Category Archives: Poland

Movie: Ashes and Diamonds — Popiół i diament (1958)

Posted on by
Reply

This movie is very difficult to understand. The original work was literature that praised the leader of the communist party, and it was approved by the Communist Party of Poland; but in the movie adaptation, director Andrzej Wajda made the communist party leader protagonist into a supporting role, and made a young guerilla planning an assassination—who had just a minor role in the original work—the protagonist in the movie. This protagonist is a freewheeling and unattached young man with weird-looking glasses. He falls in love with the girl at a bar—who is like a diamond in the ash—and they understand each other’s circumstances of their families being massacred by German soldiers; with this, he begins to transform—once he takes off his glasses—into a lonely handsome man resembling James Dean. I think the reason this movie is hard to understand is that the political situation at that time was complicated, and in order to pass censorship, the movie minimizes conversation and uses many metaphors.

images1There of course was severe censorship of movies by the Communist Party of Poland. Except for the protagonist in the original becoming a supporting role, the movie remains faithful to the original work that was approved by authorities, and the last scene with the young man dying in the landfill like worthless ash seems to warn, “Hahaha, that’s what happens when you rebel against the Communist Party.” However, it is said that those who were censoring felt something suspicious about this movie, and that they discussed with Moscow seriously about whether or not to approve this movie. In the end, since there wasn’t anything concrete that could be blamed, it passed censorship. However, because the movie received overwhelming praise in Western Europe when the producer put himself in danger by submitting it to the Venice Film Festival, the communist administration felt, “I don’t know what it is, but there must be anti-establishment thought inserted into this movie.” After this, director Wajda—who was already watched closely by the authorities—was completely blacklisted.

The circumstances of Poland during World War II are depicted in director Wajda’s Katyń. Even with the change in the political system, his attitude did not waver at all over the 50 year period between these movies, and he persevered through his hard times in Poland without choosing to flee his country. It is no wonder he is respected.

In this movie, a guerilla, who is targeting the life of a Communist Party politician, is a member of an anti-Germany partisan group. It may be hard to understand why these people who oppose Germany are attempting to assassinate a communist—who aligns with the Soviet Union that chased away Germany—without understanding the situation of those days.

In August 1939, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union entered the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression treaty, and a secret stipulation within that treaty was that Germany and the Soviet Union would divide Poland. That following September, they started invading Poland, with the German and Slovakian armies from the west on September 1, and the Soviet Army from east on the 17th. The Polish government escaped to London and formed the “Polish government-in-exile,” which guided partisans in Poland. For the Polish government-in-exile, the Soviet Union was the abominable country that had, with Germany, invaded Poland; but when forced to choose between the Nazis and the Soviet Union, the Polish government had to choose the Soviet Union as an ally because Great Britain had already allied to the Soviet Union. However, there was the Katyn incident, and Poland did not trust the Soviet Union.

The Soviet Union established a communist puppet government in Poland—separate from the Polish government-in-exile in London—that followed orders from the Soviet Union and opposed the partisans led by the government-in-exile that was supported by Great Britain. After all, World War II was a conflict between Britain, Germany, and the Soviet Union, and because of Poland’s geographical location, the true nature of the conflict became clear in Poland. Under the orders of the Polish government-in-exile, the partisans in Poland rose up against Germany several times, and the largest of these was the Warsaw Uprising in June of 1944. This uprising was actually proposed by the Soviet Union, but the Soviet Army cut off support to the revolting army at a critical time. In the end, it became a battle between the German army and the Polish resistance Home Army. Hitler, concluding that the Soviet Union Red Army had no intention at all to rescue Warsaw, ordered for the suppression of the resistance Home Army and complete destruction of Warsaw. The Polish resistance Home Army had overwhelming support from the citizens of Warsaw, and they put up a good fight, but in the end, the army failed with the uprising. Many in the Home Army died, but those who survived escaped via underground water tunnels. Warsaw was destroyed as a punitive attack by the German army; after this, participants in the uprising were considered terrorists, and about 220,000 partisans and citizens were executed. After the uprising settled, the Soviet Red Army finally resumed their attack and occupied the ruins of Warsaw in January 1945. Afterwards, the Soviet Red Army arrested partisan leaders, and oppressed partisans wishing for Poland’s independence.

