So it’s not all that surprising that more than 100 former students of the Peretz School in Lodz, Poland -- most of whom were orphaned during the Holocaust -- have remained in touch with one another 50 years after graduating, despite the fact that almost all of them left their native country in the late ’60s to settle in Israel, New York or Toronto.

In this documentary, Slawomir Grunberg tells the story behind the school and the community that relied on it as a safe haven in the aftermath of the Second World War, when anti-Semitism still trickled through the streets.

For a time, it seemed that Poland’s Jewish population might be revived and the school’s enrolment grew; but then the Six Day War unfolded in 1968, prompting Wladyslaw Gomulka and other national leaders to denounce Jewish citizens as a “Fifth Column” -- supporters of Israel rather than Poland -- and essentially suggest that they leave.

Although many of the Peretzniks, as they call themselves, continue to struggle with political identity issues, the emotional and spiritual bond they share makes for a solid foundation in life. Grunberg’s interviews with dozens of these ex-students -- including renowned architect Daniel Libeskind, who tells a funny story about an accordion -- are touching and enlightening, albeit slightly unfocused.

Audiences get tossed around from a class reunion in Tel Aviv to a family gathering in Toronto to an annual Polish festival in Ashkelon, Israel, and then back to Poland for historical footage and more context. And the dialogue tends to wander, from reminiscing about which teacher was the hottest (the physics teacher) to an anecdote about figuring out whether or not a cat was Jewish.

The soft, jazzy soundtrack that filters in every now and then doesn’t help, either -- Kenny G really has no place in a film dealing with the oppression of Polish Jews.

But for the most part, Grunberg succeeds in offering both an important history lesson and a look at what Jewish schools have -- and still do -- aim to accomplish. Above all, however, it’s a charming portrait of an improvised family unit that defies geographic boundaries.

--The Peretzniks screens in Toronto on June 10 at 7:30 p.m., at Innis Town Hall at the University of Toronto. Former students of the Peretz School, editors of the film and a representative from the Polish consulate will be on hand to answer questions.

The Peretzniks: documentary tell story of Jewish students of Polish school
By Jay Stone
Canwest News Service
June 3, 2010

In 1968, shortly after Israel had defeated its Arab neighbours in the Six Day War, a Polish politician named Wladyslaw Gomulka began giving speeches denouncing the Jewish citizens of Poland. He said they were Fifth Columnists, supporters of Israel rather than of Poland, and that they were all welcome to leave the country.

It wasn't the first time Polish Jews had been persecuted. It was only 20 years after the end of the Second World War, when millions were murdered in Nazi death camps. A few survivors had come back - the Jewish population of the country dropped from 3.5 million to 250,000 - and had tried to re-establish their lives.

Now they were being asked to leave again, and thousands did. Among them were students and graduates of the I.L. Peretz school in Lodz, a school set up after the war for Jewish students - many of them orphaned - to learn in relative safety. ``A shelter from anti-Semitism,'' one of the students recalls now. ``It was everything we had, from dawn to dusk,'' says another.

The Peretz students, called Peretzniks, were only one group of Polish Jews, but they were unusually cohesive, because they spent so much time together, and although they dispersed throughout the world - most to Israel, a few to Sweden, Denmark, the United States and Canada - they kept in touch.

The story of the Peretz students is told in a new documentary, The Peretzniks, by Slawomir Grunberg, who now lives in New York City. Grunberg interviewed more than 100 ex-students, including the renowned architect Daniel Libeskind - designer of the Michael Lee Chin Crystal at Toronto's Royal Ontario Museum - about their memories and experiences.

The result is a sometimes formless document that nonetheless provides a window into a lost world. The movie is loose on the identification of the students (many are named only once) and their connections to one another, but it brings into focus the lives of a people who had been brutalized, saved, and then brutalized again. "The challenge was to survive the day in a way that was dignified," Libeskind says in the film, one of many confessions of oppression that the Jewish children underwent. Others talk about the confusion they felt in being Jewish. "Is our cat Jewish?" one girl remembers asking. Another, told that the Jews killed Christ, replied that maybe it was done by the Rubensteins from upstairs, because they weren't very nice.

In an interview, one of the Peretzniks said the film is a tribute to an earlier generation.

"It's really about our parents," said Henry Lewkowicz, who left later than the others - he came to Canada in 1976 - and settled in Ottawa. "Why was there a Jewish school in a country devastated by war? A war whose whole reason was to kill Jews."

Lewkowicz, who now runs a software company, said he had kept in touch with Grunberg and was recruited to help (he's listed as the film's production manager) in the project. He looks at it as a way to honour the idea of the school, which he regards as a way of hoping against hope in postwar Poland, a way of saying, "Yes, we are not afraid to be Jewish."

