13-03-2008

World War II film review in Warsaw

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    The Museum of Polish History is holding a review of 21 documentaries relating to various aspects of World War II. Polish radio quoted a museum spokesman as saying the festival explores the war experience of the populations of many nations, not only Poles but also Russians, Germans, Czechs and Americans

    The highlights include Kai Wessel's Escape, which describes the exodus of Germans from Eastern Prussia in the winter months of 1945 before the incoming Soviet Red Army. Some 10 million Germans saw the film on the ARD television channel last year.

    Another featured film is Agnieszka Holland's Angry Harvest, which was made in Germany in 1984. It portrays a Polish Volksdeutscher -- a Polish citizen registered as ethnic German -- who shelters a Jewish woman.

    Several of the films are on loan from the Imperial War Museum and the General Sikorski Museum in London. They include A Forgotten Odyssey by Jagna Wright, about Poles who were deported to the Soviet Union following the invasion of Poland in September 1939