The film gives insights into the personalities of the two men, Poland’s Henryk Sławik and Hungary’s Jozsef Antall, within the broader context of the WWII plight of the Polish and Hungarian nations and the tragedy of the Jewish nation.
Location shooting for the film took place in Poland’s southern Silesian region as well as in Hungary, Austria and Israel.
The film, entitled “Here is the Man: The Story of Henryk Sławik and Jozsef Antall,” was directed by Adam Kraśnicki. It was co-produced by the Warsaw-based Institute of National Remembrance and Polish Television.
Sławik and Antall are described by historians as the heroes of three nations, Polish, Hungarian and Jewish.
During World War II, Sławik set up the Citizens’ Committee for Help to Polish Refugees in Hungary and became a delegate of the London-based Polish government-in-exile. He is believed to have helped save more than 30,000 Polish refugees, including 5,000 Polish Jews, while working closely with Antall, the father of the future prime minister of Hungary.
After Polish refugees of Jewish descent were separated from their colleagues pending racial decrees issued by the Hungarian government, Sławik provided them with false documents attesting to their Polish roots and Roman Catholic faith.
Following the Nazi takeover of Hungary, Sławik went underground and arranged for Polish Jews to leave Hungary and survive the Holocaust.
He was arrested by the Germans in March 1944. Although brutally tortured, he did not betray Antall and his Hungarian friends. He was hanged in the Mauthausen concentration camp.
In 2010, he posthumously received the Order of the White Eagle, the highest Polish state distinction. That same year, Antall was posthumously awarded the Grand Cross of the Polish Order of Merit.
Both were posthumously honoured with Righteous Among the Nations medals for saving Jews during World War II.
In recent years, memorials commemorating the two men have been unveiled in Poland’s Katowice and the Hungarian capital Budapest.
(mk/gs)