The filmmakers visited Peretz graduates around the world to get their stories, and decided to put the film together as a way of educating viewers about what happened - the 1968 expulsions are a little-known fact of history - rather than making accusations.

"Through the diversity of views and beliefs, we wanted to share as rich and as varied recollections, emotions, reflections of what it meant to be `different' and picked on, and then kicked out from your own country," Lewkowicz said in an e-mail message. "And also share what can be learned from the experience, and how really costly is the price of ignorance, intolerance and blindness."

After some screenings at film festivals, the movie is being shown in Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto at evenings sponsored by the Polish-Jewish Heritage Foundation of Canada. The Polish ambassador, Zenon Kosiniak-Kamysz, will address the audience in Ottawa, and Polish counsel generals will speak in Montreal and Toronto.

"I don't know what they're going to say," said Lewkowicz. "Just to say it happened."

For Jay Stone's weekly movie podcast, go to www.canada.com/moviereviews.

jstone@canwest.com
canada.com/stonereport

Film evokes a time and a place in Poland
Sheldon Kirshner
The Canadian Jewish News
June 3, 2010

The Peretzniks, Slawomir Grunberg’s lovingly directed documentary about a Jewish day school in Lodz, Poland, speaks volumes about enduring friendships andthe ambivalent relationship between Jews and Christians in 20th-century Poland.

Graduates get together at a reunion in Israel.

The Peretz school in this central Polish city was probably the finest institution of its kind in Poland after the horrors of World War II. Attended by the sons and daughters of Holocaust survivors, the school gave its students a sense of community and security.

The Peretzniks, which was co- produced by the Shalom Foundation and is scheduled to be screened in Toronto, Montreal and Ottawa next week, skilfully evokes a time and a place, weaving nostalgia and disappointment into its narrative.
The screenings are sponsored by Polish Embassy in Canada, Canadian Jewish Congress, the Polish-Jewish Heritage Foundation, the Polish Film Institute and the Non-Fiction Foundation.

The school was established in 1945 by Jews who believed that Jewish life could be resurrected in Poland.

In the aftermath of the war, Jewish survivors flocked to Lodz, which had been one-third Jewish and a key industrial centre in Poland. Lodz had not been destroyed by the Nazis, and in many cases, the Jews moved into apartments that had been vacated by the former ethnic German owners.

The Peretzniks opens with a scene in which a Polish teacher reads off the names of the school’s graduates, most of whom live outside Poland today, mainly in Israel and North America. The teacher, a Catholic, taught Polish literature, and was well liked by her students.

The strongest impression the film leaves is that the students felt very Polish and part of an extended family. “It was my entire life,” exclaims one man.

In quieter tones, another man says, “It provided meaning for my life,”When they meet at a reunion in Ashkelon, they exult in an explosion of joy, hugging and kissing and trading stories about their youth.

But as Grunberg – a graduate of the Polish Film School in Lodz who left Poland in 1981 and immigrated to the United States – digs deeper, he discovers a number of facts.

The students appear to have come from working-class backgrounds. Jews from the intelligentsia sent their children to Polish schools. None of the students had grandparents, since they had been killed during the Holocaust. The school bound the kids together like a close-knit family, but although they were exposed to Jewish culture, some were uncomfortable with being Jewish.

Given the continued prevalence of anti-Semitism in postwar Communist Poland, the school was something of a haven. A procession of students, including Daniel Libeskind, the architect, recall the strained atmosphere and the taunts they had to endure in the city.
Ultimately, the school was unable to shelter them or their families from the bitter reality of anti-Semitism.

During and after the Six Day War in Israel, Poland, in concert with the Communist Bloc, roundly excoriated Israel as an aggressor state. Ultimately, the students were directly affected by the anti-Jewish campaign launched by the Polish Communist leadership under the thin guise of anti-Zionism. In a stark archival clip, Wladyslaw Gomulka, then secretary general of the Communist party, delivers a fiery speech in which he denounces “Jewish nationalists” and “Zionists.” With approving shouts from the audience, he urges them to leave Poland, saying that exit visas are readily available. These are by far the most chilling and troubling scenes in The Peretzniks.

Gomulka’s anti-Semitic diatribe touched off a wave of Jewish emigration and spelled finis to the Peretz school. With a much smaller Jewish student body, the school had no alternative but to close, ending an era.

The students, now parents and grandparents, agree that their departure from the country they loved was difficult and painful. “We were uprooted,” says a woman plaintively. Despite their trials and tribulations, they have mostly fond memories of Poland and the school that played such a pivotal role in their formative years.

The Peretzniks will be screened in Toronto on Thursday, June 10, at 7:30 p.m. at the University of Toronto’s Innis Town Hall. In Montreal, it will be screened on Tuesday, June 8, at 7:30 p.m. at Adams Auditorium . The Ottawa screening is on Wednesday, June 9, at 7:30 p.m. at the Alumni Auditorium, University of Ottawa.

