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Unbridgeable Barriers: the Holocaust in Canadian Cinema by Jeremy Unbridgeable Barriers: The Holocaust in Canadian Cinema by Jeremy Maron A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Affairs in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Cultural Mediations Carleton University Ottawa, Ontario © 2011, Jeremy Maron Library and Archives Bibliotheque et 1*1 Canada Archives Canada Published Heritage Direction du Branch Patrimoine de Pedition 395 Wellington Street 395, rue Wellington OttawaONK1A0N4 OttawaONK1A0N4 Canada Canada Your file Votre riterence ISBN: 978-0-494-83210-3 Our file Notre r6f6rence ISBN: 978-0-494-83210-3 NOTICE: AVIS: The author has granted a non­ L'auteur a accorde une licence non exclusive exclusive license allowing Library and permettant a la Bibliotheque et Archives Archives Canada to reproduce, Canada de reproduire, publier, archiver, publish, archive, preserve, conserve, sauvegarder, conserver, transmettre au public communicate to the public by par telecommunication ou par I'lnternet, preter, telecommunication or on the Internet, distribuer et vendre des theses partout dans le loan, distribute and sell theses monde, a des fins commerciales ou autres, sur worldwide, for commercial or non­ support microforme, papier, electronique et/ou commercial purposes, in microform, autres formats. paper, electronic and/or any other formats. The author retains copyright L'auteur conserve la propriete du droit d'auteur ownership and moral rights in this et des droits moraux qui protege cette these. Ni thesis. Neither the thesis nor la these ni des extraits substantiels de celle-ci substantial extracts from it may be ne doivent etre imprimes ou autrement printed or otherwise reproduced reproduits sans son autorisation. without the author's permission. In compliance with the Canadian Conformement a la loi canadienne sur la Privacy Act some supporting forms protection de la vie privee, quelques may have been removed from this formulaires secondaires ont ete enleves de thesis. cette these. While these forms may be included Bien que ces formulaires aient inclus dans in the document page count, their la pagination, il n'y aura aucun contenu removal does not represent any loss manquant. of content from the thesis. ••I Canada ii Abstract This dissertation explores the treatment of the Holocaust in Canadian cinema. It argues that Canadian films have emphasized experiential barriers that challenge the Holocaust's representation within a Canadian context. At the broadest level these barriers function historically, manifesting the geographic distance between Canada and the Holocaust during World War II (WWII). More commonly, Canadian films enact these barriers at the interpersonal level via emotional or cognitive barriers between individuals who experienced the Holocaust (i.e. survivors who have moved to Canada) and those who did not (i.e. Canadians surrounding the survivors who lack the experience to understand their past). Chapter One establishes absence as a central problematic for Canadian Holocaust cinema. It pays particular attention to films that focus on Canada's WWII history, which does not (at least easily) include a confrontation with the Holocaust. Chapter Two considers the legacy of these historical barriers on an individual level through films that feature troubled relations between survivors and specifically Canadian socio-political contexts. Chapter Three looks at films that imply the invisibility of the barriers around Canadian survivors, which localizes the Holocaust squarely in their experiential memory, and thus renders it absent outside of them. Chapter Four shifts focus to films that aim to "resolve" this barrier by making the Holocaust present outside the individual experiences of survivors - first by emphasizing the shared quality of the Holocaust experience amongst groups of survivors, and second by documenting the return of survivors to the spaces of their past. Chapter Five concentrates on films that also aim to efface the barrier of experience, but through the iii process of those lacking a direct experience of the Holocaust appropriating an experiential perspective. The final chapter looks at films by Jack Kuper, a Holocaust survivor from Toronto. Kuper's films posit a clear division between himself looking back on an event that he experienced, and the event itself. By emphasizing this division of subjectivity, this survivor's films suggest the perpetual cognitive absence of the Holocaust, placing the event outside of representation, even for those who lived through it. These films thus intimate a barrier in, rather than of experience. iv Acknowledgments While rewarding, this project was a challenge that often seemed insurmountable. I could not have brought it to fruition without the support and guidance of the following: First and absolutely foremost, I thank my God for granting me strength when the possibility of actually finishing my PhD seemed so remote, and for allowing me to quarrel with Him so regularly throughout its duration. Professionally, I am indebted to my supervisor, Andre Loiselle, who spent countless hours