{"id":61243,"date":"2018-05-03T17:05:27","date_gmt":"2018-05-03T15:05:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=61243"},"modified":"2018-05-03T09:12:33","modified_gmt":"2018-05-03T07:12:33","slug":"12-05-27","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=61243","title":{"rendered":"The 1968 Forced Exodus of Polish Jewry on Film"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>The 1968 Forced Exodus of Polish Jewry on Film<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/span><\/h5>\n

Masha Shpolberg<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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May Day: How Polish filmakers documented and interpreted the \u2018March Emigration,\u2019 an \u2018anti-Zionist\u2019 purge in communist Warsaw 50 years ago<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Masha Shpolberg<\/em><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cSkibet<\/em>,\u201d Marian Marzy\u0144ski tells us, was the first Danish word he learned: it means \u201cboat.\u201d In 1969, Marzy\u0144ski found himself living on such a vessel, permanently anchored in the port of Copenhagen along with 500 other Polish-Jewish refugees who had fled to Denmark in the wake of an \u201canti-Zionist\u201d campaign waged by the Polish government. In Poland, Marzy\u0144ski had been first a radio reporter and then a successful television show producer and documentary filmmaker. With the help of Danish television, he was able to put his professional skills to work, documenting everyday life on the boat and encouraging his fellow refugees to reflect on their experience. The resulting film, titled\u00a0Skibet\/Hatikvah<\/em>, is an intriguing mixture of autobiographic documentary,\u00a0cin\u00e9ma v\u00e9rit\u00e9,\u00a0<\/em>and interviews that remains our only window into the \u00e9migr\u00e9s\u2019 state of mind, and their first impressions of life in the West.<\/span><\/p>\n

March 2018 marked the 50th anniversary of the Polish Communist Party\u2019s anti-Zionist campaign, which resulted in what became known in Poland as \u201cthe March emigration.\u201d The campaign itself was the product of a complex set of factors. Anti-Semitic action on the part of the Polish state and media apparatus had begun as early as 1967, when the USSR severed diplomatic relations with Israel following the Six Day War. The ruling Polish United Workers\u2019 Party happened to be embroiled in a power struggle at the time between First Secretary W\u0142adys\u0142aw Gomu\u0142ka and Minister of the Interior Mieczys\u0142aw Moczar. Sensing that the Jews were now an easy target, Moczar, whose anti-Semitic views were well-known,\u00a0seized the opportunity<\/a>\u00a0to flex his muscle.<\/span><\/p>\n

A student demonstration at the University of Warsaw on Mar. 8, 1968 calling for greater freedom of speech and civil rights provided the necessary excuse. The students were beaten and arrested; Jewish students were accused of instigating the demonstration. Free-thinking academics such as the Jewish philosopher Zygmunt Bauman and the non-Jewish Leszek Ko\u0142akowski were stripped of their University posts. Zionists were said to have infiltrated the government and Jews were purged from the Party ranks. Those who did not lose their jobs were harassed by colleagues and Party representatives into quitting. By 1972, between one half and two-thirds of the country\u2019s Jewish population and some of its leading gentile intellectuals had left.<\/span><\/p>\n

For the Polish government, the campaign was primarily instrumental: It simultaneously allowed for the appointment of political allies to positions vacated by the Jews and suppressed a nascent rebellion on the part of the country\u2019s intellectuals. As Bauman noted in 1969, \u201cthe anti-Jewish struggle is not an end in itself but only a means to an end.\u201d In the process, however, the campaign nearly ended the 800-year history of Polish-Jewish cohabitation. In 1967 there had been some 30,000 Jews living alongside 32 million Poles. Between 13,000 and 20,000 of them emigrated\u2014most to Denmark, Sweden, Canada, and the United States. It is estimated that approximately one-third went to Israel.<\/span><\/p>\n

