anyone else bothered by...


I loved everything about the graveyard dream...as a stratagem for Tevye to change Golde's mind it was brilliant, and the music and sets were great...but I'm always brought up short with a gasp when they jump into the grave, because hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian Jews were murdered firstly by making them jump into mass graves. I know the actions of the killing squads in the former USSR abd Baltic states are not nearly as well known an aspect of the Holocaust as the death camps and gas chambers, but I'm surprised someone involved with the production didn't sqauwk about it being really insensitive. Great film though. That's about the only criticism I can think of for this one.....and does anyone know why there are no posts on here older than 2011?

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I think the Holocaust analogy is a bit of a stretch. This wasn't a life and death struggle--they were just being haunted by the ghost of Fruma-Sarah and were jumping into the safety of their bed. It seemed a little odd that at that point their bed was inside a grave, when it hadn't started out there, but Jewison may have intended some symbolism I'm not seeing.

I have no idea why IMDB sweeps out all their old threads, unless it's for memory issues. It's one reason some of the same questions and issues keep recycling on these boards and have to be re-addressed every so often.

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Two people being haunted, in a dream, jump into a grave (with a bed in it!) to escape a ghost and you see it is an allegory for Jews being exterminated in a mass grave? That's some imagination you have there. Perhaps if they entered the grave with someone intending to shoot them in the backs of their heads because they are Jewish, you'd have a point.

So to avoid offending Jews, no graves? I suppose if a Jew uses an oven in a movie, that would be insensitive as well? They better not use any gas fireplaces either. Perhaps all people with little mustaches should be removed as well. Enough with all the PC nonsense already.

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There's a Funeral Home down the street from me and it has a cremation oven.

Is that considered a death camp?

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They simply may not have known at the time, or if they did, then they didn't want to upset the apple cart because they were filming in a communist country.

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