listening to my ideas, and bouncing ideas back to me, as I aimed to concoct a dissertation project, and provided frequent dinners and wine. I also thank my readers, Charles O'Brien and Gary Evans. A special thanks goes out to Gary as well for the work that he had done previously on Canada's Holocaust cinema, which made this study possible. I also graciously thank Mr. Jack Kuper for welcoming me into his home and granting me a generous interview. Personally, I thank my parents, Melvin and Jocelyn Maron for their continuous emotional support and a well-timed trip to Cancun in 2010. Thanks also to Matt Croombs for sharing the agony of pursuing a PhD in a seemingly fruitless job market. And finally, eternal thanks and love to my wife Cheryl. You've been beside me - perhaps closer than you wanted to be at times - throughout this journey. To say it has been an emotional rollercoaster for us would be a dramatic understatement. But your belief in me has been constant and your love unconditional. There is no doubt that without your encouragement, your listening ear, and your embrace, I would not have finished this. If I could, I would certainly award you an honorary doctorate for enduring these last five years. I love you, and shall forever. Table of Contents Introduction Unbridgeable History: Towards a Heuristic for Analyzing Canadian Holocaust Cinema 1 Chapter One "It has nothing to do with Canada": Historical Barriers Between Canada and the Holocaust During World War II 52 Chapter Two Experiential Barriers with Canadian Sociopolitical Specificity: Children of the Storm and Two Men 123 Chapter Three The Internality of Experience: Invisible and Interpersonal Barriers 161 Chapter Four Dispersing the Past: Shared Loss and Painful Returns 214 Chapter Five Breaking the Barrier by Appropriating the Past: Experience as Pedagogy and "Cross-generational" Documentaries 252 Chapter Six The Barrier in Experience: The Films of Jack Kuper 312 Conclusion Beyond the "Canadian" of Canada's Holocaust Cinema 383 Bibliography 394 Filmography 413 1 Introduction Unbridgeable History: Towards a Heuristic for Analyzing Canadian Holocaust Cinema This dissertation explores the treatment of the Holocaust in Canadian cinema. While the question of how the Holocaust has been represented in the cinematic medium has produced an extremely large amount of scholarship,1 to survey this literature one could be forgiven for concluding that Canadian films about the Holocaust are at best negligible, and at worst non-existent. I received such a reaction the first time that I presented my research for this project at the first International Graduate Students' Conference on Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark University in April 2009. When the time came for my presentation, the panel chair stood up at the podium to introduce my paper. After she read the title of my presentation, which was similar to that of this introduction, she looked in my direction and asked inquisitively and with friendly skepticism, "Canadian Holocaust cinema?" I told her that was precisely the reaction I was hoping for with this project, and the perfect introduction to my paper as I set out to convince a cross-disciplinary audience of scholars that there not only is a significant number of Canadian films that have been produced about the Holocaust, but that this corpus is worthy of scholarly attention. At present, the only published piece to have considered Canadian film productions on the Holocaust as a corpus in its own right is Gary Evans' "Vision and Revision: Canadian Film and Video on the Holocaust," an article included in Afterimage: Evocations of the Holocaust in Contemporary Canadian Arts and Literature, a collection 1 Since I refer to many examples of such scholarship throughout the rest of this dissertation, I opt at this point to refer the reader to the bibliography for a representative sample of literature on Holocaust cinema rather than providing all of these sources in a single citation. 2 derived from a conference of the same name held in Montreal in 2001 ? To conclude this article, Evans included an annotated and chronological filmography, which he has also provided online, with the most recent version being posted this year (2011).3 As is discussed in greater detail below, aside from these exceptions, the question of how the Holocaust has been treated in Canadian cinema has been entirely unexplored. The following dissertation aims to rectify this critical lacuna not only by both offering a more sustained analysis of this corpus, but also (I hope) by serving as a launch pad from which a broader scholarly discourse derived from one, some, or all of these critically neglected films may emerge. As Evans' piece serves largely as an introductory survey of Canadian Holocaust cinema - one that the present project is indebted to - it is constructed primarily as a descriptive chronology of a corpus comprised of virtually unknown films. Yet despite the descriptive impulse of the article, Evans does adopt the critical perspective that Canadian films have failed to offer a historical connection to the Holocaust.
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