Shtetlers
Written and Directed Katya Ustinova
Runtime: 80 minutes
Available digitally February 3

by Ryan Silberstein, Managing Editor, Red Herring

I’ve been thinking a lot about documentaries lately. Why they exist and why we watch them. In a few recent conversations, I found myself talking about and recommending documentaries even more than films with fictional narratives. Movies like Fire of Love, Turn Every Page, those that played at Sundance this year, and others offer us a glimpse into the world around us. Whether through the story of people or a place (or both), they serve to create a record of what is, or what was. Beyond entertaining or educating, there is a larger benefit to capturing these stories in a visual medium. Especially when it comes to trying to prevent future atrocities. Shtetlers is one such example, creating a living document about small Jewish towns in Eastern Europe, called shtetls, with the film focusing specifically on Ukraine. 

Shtetls existed in Poland, Hungary, and the western part of the Russian Empire (to the west of the Pale of Settlement) for centuries until the Holocaust, when they were eradicated by the Nazis as they invaded Eastern Europe. Now, some 75 years later, Shtetlers attempts to document the memories of those who lived in and nearby in an attempt to preserve those memories. This takes the documentary all over the world, to London, Israel, and elsewhere in finding former residents and exploring their memories. But it also zeroes in on Ukraine to show the houses that still sit abandoned and overgrown. 

Perhaps the most surprising aspect of the story for me was seeing how certain Jewish traditions: candle lighting, cuisine, and certain trades persist in the non-Jewish populations. While there was certainly hardship and ethnic strife (including pogroms in the 19th century), there is a mix of love and stereotyping among the Gentiles who remember. One man basically says ‘you couldn’t ask them to lift a shovel, but they made great shoes,’ which of course reinforces anti-Semetic stereotypes, but also speaks to the relationship between the Jewish shtetl residents and the other neighboring towns. Other stories along these lines are more heartwarming, like Jewish and Gentile families swapping chores for Shabbat and Sundays so each family could spend the day keeping their faith while not losing a day’s milk or eggs. There are similar good and bad stories from the Nazi invasion, where some locals directed Nazi officers to Jewish neighborhoods while a different family hid 50 people inside their home for years. Shtetlers doesn’t attempt to assess which attitude was the most common, but captures that both existed. 

Ultimately, Shtetlers is a story of perseverance. Of a culture, a people, and individuals. From a poetic angle, it feels right that the aspect of shtetl life that remains most alive today is the food. Matzoh, in particular, reminds us of the hardship and sacrifice of our ancestors, a pattern that has persisted for centuries and continues into the present as anti-Semitism is on the rise once again.  Shtetlers is a microcosm of the old Jewish history summation: “They tried to kill us, we survived, let’s eat.”