Unforgettable Past

Karol Becker, Jerzy Auerhan, Maria Lendowska and Jakub Guterman are able to quote Tuwim, Slowacki, and Milosz, even though they have spent their adult lives outside Poland. Their own experiences and parents’ stories help them remember cavalry songs and frivolous poems from Warsaw’s pre-war cafes. They are old men, former Polish, now Israeli Jews, who have given their lives to two motherlands. They are the ones who, thanks to their parents, have never forgotten about Poland. Their biographies are a great example of respect paid to life and history. The film attempts at showing the portraits of Polish Jews, so much injured by fate, who may have lost their families in Poland, who may have been treated horribly by their neighbors, but who have never forgotten Poland with its culture and art. This rare ability to look for goodness in life, to keep aside bad memories and concentrate on the good ones, to be able to handle things in a totally new situation carries a very deep message – you are truly human if you can find a bit of goodness in another man.