A Long List of Absentees (Dluga Lista Nieobecnych)
By Julia Rzemek, Tomasz Gromadka
Rzeczpospolita Polish Daily, Poland
April 15, 2010

“March 68 changed the lives of thousands of people, scarring their hearts forever. We are reminded of this thanks to Slawomir Grunberg’s documentary.”

The Went to School on Shabbos (Do swojej szkoly chodzili w szabas)
By Krzysztof Maslon
Rzeczpospolita Polish Daily, Poland
April 9, 2009

The director of The Peretzniks performed a marvelous job of registering hundreds of conversations and accessing not only those, who continues to visit Lodz, but also those who have nothing but bitterness towards the ‘Old World’. (…) This single film says more about the March events (the Communist antisemitic campaign, which took place in Poland in 1968) than all of the other existing projects on that subject taken together – said Leo Kantor, the director of the film festival “Man in the World”, himself a Pole and a Jew, who was ‘made to leave’ for Sweden back in those terrible days.

Ambassador to the Republic of Poland in Canada introduces "The Peretzniks" at the Ottawa screening
May 20, 2010

Ladies and Gentlemen,
Dear Guests,
Dear Representatives of Polish and Jewish communities,
Dear Friends,

I am happy to be with you tonight to watch a very moving and important documentary The Peretzniks.

Students from the Peretz School in Lodz, probably the most famous Jewish school in postwar Poland, share with us their recollections of the past, after German occupation and the Holocaust. Despite the fact that sometimes they had experienced antagonistic approach from some of non-Jewish Poles and had to leave the country because of the communist government’s policy in the late sixties, they still feel strong emotional bonds with Poland, after forty years have gone by.

They are moved to tears when they recall their great Polish teachers, especially Mrs. Kwiatkowska. They still speak beautiful Polish and they are proud of it. This phenomenon shows how deeply fates of Poles, Polish Catholics and Polish Jews are interwoven. How much all of us, Jews and Poles alike; wherever we live - in Poland, in Canada, the United States, Israel or anywhere else in the world, are still the same family. Maybe this family has been a little bit dysfunctional but it is a family, bound with love to the first homeland or the homeland of ancestors - Poland. Whatever the reason that caused many of us to leave the country or stay there; there is a growing sense of unity and togetherness between us.

Why do we experience such a reunion? There are probably many answers. One of them seems quite obvious – twenty years ago the brave people of Solidarity toppled communism and the nation began creating a new democratic state. Poles around the world, regardless of faith or origin have been proud of their native homeland, because people of this land brought about a big and peaceful change and opened the gates of freedom to many European neighbours. In this atmosphere of triumph a process of soul-searching began.

We have started talking about many previously forbidden or forgotten topics – one of them being the sad events of 1968. We have also begun pondering centuries-long Polish-Jewish coexistence, finding bright as well as sad pages of the story. We set off on a journey towards mutual understanding and we rediscovered a rich legacy. We want to preserve this legacy for future generations and this is why in Warsaw we are building the Museum of the History of Polish Jews.

Let me recall here words of the man who deeply understood the significance of Polish-Jewish dialogue. The late president Lech Kaczynski speaking at the ceremony commemorating the 40th anniversary of the events of 1968 said:
I belong to a generation which was a witness to this campaign ... This campaign lasted for many weeks, but in a certain sense even longer. It was a campaign which violated not only the basic rules of a civilized society, it was not only a – and it has to be said out loud – a racist campaign, but it was also the cause of irreparable damage to our country, damage which has not been repaired even today.

This campaign expelled thousands of people from our country who might have had Jewish origins, but who were Poles and thousands of people who identified themselves as Jews but Polish Jews. These were usually people of extraordinary value. (...) These events were, generally speaking, very unfavourable for Poland and in certain cases even tragic. This should also be remembered.

Now there is a growing interest in Jewish culture. It is enough to go to Cracow and see thousands of people, majority of them young, attending Jewish Culture Festival to understand how spontaneous and significant this process is. The 20th edition of Jewish Culture Festival begins in two weeks. You have still some time to book a flight to Cracow.

I would like to thank the organizers of this screening: The Polish Jewish Heritage Foundation, a group of very dedicated people working to strengthen Polish-Jewish bonds. And, of course, thank you to the documentary’s director Mr. Slawomir Grinberg and Mr. Henryk Lewkowicz, co-author of the documentary, himself student of the Peretz School, now living here in Ottawa. Both gentlemen are with us tonight – thank you.

I wish you a wonderful evening.

