Pawnbroker Complicates Holocaust Memory in U.S.

¶ … Richard Stites taught for over 50 years, and asserts that the most successful course during these years was a pro-seminar class designed for first-year students in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. The surprising title of the course, Europe in World War II: History and Film, seems a better fit once the reader learns that Stites has used full-length film in his courses for years. The films have given his students perspective on Russian popular culture, the U.S.S.R. And the United State in the 20th century, and Europe during World War II. As the Distinguished Professor of International Studies in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, Stites has enable students to assume the role of historians as they view and analyze film.

I chose the film The Pawnbroker for two main reasons: First, Stites considers it "the finest American fiction feature movie ever made about the Holocaust[and he believes that it] belongs in any course on the Holocaust where film is used. The second reason is because the American fiction feature film, The Pawnbroker (1964), was directed by the master of cinema, Sidney Lumet, who made more than 40 films in his lifetime. It is noteworthy that Lumet made his feature film debut with the remarkable 12 Angry Men. Many of Lumet films were complex, non-sentimental, emotional films, and a number of the films he directed became or were stage plays. Lumet was well-known for two things, in particular: his technical knowledge and his ability to get exceptionally good performances from his actors. Indeed, Rod Steiger's performance in the title role garnered three international film awards for best actor, and two domestic nominations in the same category.

The film tells the story of Sol Nazerman, a Holocaust survivor who becomes a pawnbroker living in New York City, who is so terribly haunted by his experiences in the Nazi concentration camps that he is unable to overcome their impact. Nazerman has lost all faith in his fellow man, and his outlook is strengthened by the hapless and often criminal people who drift in and out of his pawnshop. He is so hardened against human intimacy that he is indifferent to any overtures from others, regardless of the promise they hold for improving his life. Nazerman lives within a constellation of terrible personal tragedy, mental torment from memories that won't leave him alone, and the self-pity that serves to wound him afresh. In an attempt to protect Nazerman, Jesus Ortiz, his young assistant is murdered by hoodlums. His clouded lens clears sufficiently for the pawnbroker to feel the shame of his detachment, even from the young man who gave his life in an attempt to save him. If the viewer of the film wondered how Nazerman's suffering could be made worse, it is clear at this point: his grief has an acquired guilt as a companion.

Stites argues that the role of the pawnbroker illustrates that the series of horrific events experienced by Nazerman have taken away more than his wife, his family, and his friends. The Holocaust has stripped him of his capacity to feel -- to attach to others and respond to their suffering. Stites sees the character of the pawnbroker as "a twisted though less lethal and totally nonideological version of his cruel persecutors" (2).

Stites examines the origin of the title character and, also, how the book came into being. As Stites explains, the author of the book, Edward Louis Wallant, spent time observing the goings-on in a relative's pawnshop. By happenstance, he met a survivor of the death camps while attending the Pratt Institute in New York. But the odd thing is that most Jewish people living in the United States after the war did not have the type of experiences that the character in The Pawnbroker had. In fact, they were thriving and adjusted -- and like many people at the time -- were interested in putting the dreadful past behind them. There was little interest in creative work that focused on Jewish themes, let alone the Holocaust. Stites does refer briefly to a book by William B. Helmreich titled, Against All Odds: Holocaust Survivors and the Successful Lives They Made in America, which underscores his argument that the story of The Pawnbroker does substantively complicate Holocaust memory in the modern world.