2 minutes) The opening title card announces that the events are taking place on the eastern border of Poland
Tale
Through the eyes of a strong-willed woman, we learn the extraordinary story of Irena Gut and the triumphs of the human spirit over devastating tragedy as she risks her life to save a generation of Jews from the horrors of the Holocaust. Although this Canadian film had a much wider theatrical release in Canada than the typical Canadian film, for some reason its distributor, Elevation Pictures, decided not to give the film a significant marketing budget. As a result, the film was a box office failure and was pulled from most theaters at the end of its third week of release. (approx.
What we do is who we are
This area of Poland was invaded by the Soviet Union. However, the area is occupied by German troops. Irena Gut Opdyke: What difference does it make who we are? BoumMusic by Charles TrenetLyrics by Charles TrenetPerforms by Charlie and his Orchestra The street scenes for this film were filmed in the Old Town of Lublin, 4 kilometres from the Majdanek concentration camp, where my wife’s grandmother (Adela) was imprisoned for 18 months.
After a few minutes we saw them both crying and hugging
Adela was a nurse in the Polish secret army and was taking care of a Polish soldier who was wounded when one day the Gestapo came to her home town of Kurów, went to her house, shot the soldier and arrested her. She was taken to the Gestapo headquarters in Lublin and tortured for two weeks, including multiple rapes. They broke all her fingers, her jaw and many ribs, and then she was sent to the Majdanek concentration camp. She died three years ago, and after the service we saw a strange man talking to my father-in-law.
His mother made a desperate decision to exchange information about Adela for medicine for her son
It turned out that he was from the same town of Kurów and had been very ill during the war, and the only medicine available was the Germans. Grandma Adela never spoke about how she was deceived until her death because she knew that her son, his mother and her entire family would be called traitors and would face huge problems. She only mentioned the camp a few times in her life because it was too traumatic for her to talk about it. However, when she did talk about it, it was about the disgusting things the Germans did to the Jews.
I was proud to name my daughter after her
It was like the street scene in that movie where one German guard smashed a child’s head on the floor because it was crying too loudly. I try to understand the hatred between nations in modern times, but Grandma Adela taught us that hatred should be directed at the leaders of such terrible conflicts, not at the people.
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