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INTERNATIONAL EDITION | WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 2021

IS A FILM A HIT?HOLLYWOODSEEKS ANSWERSPAGE 5 | BUSINESS

GNAWING ISSUEBEAVERS DRAWIRE IN SCOTLANDPAGE 3 | WORLD

REVVED UP FOR THE STAGEIN ‘BACK TO THE FUTURE’MUSICAL, A STAR IS BORNPAGE 15 | CULTURE

Rampant deforestation has disruptedthis flow, weakening the streams thatfeed the larger rivers in the basin andtransforming the landscape.

“This is much more than a waterproblem,” said Lucas Micheloud, a Ro-sario-based member of the ArgentineAssociation of Environmental Lawyers.Frequent fires, he said, are turning re-source-rich rain forests into savannas.

Although water level varies in differ-ent locations, on average the Paraná isnow 10.5 feet below its normal flow, ac-cording to Juan Borus, an expert at Ar-gentina’s government-run National Wa-

The fisherman woke up early on a re-cent morning, banged on the fuel con-tainers on his small boat to make sure hehad enough for the day and set out onthe Paraná River, fishing net in hand.

The outing was a waste of time. Theriver, an economic lifeline in SouthAmerica, has shrunk significantly in asevere drought, and the effects are dam-aging lives and livelihoods along itsbanks and well beyond.

“I didn’t catch a single fish,” said the68-year-old fisherman, Juan CarlosGarate, pointing to patches of grasssprouting where there used to be water.“Everything is dry.”

The Paraná’s reduced flow, at its low-est level since the 1940s, has upendeddelicate ecosystems in the vast area thatstraddles Brazil, Argentina and Para-guay, and it has left scores of communi-ties scrambling for fresh water.

In a region that depends heavily onrivers to generate power and to trans-

port the agricultural commodities thatare a pillar of national economies, the re-treat of the continent’s second-largestriver has also hurt business, increasingthe costs of energy production and ship-ping.

Experts say deforestation in the Ama-zon and rain patterns altered by a warm-ing planet are helping fuel the drought.Much of the humidity that turns into therain that feeds tributaries of the Paranáoriginates in the Amazon rainforest,where trees release water vapor in aprocess that scientists call “flyingrivers.”

ter Institute who has been studying theriver for more than three decades.

The situation is likely to worsen, atleast through the beginning of Novem-ber, which is ordinarily the beginning ofthe rainy season in the region.

But the drought could last longer. Ex-perts say climate change has made itharder to make accurate predictions.

Extreme events like the drought af-fecting much of South America are be-coming “more frequent and more in-tense,” said Lincoln Alves, a researcherat Brazil’s National Institute of Space ARGENTINA, PAGE 6

Sandbars emerging in the Paraná River in front of Rosario, Argentina, late last month. The river’s flow, which is vital to a three-country region, is at its lowest since the 1940s.PHOTOGRAPHS BY SEBASTIÁN LÓPEZ BRACH FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

A vanishing lifelineROSARIO, ARGENTINA

The second-largest riverin South America is dryingup in a prolonged drought

BY DANIEL POLITI

From left: Fishermen who make their living on the Paraná are struggling; pallets have been laid on the riverbanks for pedestrians.

Rosario

Atlantic Ocean

1 0 0 M I L ES

URUGUAY

Buenos Aires

BRAZIL

ARGENTINA

Paraná

Paraná River

ARGENTINA

Detailarea

THE NEW YORK TIMES

Jean-Paul Belmondo, the rugged actorwhose disdainful eyes, boxer’s nose,sensual lips and cynical outlook madehim the idolized personification ofyouthful alienation in the French NewWave, most notably in his classic per-formance in Jean-Luc Godard’s“Breathless,” died on Monday at hishome in Paris. He was 88.

His death was confirmed by the officeof his lawyer, Michel Godest. No causewas given.

Like Humphrey Bogart, MarlonBrando and James Dean — three Ameri-can actors to whom he was frequentlycompared — Mr. Belmondo establishedhis reputation playing tough, unsenti-mental, even antisocial characters cutadrift from bourgeois society. Later, asone of France’s leading stars, he tookmore crowd-pleasing roles, but withoutsurrendering his magnetic brashness.

Like Bogart, Mr. Belmondo broughtcraggy features and sometimesseething anger to the screen, a realisticcounterpoint to more conventionallyhandsome romantic stars. Like Dean, hebecame one of the most widely imitatedpop culture figures of his era. And likeBrando, he was often dismissive of pre-tentiousness and self-importanceamong filmmakers.

“No actor since James Dean has in-spired quite such intense identification,”Eugene Archer wrote in The New YorkTimes in 1965. “Dean evoked the rebel-lious adolescent impulse, as fierce as itwas gratuitous, a violent outgrowth ofthe frustrations of the modern world.Belmondo is a later manifestation ofyouthful rejection — and more disturb-ing. His disengagement from a societyhis parents made is total. He acceptscorruption with a cynical smile, not evenbothering to struggle. He is out entirelyfor himself, to get whatever he can,while he can. The Belmondo type is ca-pable of anything.”

