Debate

On Tuesday, December 7, 2010, the Kultura Cinema hosted the debate entitled “Rescuing Jews. Film and history”. The discussion, organized within the framework of the project “Polish Righteous – Recalling Forgotten History”, attracted a wide audience. Among the invited guests were the members of the Polish Society of the Righteous Among the Nations and the Association of “Children of the Holocaust” in Poland. The event, accompanied with the special screening of Feliks Falk’s movie “Joanna” with the participation of the film’s director himself, constituted the ceremonial crowning of the work over the project “Polish Righteous - Recalling Forgotten History” in 2010. In this way we wanted to thank all of our researchers, translators and witnesses to the past events for their cooperation throughout this year.

The movie “Joanna” by Feliks Falk tells the story of a young woman hiding a Jewish girl in Cracow during World War II. The subject matter of the film corresponds perfectly to the activities conducted within our project. Also the audience found the movie deeply affecting.

The debate gathered the following participants: Feliks Falk, Tadeusz Sobolewski – a film critic, and Bartosz Kwieciński – a researcher of the Holocaust. The discussion was hosted by dr Małgorzata Pakier, the Educational Program Coordinator at the Museum of the History of Polish Jews. The main thread running through the discussion of the panelists and the audience concerned the problem of presenting the historical events from World War II in a feature film and their remaking.

The character of the main heroine in the movie provoked some controversy. Many spectators considered her as a person too much idealized, sublime and somewhat out of place in the historical realities.  As Mrs. Janina Rożecka, the Righteous, highlighted, the Rescuers were not so painfully estranged or alienated from society when they tried to save Jews as in the case of the main heroine in „Joanna”. Still, the Righteous could count on the support from their families or underground organizations. On numerous occasions, Dr Bartosz Kwieciński stressed that the experiences of Joanna from Cracow were radically different from those of the people hiding Jews in Warsaw. He insisted that the audience should take into account the specific culture of Cracow and the historical situation of this city during World War II (less restrictive policy in the Cracow ghetto than in other cities, numerous German troops stationed in the city).

Several times both Feliks Falk and Tadeusz Sobolewski emphasized that the war-Holocaust story told in the film was only the prelude to a more universal parable about human alienation, loneliness, stigmatization and quirks of fate the human being is condemned to when one finds oneself in such an atypical situation as an incessant danger of losing one’s life.

The project is co-financed by the Ministry of Polish Culture and Heritage