Jaskulski and Loewinger’s admiration for Bialek is apparent throughout the film. They collected over 200 hours of footage to create the carefully constructed 90-minute documentary. The finished work includes moving interactions between Bialek and pogrom survivors, as well as footage of town hall meetings and memorial events that Bialek organized to help unite the Kielce community.

“Bogdan has showed us that memory is important to building empathetic communities,” Jaskulski said. “That it’s even possible to build a community between those who suffered and the descendants of the perpetrators.”

In addition to highlighting Bialek’s work, “Bogdan’s Journey” also recounts the brutality that took place in Kielce just after World War II. Most of Kielce’s Jewish residents, which numbered more than 20,000 in 1939, were killed during the war.

Only about 180 returned to Kielce to seek shelter at Przy Planty 7/9, home of the local Jewish Committee. That is where the Kielce pogrom took place on July 4, 1946. Today, it is the headquarters of the Jan Karski Society, an anti-discrimination organization that Bialek chairs.

For many years, information about the Kielce pogrom was difficult to find. Still, there are residents who refuse to accept that Polish civilians played a role in the massacre despite confirmation from historians that they did, in fact, take part. This is in step with the Polish government’s move to make it a crime to connect Poland with the Nazi death camps that were located throughout the country during German occupation.

The Polish government has taken a different stance, however, when it comes to the Kielce pogrom. Last year, Andrzej Duda became the first Polish president to attend a memorial service for pogrom victims in Kielce.

The long shadow of WWII
World War II continues to cast a shadow on Poland, both politically and socially. In fact, Jaskulski became interested in making a documentary about the pogrom after working as the cinematographer on a film by two Jewish Americans about the Jewish District in Krakow.

“I was surprised that their film came with the thesis that all Poles are anti-Semites,” Jaskulski said. “This was the moment when I wanted to know what the entire story between the Poles and the Jews was about.”

Though Bialek’s work is still met with some opposition, he is optimistic about the relationship between the Polish and the Jewish people of Kielce. In the film, he contends that Kielce is one of the few Polish towns that is free of anti-Semitic graffiti and that it was one of the first Polish communities to ban racist chants in its soccer stadium.

In fact, these positive changes signaled to Jaskulski and Loewinger that their work on “Bogdan’s Journey” was complete.

“It was becoming clear that there was a change that was happening in this town and you’ll see it in the events that we were filming,” Loewinger said. “We realized at that time that it was time to bring the production part of the film to an end.”

Although Bialek has dedicated much of his life to highlighting the events of the Kielce pogrom, he said becoming the subject of the story in “Bogdan’s Journey” has not been all too different for him.

“It’s natural because in all these conversations about the pogrom and what happened in the past, I was always talking from the heart and it was always very personal,” Bialek said.

Why did it take so long for this attitude to change?

For many years there was no access to the records on the pogrom. In the 1980s there was a short time when the archives were opened and first works on the pogrom written. As the subject was not discussed in public, a number of conspiracy theories emerged, which claimed that the pogrom was a communist provocation. And as many underline that Jews were part of the communist apparatus of repression, some believe it was actually the Jews in the secret police who organised the pogrom. Of course, none of the conspiracy theories have ever been proven, but in the end, for years the memory of the pogrom was related to the provocation rather than the suffering of victims. This is what our film’s character has changed.

…Bogdan Bialek, a Pole, who is neither Jewish nor from Kielce. Yet he is the one, who brings the memory of the pogrom back to town by organising debates, erecting monuments and speaking with the survivors. Why did he become so involved in the topic?

We asked him this question every year throughout the ten years of shooting the movie. There are some hints in the film: his childhood in Białystok in eastern Poland, where he grew up around Jews and in poverty. There was a number of moments in his life, when the attitude of Poles towards the memory of Jews hurt him. But there is no defining moment. On the other hand, every year when the event he had organised was over, he would say that that was the last time.

“It tore me apart. I paid a horrible price: internal devastation“, he says towards the end of the film.

