|
Trending Topics
|
TV Series Shows How Poland Expelled 16,000 Jews in 1968
(YouTube) Adrian Hennigan - The Polish state broadcaster Telewizja Polska (Polish Television) decided to make a drama about the events of March 1968, a seismic yet rarely dramatized moment in postwar Poland. The communist government of the time brutally clamped down on intellectual dissent and whipped up anti-Jewish sentiment. The authorities withdrew the citizenship of up to 16,000 Polish Jews, accusing them of being "fifth columnist" Zionists with dual loyalty to Israel. This led to forced migration on economic grounds. Veteran filmmaker Krzysztof Lang's drama depicts a shamelessly antisemitic Polish government crushing a student revolt via the harshest of measures. Polish "Zionists" - it was still too close to the end of World War II to be flagrantly antisemitic and use the word "Jews" - were stripped of their citizenship, making them ineligible for work in Poland. The only solution was to emigrate, but the authorities would only allow them to leave if they said they were relocating to Israel (even though most actually moved elsewhere in Europe or the U.S.). Why was Polish Television so accommodating? Lang says any criticism of the communist regime in '60s Poland would have been acceptable to the ruling Justice and Law party, sitting at the opposite end of the political spectrum to the government of Wladyslaw Gomulka, who was in office from 1956 to 1970. There are two separate works: the originally commissioned film, "March '68"; and a four-part series for television retitled "End of Innocence." (Ha'aretz) See also Video Trailer: End of Innocence