Katyń
On Monday I went to a cinema to see Katyń. It was very good. It shows the massacre from the perspective of mothers, wives, sisters and daughters of murdered officers. Scenes from their lives are compared with scenes from life of their sons, brothers, husbands and fathers as POWs . There is a very touching scene, when soldiers in a camp sing a Christmas Carol called God is born (Polish text behind the link). One of the heroines wants to put a real date of her brother's death (April 1940 in Katyń by NKVD), but a priest, who agreed for that and also the graves in Katyń when Germans dicovered it, was arrested on a night before she came with a headstone. Her sister hides the truth about the family to keep her post as a headmistress of high school.They act like in Antigone by Sofokles. Beside the arrested officers there is a story of one soldier's father (a professor at Jagiellonian University) arrested by Nazis on 6th November 1939 during Sonderaktion Krakau operation and sent to Sachsenhausen camp. Nephew of Agnes, one of heroines, was a guerilla soldier of the Home Army and was hidding in woods fighting Nazis. He is chased by communistic army soldiers after he destroys a poster. He dies smashed by a car at the aged around 20. It's not a masterpiece, but it's worth seeing. Noone said a word after the movie ended. Before going to the show read Paul Allen's book about the massacre. For many years the truth about it was hidden by Soviets and in hearts of murdered soldiers' family memebers. 14 boxes with documents were hidden in Cracow in few places - at prof. Franciszek Bielak's palce and in building of Chemistry Ward of Public Forensic Medicine Intitute in Cracow. It stayed hidden even when the Institute moved to a new headquarters.
