KATYŃ

Andrzej Wajda’s Oscar nominated fiction feature opens with chaotic scenes of refugees. It is World War II and Polish civilians are fleeing east, trying to escape invading German troops. On a bridge, they encounter more refugees. But this group is heading in the opposite direction, trying to escape a Soviet invasion from the east. Poland has been overwhelmed on two sides, carved up between its totalitarian neighbours. This powerful opening establishes that Wajda’s film is about far more than simply the Katyn murders alluded to in the title. The historical facts are well known: shortly after the invasions of Poland in the autumn of 1939, first by German and then Soviet armies, more than 20,000 Polish offi cers were taken prisoner by the Soviets. They were later shot dead by Soviet secret police, in forests near the village of Katyn. Andrzej Wajda’s father was among those killed. The fi lm goes on to show captured Polish soldiers and the families who lost husbands, fathers and sons. But KATYŃ is not just about the massacre. It also recalls a period when the very existence of Poland was threatened, and when Poland was powerless to write its own history. The fi lm develops beyond the massacre to show how the crimes were dealt with after the war. For decades the Soviets blamed the executions on the Germans. This became the official history of what happened. It could never be questioned in the new Communist Poland.
Wajda depicts the shootings with shocking brutality. He unequivocally condemns Poles who colluded with the cover up or with Poland’s Communist authorities after the war. KATYŃ is an angry reminder of the deliberate elimination of Poland’s intellectual elite and an emotional call for a free and independent Poland.