The film is almost a symphony, its themes the vagaries of memory, the tricks of perspective, the fallibility of individual man and community man.
Nobody, Jew or pole, with a direct interest in Shtetl will find satisfaction with all the people in it. And that is one great measure of its success. A greater one its that it will force most everyone who watches to ponder what he or she might have done 54 years ago. The fascinating characters and information of Shtetl not only open the door to understanding of a far away, long-ago corner of the world, but also to a viewer's personal world today.
Jonathan Storm, Philadelphia Enquirer, April 17, 1996
Made over the course of four years, and on three continents, his resonant and disturbing film is a notable achievement in the lengthening annals of Holocaust history. Passionately personal even as it grasp for broader truths, it succeeds because it listens closely for the ways in which inhumanity echoes through decades and generations.
Steve Johnson, Chicago Tribune, April 17, 1996
Shtetl confirms that the fate of Poland's Jews remains an uncomfortable subject for today's Poles.
Walter Goodman, New York Times, April 17, 1996
Beyond its dramatic intensity, Shtetl preserves a lucidity rare in popular culture. It portrays the recovery of historical facts and artifacts but makes no pretense of explaining away the mystery of good and evil. The journey it recounts is a return to a permanent present.
Boston Globe, Editorial Page, April 17, 1996
In some ways, Shtetl is a slenderized, personalized "Shoah," Claude Lanzmann's landmark 1985 documentary examining the Holocaust links between oppressed and oppressor. Shtetl is anything but a nostalgia piece, though. With Marzynski narrating, it outs a serpentine path through baffling human complexity, seeking answers to the seemingly answerable. Wanders Kaplan: "How can a decent man be inhuman at times?" And a decent people be inhuman at times?
Howard Rosenberg, Los Angeles Times, April 17, 1996
Shtetl examines what happened one November day in Bransk, a Polish farm village. In so doing, the film by Holocaust survivor Marian Marzynski achieves a remarkable transformation; it wrests the Holocaust from the dim, distant realm of grainy, black-and-white images and brings it into sharply focused, sunlit color. Suddenly, the Holocaust seems to be happening today, by focusing on events in one small, country town, and revealing how the people of that town continue to live lives of willful amnesia, it reminds us that ordinary people can commit the bravest and foulest deeds.
Robert P. Laurence, The San Diego Union-Tribune, April 15, 1996
When the last scene of Shtetl dissolves - and you'll watch it to the very last scene, watching the procession leave the left side of the frame - it starts dawning on you what you've just seen. ... Shtetl raises profound questions about the biggest issues: what it means to be Jewish and whether someone who is not Jewish can appreciate being Jewish. It suggests the impact of the Holocaust on Jews and on those who aren't Jewish but who have feelings for them. Do you truly have to be Jewish to feel the pain? What are the consequences for all of us when 6 million people are killed for being Jewish?...FRONTLINE is a consistently compelling series of documentaries, but this installment is a work of art.
Bruce McCabe, Boston Globe, April 14, 1996
The documentary leaves the viewer flabbergasted by the deep-rooted anti-Semitism that prevailed and still prevails in Poland"
Liberation, The French Daily, March 1996
Romaniuk's many sides, and the filmmaker's determination reveal all of them, set Shtetl apart as a fascinating, provocative treatment of the Holocaust and its legacy
Terry Kelleher, Newsday, April 14, 1996
Shtetl is a film that confronts the Holocaust on a very personal level, yet asks the most fundamental and universal question. Who was responsible?
Erik Rosen, The Jewish Chronicle, Pittsburgh, PA, April 11, 1996
Shtetl shuttles between the once 60 per cent Jewish town of Bransk, the US, and Israel, illuminating not only the tangle of Polish-Jewish relations but the differences between American and Israeli Jews; the movie, which took four years to complete, is deceptively artless and cumulatively complex.
Jim Hoberman, Village Voice, March 4, 1996
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