Polish Film and the Holocaust

Politics and Memory

Marek Haltof

• Publisher: Berghahn Books
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9780857453570
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Film History & Criticism

During World War II Poland lost more than six million people, including about three million Polish Jews who perished in the ghettos and extermination camps built by Nazi Germany in occupied Polish territories. This book is the first to address the representation of the Holocaust in Polish film and does so through a detailed treatment of several films, which the author frames in relation to the political, ideological, and cultural contexts of the times in which they were created. Following the chronological development of Polish Holocaust films, the book begins with two early classics: Wanda Jakubowska's The Last Stage (1948) and Aleksander Ford's Border Street (1949), and next explores the Polish School period, represented by Andrzej Wajda's A Generation (1955) and Andrzej Munk's The Passenger (1963). Between 1965 and 1980 there was an "organized silence" regarding sensitive Polish-Jewish relations resulting in only a few relevant films until the return of democracy in 1989 when an increasing number were made, among them Krzysztof Kie?lowski's Decalogue 8 (1988), Andrzej Wajda's Korczak (1990), Jan Jakub Kolski's Keep Away from the Window (2000), and Roman Pola?ski's The Pianist (2002). An important contribution to film studies, this book has wider relevance in addressing the issue of Poland's national memory.

Chapter 1

POSTWAR POLAND: GEOPOLITICS AND CINEMA

The Polish state ceased to exist in September of 1939.¹ In accordance with the Nazi German-Soviet Union (Ribbentrop-Molotov) Pact, Nazi German forces invaded Poland on 1 September 1939, and then Soviet armies attacked from the east on 17 September, thus completing another partition of Poland. Unlike a number of other European countries whose film production was maintained at the prewar level, or had even increased at the beginning of the 1940s, Poland had no feature film production during the occupation.

During the war, a number of established Polish filmmakers lost their lives. Actor Eugeniusz Bodo (Bogdan Junod, 1899–1943), a symbol of commercial Polish cinema of the 1930s, was arrested by the Soviet secret police in 1941 and killed in a Soviet concentration camp. Ina Benita (Janina Ferow-Bulhak, 1912–1944), the blond femme fatale of prewar Polish cinema, died with her baby son during the Warsaw Rising in the city underground sewers while trying to escape the fighting. The legend of Polish cinema, Kazimierz Junosza-Steępowski (1882–1943), was killed by members of the Polish Home Army (AK) while trying to protect his wife, a Gestapo informer. The scientist and inventor Kazimierz Prószyński (1875–1945), also the producer of the first Polish narrative film, The Return of a Merry Fellow (Powrót birbanta, 1902), died in the Mauthausen concentration camp on 13 March 1945. The list of losses is extensive and includes film people also killed in concentration camps, for example Henryk Korewicki (1899–1943), Witold Zacharewicz (1914–1943), and Władysław Bugayski-Prus (1906–1943), and those killed in action or shot by the Germans, such as Mieczysław Krawicz (1893–1944), Tadeusz Frenkiel (1896–1943), and Franciszek Brodniewicz (1892–1944).

The losses were particularly high with regard to Polish filmmakers of Jewish origin. Henryk Szaro (Szapiro, 1900–1942), one of the leading prewar directors, was killed in the Warsaw Ghetto in June of 1942. He shared his fate in the ghetto with, among others, film producer Maria Hirszbejn (1889–1942?), actor, producer, and director of Polish and German films Danny Kaden (Daniel Kirschenfinkel, 1884–1942), and the popular composer and author of musical scores for Polish films Szymon Kataszek (1898–1943). Several filmmakers were killed by the Gestapo, among them the producer of a number of classic Polish films Józef Rosen (1902–1942) and the most accomplished prewar set designer Jacek Rotmil (1888–1944), who was arrested and killed at the infamous Pawiak prison in Warsaw. The list of victims also includes actors such as Michał Znicz (Michał Feiertag (1888–1943) and Ajzyk Samberg (Samborek, 1889–1943), directors such as Aleksander Marten (Marek Tennenbaum, 1898–1942) and Aleksander Reich (1887–1942), writers and screenwriters such as Jadwiga Migowa (literary pseudonym: Kamil Norden, 1890–1942), Andrzej Marek (Marek Arnstein, 1878–1943), and Alter Kacyzne (1885–1941), and directors who died in the Soviet Union, such as Leon Trystan (Chaim Lejb Wagman, 1899–1941) and Juliusz Gardan (Gradstein, 1912–1944).²