Yes. You are taking on shoulders something you do not want and that is not necessarily appreciated by others. Bogdan never expected any reward. But he did not have any support in the beginning. His biggest burden is his loneliness in experiencing the suffering of others and the hostility among people. I started understanding him a bit after sitting in the editing room for one and a half years with all the tears and screams. You are becoming a sponge filled with these emotions. It eats you. And Bogdan’s work does not have any ending.

How did Bogdan become your protagonist?

When we came to Kielce in 2006, the film was supposed to be about an artist, who was building a monument for the victims of the pogrom on the 60th anniversary. But by accident we joined the first big debate about the pogrom. It was shocking to see that 60 years after the events, the subject is still causing so many bad emotions. We decided to come back. Bogdan was there all the time. Three years later, during one of the interviews, he said that he has an enormous amount of empathy for what had happened to the Jews in the Polish land but at the same time he has a lot of empathy towards Poles, even for the perpetrators. At first it sounded like a heresy: How can you put the victims and perpetrators in the same sentence? But this was the moment, when we understood that this man does not have a Jewish or Polish perspective. He sees things through a human perspective.

What was your impression of Kielce when you began filming in 2006? How did it change throughout the ten years of shooting?

It was a city like any other. But during the second year we tried to do a survey on the street. As soon as people realised that it is about the pogrom, they did not want to talk. When we finished the film and showed it in Kielce, the locals said that the film gave them a lot of strength. Before they saw the pogrom as something they were burdened with and could not do anything about it. Now they realised that although you cannot change the past, you can still build something.

The film starts and ends with the events of the 70th anniversary of the pogrom, during which a group of nationalist protesters claimed that the pogrom had been initiated by the communists. Why did you decide to use this image as a frame?

The scene is in the beginning of the film because this kind of aggressive atmosphere is characteristic for the discussion on the provocation, which in a way is a summary of the past memory of the pogrom. It comes back in the end to show that the new generation is coming. Surprisingly, it also augurs the atmosphere after the film ends.

Why does it end there, with the 70th anniversary?

After eight years we finally managed to get funds for the project and this allowed us to finalise the film. Then, in the last year, a miracle happened. The grandson of one of the perpetrators decided to speak up publicly about his suffering and how the pogrom influenced his family. We started at a moment, when nobody wanted to talk about it and we finished when the grandson of a perpetrator decided to speak up. This was a good moment to end.

What were the reactions to the film in Poland?

The film got great reviews. There were only two or three small right-wing media articles online, complaining that the film does not stand against the stereotype of an anti-Semitic Pole, as we are showing Poles who killed the Jews. One of them was written by a journalist of the Polish national television. We were anxious before the premiere but it turned out that there were Polish Jews, Jews from abroad, Polish Catholics, atheists. And they all cried together. After the screening in New York a Jewish lady came to me and asked how Polish people suffered during the war and how we are dealing with the post-Holocaust trauma today. And that is a reward. If Poles and Jews start caring about each other’s suffering, that is where we should get.

The political attitude towards the pogrom is still controversial. When asked during a TV interview about the Kielce pogrom, the former Polish Minister of Culture, Anna Zaleska, refused to acknowledge that Polish people were responsible for the killings. Isn’t that hindering the efforts of people like Bogdan?

I think that because of the Minister of Education’s behavior, some important political gestures have passed unnoticed. The current president of Poland was the first one to come in person to the commemoration in Kielce. The former prime minister wrote a letter expressing appreciation for Bogdan’s work and stating clearly that any kind of provocation theory is no excuse for what happened. Many were surprised with that. This famous TV interview with the minister of education clearly shows how the good work of some politicians can be easily destroyed by politicians from the same party. I am often asked if the film has had an effect on politics. And the answer is: No, and it will not. You can learn sensitivity from what you watch, but you cannot attack anyone with this film. So, as far as politics is concerned, it is useless.

