As Leopold Socha spots a group of petrified naked
women being chased through a forest by German soldiers before they are all shot
dead, he just carries on regardless totally unmoved by what he has seen. This anti-Semitic
Polish catholic man considered that it was just one of the consequences of
having the Country Occupied in wartime by the Nazis who were set on killing off
the entire Jewish population, and that was nothing to do with him at all.
By day Socha (also known as Poldek) was a Sewer Inspector,
but by night he and his young work colleague Szczpek were burglars and he would
hide his stash underground before returning to his wife and daughter as if nothing
had happened. As the Jewish ghetto in
the town was slowly being liquidated it provided more places for the pair to loot. But also one day they come across a group of Jews who had just broken through to the Sewers as means to escape, and so Poldek sells them his 'services' to
guide then through the underground warren but for a heavy price.
What starts out strictly as a business proposition for
Poldek, very slowly turns into something he does out of sense of moral
obligation. As the days turn into weeks
and then months and the small group are still hiding out in the Sewers,
Poldek’s change of heart is very gradual and arises not because of some pivotal
awakening but the eventual realization that helping them is simply the right thing to do. He must however win his skeptical
wife over, keep his old buddy Bortnik a Commander in the Ukrainian Militia at arms
length, and also avoid the Germans at all times especially as they get closer and closer.
The group of Jews that Poldek is helping to keep alive
is very diverse. A wealthy sophisticated couple, a philandering husband
who left his wife and daughter to fend for themselves in the Ghetto so that he
could take his mistress, a very pious man who never seems to stop praying, the
local good-looking ducker-diver black market racketeer who turns over a new
leaf, two young women who are sisters, and a couple of kids. In the 14 months
they are thrown together in their unsavory and disgusting quarters, some will
fall in love, one will have a baby, and some will die.
The interesting paradox that really sets this story
aside from other Holocaust ones is that Poldek the ‘hero’ is not especially a
good man, even though he does end up doing the right thing. And also the trapped group of Jews are not
typical wonderfully warm types as all the enmities and conflicts that they
shared up in the Ghetto flare up even more under the pressure of their confinement.
It is from every angle an intensely harrowing story
with the full force of all its horror so graphically some illustrated with its
dimly lit underground sets stunningly photographed (I read that some of it was
actually filmed in sewers!)
Based on a true story and directed by veteran Polish
filmmaker Agnieszka Holland, who is no stranger to Holocaust movies as she
co-wrote and directed the Oscar nominated 'Europa Europa' about the young boy
who tried to disguise that fact he was a Jew by joining the Hitler Youth, and
prior to that she made 'Angry Harvest' about a Jewish family jumping off a train
to escape. Her experience and her obvious
commitment to the telling of these rather fraught and ghastly tales really helped make
this the extraordinary and powerful movie that it is, and the reason why it was Poland's Entry for Best Foreign Film Oscar last year.
In the end credits the movie is dedicated to the 6000
Poles, more than any other nationality, who are recognized as Righteous Gentiles
by the Israeli government for having risked their lives to save Jews. Leopold Socha (Poldek) and his wife Wanda are
two of them.
★★★★★★★★★
