Father (Stephen Fry) and daughter (Lena Dunham) travel to Poland to follow his story.
Photo: Anne Wilk
How can one address the Holocaust today and trigger concern without demanding it? In her first international feature film “Treasure,” Julia von Heinz focuses on the relationship of a concentration camp survivor with his American daughter and her search for traces of her past. The director succeeds in taking a deeply human approach to this topic, which is far from being told. After “Hanna’s Journey” (2013) and “And Tomorrow the Whole World” (2020), it is her third film about the effects of National Socialism on subsequent generations and thus ends her “Aftermath Trilogy”. The model for “Treasure” is “Too Many Men,” the autobiographically influenced novel by Lily Brett, daughter of two Auschwitz survivors.
Warsaw, 1991. Since her mother died, Ruth Rothwax (Lena Dunham) feels little connection to her father Edek (Stephen Fry). That’s why the New York music journalist persuaded her father to travel with her to Poland to trace its Jewish roots. He had survived Auschwitz and left the country forever.
For Ruth, the meeting with her father in Warsaw is a test of patience. First Edek misses their plane together, then he disappears again shortly after his arrival. The 36-year-old is annoyed that Edek then books a taxi driver for the entire trip, even though his daughter has planned every stop. While the journalist delves deeper and deeper into anti-Semitic literature, Edek seems to take her week-long road trip lightly and makes new acquaintances. Edek turns his failed visit to the former Warsaw ghetto into a tourist event and has himself photographed with his daughter in front of a wall that was never part of the ghetto – but “a wall is a wall,” he says.
Ruth visits the places of his childhood with her father and learns that the family owned a cotton factory and an apartment in Łódź before their expropriation. Little by little, old things and memories come to light. The contrasting ways father and daughter deal with the vanished past are particularly touching. Ruth records everything with her camera, Edek suppresses it.
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The cast also has something to do with this country. Lena Dunham’s family has Polish roots; her great-grandfather was born in Łódź. Stephen Fry lost his great cousins in Auschwitz. The team found further cross-connections on site. The film was shot in the former German concentration camp Auschwitz II/Birkenau, on the ramp where half a million Jews arrived in deportation trains. In order not to disturb the peace of the memorial, the team was only allowed to film the fence, the parking lot and the entrance. The camera takes its time to introduce the extensive concentration camp area, a tour guide explains the facts: Over a million people died in Auschwitz. Since 1979, most of the former extermination camp has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site and is visited by many tourists.
In the film, when Edek paints over the remaining bricks of his former barracks, a scratching noise can be heard. He tells how he noticed how the people around him were gradually being taken away, killed and burned: “I thought the smell would last forever.” When a false fire alarm is later triggered in the hotel, Ruth’s words intertwine with Edek’s thoughts: “I was afraid that you would be burned alive.” A harsh parallel.
»Treasure«, Germany/France 2024. Director: Julia von Heinz. Starring: Lena Dunham, Stephen Fry, Zbigniew Zamachowski. 112 min. Date: February 22nd, 9:45 p.m., HKW 1/Miriam Makeba Auditorium.
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