Difficult Narratives: The Holocaust in Polish Cinema

ida2_7094944.jpg, small, Difficult Narratives: The Holocaust in Polish Cinema, Still from the Oscar-winning film 'Ida' directed by Paweł Pawlikowski, 2013; Pictured: Agata Kulesza & Agata Trzebuchowska, photo: Opus Film

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In Polish historical cinema, ‘irreverent’ filmmakers have clashed with creators of cinematic memorials for decades. Even though World War II ended seventy years ago, films about the Holocaust still unleash extreme emotions.

Polish historical cinema seems like a minefield that is hard to cross without causing an explosion in the media and political sphere. In just the last few years, its casualties have included directors such as Agnieszka Holland, Paweł Pawlikowski and Władysław Pasikowski.

During the discussions surrounding films like Ida or Pokłosie (Aftermath), Polish cinema was often accused of promoting anti-Polish narratives and defaming the nation. These accusations are undeserved, since revisionist strategies have long been merely a fringe trend, while mainstream Polish cinema usually recounts stories of national heroism.

The Aftermath case is characteristic of Polish debates on historical cinema. Pasikowski divided audiences by emphasising a dark image of Polish anti-Semitism. Some criticised him for maligning the nation and lying about history, while others defended the director for tearing down the curtain of national silence to reveal some difficult truths of Polish history. No one even cared that, as a film, Aftermath was technically lame and sometimes unintentionally funny. The theme and the way it was handled were more important than the technical shortcomings. To some, Pasikowski was a valiant myth-buster, while to others he was a slanderer.

Under fire

Many years ago, Agnieszka Holland also discovered the kind of political passions that historical cinema can stir up. Accused of anti-Polonism after the premiere of Pokot (Spoor), the director had also been accused 35 years ago by French journalists of exonerating the image of Poles, as well as of … anti-Semitism.

When Andrzej Wajda’s Korczak, with its screenplay by Holland, was released in French cinemas in 1983, Daniele Heymann in Le Monde accused the Polish filmmakers of trying to forgive the part played by Poles during the Holocaust and gloss over Polish anti-Semitism. The symbolic scene showing the Old Doctor and his orphaned wards marching out of a stationary wagon was seen as Holocaust denial. Even though these accusations sound absurd these days, they almost led to the French premiere of Korczak being called off.

Polish war stories had unleashed political emotions in the past, too. One may simply recall the films of Andrzej Munk, whose Eroica sneered at Polish mythomania, which resulted in him being accused of mocking Polish heroes. ‘Those who accuse me of presenting anti-heroic tendencies in my films are doing me a great wrong’, wrote the director following Eroica’s premiere, but it was too little to silence his critics, who again branded Munk’s cinema as damaging after the release of Zezowate Szczęście (Bad Luck).

His next film – the unfinished Pasażerka (Passenger) – was also potentially scandalous. The screenplay by Zofia Posmysz tells of the ambiguous relationship between a Polish woman prisoner-of-war and a female Nazi German guard. Years later, Passenger was adapted wonderfully for the opera stage, with music by Mieczysław Weinberg.

There were many other victims of historical policy in Polish cinema: for instance, in 1948, the censors forced the Polish Jew, ideological communist, and uncompromising film activist Aleksander Ford to mutilate his film Ulica Graniczna (Border Street). It was accused of over-stigmatising Polish anti-Semitism, and Maria Dąbrowska called it ‘radically anti-Polish’. Ford re-edited his entire film, but was still criticised for anti-Polish tendencies. Even though Ford was attacked for anti-Polonism in Poland, he also fell foul of Zionists by declining their offer to organise national Jewish cinema. Tadeusz Konwicki was clearly right to state that ‘it is hard to be a stranger among one’s own’.

Shades of grey

By delving into the intricacies of the Polish–Jewish past, filmmakers put themselves in the firing line from the very outset. Some label them ‘devourers of Poland’, others – anti-Semites. The best of them are accused by both sides, as Paweł Pawlikowski learned when his Ida was attacked by the Polish right wing for showing Polish anti-Semitism, and by the left for perpetuating the anti-Semitic cliché of ‘Judeo-communism’.

