Wolf

Claudio Giovannesi
2013-01-01

5
0 min

Rabbi Benjamin Murmelstein (1905-1989) was head of the Jewish Council of the artificial ghetto of Terezín (Theresienstadt in German). The Nazis made him representative of the community destined for extermination. Victim of a tragic contradiction, after the Liberation he was tried and absolved from the accusation of collaborating with the Nazis; he moved to Rome, where he was ostracized by the Jewish community until he died. His son Wolf devoted his life to redeem his image, trying to paint a more complex picture of the role his father played in Terezín. The film reconstructs through the conversation between Wolf and the psychoanalyst David Meghnagi a son's relationship with the memory of his father, between the acceptance, the denial, and the thematization of a common and familiar tragedy.