Why Holocaust remembrance matters as history is rewritten and antisemitism surges

In the tiny Polish municipality of Gniewoszów, the traces of Jewish beingness had been truthful thoroughly erased that adjacent the tombstones from the destroyed cemetery were stolen and chopped into millstones and pavers. In a sense, this is not truthful antithetic from what is happening today, wherever facts are being warped and past reshaped into a means to beforehand governmental ideologies of the present. As International Holocaust Remembrance Day approaches, nary of america tin beryllium idly by and fto this happen.

When we arrived successful Gniewoszów successful 2014 — Anita to rededicate the Jewish cemetery wherever members of her household had erstwhile been buried, and Yoav to make a cinematic grounds — we did not expect that what began arsenic a humble enactment of remembrance would go a decade-long quest to uncover a communicative of loss, silence, complicity and the urgent request to face uncomfortable truths.

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A Polish antheral carries a fragment of an aged Jewish tombstone successful Gniewoszów, Poland from the documentary Among Neighbors.  ( Courtesy of 8 Above)

So uncomfortable, successful fact, that the bureau of Poland’s president is calling for the removal of our movie from Polish tv and streaming services.

While galore Holocaust films absorption connected Nazi atrocities, our film, Among Neighbors, shifts the lens to the Polish radical and what occurred aft the war, erstwhile immoderate Jewish survivors returned location lone to look unit — and adjacent decease — astatine the hands of their erstwhile neighbors. It is simply a reckoning with a section excessively often omitted from the narrative, events that uncover the heights of quality compassion and the depths of cruelty.

The town’s oldest residents, present successful the twilight of their lives, interruption decades of silence, sharing secrets they person carried for a lifetime. Their poignant stories are brought to beingness with hand-drawn animated sequences, enriched by artful touches of magical realism. 

The bosom of our communicative lies with 2 individuals: Yaacov Goldstein, 1 of the past surviving Holocaust survivors calved successful Gniewoszów, and Pelagia Radecka, an 85-year-old Polish pistillate who bravely shares her searing eyewitness testimony. 

And it took courageousness due to the fact that the obstacles to truth-telling are formidable. 

View of the main entranceway to the Auschwitz camp. The motion supra the gross says "Arbeit Macht Frei" (Work makes 1 free). Auschwitz, Poland/  (Keystone/GettyImage)

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In 2018, Poland’s authorities passed a instrumentality against code that blames Poland for immoderate portion successful the Holocaust, a determination that threatened to soundlessness precisely the benignant of testimonies our movie preserves. The chilling effect of specified authorities is felt not lone successful Poland, but wherever humanities revisionism and antisemitism instrumentality root.

This communicative matters present due to the fact that the forces that question to rewrite past are not confined to 1 state oregon era. Violent antisemitism is on the emergence successful our country, too, including arson attacks from a Jewish pupil halfway successful San Francisco to the Pennsylvania governor’s mansion. Social media influencers proudly declare they are connected "Team Hitler," and celebrated athletes claim Jews "own each damn thing," parroting the notorious forgery "Protocols of the Elders of Zion." Young radical are excessively easy swayed by specified voices, mounting america connected a precise unsafe path. 

Throughout history, the payment of Jewish communities has served arsenic a barometer for a society’s health. When anti-Jewish sentiment proliferates, it erodes advancement and contributes to taste collapse. 

The database is endless of once-powerful realms who turned connected their Jewish citizens, from Ancient Egypt, Greece, Rome, Arab empires, the Ottoman Empire, Spain and the Polish Kingdoms — not to notation Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. They present beryllium lone successful past books and successful the fantasies of terrorists and wannabe authoritarians.

Our movie is simply a telephone to action: to defy the temptation to sanitize the past, to grant the complexity of quality experience, and to admit that the choices we make, arsenic individuals and arsenic societies, echo acold beyond our ain lifetimes.

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Among Neighbors uses animation to picture Pelagia Radecka peering into what was erstwhile a Jewish store successful postwar Poland.  (Courtesy of 8 Above)

In making Among Neighbors, we sought to bring the past to beingness and guarantee that the stories of the Jews who lived and died successful Poland were not mislaid to history. In truthful doing, we came to situation viewers to face the uncomfortable realities that signifier our satellite today. 

As attempts to rewrite past successful favour of a much politically convenient communicative summation momentum, Among Neighbors offers a almighty counterpoint. True patriotism lies successful facing the past honestly, nary substance however achy the information whitethorn be.

This is wherefore we are screening the movie astatine theaters, movie festivals, assemblage centers and schools crossed the U.S. and internationally. No effort to soundlessness this important section of quality past — successful Poland oregon elsewhere — volition halt us. Indeed, specified efforts lone marque much radical funny successful our film.

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As the past witnesses fade, the work to look past honestly falls to each of us. Remembrance is our inheritance. Let america not squander it.