Poland vs. History

Poland versus history

Documentaire – 2025 – 69 min – Couleur – France, Pologne.

version télévisée :

Jews of Poland, a struggle for truth

Documentaire – 2025 – 60 min – Couleur – France, Pologne.

Summary

A historian, Jan T Gross, creates a scandal in Poland by revealing the identity of the perpetrators of the Jedwabne pogrom, the neighbors of the victims, all Jews. It was the start of a media chronicle that sheds light on the strong and terrible relationship between Jews and Poles. For the past 30 years, following Gross' lead, historians have been investigating and denouncing the lies of the stones and the silence of school textbooks, determined to tell the truth and bring the country face to face with its history.

Production

Produced by Produit par Céline Nusse and Paul Rozenberg – ZADIG productions , ZADIG productions , 
Raphael Lewandowski - VERTIGO Films,
ARTE GEIE,
CNC

 

Synopsis

In Poland, a blind spot in the country's history has yet to be brought to light and acknowledged, undermining the democracy that emerged victorious from the recent elections. This is the story of the fate of Poland's Jews during the war and their disappearance, in part at the hands of the Poles. In 2000, Jan Tomasz Gross, a Polish historian long exiled in the USA, broke the silence and published a book on the Jedwabne pogrom perpetrated by Poles against the Jews of their village in 1941. This marked the start of an archaic struggle between awareness and the return of denial. From state recognition to revisionist backslash, the 2000s are the stage for the struggle over memories, and tell the story of a relationship between Jews and Poles that is as strong as it is terrible. As Shmuel Wasserstein, the pogrom survivor whose testimony enabled Jan T Gross to write the book "The Neighbors", returned home, the Polish authorities sought to silence the story of Polish responsibility for the death of the Jews by inaugurating misleading memorial sites and perpetuating silence in history textbooks. For the past 30 years, they have been confronted by researchers in the human sciences and historians determined, despite the attacks and in the face of the state's lies, to tell the truth based on eyewitness accounts. With them, a new history of Poland emerges, and it is to the film that they entrust it, so that it comes out of secrecy, and finally bequeathed, becomes the history of the younger generations.

Team

Direction Joanna Grudzinska
Image Eva Sehet
Sound Jan Boguszewski, Josefina Rodriguez, Mathieu Farnarier
Editing : Anne Renardet, Eurlalie Korenfeld
Original music : Julien Ribot

Distribution - Festivals

• Festival international du film de Cracovie (KFF) – 2025
• Festival international du film de Marseille (FID) – 2025 – sélection « autres joyaux ».
• Hong Kong Jewish film festival (HJFF) – 2025
• Les rendez-vous de l’Histoire – Blois – 2025
• Jihlava IDDF – 2025 – compétition Testimonies
• …

Projections, en présence de la réalisatrice :

• ..

Press

Le Club de Mediapart – 08/07/2025
Entretien de Cédric Lépine avec Joanna Grudzinska, à l’occasion de la projection de « Pologne contre Histoire » au FID 2025.

Link title - support

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