Musical reconciliation in Poland

August 7, 2013 by J-Wire Staff
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Fay’s Journey’ (working title) is feature documentary in the making examining  the issues of reconciliation between young Jews and Poles members of the 3rd generation following WWII.

Fay Sussman and her band

Fay Sussman and her band

 

It will show them trying to come to terms with the horrors of  the Holocaust on both sides and a genuine attempt at peace and understanding on both sides.

Sydney-based Fay Sussman was born in Poland in 1946 and until recently vowed never to return.  Sussman returned to Poland with her band , and played in small towns where the entire jewish populations were wiped out and was warmly greeted , with standing ovations by people who had no knowledge jews ever existed in their towns and hungry to know more. She met with young people preserving jewish graves which lay forgotten in peoples’s backyards or gravestones used as building materials.

Sussman told J-Wire: “I left Poland as a young child and have rarely spoken any Polish since. I astounded myself when I found myself speaking the language fluently after all these years.”

Australia has the largest population of Holocaust Survivors after Israel, many of them and their children hold painful memories and anger toward Poland. Poland is one of the few countries in Europe trying to reconcile with its history of horror on its home soil. The film  we want to make, looks at the attempts by individuals to respect each other’s pain and move forward towards tolerance and healing, using Fay Sussman and her music and the individuals in this new movement for peace.It is a microcosm of what can be achieved by individuals to somehow move forward after genocide and how the young  will deal with the trauma of the past.

 

On Sunday 25 August,  Camelot Lounge, Marrickville will feature Fay Sussman and the Perogi Klezmer Band,

The concert, starting at 7:30, will raise funds to edit the documentary recently shot in Poland.

Comments

3 Responses to “Musical reconciliation in Poland”
  1. Otto Waldmann says:

    Take it easy Luke !!
    Resistance inside Poland to the Nazi occupiers had a few tiers. The communist one, remnants of a national, non communist and the specific Jewish ghetto resistance. The last resistance organized by the Jews inside the ghettoes received practically no assistance from the other two forms.
    As such, your strange and distorted notion that hundreds of thousand of Polish Jews murdered inside Poland, not just in the largest, Warsaw, ghetto, but also in Lodz, Lublin, Krakow and so many others were, in fact, saved by an overwhelming bitterly anti Semitic Polish population is a blatant insult.
    FEW, I insist on few Polish people, helped and those few Polish people were , indeed, righteous. Part of the tragedy in the fate of the Polish Jews was the widespread vicious anti Semitism which has marked for centuries the profile of the Polish national character. So , how about you dig into a bit of historical data and only after you informed yourself come here and teach us our own history !

    Indeed, “Poles were the only country which had an organized resistance DEDICATED ( my capitals ) to save the Jews.” !!!!——————HIGHLY OFFENSIVE !!!
    The Warsaw ghetto was wiped out by the Nazis completely undisturbed by anyone…………
    “Debt of gratitude”……… you make me sick.

  2. Harry says:

    It is very difficult to reach any of the ” Related stories”.

  3. Luke says:

    What this ill informed article does not say is the Poles were the only country which had an organized resistance movement dedicated to help save the Jews and that multitude of Poles died saving Jews, more so than in any other nation as evidenced by the righteous among nations . Jews owe Poland a debt of gratitude, but instead have turned to hatred and historical revisionism.

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