Ashes and Diamonds depicts four days, over which Commissar Szczuka moves to a Polish town for his new job as the occupying commander after Germany surrendered in 1945, and partisan Maciek, who has no relatives, receives orders and plans Szcuka’s assassination. For Britain, America, and France of the Allies, Germany’s surrender was the first step toward happy days, but for Poland, it was an ominous sign for their uncertain future.

images2After the failure of the Warsaw Uprising, the partisans supported by Great Britain finally recognized the Soviet Union as their true enemy, and made the Soviet Union the target of their attacks. The few surviving anticommunist partisans hid in the forest and resisted the Soviet Union, but since it became clear that the Soviet Union would be the ruler of Poland, resistance was futile. Director Wajda modeled Maciek after James Dean, who became an international star with Rebel Without a Cause, and he asked Zbigniew Cybulski who played Maciek to study James Dean. In fact, after the success of this movie, Zbigniew Cybulski came to be called the “Polish James Dean.” James Dean and Zbigniew Cybulski were the same generation, and James Dean died in a traffic accident at the age of 24, while Zbigniew Cybulski died in an accident when he was 39. Keiichiro Akagi—said to be the Japanese James Dean—also died young in a traffic accident when he was 21 years old.

日本語→

Movie: The Tin Drum — Die Blechtrommel (1979)

Posted on by
Reply

The Tin Drum was based on the full-length novel by the German author Günter Grass that was published in 1959, and director Volker Schlöndorff adapted it into a movie in 1979. It is said that the movie leaves out the second half of the original work, but the reproduction of the first half is fairly loyal to the original. Günter Grass received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1999 for his achievements as an author, such as this book, while the movie won the Palme d’Or at the Cannes International Film Festival and the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Since I have not read the original, I wish to write only about the movie.

This movie is an unpleasant movie, like listening to a nail scratch on glass. The movie’s protagonist has for some reason stopped growing and is stuck in the body of a young child, but his mind and feelings are that of a grown adult. The catchphrase of this movie—“This movie is about the pacifism of the protagonist who stopped growing in order to oppose war”—is outrageous. To say it briefly, the protagonist of this story takes advantage of people thinking that he is a child due to his small body to do whatever he pleases, and instead of taking responsibility for his actions, he shamelessly avoids responsibility by pretending he is a child. Because of the peculiar state of the protagonist, he can easily sense when an adult lets their guard down around him or an adult’s cunning when they are trying to take advantage of him. Also, it feels like the protagonist is reflecting a part of the author Günter Grass.

Günter Grass—unlike Oskar, the protagonist of this movie/novel—is not a little person; however, like Oskar, Günter was born in the Free City of Danzig, a territory that has been fought over by Poland and Germany. Also like Oskar, Günter was born of a German, Nazi-supporting father and an oppressed minority, Kashubian mother. Oskar participates with fellow little people in a dwarf circus that entertains and is treated well by high-ranking Nazi officers; Günter Grass also actually enthusiastically took part in Nazi activity in his youth. It may be a part of his past that he does not want to talk about much publicly, but when Günter confessed it, readers around the world who had idealized Günter Grass—a Nobel Prize author and advocate for peace—were shocked.

Of course being a successful author does not equal being a perfect person, and a reader with this expectation would be being selfish. Since there were many youths who thought seriously about how to live and became captivated by communist thought as a way to change the ugly world, it is conceivable that there were also many good-intentioned people who joined the Nazis with the passion of idealism to make the world a better place. It may not be possible to judge past earnest decisions simply from a modern point of view. Because the movie ends abruptly in the middle of the novel, the audience is made to think, “I am unpleasantly dragged around to have it end here?” However, the original continues on after that, and it is said that it ends with the protagonist continuing to escape reality, but achieving some growth and looking back on the past. Compared to the movie, which ends at the height of his escapism, my guess is that the original has some depth that the movie does not when the protagonist looks back with a point of view different than his selfish and immature one.

