Fateless directed and photographed by Lajos Koltai, Hungary, 2005, 1040 min.,  35mm. Hungarian/German w/subtitles

By Donald H. Harrison

How strange are our memories about pain! Women have told me that if the actual sensations were stored in their memory banks—and not just generalized impressions of the pain that they feel while giving birth—then the human race would have stopped reproducing many centuries ago, perhaps, in biblical metaphor, the moment after Eve gave birth to Cain! Luckily for all of us, the memory of pain is less intense than the anticipation of pleasure.  

When the mind deems it necessary for survival, a memory can even be blotted out—as in the case of amnesia.  Or, events can be transformed: some can be telescoped into others; some can be abbreviated; others can be elongated.


Gyuria (Marcell Nagy) upon his return from concentration camp to Budapest

In Fateless, beautifully photographed in sepia tones by its director Lajos Kottai, we relive the Holocaust as one man, Gyuria Koves (Marcell Nagy), remembers it. Thus some poignant moments—such as the evening in his Budapest home on the night before Gyuria's father had to report to a Nazi work camp—are remembered in exact and lingering detail, whereas other moments such as Gyuria's own near death in a concentration camp are confused and jumbled.  

We can imagine that during the endless roll calls that concentration camp inmates were forced to stand at attention, that Gyuria, 14, replayed those last moments with his father and family again and again, thereby embedding them in his memory.

So, too, can we assume that Gyuria thought often about the time when a Hungarian policeman, signaling with a glance, gave him permission to escape a roundup of Jews.  But Gyuria uncomprehendingly stayed put.  How often he must have thought about that—or about what would have happened to him at the Auschwitz ramp if an inmate hadn't whispered to the boys to tell the Nazis that they were 16.

Also, we realize, that because standing at attention for hours, waiting in food lines for a bit of soup, and shoveling rocks were repetitive features of Gyuria's life, his memories of these activities remained vivid.  He even could recall with pleasure his favorite time at the camp—the hour after returning from the work detail and before dinner when inmates were left more or less alone to socialize.  One can adapt to any routine.

In Fateless, we see some prisoners profiteering at each other's expense, and others, the kapos, behaving sometimes brutally.  But balancing out these memories are those of prisoners helping each other through rough spots, giving each other encouragement, praying together, and coming to each other's physical aid.

The facts of the Holocaust are well known, but what remains unclear are the lessons it taught.  By examining the memories of Gyuri—a character based on the life of Nobel Prize winning author Imre Kertesz—Koitai brings us one step closer to understanding.

Fateless will be presented during the 16th Annual San Diego Jewish Film Festival at 8 p.m., Thursday, Feb. 16 in the AMC La Jolla Theatres.  Director Lajos Koitai has been invited to attend the showing in which the New Life Club of Holocaust Survivors will serve as a community partner