The new political system that was forcefully imposed on the Polish state by the Soviet Union after 1945 replaced one dreaded system with another. Traditionally disliked and feared, Poland’s eastern neighbor and its communist ideology started to leave a mark on Polish life. This led to gradual Sovietization, to Poles being subjected to the rules of the communist minority operating under the strict control of the Soviet Union, and to the rejection of any links with the prewar, “bourgeois Poland.”

In addition, the Polish borders changed dramatically. Poland moved to the west, at least geographically. It lost its eastern territories, the so-called Kresy, places immortalized in patriotic tales by, among others, the Nobel Prize winner for Literature in 1905, Henryk Sienkiewicz, in his epic historical novels. As compensation, Poland gained new territories in the west and the north, with new borders set on the Odra (Oder) and Nysa Łużycka (Neisse) Rivers, the so-called Recovered Lands (Ziemie Odzyskane) or Western Lands (Ziemie Zachodnie). Due to migration from the east to the west, from villages to cities, the Polish people needed to be incredibly mobile. The migration, the changed borders, and the losses caused by the war visibly altered the Polish landscape. After the war, Poland became an almost homogeneous society ethnically: the majority of Polish Jews had been killed, the Germans were forced to resettle behind the Odra River border, and the Ukrainians and other nationals who populated the eastern provinces were now part of the Soviet Union. Poland started to become an ethnic and religious monolith, with the majority of the population being Roman Catholic. (Poland had previously been a multinational society, with Poles comprising 68.9 percent of the total population in 1931.)³

Attempts to create a new national identity began with the rewriting of Polish history from the communist (Marxist-Leninist) perspective. This became a history that stressed the “progressive” tendencies of the Polish past and presented a new, politically correct, version of troubled Polish-Russian relations. In spite of attempts to erase traces of traditional Polish identity and to reinterpret Polish history, there were certain aspects important for national distinctiveness which still remained. Arguably, the most important aspect continued to be the role of the Roman Catholic Church in preserving Polish national identity, especially during the earlier period of Poland’s partition (1795–1918). The Roman Catholic religion played a significant role in defining and strengthening the Polish character. Throughout the ages, Poles fought with a number of enemies representing different religions, from Islamic Turks to Orthodox Russians. Polish nationalism, identified with the Roman Catholic Church, always focused on national freedom being paramount, to be defended at all costs; it demanded personal sacrifice for national causes. The communist authorities fought a losing battle trying to change the nature of Polish nationalism. They failed to replace nationalism with internationalism, religion with ideology, and Polish romanticism with revolutionary spirit.

Postwar Poland, renamed as the Polish People’s Republic (Polska Rzeczpospolita Ludowa, PRL), started its existence by gradually erasing links with prewar Poland. Reliable information about the prewar period had virtually disappeared from school curricula and was replaced by accounts of the class struggle and the larger-than-life communist movement. The silence over certain nationally sensitive issues and the harsh criticism of others created a conviction that everything was to begin anew in a social and cultural void. The same applied to cinema. The negation of prewar achievements paralleled the mythologization of certain marginal, yet politically more appropriate, trends that were in line with the communist ideology.

Some major filmmakers survived the occupation in Poland, including scriptwriter Ludwik Starski, director Leonard Buczkowski, and actor Adolf Dymsza, but the majority left the country after the September campaign of 1939. Michał Waszyński, Seweryn Steinwurzel, Ryszard Ordyński, Józef Lejtes, and Jadwiga Smosarska, among others, found themselves in the West. In the new geopolitical situation after the war, these and other filmmakers chose permanent emigration rather than return to a Soviet-dominated Poland. As a consequence of their decision to remain abroad, their postwar careers were rarely mentioned in Poland. Others, mostly filmmakers associated with prewar leftist groups, survived the war in the Soviet Union. In 1943, they created the Polish Army Film Unit Czołówka (Czołówka Filmowa Wojska Polskiego) within the Polish Tadeusz Kościuszko First Division, part of the Red Army. Its task was to document struggles of Polish soldiers fighting alongside the Red Army. Headed by Aleksander Ford, the Czołówka (Vanguard) members, including Jerzy Bossak, Stanisław Wohl, and Ludwik Perski (all of them assimilated Polish Jews), returned with the Red Army as officers in the First Polish Army.

