THE TESTAMENT
Austria/Israel, 2017, 88 minutes, Colour.
Ori Pfeffer.
Directed by Amichai Greenberg.
The Testament concerns an Orthodox Jewish researcher who is trying to uncover details of a massacre which took place in Austria during World War II. The Austrian authorities are intending to build commercial enterprises on the site.
The researcher works with a team but is also a loner. He goes to great lengths to discover documents, to do interviews, determined to prove that the massacre took place. Eventually, he does, getting corroborative witnesses, finding that local church which was a point of reference was rebuilt after the war and so details of distance and information was subsequently not helpful.
However, what is important to him, and he is obsessive about this, quite a difficult man to deal with, is the discovery that his mother who worked as a maid in a Jewish household was so beholden to them that she assumed the Jewish identity and went to the concentration camps. She was determined to marry before she died and did so but was saved from death by the arrival of the allies. She has brought up her children as Jewish and not revealed the truth to them.
This Testament from his mother makes the researcher a complicated character, intense on his research and follow through, talking with his mother, the ideas being rejected by his sister, and his having to deal with his son and his bar mitzvah training and his own sense of identity.
1. The title? Biblical overtones? Jewish overtones? The record of the Holocaust? The witness of survivors?
2. An Austrian/Israeli production? Locations in Austria, the town of N is Dorff, in the past with concentration camp, the massacre, the Church? In the present, the church, the open fields? The prospect for commercial development?
3. Contrast with Israel, research centres, museums, homes, synagogues? The musical score?
4. The focus on Yoel? Traditional Jewish? Garb, hair? Manner of bearing himself? Manner of speaking? The background of his family, his mother, photos, the family history? His sister? His son? His expectations of his son, the bar mitzvah, practising reading and singing the Scriptures, his anger with his son and accusing him of not working hard, his later apology? With his fellow workers, his demands? Serious, the research, the documents, the documentation, checking and double checking? His quest?
5. The initial conference, teleconference, the Austrian authorities, the board, information about commercial development? The question of the Jewish graves and the cement over them? The Israelis, the history, the documentation of the massacres? The difficulties of providing documentation? Asking for postponements?
6. Yoel and the boss, her presence at the conference, her demands, her expectations of him? The later meetings and his not informing her, surprising her? Her threats?
7. Yoel's family background, the photo of his mother and father, his mother surviving, meeting with her, his suspicions about her not being Jewish? The preoccupation for himself and his own status? The discussions with his mother, her description of the family, her mother being made, the identifying with the Jews, going to the concentration camp, willing to be executed, wanting to be married, the ceremony, the gas not working, the American liberation, marrying her husband, her family? Her death – but her talking again at the end about what happened to her? Y’all sister and her unwillingness to accept this, to look at the documents? Y’all and eventually his cutting his hair, shaving his beard?
8. The issue of the massacre, the documents, the witnesses at the time, the destruction of documents at the time? The Nazi authorities, the massacres, getting the 10 dues to do the massacre, their escape, eight of them being executed? The other two escaping? The witness from the camp, his bringing the prayer book, the importance of prayer, the prisoner writing his own prayers? The irony of not looking at the pages on which the prayers were written – and eventually the list of the dead being revealed? The witness who was killed? Burnham and the contact with Yoel, the envoy, going to the field, the pieces, the church? The later realisation that the church was destroyed and rebuilt in a different place? The initial digging in the wrong place? In the right place? The old man and his prayer book, the testimony at the conference?
9. Yoel, his assistant, supportive? The details of the research, checking documents? The phone calls? The exasperation? Yoel and the complexity of wanting to understand his origins? His boss and her not caring one way or the other?
10. His final achievement, the end of his quest? The personal journey? And what future for him?
