The inaccuracies in Edward Zwick’s new film Defiance, in cinemas now, may simply be the result of a misunderstanding of historical resources. But it is not the first time that Poland’s part in the Second World War has been misinterpreted by Hollywood.
And despite the suggestions made by the film, the main character – Tewje Bielski (portrayed by current ‘James Bond’ actor Daniel Craig), who with his brothers established a Soviet partisan troop in Nabolicka Forest – can by no means be compared to Oscar Schindler, whose actions saved the lives of countless Jews from Nazi persecution.
The issue is especially troubling because at this very moment the Polish Institute of National Memory (IPN) is conducting an investigation into the part potentially played by Bielski’s troop in a massacre of 128 Poles in the village of Nawroki.
Whether or not Bielski or any of his men are judged to have been involved in that event, it underlines the fact that one must consider the tense divergences in the Jewish and Polish histories of the war before taking up the challenge of imagining it.
Although it was indeed something beyond any previous idea of cruelty and horror, the Holocaust was not the only crime against humanity committed during the war years. Surely the Soviet Union’s crimes against Poland, from the attack on the Polish state on 17 September 1939 to the murder of civilians and Polish soldiers, cannot be disregarded or forgotten.
Like the Allies at the time, today’s western world pretends to forget that Poland, though not a part of the Axis, was in a state of war with Soviet Russia, and any picture of the Soviet army acting as the ‘good’ side against the Germans is particularly bitter and unjust in light of the Polish experience. With this in mind, the Irish premiere this April of Andrzej Wajda’s KatyÅ„, which details the KatyÅ„ Forest massacre of 22,000 Poles sanctioned by the Soviet Union, will certainly be a much-needed counterpoint to the one-sided history recounted in Defiance.
As the Polish media has emphasised, regardless of dramatic licence, the story of Defiance contains some serious factual discordances. For one, the film’s location of Nowogródek Voivodeship was a part of Poland before the outbreak of the war; Defiance, however, places it in Belarus, as it is now, and completely ignores the presence of Polish Home Army troops in the area. Doubling the insult, the film portrays Tewje (anglicised to Tuvia) as speaking fluent Russian, not Polish.
The book on which the film was based, Defiance: The Bielski Partisans by Nechama Tec, is already available at Amazon.com with Daniel Craig’s grizzled features emblazoned on the cover.
But perhaps a more accurate account of events is Praw-dziwa historia braci Bielskich (or Revenge: The true story of Bielski brothers) by Piotr GÅ‚uchowski and Marcin Kowalski Odwet, published in Poland this month.