This movie was made in the 1970s, which was a confusing time across the world. Although the Cold War was becoming more serious, the majority of people had started to become disillusioned with the notion that socialism was the only salvation to change the world. In addition to the antagonism between liberalism and socialism, there was a new antagonism sprouting between Christian and Islamic fundamentalist nations. It was a time when people were at a loss, which was very different than things starting in 1980, when America, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union chose pragmatic leaders—President Reagan, Prime Minister Thatcher, and General Secretary Gorbachev, respectively—to look for pragmatic solutions. Even Hollywood—which always chose to have pleasing happy endings—started to make movies that left the audience in desperation and provided no solutions or salvation, which the audience thought was profound and depicted reality; this movie was made during these times. Now, 40 years later, I wonder what viewers think when they watch this movie. It seems that the current audience desires more emotionally consoling movies, thoroughly entertaining movies, or informative movies that positively influence how viewers live. Due to the change in times, it is no longer easy to understand the enthusiastic response to this movie when it was released.

Danzig is a harbor city that faces the Baltic Sea, and is at the northeast edge of the Polish Corridor that divided Germany. Since ancient times, Germany and Poland fought to control the land in the Corridor, but due to Germany’s defeat in World War I, the area was separated from Germany and transferred to being under the control of the League of Nations. With the Treaty of Versailles, Danzig was incorporated as Polish tariff territory; though not physically neighboring Poland, the city developed strong ties with Poland. The Free City of Danzig’s railroad that connected it to Poland was controlled by Poland; there was a Polish naval port; and of the two post offices, one post office was the city’s while the other was Poland’s. Residents of this area were mostly Polish and German, while a small number were Kashubian and Jewish.

At first, Danzig was established with the objective to protect the interests of Poles and to extend the power of Poland; however, the influence of Germans and Nazis gradually strengthened, and after the Nazis won the election in 1933, anti-Jew and anti-Catholic laws (meant to target Poles and Kashubians) were passed. In 1939, the Nazi government in Danzig started to severely oppress Poles living in Danzig. Then on September 1, 1939, the German battleship SMS Schleswig-Holstein, which was anchored at Gdańsk Bay in Danzig, began a severe bombardment on Poland’s military base in Danzig without proclamation, and thus World War II began.

The Polish army resisted by using the Polish post office as their fort. The Polish post office was considered to be Polish territory, rather than within Danzig city limits, and there was a direct phone line to Poland. It is said that workers had received rifle training before the war started. Also, some say that Poland’s anti-Germany intelligence organization secretly operated there. Despite their hard-fought defense, the Polish civilian army in the post office could not compete with the offense of the German army, and in the end, they surrendered.

In World War II, most non-Jewish Polish citizens in Danzig were killed by German paramilitary organizations such as the Selbstschutz (“self-protection”), while the Jewish citizens were targeted by the Holocaust and were sent to concentration camps. In March of 1945, Danzig was liberated by the Soviet Union Red Army. In this movie, the way Oskar’s Kashubian mother goes back and forth between her German husband and her Polish lover seems to symbolize the race conflict in Danzig. There is a strong possibility that Oskar’s real father is the Polish man, but because he is the child of a German on the family register, Oskar barely escapes alive to Germany after the war. However, his grandmother remains in Danzig, and she is separated from Oskar for the rest of her life; since his grandmother is Kashubian, she cannot enter Germany.

Nowadays, Danzig is a Polish territory called Gdańsk. It was mostly destroyed in World War II, but it is said that due to the great efforts of current citizens, the historic streets have been rebuilt, and it prospers as a beautiful town for sightseeing.

日本語→

Movie: The Way I Spent the End of the World – Cum mi-am petrecut sfârşitul lumii (2006)

Posted on by
Reply

This movie is a sketch of the life of 17-year-old Eva living in Romania’s capital Bucharest in 1989. In 1989, the General Secretary of the Communist Party in Romania, Nicolae Ceauşescu, was executed and this was the year the communist dictatorship fell. In this movie, Eva seems to be rebellious, expressionless, unsociable, irresponsible, and random (however, she looks pretty and shows a little smile when she talks with her boyfriend); even though she is going out with Alexandru, the son of an important man in the socialist administration, she shows interest in Andrei, whose parents are missing on the charge of the assassination attempt of Nicolae Ceauşescu, and the two plan to cross the Danube River to escape to Yugoslavia. But partway through, Eva says “I quit,” stops crossing of the river, and returns to Bucharest alone; her parents are angry and they ask Eva to keep a good relationship with Alexandru for the sake of the safety of their family. Eva is captivated with a cheap condominium (or it may be a high-end condo by Romanian standards) that Alexandru recently bought. In the end, an intimate relationship between the two somehow develops, and Eva returns home and declares triumphantly, “We are engaged!!” but immediately after, a bloody revolution erupts; the adults, who seemed until then to be gloomy and obedient to authority, suddenly and joyfully begin destructive activity. This movie ends after briefly depicting Alexandru’s family slipping from the upper class after the bloody revolution, Andrei safely arriving in Italy via Yugoslavia, and Eva triumphantly pursuing a career as a crew member on an international passenger ship.

