Yizkor dramatizes its theme of fidelity to one's self, one's community and one's religion through a plot that revolves around hostage-taking, heroism and resistance. In a small Volhynian village, the local Count's daughter falls in love with Leybke, a handsome Jewish guardsman, but all her attempts to win him fail as he is in love with and betrothed to Kreyndl. The Countess desperately tries to seduce Leybke, and avenges her failure by falsely accusing him of attacking her. Arrested on the eve of his wedding, Leybke escapes and marries Kreyndl, but after they flee the entire Jewish community is held hostage. Leybke gives himself up, is buried alive and the Countess commits suicide.Made in Vienna, then "touted as 'the Hollywood of Europe,'...[Yizkor] presents Jewish life evolving in dialectical relation to the Gentile world--a point of particular relevance for a city as simultaneously charged by political antisemitism and Jewish cultural achievement as postwar Vienna," says J. Hoberman.
"Like many of Sekler's writings, [Yizkor] concerns a Jewish martyr. In a published edition of the play, Sekler gives a legend collected by the Ansky expedition as his source of inspiration. In the original tale, a nobleman's daughter is smitten by a handsome Jewish youth, tries repeatedly to seduce him, and finally dies `burned in her own hellish fire,' after which the duke has the youth buried alive. (Sekler was attracted to the story, he says, because the martyr was beautiful rather than learned.)"
J. Hoberman, Bridge of Light: Yiddish Film Between Two Worlds
The National Center For Jewish Film
Brandeis University, Lown 102, MS053, Waltham MA 02454
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