His leading role in “À bout de souffle” BELMONDO, PAGE 2

Rugged-faced star of French New Wave

Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean Seberg in “À bout de souffle,” released in America as“Breathless.” He was compared to Humphrey Bogart, Marlon Brando and James Dean.

RAYMOND CAUCHETIER/FILMS AROUND THE WORLD, VIA PHOTOFEST

JEAN-PAUL BELMONDO1933-2021

BY RICK LYMAN

The New York Times publishes opinionfrom a wide range of perspectives inhopes of promoting constructive debateabout consequential questions.

Four decades ago, Deng Xiaoping de-clared that China would “let some peo-ple get rich first” in its race for growth.Now, Xi Jinping has put China’s tycoonson notice that it is time for them to sharemore wealth with the rest of the country.

Mr. Xi says the Communist Party willpursue “common prosperity,” pressingbusinesses and entrepreneurs to helpnarrow a stubborn wealth gap that couldhold back the country’s rise and erodepublic confidence in the leadership. Sup-porters say China’s next phase ofgrowth demands the shift.

“A powerful China should also be a fairand just China,” Yao Yang, a professor ofeconomics at Peking University who en-dorses the shift in priorities, wrote in anemail. “China is one of the worst coun-tries in terms of redistribution, despitebeing a socialist country. Public spend-ing is overly concentrated in cities, eliteschools and so on.”

Officials are pledging to make school-ing, housing and health care less costlyand more evenly available outside bigcities, and to lift incomes for workers,helping more people secure a place inthe middle class. The “common prosper-ity” campaign has converged with acrackdown on the country’s tech giantsto curb their dominance. Facing scru-tiny, some of China’s biggest billionaires,like Jack Ma, have lined up to pledge bil-lions of dollars to charity.

The pledges hold out the prospect, en-dorsed by Mr. Xi in a meeting lastmonth, that China is now affluentenough to shift closer to the CommunistParty’s longstanding ideal of wealthsharing. For Mr. Xi, the Communist Par-ty’s long-term authority is at stake.

Now that economic growth is moder-ating, many young Chinese feel that up-ward mobility is diminishing. Well-pay-ing white-collar jobs can be hard to find.Tech workers complain of punishinglylong hours. Families feel they can’t af-ford to have more children, adding to alooming demographic crisis. For now,Mr. Xi faces little opposition, but in thelonger term, that could change if suchgrievances pile up.

“Achieving common prosperity is notjust an economic issue: It’s a major po-litical matter bearing on the party’sfoundation for rule,” Mr. Xi told officialsin January. “We cannot let an unbridge-able gulf appear between the rich andthe poor.”

The party is eager to show it is listen-ing to the complaints as Mr. Xi lays the CHINA, PAGE 6

Beijingis pushingthe wealthyto share‘Common prosperity’ is the theme of an effortto close an economic gap

BY CHRIS BUCKLEY, ALEXANDRA STEVENSON AND CAO LI

On an unseasonably cold night inAugust 1942, Miriam Rabinowitzpushed her way past a wooden fencetopped with barbed wire and broke outof the ghetto in Zdzieciol, Poland. Shewasn’t alone. The 34-year-old womanled her two young daughters, hersister, a cousin, and a handful of othersaway from the underground bunkerwhere they had hidden for three dayswhile SS squads rounded up some2,500 other Jewish men, women andchildren, marched them to the edge oftown, forced them to strip naked andshot them into waiting pits.

Having narrowly escaped, Miriam’sgroup set off for the only place thatoffered real hope to the Jews internedin ghettos in the former Soviet-occu-

pied territories ofPoland and Belorus-sia: the forest.

It was in theLipiczany Forestthat Miriam wasreunited with herhusband, Morris. Fortwo years, they ekedout a meager exist-

ence there with two dozen other Jews.Together, this collective found a sort ofsanctuary, even as they endureddeadly typhus outbreaks, winter tem-peratures as low as 30 degrees belowzero, constant hunger, and the threat ofraids by Nazis and local gangs whowere hunting Jews and Soviet parti-sans.

More than 75 years after the end ofWorld War II, we are familiar with anumber of well-established accounts ofwhat happened to Europe’s Jews dur-ing the Holocaust. They mountedghetto uprisings; they hid in the homesof their Christian neighbors; and, ofcourse, they were sent to Nazi concen-tration camps and perished in the gaschambers. Only recently, we’ve begunto hear more about the roughly 25,000Jews who survived the war in thewoods of Eastern Europe. Even so,that narrative has focused on the15,000 or so who took up arms andjoined the partisan fighters, like theBielski brothers, who were made fa-mous in the 2008 film “Defiance.”Overlooked even now are stories likethose of the Rabinowitz family, wholived — and died — in those samewoods in small family camps: theforgotten Jews of the forest.

These camps were populated bysplintered families, some held togetherby friendship, many more by necessity.Most people begged for food, somebartered, others foraged or stole. Theymoved frequently to avoid Nazi raids

Stories we’relosing of theHolocaustRebecca Frankel

OPINION

We’re stilllearningabout diff-erent facets of the Jewishexperience.

FRANKEL, PAGE 12

DEMOCRATS’ CRADLE-TO-THE-GRAVE PLANCongress is undertaking the mostsignificant expansion of the U.S. socialsafety net since the 1960s. PAGE 5

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