Musick Hund On World War II And Jewish Resistence

Next up "Defiance" (2008). Based of the true story of two brothers in Nazi occupied Belarus who led a community of Jews hiding in the forest where their family ran a smuggling operation before the war.

This well-made film tells a story that is compelling without any help from theoretical concerns about the nature of violence. However, it's in the mix today because it deals with a group of individuals that must find a way to form a community in the midst of war, occupation and mass murder, without resorting to unnecessarily coercive methods. 

The movie opens with the SS murdering thousands of Jews across several communities, both rural shtetl and urban ghettos. The two protagonists, Tuvia and Zus Beilski (Daniel Craig and Liev Schreiber) both want revenge against the Polish gentiles that informed on their family, but the task of killing the man responsible goes the the elder and less hot-tempered Tuvia. This denial of specific personal vengeance, along with all the other unimaginable losses of loved ones, including parents wives and children drives Zus into a near perpetual state of homicidal rage that threatens to tear the forest community apart. Zus soon leaves to join the Red Army, leaving his brother to lead the fragile camp of refugees. The pivotal scene comes when a group of fighters attached to the camp refuses to do their share of the work and demands a greater share of food. In order to preserve the egalitarian spirit of the camp, Tuvia kills the leader of the rebellious fighters with a bullet between the eyes. The movie lingers on the deeply paradoxical, but ultimately just nature of this act. I merely wish to call attention to the idea that film depict this killing as both morally and politically just. Reasonable people can disagree on whether it is morally just. But it seems to me harder to dismiss the political justice of it. I think the film SHOWS it to be politically just because even though there are community members who would object to the killing on moral grounds (even if the film does not), Tuvia is shown to lead and act by mutual consent of the whole group. The camera does not show him taking matters into his own hands, but rather reveals him at that moment as a political actor in the public space that has evolved in their little community.