"Among Neighbors" Documentary Screening & Discussion

Decades after the Holocaust, award-winning American filmmaker Yoav Potash (Crime After Crime, Sundance Film Festival) unearths the haunting mysteries of a small Polish town where people of two different faiths lived side by side for centuries.

At its heart, the film focuses on two individuals who lived through the peril of World War II and its aftermath: Yaacov Goldstein, a Holocaust survivor whose harrowing story exposes both the heights of human compassion and the depths of cruelty and Pelagia Radecka, an eyewitness to when five Jews were murdered, not by the Nazis but by her own Polish neighbors, six months after the end of World War II.

Breaking decades of silence for this film, they share secrets they have held for a lifetime, and their experiences are brought to life in stunning animated sequences, enriched by artful touches of magical realism. Together, their accounts illuminate the darkest chapter of Poland’s history. As attempts to rewrite this history in favor of a more politically convenient narrative gain momentum, Among Neighbors offers a powerful counterpoint. Revealing a tale of love and
murder spanning seven decades, the film boldly asserts that true patriotism lies in facing history honestly, no matter how painful the truths may be. As life imitates art, political extremists and historical revisionists in Poland, including its president, have now called for the film itself to be banned.

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