News from Berlin
Raising Awareness about the Warsaw Uprising through Cinema
September 22nd, 2014
After the successful opening of the “Warsaw Uprising” exhibition in the Topography of Terror in August, the Polish Institute, in cooperation with the Topography of Terror, is organising a series of film screenings and debates to commemorate this important moment in history.
The first film was presented on October 18th, 2014 at the start of the programme. The movie, “Eroica. Heroic symphony in two parts”, consists of two narratives – “Scherzo alla polacca” and “Ostinato–Lugubre” – both of which tell the story of Poles and Polish soldiers during the Warsaw Uprising in 1944. The first part narrates the activity of a young man who decides to become a liaison officer, mediating between the Polish and Hungarian forces of branches retained by the Poles in Warsaw. The second tells the story of Polish officers in a German camp who cultivate the myth of the legendary refugee camp. Lieutenant Zawistowski was thought to be the only person that managed to escape from the camp, but the story that eventually emerges is different.
The series of events and movie screening commemorating Warsaw Uprising is a great example of productive cooperation between Polish and German institutions recently, both of which work on reconciliation and memory preservation about common history.
The commemoration in the Topography of Terror will continue in the form of debates on September 23rd, at 7pm: “The fate of Warsaw insurgents in Nazi concentration and POW camps”, and October 2nd, at 6pm: “Lessons of the 20th century- what Europe has learned?”