The Polish parliament has recently passed a law that criminalises any mention of Poles being responsible crimes committed by Nazi Germany. Doesn’t that complicate the debate?

I am thinking about how much damage the controversies related to the law are going to cause. There are people like Bogdan, also in Israel, who spent decades bringing Jews and Poles together. I am afraid the current situation has taken us 15 to 20 years back, as both in Poland and in Israel the crisis has caused reactions which will see a lot of old stereotypes resurface. And the discussion about the law is not only about the Polish government versus the Israeli one. It also affects the debate inside Poland. The biggest concern is that due to the way the law is written, a judge will decide what is true and what is not. This is terrible. It used to be up to researchers to decide on historical facts. Now the question is what the truth is. The truth most Poles have not learned about or the truth that is politically dictated?

In the beginning of the film Bogdan says that the past ends when we end it by talking about it normally. Is Poland ready to end its past?

I am not sure. For me making this film meant trying to put myself emotionally in a certain place. And as long as there is this cynical attitude to right away defend or attack, we will get nowhere. It will begin when we put ourselves in the situation that Bogdan was in when he visited Israel. He is talking to two women survivors of the pogrom and one of them says that she is sure that Bogdan would have saved her during the war if he had been there. And Bogdan replies: “I’m not so sure. I didn’t live at that time.” Until we do not get where Bogdan is, we will not be able to end the past.

Michal Jaskulski is co-director of the documentary Bogdan’s Journey.

Paul Toetzke is a freelance journalist and Masters student of East European Studies at the Freie University in Berlin.

The building, which was owned by the Jewish Committee and housed many Jewish institutions, was home to up to 180 Jews. It did not have a basement. Most of the residents were refugees, having survived the horrors of the death camps that decimated more than 90 percent of the Polish Jewish population. After the war, they had returned to their homeland with the hope that they could leave the past behind them. They had no idea they were about to become the target of anti-Semitic aggression once again—this time from the Polish neighbors they lived alongside.

On the morning of July 4, a small group of state militia and local police approached the building to investigate the alleged kidnapping. As rumors of misdeeds spread, a version of the centuries-old “blood libel” that Jews were kidnapping Christian children for ritual sacrifice, a mob began to assemble. But it was the police and military who started the violence, recounts Polish historian Jan T. Gross in his 2006 book Fear: Anti-Semitism in Poland After Auschwitz. Though they were ostensibly there to protect civilians and keep the peace, officers instead opened fire and began dragging Jews into the courtyard, where the townspeople savagely attacked the Jewish residents.

That day, Jewish men and women were stoned, robbed, beaten with rifles, stabbed with bayonets, and hurled into a river that flowed nearby. Yet while other Kielce residents walked by, none did anything to stop it. It wasn’t until noon that another group of soldiers was sent in to break up the crowd and evacuate the wounded and dead. In the afternoon, a group of metal workers ran toward the building, armed with iron bars and other weapons. The residents of 7 Planty were relieved; they thought these men had come to help. Instead, the metal workers began brutally attacking and killing those still alive inside the building.

The violence went on for hours. As Miriam Guterman, one of the last remaining survivors of the pogrom, put it in the 2016 documentary film Bogdan’s Journey: “I couldn’t believe that these were humans.” (Guterman died in 2014.)

All told, 42 Jews were killed that day at 7 Planty and around the city, including a newborn baby and a woman who was six months pregnant. Another 40 were injured. Yet beyond the horror of those physical facts, the event would take on a larger historical significance. After the Holocaust, many Jews had dreamed of returning to their native lands. Kielce shattered that dream; for Jews, Poland could never again be home.

“[Kielce] really is a symbol of the exodus of Jewish survivors from Poland, and a symbol sometimes that there is no future in Poland for Jews,” says Joanna Sliwa, a historian with the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany who focuses on modern Polish Jewish history and the Holocaust. “That despite what Jews had endured during the Holocaust, and despite the fact that the local Polish population had observed all that, had witnessed all of that … Jews cannot feel safe in Poland.”

