Pokłosie

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Movie
Original title Pokłosie
Country of production Poland
original language Polish
Publishing year 2012
Rod
Director Wladyslaw Pasikowski
script Wladyslaw Pasikowski
production Dariusz Jabłoński
camera Paweł Edelman
cut Jarosław Kamiński
occupation

Pokłosie (German "Nachlese"; international title Aftermath ) is a Polish feature film from 2012 by Władysław Pasikowski .

action

Franciszek Kalina, who emigrated to Chicago in the 1980s, comes to his Polish hometown of Gurówka to visit his brother Józef and his parents' grave. There he learns that Józef is in trouble: He has gathered Jewish tombstones all over the place and set them up in a lapidary in his field . In some cases he buys them from neighbors who have used them for various purposes on their farms. But he also illegally removes them from the roof of a road in the forest, thus getting into conflict with the local police. The road leads to a derelict tannery that was used as a prison during the German occupation .

Like everyone else in the community, Józef is a Catholic without Jewish roots, but his sense of justice tells him that Jewish gravestones should be preserved just as dignified as others. He lives alone as a smallholder because his wife has left him with the children and emigrated to America. His mission to the perished Jews goes so far that he even learns Hebrew to decipher the grave inscriptions. Franciszek senses the resistance of the other villagers and advises Józef not to continue researching the former Jewish residents of the village, especially since there are aggressive attacks on them. Apparently, Józef has got into debt with his involvement: the bank refuses a mortgage on the farm because there were irregularities in the transfer of ownership to the father.

Franciszek begins to support his brother: With the permission of the retired, but against the will of the incumbent priest, who feels obliged to the village community, they fetch the Jewish gravestones from the churchyard in a nightly action. They also bring them to the high wheat field in summer. When they want to harvest it the next day, they are not given a date for using the combine harvester of the local cooperative under pretexts. They repair an old cutter bar and start harvesting, but during the night they are horrified to find that the field has apparently been set on fire. The local fire department moves out but refuses to put out the fire and the field burns down. Józef then physically attacks the fire brigade commander and the police officers present, Franciszek helps him in the situation and both are arrested. On the initiative of the retired priest, they are released the next day from prison.

Franciszek also begins to be interested in the past and does his own research. He learns from the old land registers of the community that a large part of the houses in the village used to be owned by Jews and that the current homeowners were registered as new owners immediately after the Second World War, even before the official land reform. He also learns that his parents' farm used to have a Jewish owner. Before the war, her father Stanisław Kalina owned a smaller and poorer property on swampy and therefore far less fertile land. An old villager gave them an initially incomprehensible hint that 'they should ask the house' to find out the story. They finally discover a mass grave on the family's abandoned property with its dilapidated farmhouse.

First of all, they assume that either the Wehrmacht or the SS were responsible for the killing of the people. You speak to an old hermit who lives in the adjacent forest and who witnessed the massacre first hand. She states that two SS men had contact with the mayor the day before the massacre, but that the Jewish residents were driven into the barn by their Polish neighbors and burned alive there. When they confront the alleged main perpetrator, they learn from him that their father, Stanisław Kalina, was instrumental in the murder of the Jewish neighbors and that he distinguished himself through particular cruelty. He brutally murdered a young woman who had turned him away. The brothers quarrel over the question of how to deal with this knowledge. Franciszek decides to leave the place. Already sitting in the local bus, one of the brother's neighbors stops the vehicle and tells him to return to the courtyard. In the meantime, neighbors have found Józef murdered. He was crucified by unknown perpetrators with outspread arms at a barn door and shows clear signs of abuse.

The final scene shows a group of Jewish visitors speaking the kaddish , the Jewish prayer for the dead, together with a rabbi between the gravestones in the Józef field . A memorial stone has been erected on the field.

background

The action takes place in the fictional place Gurówka in Poland in the recent past and refers, although not explicitly mentioned in the film, to the Jedwabne massacre , in which on July 10, 1941, at the time of the German occupation , about 300 to 400 Jews from Polish perpetrators were rounded up and burned in a barn.

The final scene suggests that the murder of the local Jewish residents and the murder of Józef, both by Polish neighbors, sparked a nationwide debate about the pogroms during World War II. The field with the tombstones became a memorial.

The film was originally supposed to be called "Kaddisch" ( Kadisz ). The start of filming had to be postponed repeatedly because initially there were not enough donors. Only when the Polish Institute for Cinematic Art ( Polski Instytut Sztuki Filmowej ) pledged 3.5 million złoty (then around 850,000 euros) did the state television TVP and Canal + also take part in the production. The shooting took place in 2011. The film was released in Poland on November 9, 2012.

controversy

Like the reports on the Jedwabne massacre in 2000 and 2001, the film inspired by it sparked controversy in Poland. Main actor Maciej Stuhr in particular was attacked from the right-wing camp. The nationally patriotic press criticized the film for its alleged distortion of historical facts, it ignored the much greater guilt of the Nazi occupiers compared to the crimes of individual Polish perpetrators , the left-wing liberal Gazeta Wyborcza defended it. The two Polish directors Andrzej Wajda and Roman Polański also found words of appreciation for the film.

Awards

Footnotes

  1. ↑ Duży format , July 24, 2011 (supplement to Gazeta Wyborcza )
  2. ↑ http://www.pisf.pl/pl/dotacje/dofinansowane-projekty/2011/po-produkcja-filmowa/priorytet-1-produkcja-sesja-1-2011?language=pl&print=1
  3. ↑ a b http://www.filmpolski.pl/fp/index.php/1228056
  4. ↑ http://kultura.gazeta.pl/kultura/1,114438,12843114,Maciej_Stuhr__Po_roli_w__Poklosiu__przestalem_byc.html
  5. ↑ Przegląd recenzji filmu "Pokłosie" autorstwa prawicowych publicystów . Gazeta Wyborcza. Retrieved May 20, 2013.
  6. ^ Displaced anti-Semitism in Poland , article on dw.com from January 10, 2013, accessed on January 26, 2020
  7. ↑ Exorcism of Conscience. In: sueddeutsche.de. January 2, 2013, accessed July 16, 2018 .

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