The Katyn massacre

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Movie
German title The Katyn massacre
Original title Katyn
Country of production Poland
original language Polish
Publishing year 2007
length 118 minutes
Rod
Director Andrzej Wajda
script Andrzej Wajda
Władysław Pasikowski
Przemysław Nowakowski
production Michał Kwieciński
music Krzysztof Penderecki
camera Paweł Edelman
occupation

The Katyn Massacre (original title: Katyń ) is a 2007 film about the Katyn Massacre by Polish director and Oscar winner Andrzej Wajda . The film is based on the book “Post mortem. Opowieść katyńska “ ( Post mortem. Katyn's story ) by Andrzej Mularczyk .

Katyń was shown in Polish cinemas on September 17, 2007 and was also attended by whole school classes. It became compulsory for members of the Polish armed forces . The film was u. a. nominated for the Oscar of the year 2008 ( best foreign language film ).

The Berlinale premiere of the film on February 15, 2008 was attended by Chancellor Angela Merkel , among others . The film was shown in German cinemas on September 17, 2009.

action

September 1939. On a bridge, Polish refugees from the west who are fleeing from the German troops meet Polish refugees from the east who are fleeing the Soviet occupation . Poland is divided . 14,000 Polish officers are taken prisoner by the Soviets. Her relatives receive little information about her whereabouts through censored letters. Andrzej is among the prisoners. His father is a professor at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow . His wife Anna escapes with his daughter Nika over the bridge to the east and finally finds him among the prisoners in a camp. However, she cannot persuade Andrzej to flee, as he does not want to break his oath . Anna is finally able to return to Krakow thanks to the help of a Red Army officer .

Meanwhile in Krakow all professors were arrested by the National Socialists and taken to concentration camps. Andrzej's father, who is also among the professors captured, eventually dies in Sachsenhausen concentration camp . The officers in Soviet captivity are transported to camps. In 1943 the German occupiers informed the population about the crime of Katyń. Lists with the names of the dead Polish officers are published. Andrzej does not appear on the list and so Anna and her mother-in-law remain hopeful of his return. The National Socialists use the crime of the Soviet Union for their propaganda .

After the war, the Soviet Union and the Polish communists take power in Poland. The Krakow population now has to endure the propaganda and accept claims that the Germans murdered the Polish officers. Jerzy, a former officer from Andrzej's regiment, is also returning to Krakow with the Soviet troops, although he was on the Katyń list. He is now a major in the Polish People's Army . He informs Anna about the death of her husband, because he had worn his sweater with the name Jerzys knitted into it, which is why Jerzy was mistakenly on the Katyń list. Some time later, Anna receives her husband's diary entries. They prove that the officers were murdered by the Soviets. Only now does Wajda's film show the murder of the Polish officers in 20 minutes. One by one, the prisoners are shot in the back of the head. The general is humiliated and executed in a basement room. The dead are buried in mass graves . The film ends with the graves being filled with a bulldozer .

music

The soundtrack comes from Krzysztof Penderecki , who like Wajda lost close relatives in Katyn. The music consists of elements from his 2nd and 3rd symphonies for orchestra (1980 and 1995) as well as his Polish Requiem (1984), but has also been newly composed in parts.

Reviews

“At times, 'Katyn' gets very pathetic, for example when he tells of the suffering of the women and the families of the captured officers before they die. But the last twenty minutes of Wajda's 'Katyn' are among the most impressive that has ever been shown in the cinema against the backdrop of World War II. "

- Olaf Sundermeyer, Spiegel Online

Broadcast on Russian television

Wajda 2006 during the recordings

In April 2008, the film was shown at the Moscow Film Festival; 1,600 viewers saw the screening, including high-ranking representatives of the Presidential Office . However, the Polish Cultural Institute in Moscow tried in vain to bring the film into cinemas.

In the run-up to the meeting between Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and his Polish counterpart Donald Tusk on the 70th anniversary of the Katyn massacre, Russian television channel Kultura first broadcast Vajda's film on April 2, 2010.

The Polish President Lech Kaczynski , who was a critic of Russia, traveled three days after the meeting between Putin and Tusk on 10 April 2010 on a purely Polish memorial to Katyn. On the way to this event , organized by the Council for the Preservation of the Remembrance of Struggle and Martyrdom , the presidential plane crashed . All 96 inmates - including Kaczyński, his wife Maria and numerous high-ranking representatives of the country - were killed.

On the occasion of the crash, the Russian media also reported on the Katyn massacre. The Russian government made sure that Andrzej Wajda's film was shown for the first time on national television on the evening after the crash. This was the first time many Russians learned of the Katyn massacre. According to the broadcaster, 14 million Russians saw the film on television.

In December 2010, Wajda received the Order of Friendship of the Russian Federation from President Dmitry Medvedev for his contribution to the Polish-Russian understanding .

Awards

literature

  • Cordula Kalmbach: Remembering the massacre: Katyn as lieu de mémoire of the Polish culture of remembrance . Peter Lang Edition, Frankfurt a. M. 2015, ISBN 978-3-631-65871-0 , pp. 119-140. (Chapter VIII: A special monument: Andrzej Wajda's film ›Katyn‹ as a cinematographic monument )
  • Thomas Urban : Katyn 1940. History of a crime . CH Beck, Munich 2015, ISBN 978-3-406-67366-5 .
  • Andrzej Wajda: Katyń . Prószyński, Warsaw 2007, ISBN 978-83-7469-555-8 . Script commented by Wajda (Polish).
  • Magdalena Saryusz Wolska: On the reception of Andrzej Wajda's film ›The Katyń Massacre‹. In: History. Yearbook of the Center for Historical Research Berlin, 3 (2010), pp. 241–260.

Web links

Commons : Katyń (film)  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Dlaczego "Katyń" bije Rekordy oglądalności? histmag.org, October 8, 2007.
  2. ↑ Germans behind, Russians in front of them. In: Berliner Zeitung , February 16, 2008. Quote: "The political basis of this massacre was the Hitler-Stalin Pact of 1939".
  3. ↑ Andrzej Wajda's father, Captain Jakub Wajda, was one of the prisoners of war in the Starobielsk camp. He and his comrades were shot in an NKVD cellar in Kharkov . With the scene of the general, Wajda recalls his father's fate. welt.de
  4. ↑ welt.de
  5. ↑ culture.pl ( Memento of the original from October 30, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.culture.pl
  6. ^ Berlinale film "Katyn": History lesson from Poland . Spiegel Online , February 15, 2008
  7. ↑ Andrzej Wajda pokazał "Katyń" w Moskwie gazeta.pl, March 19 of 2008.
  8. ↑ Sensacionnaja prem'era na telekanale Kul'tura vesti.ru, April 3, 2010.
  9. ↑ Compassion a year later . In: faz.net , April 11, 2011. Quotation: “In March 2010, surveys by the Levada Center showed that half of Russians were unaware of the crime of 1940 and that two thirds of those who had heard about it still did the Soviet propaganda lie always believed that this mass murder was a German act. At the end of April three quarters of those questioned said they knew about 'Katyn' and only a quarter said that the Polish officers had been victims of the Germans. "
  10. ↑ Wajda o rosyjskim odznaczeniu: budowanie mostów między Polską i Rosją gazeta.pl, December 4, 2010.