Eva is expressionless and arrogant from the start to finish and her inner state isn’t depicted at all. She goes back and forth between Alexandru—who symbolizes in the movie the center of political power—and Andrei—who symbolizes anti-establishment. Despite their political differences, she is attracted to both of them with the fickle feelings of a teenager. Romania, an underdeveloped satellite country of the Soviet Union, is in a desolate state of affairs and even the capital Bucharest is in bad shape; we don’t know what the parents do, but they always look gloomy, tired, and uninterested in their children. I don’t think they are poor, but it seems that the home is also in a dismal state and their meals are just soup and bread. There is no discussion of politics because the adults are afraid to get involved with politics. This depiction of desolate everyday life aptly shows the true nature of the stagnation that resulted from the socialist dictatorship in Romania and no further words of explanation are needed.

The Romanian film world first showed signs of new activity in the late 1980s and it started getting attention from film festivals, primarily the Cannes Film Festival, in the 2000s. These movies focused on the themes of the transition from a socialist country to one with a free economy or criticisms of the Ceauşescu regime, and many seemed to have an unfinished, minimalistic, documentary feel. There is a divide on whether to call this “fresh” or “amateurism,” but after watching movies from Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary that proudly demonstrate sophisticated techniques, I have a feeling that Romanian movies have a long way to go. Perhaps because Western European countries want to support Romania, Romanian movies briefly gained praise at Cannes, and Dorotheea Petre who played Eva in this movie even won the Best Actress Award at Cannes. This movie’s story is unrefined; since winter and summer are repeated many times, it feels like many years pass in the story, but it is only one year. This movie doesn’t seem to care about these inaccuracies. In addition, Dorotheea Petre who played Eva looks like she is in her 30s and doesn’t at all resemble the actress who played her mother, who is dressed to look younger; the two look as if they are sisters or friends. Both actresses certainly are quite beautiful, but that is not enough. There is a feeling somehow that this movie was made without attention to details, in contrast to the many directors in the world that really pay attention to detail. I wonder where Romanian movies will go from here.

1989 was the year that the Tiananmen Square Massacre happened and the grip of communism was strengthened in China, but it was also the year that the communist dictatorship in Eastern Europe was ended relatively peacefully. John Paul II from Poland was inaugurated as Pope in 1978 and, even though nobody thought that this was a step towards ending the Cold War, I think Pope John Paul II greatly contributed to the ending of the Cold War. Poles felt that there was something to believe in, a kind of spiritual hope. This led to the rise of charismatic yet pragmatic, labor-union chairman Lech Wełęsa. While he was trying to change the social and political direction of Poland with the word “Solidarity,” most people in the world watching Eastern Europe thought, “Oh no, something like the Hungarian Revolution or the Prague Spring might be repeated in Poland…” However, Wełęsa’s approach was different. He who would bend but not break to pressure carefully watched Moscow’s reaction in order to advance or retreat appropriately, advocated for nonviolence, and patiently and peacefully pushed for the democratization of Poland.

Hungary was similarly a “mature country.” This is because Hungary prided itself in being an advanced country like Austria. Mikhail Gorbachev’s administration of the Soviet Union began “perestroika” in 1985, which removed what was called the “Brezhnev Doctrine” that regulated the Eastern Bloc of the communist party countries; Hungary, taking advantage of this deregulation, opened the national border between Hungary and Austria in May of 1989. A non-communist regime was elected in Poland in June and a non-communist regime was established in Hungary in October.

Now that citizens from East Germany could cross the Hungary-Austria national border and flee to West Germany by way of Austria, the Berlin Wall had lost its purpose for existing. The Berlin Wall was destroyed on November 10. This encouraged many citizens in Czechoslovakia and Romania to demand democratization. On November 17, a bloodless revolution called the Velvet Revolution began in Czechoslovakia. However, a bloody revolution in Romania resulted in the execution of the dictator Nicolae Ceauşescu.

