Film about a Righteous at the „Jewish Eye” Festival in Ashkelon

One of these films will be the documentary Narodzona po raz drugi” („Born for the Second Time”) directed by Michał Nekanda-Trepka. It tells the story of Maria Kowalska (born in Vilnius in 1939 as Masza Fajnsztejn), whose family was in the Vilnius Ghetto after the Nazis entered the city in 1941. When Masza was taken ill, her mother carried her to the so-called “Aryan side” and entrusted her to the care of a Polish nanny, Ms Butkiewicz.

The nanny and Masza – who was now called Marysia Butkiewicz – survived the Second World War and settled together in Węgorzewo. When Marysia finished school, she got married and left to Żagań. Ms Butkiewicz died in 1990. Two years later she was posthumously honored with the medal “Righteous Among the Nations” for her heroic and unselfish rescue of Jews during the Second World War.

After the death of her husband, Maria published an appeal in the Internet, asking for help in finding information about her lost family. She managed to find her relatives in Haifa and in 2007 she went to meet her family.

Among other Polish films presented at the Festival are: „Hotel Polski” directed by Kama Veymont, revealing the story of the famous “Hotel Polski affair”; the film „8 historii, które nie zmieniły świata” (“8 Stories, that Did Not Change the World”) by Ivo Krankowski, presenting memories of eight Jews born between 1914 and 1933, a film in which the Jewish community is depicted from an “ahistorical”, intimate perspective; „Radegast” directed by Borys Lankosz, in which Holocaust Survivors describe their first moments after getting out of railway carriages at the Radegast railway station in the Lodz Ghetto and about everyday life in the ghetto; and „Ghetto Bałuty” by Pavel Stingl, presenting stories of Czech Jews deported in 1941 to the Lodz Ghetto and closed together with Polish Jews in the Bałuty district.