Historical films can inflame emotions even when filmmakers try to avoid judging their heroes, as was the case with Agnieszka Holland’s W Ciemności (In Darkness), the tale of a Lviv sewer worker who saves Jews during World War II. Holland paints the portrait of a Polish hero, but avoids platitudes. Leopold Socha, played by Robert Więckiewicz, evolves from a cynic offering refuge for personal gain, into a man capable of selfless devotion. Though noble, he also has base instincts and weaknesses, and is brave enough to overcome them.
In one scene from In Darkness, the hero’s wife warns him that the neighbours are treacherous, saying that ‘people are only… human’; even if they have noble intentions, they can always fall. Holland’s film concerns exactly that kind of people – average, complex and beautiful, but not exactly the stuff of national monuments, which perhaps explains her film’s success.

Holland’s film was not the only one whose dramaturgical strength derived from its ambivalence. It also drove Jan Jakub Kolski’s Daleko od Okna (Keep Away from the Window) twelve years earlier. The director of Pornografia (Pornography) told the tale of a Polish Jewish woman hidden by Poles during World War II but, rather than portraying heroism, he was interested in the complex interpersonal relations between the young Jewish woman, the man hiding her, and his barren wife, who appropriates the child of her husband’s infidelity. Kolski neither defended Polish nobleness, nor attempted to prove Polish guilt. As a director, he sought elements of mystery and dramatic tension for his story, resulting in one of the most interesting historical films of the last two decades.

Another was Michał Rogalski’s Letnie Przesilenie (Summer Solstice) from 2014, an underrated coming-of-age drama set during World War II. Rogalski tells the story of a boy who hides a Jewish girl who has escaped from a transport. His film has no room for simple heroism and a black-and-white worldview, however. In Letnie Przesilenie, the will to survive is sometimes stronger than an honest, charitable gesture, and the hounded victim can suddenly transform into a torturer. Rogalski refrains from moralising and, instead of evaluating his heroes’ behaviour, does his best to comprehend it.

The ambivalence these films share testifies to their artistic maturity and respect for the audience. Another common factor is their respect for filmmaking as a craft. The directors of In Darkness, Keep Away from the Window and Summer Solstice know that their mission is not to erect monuments, but to tell fascinating tales. Instead of casting themselves in the role of accusers or defenders of various points of view and attitudes to history, Holland, Kolski and Rogalski simply tell interesting stories.

Textbook history cast in bronze

The problem with Polish historical cinema is not a shortage of heroic stories, but the quality of those that get made. Take, for example, Pilecki, Mirosław Krzyszkowski’s fictionalised documentary on the life of the cavalry master Witold Pilecki. Instead of a full-blooded drama about one of the most interesting heroes of World War II, audiences were treated to a cinematic monument to Pilecki, full of technical imperfections and oversimplifications in the script. Nevertheless, the film was a major box-office success (160,000 viewers) in 2015, so it did fulfil the expectations of a certain segment of the audience, for whom an unambiguous message counts more than artistic form.

Makers of historical films easily fall hostage to their own viewpoints and leanings. The ‘revisionists’ feel obliged to paint the darkest possible picture of society, going beyond the bounds of caricature, while the ‘patriots’ offer an overdose of pathos. In the hands of ‘ideologised’ artists, cinema becomes a tool for persuasion and propaganda, with ideological messages masking the technical shortcomings.

This is not only true of Pilecki or Aftermath, but also many other recent historical films. For example, Michał Szczerbica’s directorial debut Sprawiedliwy (Righteous), the story of a man saving a Jewish girl, is drowned in theatrical staging and old-fashioned form. Or Jan Kidawa-Błoński’s W Ukryciu (In Hiding), which portrays a homoerotic romance between two women – one Polish Jewish, one Polish Catholic – and opts for cheap provocation instead of dramaturgical precision.

Does the truth set you free?

While feature films are awash with ideological controversy, documentaries have taken over the reins for honest retellings of Polish history. Here, where adhering to the facts is crucial, Polish history can appear serious once again, as heroism is far from easy, and sacrifice carries a painful price.

For years, Polish documentary filmmakers have scrupulously sketched portraits of our forgotten historical heroes, but have also dug into the darkest recesses of the past century. On the one hand, we have portraits of heroes, such as Irena Sendler, Jan Karski, the Ulma family and Simcha Rotem, and on the other, stories of the Poles who murdered their Jewish neighbours in Jedwabne or post-war Kielce.