Nicolae Ceauşescu was the dictator of Romania for 22 years, from 1967 to 1989. At the beginning, he opposed the suppression of the Prague Spring by the Soviet Union and refused to send armed forces; declared a pro-Western Bloc attitude along with Yugoslavia; and became a member of IMF and GATT and conformed to Western Bloc economics. Romania was the only satellite country of the Soviet Union that established diplomatic relations with Israel, and it participated in the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics when all other Eastern Bloc countries boycotted it. Nicolae Ceauşescu gained a very favorable impression with the Western Bloc countries, and support from citizens was also high. Unfortunately, however, he seemed to have held a position of power for too long. He gradually began to turn Romania’s government structure in a direction that resembled the Workers’ Party of Korea in North Korea or the Chinese Communist Party.

The failure of Nicolae Ceauşescu’s economic policy was what decisively made him unpopular. Because Romania was popular with the Western Bloc countries, it was able to easily obtain funds from the Western Bloc, but this was a double-edged sword. Romania struggled with paying off this large sum of money that was loaned to them, causing the national economy to suffer and most Romanians to live in great poverty. Due to the food rationing system that was established in the country and the unreasonable exports that were given priority, Romanian citizens were without daily food or fuel for winter heating, and power outages became frequent. Such things are depicted in this movie.

In the “Arab Spring” of 2012, Twitter functioned as real-time communication and accelerated a revolution, while television played a big part in the “Revolutions of 1989” in Eastern Europe. Through television, Romanian citizens were able to know what happened in Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and East Germany. We can see this happening in Romania extensively in this movie.

日本語→

Movie: In Darkness — W ciemności (2011)

Posted on by
Reply

This movie is based on a true story about Socha, a sewage worker in former Poland city Lviv, who hid Jews under the city in 1943 when it was ruled by Nazi Germany. Socha hid Jews in the underground sewer system to escape Nazi persecution. He helps these Jews and agrees to bring them food every day, but Socha’s actions endanger not only his own life, but the lives of his family.

As part of the drama of this movie, Socha is shown as a small criminal who steals and he starts sheltering Jews for money, to which he gets opposition from his wife for helping Jews. But over time, Socha gradually gains sympathy for the Jews he is hiding and he continues to help them free of charge after they run out of money, risking his own life to help them. However, I had a feeling that it may not be entirely accurate as I examined various facts in this movie. It is possible he was sympathetic to the Jews from the beginning and worked together with his wife and friend because of his own desire to help them. As for accepting money, Socha lived a very poor life and probably did not have extra money to buy food for other people so he may have needed the money from the Jews in order to buy them food. Later, when the Jews had used up all of their money, he used his own money to buy food to offer them. The hiding lasted for 14 months.

I don’t know which one is reality, but that is not so important. The important thing is why Socha decided to help the Jews even when it put his own life and the lives of his family in danger. This is what I wish to consider.

Socha lived in the city of Lviv in the east end of Poland, an area from ancient times under repeated contention between the Kingdom of Poland from the west and the Duchy of Kiev from the east. Until the 17th century, Lviv was caught in a series of invasions by the Ukraine Cossack or Ottoman Empire, among others, and in 1704, Swedish troops led by Charles XII during the Great Northern War captured Lviv and the town was destroyed.

Lviv was put under the control of the Austrian Empire by the First Partition of Poland in 1772. The Austrian Empire government strongly pushed for a German-ification and German was made the official language. In hatred of this, the Polish people rose up in revolt in 1848; after that, the people of Poland gradually gained self-governance of this land. Lviv was the center of Polish culture; at the same time, many Ukrainians also lived there and their culture was protected in Lviv, while other Ukrainian districts changed under Russian rule. When the Austro-Hungarian Empire collapsed after Austria’s defeat in World War I in 1918, the West Ukrainian People’s Republic declared its independence with Lviv as its capital.

ukrainemap_enFaced with this, the Polish population rose in revolt and the Polish-Ukrainian War began. The war ended with a landslide victory for Poland due to the complete support by the Polish army to defend their homeland, and Lviv once more came under Polish control. The Directorate of the Ukrainian People’s Republic did not support the Ukrainians in Lviv because the Directorate wanted support from Poland to fight against Russia’s Red Army; in exchange for Poland’s support, Poland was allowed to keep control of Lviv.

