Educational Media Reviews Online

Daniela Zanzotto has traced the life of the La Muette building from its beginning in 1938 as public housing, its use as a transit camp during WWII, up to its current use as public housing. Utilizing archival footage of the La Muette building from the war years, and interspersing interviews with Jewish survivors, Zanzotto has powerfully conveyed the terrible plight of the Jews in Vichy France during World War II. Of the 67,000 deportees, including over 4000 children, housed at different periods in La Muette, only 2000 survived the end of the war. Interestingly, Zanzotto has interviewed some of the current occupants of La Muette, many of whom are North African immigrants, who feel as the persecuted French Jews did, alienated from the France of today. Yet, at the same time, these residents do not feel the poignancy of the horrible fate of those lost during the war years. Jewish survivors, while acknowledging the La Muette memorial to those who were lost, reflect on the vandalism inflicted on it, and the anti-Semitism that still exists, even here, in this place of past tragedy. They lament that the use of the building complex as housing flats has robbed it of its importance as a proper memorial to the deportations. The documentary, featuring the La Muette complex, is a masterful blend of changing ethnic groups, historical moments, and complex viewpoints of past and current events.

Recommended and suitable for use in classes on the Holocaust, World War II, and Sociology.