Sliwa points out that Kielce was not the first post-war pogrom against Jews in Poland; smaller outbursts of violence took place the previous year in Krakow and the town of Rzeszow.

In the years that followed, the Kielce pogrom—like so many atrocities committed or abetted by Poles during the war—became taboo. There were no memorials. When Bogdan Bialek, a Catholic Pole from Białystok, moved to Kielce in 1970, he sensed immediately that something was wrong. In Bogdan’s Journey, which was recently screened at an event at the Paley Center for Media in New York organized by the Claims Conference, Bialek remembers sensing a deep guilt or shame among residents when it came to talking about the pogrom. He calls this oppression of silence a “disease.”

Bialek became drawn to the abscess—what Jewish historian Michael Birnbaum referred to at the event as “the looming presence of absence”—that seemed to be haunting the town. Over the past 30 years, he made it his mission to bring this memory back to life and engage today’s residents of Kielce in dialogue through town meetings, memorials and conversations with survivors.

Unsurprisingly, he encountered pushback. The story of the Kielce massacre—which the film pieces together using the testimony of some of the last living victims and their descendants—is inconvenient. It challenges Poles. It opens old wounds. But for Bialek, bringing dialogue to this moment isn’t just about reopening old wounds—it is about lancing a boil. “Each of us has a tough moment in his past,” he says in the film, which was funded in part by the Claims Conference. “Either we were harmed, or we harmed someone. Until we name it, we drag the past behind us.”

Since the collapse of communism in 1989, Poland has gone through a soul-searching process that has progressed in bursts, with moments of clarity but also worrisome backsliding. Polish Jews have come out of the shadows, establishing new communities and reincorporating Jews back into the country’s fabric. In the mid-2000s, reports began to emerge documenting a curious trend: a “Jewish revival” of sorts sweeping Poland and beyond. Polish Jews reclaimed their roots; Polish-Jewish book publishers and museums sprung up; once-decimated Jewish quarters began to thrive again.

Part of that shift has been a reexamination of Poland’s history, Bialek said in an interview with Smithsonian.com. “We began with no understanding at all, with a kind of denial, and over time it’s been changing,” Bialek said in Polish, translated by Michał Jaskulski, one of the film’s directors. “These days it’s also easier for [Poles] to see from the perspective of the victims, which didn’t happen before. And we truly can notice how the pogrom strongly impacted Polish-Jewish relations.”

But there is still work to be done, he readily admits. While Poles today don’t deny that the pogrom actually happened, they do debate who deserves responsibility for the atrocity. Conspiracy theories ran rampant when Bialek first moved to Kielce, and he reports that they are still common today. In the film, co-director Larry Loewinger interviews several older residents who claim that the riot was instigated by Soviet intelligence, or even that Jews themselves staged a massacre by dragging bodies to the scene.

Unlike the better-known massacre at Jedwabne, when Poles living under Nazi control herded several hundred of their Jewish neighbors into a barn—and burned them alive—the tragedy in Kielce was borne out of post-war tensions. Poland was on the brink of civil war, its citizens were impoverished, and at the time many believed Jews were communists or spies. “You have to understand, Poland was a pretty miserable place in 1946,” says Loewinger. “It was poverty stricken. There were Jews floating around … There was a lot of anger all over.”

Yet there are clear parallels. Jedwabne happened in 1941, directly after the Nazi conquest of Poland; the accepted narrative is that the killing was carried out by Poles under pressure by Nazi Germans. In Kielce, the Polish people are equally “blameless.” Both of these narratives allow Poles to cling to a national mythology of victimhood and heroism. As Polish journalist and dissident Konstanty Gebert wrote in Moment, “Raised for generations with the (legitimate) belief that theirs was a martyred nation, many Poles found it increasingly hard to accept that their victimhood did not automatically grant them the moral high ground when it came to their behavior toward Jews during the Holocaust.”

Moreover, says Silwa, “Both of these events show how dangerous these conspiracy theories are, and how these myths about the so-called other, the blood libel, and … equating Jews with Communism, can turn into mob-like violence.”