In 1920, the Soviet Red Army attacked Lviv. Armed citizens repelled the Red Army and Poland made a peace treaty with the Soviet Union, ignoring Ukraine’s wishes. This was a betrayal against the alliance they had with the Ukrainian People’s Republic against the Soviet Army.

Summarizing this complicated state of affairs, there was an antagonism between Polish and Ukrainian people in Lviv from long ago. Russia (as well as the Soviet Union after the revolution) was a natural enemy of Ukraine. Polish people had a hatred for German people from long ago. The Ukrainians conspired with the Germans to gain hegemony in Lviv, so conversely, the Polish allied with the Russians.

During World War II, Germany invaded Poland in September 1, 1939, and on September 14, the German army occupied Lviv. After that, Lviv was occupied for a short time by the Soviet Union, but in the end, Germany controlled that land. The goal of the German army was to annihilate all communists and Jews. The Ukrainian part of Lviv supported the anti-Soviet Union movement and so cooperated with the Nazis. During the German occupation, Poles had difficult lives. With the scene within this movie where many Poles being charged for killing a German soldier are executed, it seems that a Polish person may see the Nazi persecution of the Jews and think, “Tomorrow will be me.” There is sympathy there. Nevertheless, it’s impossible to know for sure the source of Socha’s determination to help the Jews in spite of facing grave danger.

After World War II, the whole area of Lviv was incorporated into the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. During that time, most of the Polish inhabitants of Lviv fled to Poland.

In 1945, immediately after the end of World War II, Socha was riding a bicycle with his daughter when a Soviet army truck approached his daughter. Socha, protecting his daughter from the truck, was hit by the truck and died. At his funeral, someone said, “He died because he triggered the anger of God by sheltering Jews.” For the sake of drama, this movie depicts Socha as someone who is petty, but I don’t believe it. I don’t care what kind of person he was. The things he did were important and people will continue to tell his story through this movie.

日本語→

Movie: A Dangerous Method (2011)

Posted on by
Reply

Most everyone is familiar with the psychologists Freud and Jung as well as Freud’s theory of dream analysis. However, the specific details of Freud and Jung’s medical treatment are not very well-known outside the actual field of psychology. I think that the relationship between the two men and the conditions of the times in which they emerged are also not well-known. This movie depicts Freud and Jung’s friendship and eventual falling out, as well as their relationship with their student, the female psychiatrist Sabina Spielrein.

Sabina lived in the city of Rostov-on-Don in western Russia, born into a wealthy Jewish family. However, she was afflicted by mental illness, and in 1904, was admitted to a Swiss mental hospital, Burghölzli, in Zurich. Here she was treated by Jung, a young psychiatrist. Jung was the son of a Lutheran pastor, and had married a woman from a wealthy family; he was sincere, faithful in marriage, and blessed with good looks and intelligence, but also had a keen perception that was akin to a sixth sense. When they meet, Jung recognizes that Sabina also possessed this same kind of perception and exceptional intellect. Through Jung’s treatment, Sabina eventually recovers from her illness and starts medical school with the aim of becoming a psychiatrist.

Jung becomes aware that Sigmund Freud is treating a patient with similar symptoms as Sabina using psychoanalysis, a method based on the theory of the subconscious that was innovative for its time, and the two become close friends around 1907. Freud is very fond of Jung and asks him to treat Otto Gross, an apprentice of Freud who was suffering from a mental illness. In the private sessions with Otto, Jung, a conformist and one who strictly adhered to monogamy, is greatly challenged by Otto’s depraved philosophy; eventually, out of the desire to be honest with himself, Jung admits his love for Sabina, and he and Sabina begin an affair. During the time of this affair, Sabina’s brilliant mind greatly influenced Jung’s theories.

However, starting from around 1913, Jung and Freud have a falling out. Freud considers Jung’s love for the psychic ability to be occult and fears he is drifting too far away from the scholastic field of psychology; on Jung’s side, he becomes skeptical of Freud’s use of dream analysis to explain the whole nature of the subconscious. After that, the two become antagonistic within their field. At the same time, Sabina, now a fully-fledged psychologist, begins asking Jung if they could be more than lovers, and this causes Jung and Sabina’s relationship to fall apart as well. After Jung, the next person Sabina chooses as a mentor is Freud. Freud tells her that, as they are both Jewish, they’re able to understand each other well. However, after Sabina, Jung begins an affair with Toni Wolff, also Jewish. The film ends just before World War I when Jung and Freud part ways.