In documentaries, truth can be more fascinating than ideology. For example, Sławomir Grünberg’s Wyrzutki (Castaways), a tale of Jewish children thrown out of Nazi German transport wagons by their parents. His film also includes portraits of Polish heroes, and stories of those who collaborated with the Nazi Germans either deliberately or out of fear for their lives. What Grünberg’s film lacks is an unambiguous evaluation from the safe distance of several decades.

In another of Grünberg’s films, Karski i Władcy Ludzkości (Karski and the Lords of Humanity), a documentary portrait of Jan Karski, the hero’s bravery is mixed with fear, and resistance with helplessness. Grünberg’s film depicts the Polish emissary who told the world about the Holocaust as a flesh-and-blood human, wracked by doubts and a sense of guilt, convinced that he had done too little, even though the whole world hailed him as a hero.

In the last couple of decades, Polish documentaries have given us at least several excellent portraits of Polish heroes. Marek Tomasz Pawłowski’s Dotknięcie Anioła (The Touch of an Angel) tells the story of Leon Schönker, who set up a Bureau for Jewish Emigration to Palestine at the start of the war, in Oświęcim, aiming to save thousands of Jews from the Holocaust. Meanwhile, Maciej Pawlicki and Arkadiusz Gołębiewski’s Historia Kowalskich (The Kowalskis’ Story) and Rafał Wieczyński’s Świat Józefa (Joseph’s World) pay their respects to families murdered for hiding Jews.

Other touching pictures of wartime tragedy include: Dariusz Jabłoński’s Fotoamator (The Photographer), a film made twenty years ago about forced labour in the Łódź Ghetto; Portrecista (The Portraitist) by Ireneusz Dobrowolski, the story of Wilhelm Brasse, the photographer of Auschwitz; Kronika Powstania w Getcie Warszawskim według Marka Edelmana (Chronicle of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising according to Marek Edelman) by Jolanta Dylewska; and Rotem by Agnieszka Arnold.

Cleansing old wounds

Arnold’s film career wonderfully illustrates the power and variety of Polish historical documentaries. Several years before the director made her heroic portrait of Simcha Rathajzer-Rotem, another of her films, Gdzie jest mój Starszy Syn Kain? (Where is my Older Brother Cain?), was screened on television in 2000. In that documentary, made before Jan Tomasz Gross’s notorious books were published, Arnold dealt with the Jedwabne massacre and Polish involvement in the deaths of their Jewish neighbours. Asking difficult questions, she made the audience face up to the painful truth of our history.

Her films provoked no major debate, however. Years later, the director herself said in an interview with Jakub Janiszewski for Wysokie Obcasy weekly:

The Polish elite requires an external pillory. In order for criticism to be taken seriously, it cannot come from here, from Poland. We are still not mature enough for that yet.

Paweł Łoziński might as well have said the same thing. In 1992, he made one of the most shocking films about Polish involvement in the Holocaust – Miejsce Urodzenia (Birthplace), the story of Henryk Grynberg’s return to the village where his father was murdered during the war; a documentary detective story with an unhappy ending. This dreadful tale of a murder committed for profit provoked outrage among some audiences and triggered defensive reactions from the film community, which accused Łoziński of exaggerating and distorting the truth.

Compared to the ideologically committed filmmakers, Polish documentary-makers come across as far braver, going beyond the ‘revisionist/patriot divide’ and unwilling to be hostages to their personal views. They strive for the truth, which can lead to stories of heroism, but also to tales of human degradation. It can result in heroic portraits of the Ulma family and Jan Karski, but also in films like Jerzy Śladkowski’s Amnezja (Amnesia) or Lawrence Loewinger and Michała Jaskulski’s Przy Plantach 7/9 (Bogdan’s Journey), about the Kielce pogrom.

Polish documentaries are proof that one measure of art’s maturity is its polyphony – the ability to juxtapose positive stories with others that can topple monuments. We hope that Polish feature films can also take a lesson from this, and that, alongside Polish cinema’s long-awaited epic historical blockbusters, there will also be room for films that pose pointed questions. In the struggle between revisionist and patriotic traditions, it would be nice if cinema always came out on top, and the political-ideological backdrop served as a context – not an alibi – for technical shortcomings and intellectual oversimplifications.

^{Originally written in Polish, translated by Mark Bence, May 2018}

^{Sources: Wysokie Obcasy, 'Andrzej Munk', Marek Hendrykowski, Warsaw 2007}

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