The premiere of Katyn was attended by the legendary movie director Andrzej Wajda himself. During his stay in Kyiv he gave a press interview on which the following interview is based.
What sources did you use to make the film?
“The film is based not only on historical facts: it is also my personal response. This is a story about my family, my father who was shot in Katyn, and my mother who believed to the very end that he would come back. Although the Katyn mass graves were discovered in 1943 and the list of the executed officers was made public, my mother was still waiting for my father to return.
“As for the historical materials, I must say that immediately after this crime was exposed, the whole process was turned over to the London-based Polish government in exile. Enormous work was done, and this research helped the Sikorski Institute in London establish the first databases. These were materials about those who had been shot not only in Katyn but also in other places, in Ukraine and Belarus. I would also like to emphasize the role of personal reminiscences - the memoirs, notes, and diaries of the people who were affected by this crime, which were published after 1943. This is the testimony of those who visited the mass graves in Katyn, recollections of the wives of the slaughtered officers, etc.
“We also used Soviet sources, because the last president of the USSR Mikhail Gorbachev and then President Boris Yeltsin of Russia gave Poland materials from Soviet archives, including Stalin’s declassified order, according to which this crime was in fact committed. I finally gathered an enormous archive of the Katyn crime, which unquestionably helped me in my work. Once I got around to making the film, my question was: what is the topic?”
What is the film about?
“I answered my question this way: it will be about the Katyn crime and the Katyn lies.”
One of the film’s subjects, a secondary one at first glance, is Poland’s independence and freedom. Some of the dialogue suggests that Poland would never be free. Can we say that now, in the conditions of globalization, the country is really free and independent?
“The idea that Poland would never be free was planted in the minds of millions of people for many years, and I myself did not expect that I would ever live in an independent country, and be able to come to your country and talk with you as a free man with free people. When Poland found itself within the Soviet sphere of influence, it was the result of war actions and violence against our country rather than an act of good will. Poland is now entering European organizations and participating in Euro-integration: it is our political, cultural, and historical interest. It is our choice.”
There used to be an NKVD torture dungeon in this very building, and the same thing occurred here as in Katyn.
“The question of why we are talking here should be addressed to the organizers of our meeting. If this was a deliberate choice, it is undoubtedly symbolic. This again shows the victory of the ideals that we espoused rather than those of our Soviet communist enemies and occupiers, who committed those crimes.”
Is the reaction to Katyn the same in Ukraine and in Russia?
An unheard-of and touching thing happened in Moscow. After the screening, one of the spectators asked the 450 members of the audience to stand up and honor the victims of Katyn with a minute of silence. The audience rose. This also proves that we were right to show the film there. Naturally, there will be different attitudes, and we are prepared for this because the goal of the film is a debate. This debate in the press, in various memoirs and newly-found materials is still going on. Another goal was to launch a discussion of all those events in the sphere of art; we think this could help us reconcile ourselves to these events and take them, to a certain extent, into our hearts.”
You were in the Armia Krajowa. Are you planning to make a film about the Volyn events and complete the line from Katyn to Volyn?
“I am not planning to make a film about Volyn. I have already said that one of the reasons why I made a film about Katyn is that it is part of my family’s story, there is a personal aspect here.”
I have always loved Polish movie stars. Does this star system still exist in Poland?
Andrzej CHIRA who plays one of the main roles: “In our country, the system of raising stars, like it exists in the West, is not very well developed, but we still feel its influence because our well- known actors are on the front pages of newspapers and on the televised news. Still, we are not so ‘starry’ because we do not act in TV productions. The most famous actors in Poland are those who are on television. We are still actors of the cinema and theater.”
Speaking about actors, I can’t help noting that Katyn also stars the Kyiv-based actors Oleh Savkin and Oleh Drach as well as the Russian actor Sergei Garmash, who was born in Ukraine’s Kherson region.
Andrzej WAJDA: “When we were looking for Russian-speaking actors, we turned to a well-known Polish agency that suggested we hire these actors to play the Russian-speaking characters. This was a very correct choice. I am delighted with the artistic skills of these gentlemen, because in fact they created their roles by themselves. They played the way I could not perhaps instruct them. They felt everything absolutely correctly and played their characters, using their own mental groundwork. They devised the scene in which the Soviet artillery officer played by Garmash speaks to the NKVD man played by Oleh Savkin, and I am grateful to them for this.”
In the episode you are talking about, a Soviet officer helps a Polish family. But nowhere in Polish cinema is there a scene showing a German invader helping the Poles. How can you explain this?
“This bit was true to life. Otherwise, I would not have dared invent something like that. This was taken from the reminiscences of two women whom I joined into one screen character. One told me that a Soviet officer suggested that she marry him to avoid being deported to Kazakhstan. Another story was that when the NKVD came to arrest some Poles, a Soviet officer said they no longer lived there. When the NKVD men had gone, the Polish family went out the back door and was saved. As for help from the Germans, it is true that I have never filmed such scenes, but there is an episode like that in Roman Polanski’s The Pianist. There were quite a few good people in the Soviet army, such as Solzhenitsyn, Grigory Chukhrai, who later became a film director and a friend of mine; they were also in the war. We can presume that if they had been in a similar situation, they would have behaved equally nobly.”
Can you tell us about your new film, which is based on a novel by Jaroslaw Iwaszkiewicz?
“Yes, I want to use the works of this writer again. He has often provided me with rich materials for screen adaptations. I made The Birch Wood and The Maids of Wilko, and now I would like to film his Tatar Weed, which is set immediately after the war.”
The impression is that all the film characters who did not want to keep silent about Katyn died. To what extent was Katyn a taboo subject in Poland? How did the Poles live with it?
“The Polish people are represented by the school principal, who says that regardless of the political situation, she must bring up the next situation and when this generation matures, then the Solidarnosc movement may emerge, as the finale of this story hints. As for coverage of the Katyn issue, there were two aspects. One is official, from 1945 until 1989, when it was said that the Katyn crime was the handiwork of the Germans. There was also unofficial opinion after 1943 about who was really to blame, and some families even received what was left of the personal belongings and documents of those who had died in Katyn. In addition, the works of emigre historians who wrote about this were secretly smuggled in from abroad. Society was always aware of who was to blame.”
It seems to me that this film should be logically completed, if not by you, Mr. Wajda, then by your pupils. There are two items in the CC AUCP(B) resolution. We saw in the film the consequences of the first item: the execution of 14,000 officers from POW camps. But the7,500 soldiers who were in the prisons of Ukraine and Belarus were left out of the film even though they met the same fate. Hundreds of thousands of officers’ wives and many Polish civilians were deported to labor camps, where they were dying during their 8-to-10-year terms. The younger generation should know about this.
“Of course, one can make films that would continue this subject in various directions. For example, one could show the political background, what was going on behind the scenes of this crime, the actions of the leaders, those who made decisions and issued orders. This would be extremely interesting. A sequel could be made. But this question is no longer up to me. I would like to say goodbye to the subject of Katyn, war, and the tragic past in general. This is a task for the generations to come.”