The fact that Freud was Jewish makes the relationship between Jung and Freud very interesting. Freud and Jung were integral in the founding of the International Psychoanalytical Association in 1911, but Jung, not Freud, became the first president, and it is said Jung was chosen because the president of the association could not be a Jew. Freud was an Ashkenazi Jew (a Jew descended from Eastern Europe). In those days, it was difficult for Ashkenazi Jews to be researchers through university positions, so Freud earned a living as a common doctor of private practice while working hard on his research.

Ashkenazi refers to Jews that reside in German-speaking areas or Eastern European countries. Sephardim refers to another group of Jews that resides in the Middle East. At first, the Ashkenazi Jews were traveling merchants that linked Islam to Europe. However, since direct trade between Europe and Islam became common practice and the long trip became dangerous for Jews because of Jewish persecution, the Ashkenazi shifted to being settled merchants and moved into the finance business, which was banned for Christians. The merchant in Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice is an Ashkenazi Jew. The Ashkenazi were expelled from Britain in 1290 and from France in 1394, thus immigrating to Eastern Europe. They were persecuted in the Holy Roman Empire, but since the social rights for Jews were guaranteed in the Kingdom of Poland since 1264 with the “Statute of Kalisz,” Poland was an extremely safe country for Jews to live in. The Kingdom of Poland also welcomed Jewish immigrants as skilled workers to enhance their economy. From Poland, Jewish people immigrated east to Ukraine and Russia.

When Adolf Hitler as the leader of the Nazis expelled Ashkenazi scholars from the psychiatric society in 1938, Jung, using his position as the president of this society and as a citizen of a permanently neutral country, planned to secure status for Ashkenazi doctors within Germany by accepting them into an international society. He asked Freud about his plan, but Freud rejected it by saying, “I can’t accept a favor from Jung, who is the enemy of my research.” Freud himself took refuge in London immediately after that, but the Ashkenazi doctors that were unable to take refuge lost work, and most were sent to concentration camps and murdered in gas chambers.

As for Sabina, she married Russian Jewish doctor Pavel Scheftel in 1912, and lived in Berlin. They lived in Switzerland during World War I, but after the Russian Revolution in 1923, she returned to Russia under Soviet Union control and established a kindergarten in Moscow. However, in 1942, her hometown Rostov was invaded and she was murdered by Nazis.

日本語→

Movie: Katyń (2007)

Posted on by
Reply

If I were to be asked right now to choose only one movie among the movies I’ve seen that is the most worthwhile, I would choose the Polish movie Katyń without hesitation. It is quite a high quality movie and this movie offers information that I may never have known if I hadn’t watched it. I am grateful for this movie from the bottom of my heart.

Sandwiched between Russia on the east side and Germany on the west, Poland has tragically been the victim of the two countries’ power struggles throughout history. In September of 1939, Germany invaded Poland, beginning World War II, and, utilizing this chaos, the Soviet Army invaded Poland from the east. While this was going on, the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression treaty was covertly signed and Poland was occupied and divided by Germany and the Soviet Army. Poles being pursued by from the German army from the west and Poles being pursued by the Soviet Army from the east encountered each other near the Bug River in eastern Poland. Those escaping from the Soviet Army told the Poles who escaped from Germany that it was dangerous and to head back west, while those escaping from the German army said the opposite. At that moment, trapped between two armies, each individual had to decide their fate.

The Polish government escaped to London and formed a Polish government-in-exile. Polish soldiers immediately complied with the orders of both armies, honorably and peacefully surrendering to the German and Soviet armies. The German army, in accordance to international law, released their Polish soldiers, but the Soviet Army did not. Katyń depicts the fates that followed the Polish soldiers that surrendered to the Soviet Army.

After the Soviet-German War broke out in 1941, the Polish government-in-exile and the Soviet Union formed a treaty with an anti-German interest, and the Soviet Union was supposed to release all of their Polish prisoners and organize a Polish unit to attack the Nazis. However, more than 90% of the soldiers that were prisoners were unaccounted for; when the Polish government-in-exile in London pursued the Soviet Union to release all of the Polish soldiers, the Soviet Union responded that there was delay due to office work and transportation.

