Anti-Semitism Film

From the DW:

"Film reignites debate on Polish anti-Semitism"

The film "Poklosie" delves into the dark history of Polish complicity during the Holocaust. Director Wladyslaw Pasikowski's work has sparked fresh debate in Poland by posing the question: How anti-Semitic were the Poles? Poland's Jewish community was almost entirely decimated during the Holocaust. The Nazis murdered 90 percent of the three million Jews there. Later, the communist regime fostered a climate of anti-Semitism in the country, forcing many more Jews to leave. A kind of phantom pain was all that remained, the sort experienced by people who've lost a limb.The loss is, to this day, almost unbearable. Fierce debates between Jewish and Catholic Poles continue to shake the country on a regular basis. The question is always the The country's self-image as the most significant victim of the Nazi terror and the Second World War is at stake. It's a debate that has been reignited in recent weeks with the release of the film "Poklosie" ("Aftermath") by director Wladyslaw Pasikowski.  The thriller tells the story of a Catholic farmer, Jozef Kalina (Maciej Stuhr), who discovers the traces of a massacre of Jews during the Holocaust in his village. His research reveals that it was local Polish villagers who, without the help of the Nazis, had murdered their Jewish neighbors. But the local families of the perpetrators don't want to know about their guilt. They terrorize Kalina and lynch him. Such discussions have long circled among the country's intellectual elite, occupying a large section of the Polish media. Such arguments are not new. Pasikowski's film centers on the Jedwabne massacre of July 1941, which has been an open wound for Polish society for decades. Polish villagers in the north-eastern town of Jedwabne murdered several hundred of their Jewish neighbors with the complicity of Nazi soldiers. Pogroms against Jews continued in Poland both during and after the war, as in Kielce, where around 40 Jews were murdered in 1946. Polish-Jewish historian Jan Tomasz Gross, now based in the United States, detailed these events in his books "Neighbors" (2001), "Fear" (2006) and "Golden Harvest" (2011) in an at times provocative manner.

Gross's central thesis is that a deeply-rooted anti-Semitism existed in Poland during the 20th century which aided the Nazis in carrying out atrocities. "Basically, the Germans did the dirty work anti-Semites in Poland and across Europe," Gross said in an interview with DW.

 

^ I have written about Polish Anti-Semitism in the past (being part Polish the subject interests me.) I'm surprised that current Polish society doesn't fully admit the wrong-doings of their past (before the Holocaust, during the Holocaust and in Communist Poland,) work to make amends and move on. No country has a pure history and those nations that are truly great (today) are the ones who admit their mistakes and work to make sure the past isn't repeated. I have seen all of the movies listed above (except for: "Poklosie" and "Fear") and have done research on pre-war Polish "Ghetto Benches", wartime collaboration with the Germans and Communist Poland's anti-Jewish policies and anyone who has read and seen half of what I have would know beyond a doubt that Polish history has been negative towards the Jews. While you can't change the past you can admit the facts happened and try to change the future for the better. Hopefully, Polish society will get over it's victim mentality (victims of the Czars, the Nazis and the Communists) and take charge of its country and their history. ^

http://www.dw.de/film-reignites-debate-on-polish-anti-semitism/a-16502663