Section: Close Up WWII

Unvergessene Geschichten

Unvergessene Geschichten

Andrzej Winiszewski
Poland, Germany, 2017, 40 Min

Once German, now Polish: the eventful history of the small town of Trzębiel has been strongly shaped by displaced and resettled people. People who were unable to determine their own paths in life. The authors set off on a search for clues that takes in photo albums, postcards and very different memories of a city that no longer exists.

A city in the countryside, the houses beautifully decorated and brightly painted. The place looks idyllic. This wasn't always the case. The film takes us back in time, interviews residents and former residents of the Lubusz town of Trzębiel, formerly known as Triebel. Contemporary witnesses use city maps and postcards to reconstruct topographical information: where was the market, the school, the hairdresser? Photo albums tell personal stories. Poles who were expelled from what was then eastern Poland after 1945 and subsequently settled here remember what, for them, was a new beginning. Germans who were expelled from here reflect on a farewell. There are memories of escape, but above all of the immediate post-war period. The city was almost completely intact at the time, yet the houses around the market were demolished in order to free up the bricks to rebuild Warsaw, which had been destroyed by the Germans. Other contemporary witnesses also speak of well-organised gangs involved, at the time, in an illegal trade in bricks. WMH

Andrzej Winiszewski -