However, the German army violated the non-aggression treaty and invaded Soviet Union territory in April 1943; near the Katyn forest, former Soviet Union territory, they discovered the dead bodies of nearly twenty thousand Polish soldiers. Germany widely broadcasted this crime committed by the Soviet Army in 1940. After Germany was defeated and World War II ended in 1945, Poland was put under Soviet Union control as a satellite country of the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union argued that, in fact, the Katyn forest massacre was an act of the German army and they carried out a grand anti-Nazi campaign; afterwards, it became taboo for Poles under Soviet Union control to mention the truth of the event.

This movie depicts the tragedy of the few families of the Katyn massacre victims that resisted the occupying Soviet Union by trying to reveal the truth of the event—after the Soviet rule started, most Poles obeyed the Soviet Union because of their hatred of Nazi Germany and for the sake of their personal safety.

Director Andrzej Wajda’s father was killed in the Katyn forest massacre. He gained international fame with works such as Kanał, Ashes and Diamonds, and Man of Marble, but because of his anti-Soviet stance, he was oppressed by the government of Poland. For over 50 long years, he had a plan to make a movie of the Katyn forest massacre, but it was impossible before the collapse of the Berlin Wall; he was already 80 years old when he was finally able to make the movie in 2007. I felt through this movie his determination of, “I can’t die until I convey what happened in the Katyn forest.” We must remember the following three points from this movie.

One, the crime. War is an abnormal, extreme situation where people kill each other, but there are universal rules in it. First, civilians must never be killed intentionally. And even soldiers must be treated humanely once they have surrendered. However, under the orders of Stalin, the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD) in charge of prisoner accommodations interrogated each Polish soldier, and any soldier that was thought to have even a trace of anti-communist belief was killed mercilessly.

Two, the lie. After Germany discovered the dead bodies near the Katyn forest, Geneva’s International Committee of the Red Cross was asked to conduct a neutral investigation, but, faced with resistance from the Soviet Union, the International Committee of the Red Cross abandoned dispatching the commission. On April 24, 1943, the Soviet Union demanded that the Polish government-in-exile, in alliance with the Soviet Union at the time, announce, “The Katyn massacre was a German scheme.” But the Polish government-in-exile refused and, in response, the Soviet Union cut off their alliance with the government-in-exile. Believing that support from the Soviet Union on the side of the Allies was needed to win World War II, direct criticism of the Soviet Union was not permitted. In 1944, American President Franklin Roosevelt appointed Navy Commander George Earle as a secret agent to gather information on the Katyn forest massacre. Earle collected information by contacting Bulgaria and Romania who were sided with the Axis and came to think that the Katyn forest massacre was an act of the Soviet Union, but Roosevelt rejected this conclusion and ordered for Earle’s report to be suppressed. Earle requested permission to release his investigation, but Roosevelt sent him a written order prohibiting him. Earle was dismissed from these duties after that and he was demoted to duties concerning Samoa. Supported by circumstances from ally countries like this, the Soviet Union was allowed to maintain the lie that Nazi Germany was responsible for the massacre for over 50 years.

Finally, I want to emphasize the arrogance of a nation that wins in war.

The crimes of Nazi Germany were judged in the Nuremberg Trials in 1946. The Soviet Union took advantage of the opportunity as a victor to accuse particular Germans as the masterminds of the Katyn forest massacre, but America and the United Kingdom drew the line at this and refused the accusation of the Soviet Union. After that, an argument on the responsibility of this event continued in both the Western Bloc and Eastern Bloc, but nobody in Poland was permitted to investigate the truth out of fear of the Soviet Union which controlled Poland then. This situation of not asking for the truth continued until the communist regime collapsed in Poland in 1989 and the young generation knew nothing of the Katyn forest massacre.

After the Soviet Union became less oppressive in 1989, the human rights of the victims of the Katyn forest massacre were finally recognized. In 1989, scholars in the Soviet Union disclosed that Stalin gave the order for the killings and Beria, the chief of the People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs, signed the decree for the Katyn forest massacre. In 1990, Gorbachev admitted the Soviet Union’s People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs involvement in the killing of Polish people including in Mednoe and Pyatikhatki, where burial sites like Katyn were found. After the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1992, the Russian government finally released the official documents on the Katyn forest massacre, publicly revealing for the first time in over 50 years the lie that the Soviet Union had maintained.

日本語→