A documentary about Polish diplomats who saved Jews from concentration or death camps will be screened at the KEDEM Jewish Cultural Center in Chisinau on July 20. The film titled “Passports to Paraguay” directed by Robert Kaczmarek is about the “Bernese Group” that rescued Polish Jews whose story can compete with “Schindler’s List”, IPN reports.
In a press release, the KEDEM Center says “Passports to Paraguay” is the first film about the heroic deeds of Poland’s Ambassador to Switzerland Alexander Ladosh, Ambassador-Consul Konstantha Rokicki, Stefan Jan Rynevich, Juliusz Kyulia and two representatives of the Jewish organizations Adolf H. Silberstein and Chaim Eiss. They were engaged in the mass production of false passports of the Latin-American states Paraguay, Honduras, Haiti and Peru for Jews from Poland, Germany, the Netherland, Austria, France, Slovakia, Lithuania and Ukraine. Initially, it was an operation to save the Jewish elite, but in 1942 it became a large-scale rescue operation.
Owing to these papers, many families avoided deportation to concentration camps. Instead, they were sent to camp hospitals in Germany. Paraguayan passports were received by about 4,000 Jews and 1,500 of these survived the Holocaust, including 800 “Paraguayans”. Only now the relatives of many families of survivors will find out who their relatives owe their life to. Possibly, such amazing stories exist in Moldova too and these will help to compile the own Schindler list.
The screening will be attended by Poland’s Ambassador to Moldova Bartlomiej Zdaniuk and will be staged with support from the Swiss Cooperation Office and the KEDEM Jewish Cultural Center. The Film will be shown in the festivity hall of the KEDEM Center on July 20 between 4pm and 6pm