Immediately after the war there was only one Polish film organization in existence, namely the Polish Army Film Unit (Wytwórnia Filmowa Wojska Polskiego), an extension of Czołówka, which was attached to the political department of the Polish army. Its task had been not only to provide documentation of war activities (frequently biased and unreliable), but also to capture film equipment and film stock left by the Germans, and to take care of the surviving movie theaters.⁴ Polish filmmakers who affiliated themselves with the Polish army, which had come from the east, were able to take some advantage of the German studio UFA’s technical supplies, both in Berlin and the Lower Silesia, where the Germans had stored their film equipment. The equipment and confiscated films enabled the establishment of a film studio in Łódź (the only major Polish city with an intact infrastructure).⁵ By the end of 1945, the studio in Łódź was ready to produce films.

Although Ford and other leading postwar film figures started their careers before the war, they attacked the prewar film industry and the dominant film culture of that period. Leonard Buczkowski became the only established prewar film director to be able to make films in communist Poland. Interestingly, some of the first and most popular postwar films were made by the prewar professionals who had associated with the filmowa branża (film business), much criticized by Ford and other members of the Society for the Promotion of Film Art (Stowarzyszenie Propagandy Filmu Artystycznego, START), established in Warsaw in 1930 by, among others, film historian Jerzy Toeplitz, and filmmakers Wanda Jakubowska, Eugeniusz Cękalski, Jerzy Zarzycki, and Stanisław Wohl. Officially known from 1931 as The Society of Film Art Devotees (Stowarzyszenie Miłośników Filmu Artystycznego), the START members began their careers by attacking commercial Polish productions while promoting art cinema. Regarding cinema as more than just entertainment, they were united by “the struggle for films for the public good,” which was the START slogan from 1932. After the disintegration of the START group in 1935, its former members attempted to make films that reflected their interest in a socially committed cinema. In 1937, some of the START members, including Ford, Cękalski, and Wohl, established the Cooperative of Film Authors (Spółdzielnia Autorów Filmowych, SAF). Their two productions, The Ghosts (Strachy, 1938), directed by Cękalski and Karol Szołowski, and The People of the Vistula (Ludzie Wisły, 1938), directed by Ford and Zarzycki, were among the finest achievements in prewar Polish cinema. After World War II, the former START members immediately seized power, imposed their vision of cinema, which was much in line with that of the communist authorities, and practically controlled the nationalized post-1945 Polish film industry, both as decision makers and filmmakers.

The Polish film industry was nationalized on 13 November 1945. Film Polski (Polish Film; the National Board of Polish Film) was established as the sole body producing, distributing, and exhibiting films in Poland. From 1945 to 1947, Aleksander Ford was the head of the organization, which operated within the Ministry of Information and Propaganda. Ford accumulated power, and, thanks to his high-ranking political and military connections with the communist leaders, he ran the board in an almost dictatorial manner. After 1947, Film Polski was headed by Stanisław Albrecht and operated within the newly formed Ministry of Culture and Arts (Ministerstwo Kultury i Sztuki), which replaced the Ministry of Information and Propaganda.

Following the Soviet example, the Polish communist government paid particular attention to the “cinefication” (kinofikacja) of rural areas by building new cinema theaters and creating mobile cinemas (kina objazdowe). The ambitions of the communist government and Film Polski were very high, yet very few feature films were made within the first ten years after the war. No feature films were released in 1945–1946, largely due to censorship and the impossibility of dealing with certain sensitive issues, such as the 1944 Warsaw Rising and the role of the underground Home Army (AK).⁶

Poland after Auschwitz

Several published works, while justly stressing some anti-Semitic attitudes in Poland during and after the war, typically provide a one-dimensional picture of the Polish post...