'Schindlers List' and 'The Pianist' are the two most widely known films about the fate of Poland's Jews during the Second World War. The former was made by Stephen Spielberg, an American of Jewish descent who grew up in the States, the latter was made by Roman Polanski, a Pole of Jewish descent who grew up in Poland and later emigrated to the States. Of the two, Polanski lived through the experience of one of the Nazis' wartime ghettos (Cracow), whilst Spielberg was born into a middle-class American family and discovered Poland late in the day.
Both films employed extensive Polish crews, and both were garlanded with awards. Both were made with a spirit of earnestness, and both delivered powerful portrayals of the tragedies of that era. However, only one of the films was well-received in Poland - Polanski's.
The reasons for this are straightforward to many Poles. 'Schindlers List' was set in Cracow yet there are hardly any references to Poland in the film. The uninformed viewer would barely notice that Poland was the country in which the drama was set.
Should the viewer assume then that the Poles were just vacant bystanders to the tragedy? Here lies the root of the problem, as this is an assumption which is held by many. If it is not this assumption, then there is the accusation that the Poles were willing helpers in the Nazis despicable policies.
It cannot be denied that there was anti-semitism in Poland during and before the war. Some Poles are still anti-semitic today. And during the war, some Poles did give up Jews to the Nazis. But this is not the whole story by any means.
More Poles gave their lives to save Jews than any other nation. Likewise, Poles saved more Jews than any other nation.
And what of the occupation itself? Occupied Poland was very different to occupied France:
"In Prague, large red posters were to be put up announcing the execution of seven Czechs,' remarked Nazi Governor Hans Frank, who was stationed in Cracow. 'If I wanted to put up a poster for every seven Poles that were executed, there would not be enough trees in all the Polish forests to supply the paper. Yes, we had to get down to things sharply.'
This business that the Nazi's got down to 'sharply' was the brutal subjection of the Polish nation, including both Polish Gentiles and Polish Jews. Auschwitz itself was originally set up as a concentration camp for the Polish intelligentsia, and one of the first crimes in occupied Cracow was the rounding up of as many University professors as possible and their dispatch to concentration camps. Official estimates of the number of Polish victims are 75,000 for the Auschwitz-Birkenau camps alone.
Cracow itself, Poland's ancient Royal Capital, was humiliated from the start by the Nazi Occupiers. Patriotic statues were torn down, and streets were renamed (the Main Market Square itself was retitled Adolf Hitler Platz). Yet not a hint of any of this (or the accompanying atrocities) was suggested in Spielberg's film.
Another problem about Hollywood history and much post-war history in general, is the common implication that Jews living in Poland were almost a different species to Poles themselves. There certainly were difficulties between Polish Jews and Polish gentiles, and there were anti-semitic far right parties, but again, this is only part of the picture.
Many Polish Jews spoke Polish as their first language. Indeed, some of the most cherished writers in pre-war Polish literature were Jewish, such as Bruno Schulz, Juliusz Tuwim and Boleslaw Lesmian. These figures did not live in Jewish ghettos - there were no Jewish ghettos in the independent Poland of the 1930's. And whilst they were not always unscathed by the far right press, these authors wrote in Polish, had Polish friends and Polish admirers. The same goes for thousands of ordinary middle class Polish Jews who were later victims of Hitler's whirlwind.
Returning to Schindler's List (a film which is certainly not without impressive aspects) one finds one of the few representations of a Pole right at the start of the film. Cracow's Jews are being marched by the Nazis to the newly created ghetto. An unpleasant girl taunts them by repeating 'Goodbye Jews' in a vindinctive fashion.
There were characters like that girl. There were characters who were much worse than her. But that is only a tiny part of the picture. Polanski himself also depicted an unpleasant Polish character in his film 'The Pianist". Yet Polanski also showed the other side of the coin. This was a side which he himself had experienced, when Polish gentiles helped him to evade capture by the Nazis as a young boy. The Jews had their detractors in pre-war Poland, but they also had many allies, as they still do today.
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