January 27th 2020 marks the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp. In 2015, Arsenal digitally restored the far too seldom screened documentary HA' MAKAH HA' SHMONIM VE' AHAT (The 81st Blow, David Bergman, Jacques Ehrlich, Haim Gouri, Miriam Novitch, Zvi Shner, Israel 1975) as part of the "Asynchronous: Documentaries and Experimental Films on the Holocaust” project. Based on the testimony of Michael Goldmann-Gilad, who as a child in the ghetto was almost beaten to death, the film explores Jewish life in Europe before 1933, Hitler's seizure of power, the outbreak of war, the establishment of the Warsaw Ghetto and its demolishment after the Uprisings there, ending with the deportations and extermination camps. Archive footage is transformed from a document and piece of evidence into a monument. (gk) Introduction: Christian Pischel. (27.1.)