Zenon Kosiniak-Kamysz - Ambassador to the Republic of Poland in Canada

Joy, Pain and Survival: Portrayed by filmmaker Slawomir Grunberg
By Masha Leon
Forward
February 5, 2010

On February 21, I had dinner with Emmy-winning filmmaker Slawomir Grunberg. Two of his recent films — “The Peretzniks,” a 2009 Polish film that had its American premiere at the recent Jewish Film Festival, and “Saved by Deportation: An Unknown Odyssey of Polish Jews,” the December 2006 award-winner at the Washington Jewish Film Festival — evoked painful memories. In &ldquldquo;The Peretzniks” we meet people ranging in age from 55 to 75 who recall their adolescent friendships and crushes in postwar Lodz, where they attended the Yiddish-language Peretz School, named after the Yiddish writer I.L. Peretz. One of its alumni is architect Daniel Libeskind. Dispersed throughout the world following Poland’s 1968 antisemitic purge, the film chronicles the alumnis’ reunion in Israel, where the conversation is in Polish and not a word of Yiddish is spoken.

In “Deportation,” the fate of Polish Jews exiled to Siberia in 1939 following the Hitler-Stalin pact and their subsequent hegira through Uzbekistan and Tajikistan replicates my father’s near-death travails at that time and place — about which he never spoke. Joining us at dinner was Grunberg’s friend Katka Reszke, who, like Grunberg, learned of her Jewish roots as an adult. Special project director of the North American Council of the Museum of the History of Polish Jews (in Warsaw), Reszke, who is the editor and assistant director of “The Peretzniks,” discovered that both her grandmother and mother were Jews. Holding Polish-Israeli citizenship, Reszke received her doctorate in Jewish studies at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University. Her doctoral thesis was “The Identity of Young Polish-Jewish Adults.” Grunberg, who was born in Lublin and whose father still lives in Torun (Copernicus’s birth town), knew not of his roots until his mother, before dying, told him, “We are Jewish.”

At Lodz’s Peretz School, which was the last Jewish school in Poland before its students fled to Denmark, Sweden, France, the United States and Israel, all subjects were taught in Yiddish — including Polish! Following the establishment of Israel, Polish antisemitism was ratcheted up. Israel’s birth was perceived as “aggression.” A secular school, some of its students were not Jewish, but were children of Polish instructors or Jehovah’s Witnesses. The Peretzniks consider themselves an extended, worldwide family that substitutes for the grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins lost in the Holocaust, with whom they celebrate each other’s simkhas.

In “Saved by Deportation,” Grunberg follows 58-years-married Asher and Shifra Scharf as they retrace their wartime odyssey, which began in Poland, to Siberia, to Tashkent [Uzbekistan] to Tajikistan and Stalinabad, before their postwar rescue and return to Poland. They dealt with starvation, typhoid and unbelievable living conditions, including “bedbugs falling on you at night from the ceiling,” working in coal mines and felling trees in 50-below zero. Yet, without exception, the local populations — Christians, Muslims, Russians, Tajiks, Uzbeks — treated them, and their fellow exiles, with kindness, often sustaining them during difficult times. Not one incident of antisemitism, until their return to Poland! Back in the United States, the Sharfs, now in their 80s, share their memories with fellow deportees, some of whom are members of the Hasidic community. (I can’t remember how many children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren there were from among these survivors.) Bottom line: “If we had not been deported to Siberia,” every deportee in the film concurred, “we would have perished in the Holocaust.”

Completely off the main topic of the film: I found the aspect of homage to the old teachers very touching - to see the former students finding them and showing them clips of the film on the computer... How many teachers ever experience that or even know what happened to their former pupils?
Aleks
August 20, 2010

"The Peretzniks" is a great document of the post-World War II situation of Jews who survived the war and tried to establish their lives in the devastated country, with most of their families and relatives gone.

Slawomir Grunberg was able to communicate to the viewers the peculiarities of those times, and the ambivalence of being a Jew, born in Poland, and attached to his or her country, in spite of the more recent history that frequently divided Poles and Polish Jews. He did so with great, impartial sensitivity. He stimulated the Peretzniks to be sincere, true, and thoughtful, and he captured the nuances with the hand—and an eye—of a master.

His documentary will remain the witness of the times that are fading quickly from the collective memory.

As somebody who was to a certain extent a part of this history, I was deeply touched on the personal level by the accurate depiction of the dilemmas the Jews in Poland were facing after the war, especially in 1968, which practically terminated a 1,000-year history of Jews, settled in Poland.

It would be extremely valuable to see similar documentaries produced by Mr. Grunberg in other localities in Poland and other countries in that part of Europe, something akin to what Roman Vishniac accomplished with his still camera, although Vishniac had the advantage of capturing Jewish history there just before the Holocaust.
Piotr H
August 20, 2010