The 10th annual Rutgers Jewish Film Festival brings award-winning, international films to New Jersey that touch on many aspects of the Jewish experience. And Along Come Tourists is making its New Jersey premiere on November 10, at 7:30, at the Regal Cinema, in North Brunswick. We sat down with Michael Levine, professor of German at Rutgers, who will be leading a discussion with the audience following the screening.

FOCUS: You have researched how difficult it is to serve as witnesses to people who have been through unspeakable acts. How does the movie address this?

LEVINE: The film is a small, poignant, behind-the-scenes look at what Auschwitz has become for tourists, guides, and, in this case, even a Polish survivor who remains there after liberation. The very fact that there are now tourists led around by professional guides, suggests a place where rehearsed speeches and canned responses predominate, in which going “behind-the-scenes” means somehow making our way through the clichés that have accumulated around this site. It looks at the mechanical, obligatory gestures that have somehow taken the place of the machinery of death. I know this sounds heavy, but the film has a remarkably light touch. It makes its points through small gestures, subtle juxtapositions, and cutting ironies.

FOCUS:  What is the story? Does it speak to modern-day Germany?

LEVINE: To appreciate it, one first has to know something about the options available to young Germans today who are called to serve in the military. They have their choice of the army, or Zivildienst, civilian service. Many young Germans choose service, fulfilling their commitment by working in hospitals, retirement homes, hospitals, and youth centers. In the film, the main character, Sven, applies to work with young people in Amsterdam. Instead, he is sent to Auschwitz, which is now again a Polish town and is called by its “original” name, ‘Oswiecim.’  His principal responsibility is to look after a former inmate of the camp, who remained there after liberation. Still a prisoner to the past, the old man at first sees Sven only as a representative of those who had made his life hell. Turning the tables, he now takes a certain pleasure in barking orders at the sensitive, young German. Sven, a pacifist, finds himself – not unlike the old man -- trapped in a kind of time warp, suspended between the realities of the present and the ghosts of the past As he seeks to orient himself in this bizarre landscape, he meets an attractive young Polish woman, a tour guide, who escorts German tour groups around the former death camp. The two become involved, yet the closer Sven gets to the guide, the more lost he seems. It is just this sense of disorientation that enables him -- and us -- to move beyond pre-assigned, prescripted roles.

The survivor who remains in Oswiecim spends his time there speaking to German youth groups and repairing the preserved suitcases of those who had perished. On special ceremonial occasions he is invited to speak – but never for too long – by German companies which, ironically, have returned to the town to open factories and do business the New Europe. The old man lets himself be exploited, to some extent, because he cannot leave, because he feels bound to those who perished, bound to tell their side of the story even if, at times, it seems to fall only on deaf ears.

FOCUS: Is this a movie about guilt?

LEVINE: In some sense, it has to be. How could it not be? That said it is not a film that tries to convey a big message, or to shock its audiences with horrifying, overwhelming images. It is about the little, everyday things in a place that can never be everyday.

FOCUS: It sounds grim.

It’s not. It is actually a moving love story between Sven and the young Polish tour guide, a story that itself unfolds in poignant juxtaposition to the Sven’s changing relationship with the old Polish survivor. It is an ongoing dialogue between young and old, past and present, Germans and Poles. The silence at the heart of this dialogue, the central absence around which the film turns, is the fate of European Jewry at Auschwitz.