Among Neighbors

As part of its WWII strategy, Germany tried to kill or imprison the leaders of Polish society. They didn’t just target military and political officials, but also anyone who could inspire resistance or righteousness. The Soviets did likewise, both during and after the War. That left a lot of opportunists and collaborationists in positions to take advantage. Tragically, they often did so. They even murdered Yaacov Goldstein’s parents, who had thought they could restart their lives in the village of Gniewoszow, having survived the Holocaust. It is not Goldstein who makes that accusation. Yoav Potash interviews a living witness in the documentary, Among Neighbors, which is now playing in New York.

It seems unbelievably cruel that Goldstein’s parents were murdered by their neighbors, after the National Socialists’ defeat. Yet, that is exactly what Pelagia Radecka saw. At least Goldstein had a brief reunion with his mother, after the Allied victory, but she quickly left again in search of his missing younger brother, promising to return soon. Sadly, she never did.

Radecka had not seen Goldstein since before the war started, until Potash briefly re-introduced them for the film (both passed away after the production wrapped). Consequently, her testimony was not influenced by contact with the victims’ families. She was horrified by the murderers—committed by people she personally knew quite well—and terrified for her safety. However, in her senior years, she felt compelled to finally speak out.

Among Neighbors does not exclusively concentrate on the testimony and experiences of Radecka and Goldstein (although perhaps it should have). Periodically, Potash draws back to taker a wider perspective on Poland’s contested view of the Holocaust. Admittedly, much of what the film documents should alarm the audience, as when Anita Friedman and her grown son Adam Tartakovsky explain how they visited Gniewoszow in search of their family roots, but were essentially run out of town by an anti-Semitic “welcoming committee.”

Likewise, Potash thoroughly critiques the subsequently softened Polish laws that criminalized any official association of Poland and the Polish people with the atrocities of the Holocaust. However, the film never addresses the Communist regime’s 1967/1968 “Anti-Zionist” campaign, which purged Jews from positions of authority and even forcibly deported them. Frankly, the roots of the problem run deeper than the admittedly troubling but relatively recent Law and Justice Party.

Regardless, Goldstein and Radecka personalize the grief and fear caused by Jew-hatred in post-war Poland. In fact, Potash recreates their oral histories in extensive animated sequences that dramatically convey the horror and confusion of the two witnesses, confronting shameless cruelty, as young children. In fact, Among Neighbors should have more than enough animation to qualify as a “hybrid.”

This is an eye-opening and often chilling documentary. From a filmmaking perspective, it would either benefited from greater historical context or a narrower focus on Goldstein and Radecka, but anyone who watches it in good conscience will learn a great deal. Recommended as a further expose of the pathological anti-Semitism that continues to poison supposedly civilized nations, Among Neighbors is now playing in New York at the Quad and opens this Friday (10/17) in LA at the Laemmle Royal.