Pain, Vengeance?

Two texts form the starting point for Stefan Hayn’s essay film PAIN, VENGEANCE? | BROT, RACHE? (Germany 2019). They are both by French writer and resistance fighter Robert Antelme (1917–1990), who was interned in Bad Gandersheim in 1944, one of the outposts of Buchenwald concentration camp. Shortly after he was freed in 1945, he already wrote the  article “Vengeance?”, in which he made a plea for revenge to be avoided. In 1947, he published his story about the various cases of bread being stolen among the camp inmates. Passages from both texts are read out in the French original version, the reflection on vengeance by a young French man, while excepts from the story of the stolen bread are staged in the Klosterkirche Brunshausen in a sort of re-enactment, with the various parts delivered by German native speakers. This “filmed reading” testifies to the horrific dehumanization that took place during the National Socialist era and becomes an important contribution to memory work before the backdrop of documentary footage of memorials today. (bik)