering, as it was other Poles, non-Jews, who believed in humanity and resistance to oppression, who helped Nina and some of her family to survive. The last movie about the Warsaw Ghetto shown here in Gaborone (both in book and film) was The Pianist, the prize-winning story of Wladyslaw Szpilman and how he survived, with the help of a Nazi (Mmegi, 14 June 2003). Other films that dealt with the subject are Schindler's List; Playing for Time; Holocaust; and Sophie's Choice.
There are dramatised parts showing Nina's life in 1937 as a girl travelling to the United States of America (US) and back to Poland, in Lodz and the Warsaw ghetto where hundreds of thousands died. Having survived through amazing channels, Nina finally, in Sweden, realised her dream to study medicine. Archival footage provides historical background and depth to Nina's story. The techniques break with most of the conventional styles of cinema. Nina is the storyteller, recorded by her daughter before Nina died on May 10, 2002.
In Polish and Swedish with English subtitles, Nina's Journey is 125 minutes long. It won two Golden Bugs in Sweden as best film and best script.
Email:[email protected]
