The Holocaust is a period in history that continues to engage the world populace evinced by the number of directors who have translated the large scale genocide of Jews in World War II into movies. These have included Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List and Roman Polanski’s The Pianist. Filmmaker/music producer Ana-Isabel Ordonez can be added to this list with her new film Order From Chaos. Produced by Ruby Flower Records and La Belle Usine a.s.b.i. and partially funded by the Augusta Savage Gallery at the University of Massachusetts, the film was taped in present day Poland, The Netherlands, Serbia, Luxembourg, Hungary, New York, and Israel.
Ordonez weaves the stories of three Holocaust/Shoah survivors. The first is Albert Katzenger whose story is narrated by Herb Robertson. Katzenger’s parents and step-brother Oscar are brutally murdered by the Nazis, but he shares the woman whom he loves and was separated from during the war has given birth to his daughter. He claims she “has solved my sorrows.”
More Holocaust Survivors Emerge
The second survivor is Loter Martin who is from a town in Bavaria where everyone was a Nazi. He tells that in 1938, the Nazis invaded his home and he was sent to Rivesaltes Camp in France. He escaped to Spain and then to Africa where he joined the Allied forces, and on June 6, 1944, he went to Normandy, better known worldwide as D-Day. He was assigned to capture Professor Hirt, but he was shot in the neck and resigned from the army. In 1968, he relocated to Israel where he met and married his language instructor Zmira. They have two daughters.
The third survivor that Ordonez profiles is Yehuda Cheres. His family was forced to live in a ghetto in Germany. They escaped into the forest where they hid from the Axis troops. He describes that his mother was captured one day by the Nazis while in town shopping for food to feed the family. He reveals that he was told that the Nazis had tortured her as they tried to make her tell them where her family was hiding. She never disclosed her family’s location to the Nazis and they killed her. He admitted that he “lived in darkness for a long time,” always frightened that the Nazis would find him and his family. His father joined the Russian Army and moved the family to Poland and then to Salzburg. His father wanted to take the family home to Israel, but his sisters refused. Instead, one sibling moved to America and the other one went to Canada. He and his father settled in Israel.
The Ramifications of the War Affect Jewish Society Forever
Ordonez splits the film into 16 sections, each with its own title and theme. For instance, “Revealing The Concealed” shows footage of the grounds of Auschwitz littered with barbed wired fences, austere barracks, and decaying steel locks, while in direct opposition, Ordonez showcases the vast street markets and the worldly vibe of Israel’s cities of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. In sections like “Lost And Found” and “Listening To Your Soul,” Ordonez provides a sense of resolution for the Jewish community who have battled through prejudices, wrongful prosecution, and mass killings during the Holocaust/Shoah by showing that the family lines of the survivors continued, and their children kept the Jewish traditions going.
Ordonez also incorporates music into the film to give emotion to the messages and themes of the individual chapters. Trumpeter Herb Robertson, who also serves as the narrator of Katzenger’s story, plays a lamenting score through the dark moments of the film. The periods of celebration are performed in an Afro-Semitic style played by bassist David Chevan, trumpeter Frank London, and drummer/percussionist Zlatko Kaucic.
Inner Peace Is Found
In the final section of “Freedom,” Ordonez goes to a synagogue and zooms in on a mosaic of the Star of David. The image is followed by an interview with Rabbi Carie Carter who professes that “The Shoah is one of those critical stories” in history. “It showed people’s willingness to degrade and murder others for no other reason than because they are different.” She alluded that anyone less than the ideal had to be destroyed. She assesses, “It’s as bad as humanity can get.”
The three stories that Ordonez presents in the film along with insightful opinions from such luminaries as Rabbi Carie Carter, Benoit Wesly, and Leszek Szuster open up a dialogue so people can speak freely about the effects of the Holocaust. Ordonez’s film Order From Chaos binds the past with the present, and shows the mistakes that future generations can learn from so as not to repeat the cycle.
- Youtube.com/watch?v=4POjkDFVg7M
- Labelleusine.com
- Wordpress.com/tag/ana-isabel-ordonez/
Susan Frances - Born in Brooklyn, New York and raised in eastern Long Island, I always enjoyed writing. Influenced by such writers as Colleen McCullough ...
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