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Actor receives threats after Jewish pogrom movie

PR dla Zagranicy
Nick Hodge 15.11.2012 12:02
Polish actor Maciej Stuhr has said he has been hit by a wave of hatred since starring in a movie that explores murders of Jews by Poles during the Second World War.

Maciej
Maciej Stuhr in Aftermath: press materials

“I knew that the thunder would strike – it was inevitable,” he told the Polish news channel TVN24.

Stuhr has been accused of slandering Poland by taking a role in Aftermath (Poklosie), which went on general release last week.

The 36-year-old actor said that most of the physical threats against him have been made on the internet, but that he wasn't allowing the criticism to get to him.

“It just makes me laugh,” he said, alluding to some of the more lurid attacks.

Aftermath follows two brothers who attempt to uncover a dark wartime secret in a fictional Polish village.

The film echoes the national soul-searching prompted by the 2001 book Neighbours by Princeton academic Jan T. Gross. The book brought a wartime massacre of ethnic Jews by ethnic Poles into the limelight, focusing on events in the town of Jedwabne in July 1941.

Other examples of murders of Jews by their neighbours soon surfaced.

“We're not dealing with this tragic history and that's what the film is about,” Stuhr said.

Director Wladyslaw Pasikowski won the Critics' Prize at this year's Gdynia Film Festival (Poland's most important movie event, in terms of home-grown films). The film was shot by Pawel Edelman (Katyn, The Ghost Writer, Carnage). (nh)

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