Most of those who left were Holocaust survivors or children of survivors. Marzy\u0144ski himself had been smuggled out of the Warsaw ghetto as a child and placed in a Catholic orphanage by righteous gentiles. As he reflects in the voice-over that accompanies shots of older people on the boat, \u201csome of the Skibet\u2019s passengers had survived the war by deportation to Russia where they had been indoctrinated into communist ideology, and later returned to Poland. Denmark is their second exile. And it is the first for their children and grandchildren.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Marzy\u0144ski acknowledges the burden of this history, but he refuses to succumb to it. One of the most striking things about the film is its rather cheerful tone, one of bemused reflection rather than lament. The documentary opens with a first-person shot of the boat\u2019s hallways. \u201cThe ship is sleepy, but from one of the cabins, I hear the Polish hit of the \u201960s called \u2018Strange is this World,\u2019 \u201d Marzy\u0144ski narrates. \u201cCzes\u0142aw Niemen, the Polish John Lennon cries for justice in the world. Today, it appears to be our own world with its own ironies.\u201d He then lets the song play over nighttime shots of the boat. \u201cStrange is this world \/ where there is still so much evil. \/ And it\u2019s strange that \/ for so many years, man despises man,\u201d Niemen belts out. \u201cBut there are more people of good will \/ And I strongly believe that \/ this world will never die thanks to them. \/ No! No! No! No! No! \/ The time has come, high time \/ To destroy the hatred inside us.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

This playful but profound opening is paralleled by a brief excursion into the boat\u2019s curriculum vitae: Prior to housing the Polish Jews, Marzy\u0144ski explains, the Skibet had served first as a pleasure-boat on the St. Lawrence river in Qu\u00e9bec and then as an edgy night club back in Copenhagen where \u201csexual acts would be performed on stage.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The rest of the film consists of two parts: In the first part, filmed in 1969 and titled\u00a0Skibet<\/em>, Marzy\u0144ski records daily life on the boat while providing poetic or ironic commentary on the proceedings. Marzy\u0144ski films the refugees in the dining hall, chatting in the common areas, learning Danish, and interacting with Danish journalists and visitors. Throughout, he expresses his amazement at the Danes\u2019 generosity and goodwill.<\/span><\/p>\n

These observational sequences are punctuated by interviews with several of the Skibet\u2019s residents, ranging from a 20-year-old student to a middle-aged concert cellist. Marzy\u0144ski\u2019s sociological interest in his fellow exiles appears to inoculate him against the depression plaguing his compatriots. Their experiences, despite differences in gender and age, coalesce into a common story. All say that they have always been aware that they were Jewish, but that it did not mean much to them: they\u00a0felt\u00a0<\/em>Polish. All wish they could have remained in Poland except for one woman who explains, \u201cI left not as a Jew but as a person who could not stand the feeling that something like that could erupt again. Next time, it could be gypsies or even hunchbacks. A country with so many economic and social problems will always need to find a scapegoat.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

For all of Marzy\u0144ski\u2019s interlocutors, their Judaism is something attributed to them from without, not something they feel from within. The student says he first learned that he was Jewish because that was the excuse the other children would use to beat him up; the concert cellist recalls the pain of being shunned by her fellow musicians once the campaign began\u2014\u201cthey would look at me and pretend not to see me, no one would speak to me.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

In the second part of the film, shot in 1971 and titled\u00a0Hatikvah<\/em>, Marzy\u0144ski spends some time with a group of young people who have formed a folk ensemble on the boat. Only three of the group\u2019s eight or so members appear to have ever heard, let alone performed, traditional Jewish music before. Marzy\u0144ski questions them about how their recent experience has impacted their sense of identity. \u201cWhat makes you Jewish?\u201d Marzy\u0144ski asks. \u201cIt\u2019s simple: my parents were Jewish: that\u2019s what makes me Jewish,\u201d a woman named Ania responds. \u201cHave you ever been to a synagogue?\u201d Two thirds raise their hands. \u201cAs tourists or to pray?\u201d The answer is unanimous: \u201cas tourists.\u201d Do they interpret what happened to them as an exile or not? The responses are more mixed. Over and over, the young people insist that they left Poland of their own free will although \u201cit was a choice born out of necessity\u201d and they \u201cdid not want to.\u201d \u201cIt\u2019s hard to come to terms with it,\u201d one young man offers. \u201cYou can\u2019t confuse the Polish people with the Polish government.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The first part of the film,\u00a0Skibet<\/em>, had been shot in black and white; the second,\u00a0Hatikvah<\/em>, is shot in color. Though this was doubtless by chance, having to do with the resources available to the filmmaker rather than with his artistic intentions, the effect is the same: The color and the presence of young people brings the wintry world of the Skibet to life, suggesting that despite the difficulties endured spring\u2014and renewal\u2014may not be far off.<\/span><\/p>\n

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