The Holocaust: Polish Guilt. Polish Sorrow

via MA:

 The film "Poklosie" delves into the dark history of Polish complicity during the Holocaust. Director Wladyslaw Pasikowski's work has sparked fresh debate in Poland by posing the question: How anti-Semitic were the Poles?

Poland's Jewish community was almost entirely decimated during the Holocaust. The Nazis murdered 90 percent of the three million Jews there.

Later, the communist regime fostered a climate of anti-Semitism in the country, forcing many more Jews to leave. A kind of phantom pain was all that remained, the sort experienced by people who've lost a limb.

The loss is, to this day, almost unbearable.

Fierce debates between Jewish and Catholic Poles continue to shake the country on a regular basis. The question is always the same: Did the majority of Christian Poles approve of, or even assist, the mass murder of Jews?

The country's self-image as the most significant victim of the Nazi terror and the Second World War is at stake.

Sparking debate

It's a debate that has been reignited in recent weeks with the release of the film "Poklosie" ("Aftermath") by director Wladyslaw Pasikowski.  

The thriller tells the story of a Catholic farmer, Jozef Kalina (Maciej Stuhr), who discovers the traces of a massacre of Jews during the Holocaust in his village. His research reveals that it was local Polish villagers who, without the help of the Nazis, had murdered their Jewish neighbors.