The move prompted criticism that the film could be shelved, the Gazeta Wyborcza newspaper reported.
Gazeta Wyborcza said this week the 73-minute film, titled XI. Nie bądź obojętny (Eleventh: Thou Shalt Not Be Indifferent), was judged by some as too emotionally harrowing and politically contentious.
The film is described as a final message from Turski, a Polish journalist and Auschwitz survivor who died in Warsaw on February 18, 2025.
Turski was born Mosze Turbowicz on June 26, 1926, in Druskienniki, then part of interwar Poland, now in Lithuania.
He grew up in a Polish Jewish family and was trapped with relatives in the Litzmannstadt Ghetto after Germany’s invasion of Poland.
He was deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau in August 1944 in one of the last transports from the ghetto.
He survived the camp, then death marches in early 1945 to Buchenwald and later to Theresienstadt, where, sick with typhus, he lived to see liberation.
After the war he settled in Warsaw and enjoyed a long career in journalism, including years at the weekly Polityka, where he led its history section.
He later worked in institutions focused on Holocaust remembrance and Jewish history, including the International Auschwitz Council, the Jewish Historical Institute, and associations of Jewish combatants and victims of World War II.
Hanna Machińska, a human rights advocate and former deputy commissioner for human rights, told Gazeta Wyborcza she believes the documentary risks becoming a work kept off screens and effectively put on the shelf.
“I was convinced that after Marian’s death such a film should be made and that it would easily find a place in public media,” she said.
Machińska argued the documentary should be shown in schools and universities. She added that even that may be difficult, telling the newspaper that the University of Warsaw authorities declined to screen the film for students last week, saying the decision should be made by the student council.
Footage from Gaza, Polish-Belarusian border
The newspaper said the film weaves Turski’s reflections with contemporary images and statements meant to demonstrate how hateful language can easily escalate.
It includes footage from Gaza in a section on modern examples of mass violence.
Gazeta Wyborcza reported that Poland’s Chief Rabbi Michael Schudrich left a screening visibly upset.
The documentary also incorporates remarks attributed to political leaders.
Gazeta Wyborcza cited toxic comments by US President Donald Trump about immigrants, remarks by former Polish President Andrzej Duda dismissing LGBT issues as "an ideology," and a statement by Jarosław Kaczyński, the leader of Poland's right-wing Law and Justice (PiS) party suggesting refugees were carriers of disease, alongside images of migrants detained at the Polish-Belarusian border and scenes of extremists chanting antisemitic slogans.
In one of the film’s central passages, Turski is quoted reflecting on the power of words and the limits of free expression when language can incite hatred.
He argues that the answer lies in "an attempt to overcome contempt on both sides," the newspaper reported.
'Auschwitz didn't fall from the sky'
Turski was widely known internationally for his warning that “Auschwitz didn't fall from the sky,” delivered on January 27, 2020, during ceremonies marking the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau.
He appealed for vigilance against historical falsehoods, the instrumental use of the past in day-to-day politics, and discrimination against minorities, urging people to adopt what he called "the eleventh commandment,” borrowed from his friend Roman Kent, “Thou shalt not be indifferent.”
Over decades, Turski received a string of honors in Poland and abroad. He was awarded the Commander’s Cross with Star of the Polonia Restituta Order in 1997 and the Gold Gloria Artis Medal for Merit to Culture in 2015.
Germany awarded him its First Class Federal Cross of Merit in 2007 for work supporting Polish-German relations, and France awarded him the Legion of Honour in 2012 for his engagement in shaping Polish-Jewish relations, with the French ambassador praising him at the ceremony as a “guardian of memory” who fought “against forgetting.”
He was an honorary citizen of Warsaw and Łódź and later received awards linked to the United Nations and Austria for public service and human rights work.
Machińska told Gazeta Wyborcza that Turski viewed the film on December 18, less than two months before his death, and approved it after minor changes.
The film was made largely with the creators’ own funds by Andrzej Wolf, Andrzej Krakowski and Majka Elczewska, the newspaper reported.
TVP rejected the suggestion that it had backed away from a planned broadcast, according to Gazeta Wyborcza.
In a statement from its corporate communications department, the public broadcaster said it had not scheduled the documentary for airing and had informed the filmmakers in December that it would not take part financially as a co-producer.
TVP said it has the right to decide which projects it supports and shows.
On Thursday, TVP marked the first anniversary of Turski’s death by broadcasting a different documentary, Mój najszczęśliwszy dzień (My Happiest Day), directed by Michał Bukojemski.
(rt/gs)
Source: dzieje.pl, wp.pl