BOGDAN'S JOURNEY

On July 4, 1946, a year after the Second World War, the militia, soldiers and ordinary inhabitants of Kielce kill more than 40 Jews who survived the Holocaust, who live on the Jewish committee in the city center. They injure about 80 people throughout Kielce. The Kielce Pogrom becomes a symbol of Polish post-war anti-Semitism in the Jewish world. In Poland, it is a topic forbidden by the people’s authorities. With the fall of communism, Bogdan Białek, a Polish Catholic, psychologist by education, opens Pandora’s box: he begins to speak publicly about what happened in 1946. It breaks through conspiracy theories about the pogrom, displacing the pogrom from the consciousness of the inhabitants of Kielce and the mutual stereotypes of Poles and Jews, which have been preserved over the years. The rapprochement between the inhabitants of Kielce and the Jews is beginning to emerge, but it also comes at a price. The film’s directors – a Polish Catholic and an American Jew – learned to look at the history of the pogrom together for nearly ten years of making the film. On the 70th anniversary of the tragedy, they present viewers with a story of how much can change between people when even the most difficult truth is conveyed with love.