Rachela Auerbach opposed the Nazis with words, Cywia Lubetkin confronted them with weapons. Through the journey of these two figures of the Polish Jewish resistance, this documentary returns to the first great popular uprising in Europe: the Warsaw ghetto uprising. The film, directed by Rafaël Lewandowski and narrated by Mathieu Almaric, places this event in long history. It all begins in anti-Semitic Poland between the wars.
Cywia Lubetkin was then an activist in a socialist Zionist party. She prepared to immigrate to Palestine, when in 1935 she was elected a member of the Central Committee of the Kibbutz of Poland. At the same period, Rachela Auerbach, committed to the left, continued her research in Warsaw: writer, journalist and feminist, she documented the class, gender and ethnic discriminations at work.
The 1is September 1939, Hitler launches his attack against Poland. Cywia was then 25 years old. After fleeing with a group of friends, she decides to return to the capital to reorganize the left-wing Zionist youth. With her fiancé, the general secretary of the Dror party, she returned to the underground of the kibbutz. Rachela joined Emanuel Ringelblum, who then created Jewish Social Assistance. It is around these two formations, political and social, that the resistance network inside the Warsaw ghetto will be structured.
The first will be at the origin of the creation of the Jewish combat organization which will lead the armed struggle. The second, from the secret operation “Oneg Shabbat”. It brings together writers and intellectuals, who will document the horror of the ghetto and gather the first evidence of the final solution. Cywia Lubetkin and Rachela Auerbach will be among the rare survivors. Based on their journeys as activists and insurgents, Rafaël Lewandowski restores all its historical substance to the Warsaw ghetto uprising.
The hut of the century. Insurgents! Resistance fighters in the Warsaw ghetto Documentary/ France 5 / October 13, 2024 / 11:30 p.m.
