Frames Benjamin Howard Ratner

NOTE: This essay utilized pictures and graphics which could not be included online.

“Quiet on the set. Camera ready? Sound ready? Roll camera… speed. Action!” This series of sentence fragments is used to get a film camera recording on a movie set. Ever since my first media class in seventh grade, I knew that media arts was my passion and would become my future profession. So it was not unusual for me to view my experiences as a filmmaker when I visited Eastern Europe last summer. With a group of fifty other Jewish teenagers, I visited twelve Nazi concentration camps, death camps, and ghettos, including Auschwitz, Terezin, Ponar, Kovno, Tikochin, Lupuchova Forest, Treblinka, Warsaw, Majdanek, Birkenau.

Film is recorded at twenty four frames per second. During my studies at Northwestern University this past summer, I learned that each and every frame is important. Like the frames, each experience on my journey through Eastern Europe has led to my greater understanding of the importance of how the past will continue to be a living and influential entity that will shape my future.

Frame 1: Treblinka Extermination Camp, Poland

After a long bus ride, we stepped out into the sultry air. We observed a line of rocks representing the...