Posted on 04/20/2009 3:03:20 PM PDT by lizol
"Katyn", a recent Polish movie production about the mass genocide of Polish elites by the Soviet NKVD at Stalin's personal order, is well-received in Italy. The Italian Prime Minister himself encouraged world leaders present at the NATO summit to see the picture.
Although the movie received so many good reviews, the company distributing copies of the movie to cinemas across the country is complaining they encounter serious prejudice and hostility. Martio Mazarotto of the company said in an interview that the world of culture and also of distribution of movies within Italy is almost monopolized by extreme leftists, for whom the truth about communist crimes is not a comfortable subject, so they are doing everything they can to suppress the message.
The movie by Andrzej Wajda is silenced across Europe, said Mazzarotto. In some countries, companies bought distribution rights and are not showing the movie at all. They bought the movie to keep it away from the public, Mazzarotto argues. Italian culture minister Sandro Bondi, who asked the Venice festival management to screen Katyn in September, says he also thinks the movie is under an intentional boycott from leftist ideologues. Reportedly, authors of books and movies telling the story of communist crimes in Italy have been viscously attacked and even beaten, reports RZECZPOSPOLITA.
Of course the feel uncomfortable. To that type, Soviet Union= good. Everybody else= bad.
Wrong link.
No, it’s OK. The linked text is a part of a longer press review.
must be a pretty good movie
An unpleasant dose of reality for the historically ignorant who think Che t-shirts and revolution is cool. But Katyn wasn’t the first or last genocide at the hands of the vanguard of the worldwide proletariat. Lenin’s Red Terror, Stalin’s collectivization, Mao’s Cultural Revolution and Pol Pot’s insanity are just some of the most well known bloodlettings in the name of the worldwide march of the working class.
The movie was available on YouTube with English subs, but I think they’re going to take it down anytime now.
I will reiterate, very graphic, and very upsetting, especially to anyone of Polish heritage. Just glad no Russians were in my vicinity after I saw it.
I do also like the fact that in the movie Wajda doesn’t let the Nazis go scot-free with the depiction of the Sonderaktion Krakau. The true tragedy of Poland during the war, caught in-between the two most despicable regimes in history.
The movie really served two purposes, one to show what happened, but also to demonstrate the post-war dilemmas facing Poles who knew the truth, despite the official party line about what happened at Katyn.
From Wiki:
22,000 deaths-
--
"The Katyn massacre, also known as the Katyn Forest massacre (Polish: zbrodnia katyńska, 'Katyń crime'), was a mass murder of thousands of Polish military officers, policemen, intellectuals and civilian prisoners of war by Soviet NKVD, based on a proposal from Lavrentiy Beria to execute all members of the Polish Officer Corps dated March 5 1940. This official document was then approved (signed) by the entire Soviet Politburo including Stalin and Beria. [1][2][3] The number of victims is estimated at about 22,000, the most commonly cited number is 21,768.[4] The victims were murdered in the Katyn forest in Russia, the Kalinin (Tver) and Kharkov prisons and elsewhere.[5] About 8,000 were officers taken prisoner during the 1939 Soviet invasion of Poland, the rest being Poles arrested for allegedly being "intelligence agents, gendarmes, saboteurs, landowners, factory owners, lawyers, priests, and officials."[4] Since Poland's conscription system required every unexempted university graduate to become a reserve officer,[6] the Soviets were able to round up much of the Polish intelligentsia, and the Jewish, Ukrainian, Georgian[7] and Belarusian intelligentsia of Polish citizenship.[8]"
And of course one of the students who witnessed Sonderaktion Krakau was a young Karol Wojtyla.
The President (figurehead) of the Italian Republic is an atheist and a Communist.
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