Wednesday 19 April 2023 at 20.00, cinema ART, Cihlářská 19, Brno

During World War II, occupied Warsaw was divided by a wall - a Jewish
ghetto, where not only Jews from Warsaw, but also from other parts of
Poland or Germany. The conditions were inhumane, and in 1942, in addition, the
regular deportations to the Treblinka extermination camp. Some of the ghetto inhabitants decided to make a desperate and heroic gesture - to die in battle. April 19, 1943,
exactly eighty years ago, an uprising broke out. It was outnumbered by German
soldiers were brutally suppressed and the ghetto was razed to the ground. Warsaw was
the capital of Poland was to become a model Nazi city and the German
architects were working on plans for a major redevelopment. Canadian filmmaker and historian
with Polish roots, Eric Bednarski, discovered by happy accident a unique documentary
- amateur footage from the ghetto by a young Polish man who, while filming
risked his life. In addition to Nazi propaganda films, these are
the only surviving material depicting the daily life of the ghetto inhabitants.
Bednarski became interested in the wartime fate of Warsaw and decided to map it. V
his film, in addition to the unique archival footage, also features eyewitnesses and
architects and urban activists. We follow the destruction of the city and its post-war
restoration and the effort to embody in its streets not only in the form of monuments and museums the memory of
of a vanished Polish-Jewish metropolis.
Directed by Eric Bednarski, 2019, 71 minutes, Polish with Czech and English subtitles
The discussion after the film will be attended by Martin Reiner for Mehrin - Moravian Jewish
museum and Lucie Zakopalová from the Polish Institute in Prague.
The screening is co-organized by Kino Art, the Polish Institute in Prague and Malý Mehrin as part of
Days of Polish Culture in Brno: https://dpk.brno.cz/