The Phantom of the Poet

Israeli poet Ilana Shmueli is researching memory.  She is investigating her own memory of a story that happened, as she puts it, “at the margins of the Holocaust”; and she has some astonishing findings.

Liane Schindler (Ilana Shmueli) was born in 1924 in Czernowitz (then in Romania).  In October 1941 all Jews were required to gather their things and move to the Ghetto. While carrying the family’s luggage to the Ghetto,  17 year old Ilana was accosted by a Romanian Army officer who offers his help.  His help, apart from carrying the heavy suitcases, includes an offer to escape Czernowitz with him.  Ilana refused.

Ilana and her family survived the Holocaust and immigrated to Palestine in 1944.

Although it had no bearing on her survival or on her later life, time and again Ilana keeps telling the story of the officer, making it the centerpiece of her “Holocaust Story.”  In each retelling the story takes unexpected new directions. She can visualize many details but not the officer’s face.  A police artist is brought in to create a facial composite of the man, and objects from her past are used as evidence in her attempt to catch the phantom of her story.

A Film and a Roominstallation by Friedemann Derschmidt

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Thanks to Yoav Weiss for the English