In a 2016 television interview, Poland’s education minister Anna Zalewska appeared to deny Polish responsibility for any involvement in both of these historical events. When asked directly, “Who murdered Kielce’s Jews during the town pogrom?” she was unable to answer the question. She demurred, before finally answering: “Anti-Semites.” She did not admit that these anti-Semites were Poles. When controversy erupted, Zalewska received support from Foreign Minister Witold Wszczykowski, who said her comments had been “misunderstood.”

“It has to do with the Polish government, the effort to in a way rewrite history,” says Sliwa. “To put more emphasis on heroism and patriotism of the Polish nation during the war and after the war. It seems like it is an attempt to take hold over, to control, how the past is narrated.”

The concern that Poland is rewriting its history feels more relevant now than ever. Ever since the 2015 victory of the Law and Justice (Prawo i Sprawiedliwość) party, the right-wing populist party led by Jarosław Kaczyński, the government has pursued what is openly referred to as polityka historyczna, or “history policy.” Journalists and historians like Sliwa, however, call it “politicized history.” Of course, she adds, “there was discussion about this even before Law and Justice came to rule Poland. But now that taken over, it’s become so public and acceptable. And official, really official.”

You can see traces of this “history policy” in how the Kielce story has evolved over time. Despite the facts Gross and others have detailed, a 2004 report by the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN)—a state research institute that examines crimes committed by the Nazi and communist regimes and routinely minimizes Poland’s role in the Holocaust—concluded that the Kielce pogrom was the result of a “mishap.” This year, the Polish government backed legislation that would criminalize the use of the phrase “Polish death camps,” stating that the phrase wrongly implicated Poles as the orchestrators of Auschwitz and other Nazi death camps.

At the same time, Poland’s far right groups have grown emboldened. The largest demonstration of anti-immigrant and fascist attitudes coalesced in November of last year, on the country’s official Independence Day. The celebration, which has become an annual rallying point for Poland’s far-right groups, saw more than 60,000 demonstrators march through Warsaw calling for “White Europe.” Some threw red smoke bombs or carried banners with white supremacist symbols or phrases like “Clean blood.” Others chanted “Pure Poland, white Poland!” and “Refugees get out!”

The ruling party has long stoked fear of Muslim refugees, with Kaczyński saying in 2015 that migrants brought “dangerous diseases” including “all sorts of parasites and protozoa.” In 2017, Poland refused to take in refugees despite the European Union’s threats to sue. Poland has also seen an upswing in racially motivated violence toward foreigners, with Muslims and Africans the most frequent targets of attacks. In 2016, Polish police investigated 1,631 hate crimes fueled by racism, anti-Semitism or xenophobia.

To Bialek, these attitudes are a scary echo of what happened in 1946, and 1945. Worse, he fears they are a harbinger of things to come. “I keep on saying that for the last couple of years that these things may come back,” says Bialek. “When there are these examples of hostility of people in Poland toward foreigners, because they speak in different language, because they have darker skin, when these things happen—to me the most terrifying thing is the indifference. It is to have people who see these things do nothing about it.”

He continues: “When you’re referring to this ‘Independence’ march, the authorities would say that people who carry these wrong texts on their banners were a minority. Even if this was true, no one did anything about it. The authorities allow these things.”

With Bogdan’s Journey, the filmmakers strive to keep the memory of another time the authorities did nothing—and in fact aided in an atrocity—fresh in Poles’ minds. The film premiered in summer 2016 at the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw; last month it began screening nationally for the first time. While it has been generating positive interest in Polish media, there have also been accusations online that resurface the Soviet conspiracy theories and claim the film is deliberately misleading.

The film anticipates just such a response. “The disgrace of the pogrom will never disappear. It is a historical fact,” Bialek says in it. He only hopes that, “With time, the world will remember not only the pogrom in Kielce, but also that Kielce has tried to do something about it.”