Film of 1946 Polish Pogrom Shown
A documentary film shown Saturday in Poland portrays through eyewitness accounts a pogrom in 1946 in which more than 40 Jews were killed.
Entitled “Swiadkowie” (Witnesses), it was the first underground film to be given a public screening in Poland.
Directed by Marcel Lozinski and produced by Nowa, the Eastern Bloc’s largest underground publisher, it was shown in a Warsaw club for Roman Catholic intellectuals known for offering a forum for independent opinions.
The film features interviews with several eyewitnesses who describe how more than 40 Jews were stoned to death or shot by a crowd and an army unit in a pogrom in Kielce, south of Warsaw, on July 4, 1946, more than a year after World War II.
At the time, Polish authorities said the pogrom was provoked by the anti-Communist underground. Nine people were sentenced to death for taking part in the killings.
Historians have challenged the official version of events, pointing out that the army unit did not intervene until eight hours after the pogrom started.
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