Notably, the camera pauses on a Jewish man, huddling under his tallit (a religious prayer shawl), rocking back and forth praying in Hebrew. In transit, the unfortunate passengers appeal many times to God for mercy most cross themselves, especially when the door opens accidentally half-way through the journey to a vision of a church. Several months later, in the middle of a night in February 1940, and bearing an eerie parallelism to earlier historical events such as in the fictitious village of Anatevka in Fiddler on the Roof, the residents of Podola are expelled from their homes and forced onto a cattle car bound for Siberia. Directed by Janusz Zaorski, and based on the book of the same name by Zbigniew Domino (who was also sent to Siberia with his family from his native Rzeszów), the film is as long as it is melodramatic. It is September 1st 1939.īack at the house, Staszek's mother Antonina and Jan Dolin are enjoying an intimate moment over a bowl of shaving cream, when they too, notice the commotion these foreign planes are causing. They immerse themselves in the water, only to re-emerge a moment later to military planes flying dangerously low over them. His Jewish childhood sweetheart hesitates for a moment before jumping in after him. Staszek Dolin, the teenage protagonist, is shown running and jumping off a rickety old pier into a lake. Syberiada Polska begins as it ends, in the idyllic rural town of Podola in “Czerwony Jar” in Eastern Poland.
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