EK: The film hasn’t premiered yet, though?
PS: No. Jolanta began to make the film about ten years ago, then she took a break. She wanted to rework the script, the framework. Ultimately, she turned to Wajda with a request that he participate in the making of the picture. The movie would consist of a documentary part, filmed by Dylewska, and a fictional story, directed by Andrzej Wajda. Many people say that Wajda’s last picture was Afterimage, however this isn’t true. His last work is a story about love in the Warsaw ghetto, which we have yet to see.
EK: Your and Marek Edelman’s book has been translated into many languages.
PS: Into ten languages, yes. French, Spanish, Czech, Russian, Belarusian, German…
EK: How did Edelman regard Germans after the war?
PS: It hurts me today to see how people show intolerance and hatred to others for reasons of nationality, justifying their ill-treatment with the past crimes of their countrymen. Edelman was not like that even after the war. Once, he was walking through a Warsaw courtyard with some friends. One of the buildings had an open window on the first floor. Some Nazi German soldiers were sitting in the apartment drinking tea. Marek told me many years later: ‘We could’ve shot them all through the window, but you just can’t shoot people who are sitting and peacefully drinking tea’. There was yet another example. Marek and his friend were walking down a street with pistols in their pockets. Ahead of them were two Germans. ‘Of course, we could’ve shot them, but how can you shoot people who are peacefully walking down the street and chatting? This isn’t a battlefield’, Marek said. Then these two Germans turned around and one of them said, smiling: ‘There’s a gunfight going on somewhere. It’s nice that it is calm here’.
EK: Many of the Jews who survived the Holocaust left Poland after the war. Edelman stayed.
PS: He was often asked why he didn’t leave. He always gave different answers depending on his mood and who he was talking to. One of his answers: ‘You know, our state security service is always interested in that, too’. Another: ‘Well, why didn’t you leave?’. And yet another response: ‘Someone has to look after the graves’. It seems to me, that this was actually an improper question. Every person is free to live where they want. [It was] his right and he doesn’t have to explain himself to anyone. There’s freedom in that.
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