Travellers ambling across the Rynek this morning were struck by a chilling sight. A twenty-metre-long Nazi banner has been unfurled from the 'Phoenix Mansion' at number 41. However, before anyone worries that a band of right-wing loonies has hijacked the building, let's straighten out that the fascists have not risen again. The blood-red banners are set props for 'Post Mortem', the new film of Oscar-winning director Andrzej Wajda.
Wajda, who is very much the grand old man of Polish cinema, has begun shooting a film about the Katyn affair. The director's own father was a victim of this wartime atrocity, in which thousands of Polish officers were murdered by the Russian secret police. Although the Soviets tried to pin the blame on the Nazis at the time, Gorbachev eventually owned up in 1990 that the Russians were responsible.
Suffice it to say that the Germans carried out a similar campaign on the Polish intelligentsia. It's not the merriest fact to recall on a Monday morning, but Cracow's Main Market Square was renamed 'Adolf Hitler Platz' when the Nazis arrived in 1939.
|