Witnesses (1987) [ENG SUBS]

Usually people understand perfectly well that corporations and manufacturers use tools of persuasion with which they try to increase sales. A perfectly obvious example would be TV commercials, which sometimes use manipulative phrases, such as "You're worth it". We know this type of tools from communist countries and call them "propaganda". But they don't offend us when we see them in commercials.

It's much harder to believe, however, that in democratic countries, the power apparatus, wanting to achieve the intended effects, every now and then also goes so far as to use similar tools. Sometimes even forcing us to act against our will and even common sense. An example can be the obedience to the rules of lockdowns, which in themselves took a worse toll of death than their cause, i.e. the virus. When these events took place, those who took notice were labeled by the mainstream media as spreading absurd conspiracy theories. On the other hand, those who submitted themselves to the authorities had no desire to listen to any critical opinion, and they were able to perform "self-judgment" on people who did not want to submit to the decisions of the government. It's easy to find videos today of people beating up other people who chose not to wear masks (e.g. in supermarkets). Are these images something new? Haven't similar things happened before? It is worth having a look at these events from a distance and in a broader context. And this is what history gives us.

Below is a commentary by historian Krystyna Kersten on the film "Witnesses":

It was 1946. A year after the war in which millions of Poles and Jews died. In Poland, there was resistance against the foreign, communist power that was imposed on Poles by force. The hope for true freedom of the Poles was placed in the free and unrestricted elections guaranteed during the Yalta Conference in 1945. On June 30, 1946, the referendum in Poland that took place. The vast majority of Poles said a categorical NO to the new [Russian] occupant. What was to be expected from the Russian aggressor, the election results in Poland were obviously falsified.

Four days after this referendum, the so-called "Slaughter in Kielce", which made the eyes of the [Western] world turn to Poles - but not as victims [of Russian occupier], but as anti-Semitic criminals, executioners of Jews, previously saved from the Nazi death camp in Shoah. Polish independent opinion of specialists sees in this the hand of the Soviet occupier.

I believe that it was most likely a provocation on the part of [the occupier] interested in diverting [the world's] attention from the suppression of independence being carried out in Poland at that time.

On the other hand, the size and barbarity of the events were definitely determined by the crowd itself [influenced by Soviet propaganda] and overcome by a psychosis of hatred of Jews.

***

During the Yalta Conference, which took place just after World War II, Stalin promised free elections in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria. Polish intelligence informed the Allies that the Red Army was occupying these countries and Stalin intended to take over them, creating puppet governments there and eliminating all opposition (similarly as Hitler had done before). Unfortunately, the shortsightedness of the Allies meant that Polish information was considered conspiracy theories... As we clearly know today, communist governments were indeed established in all those countries, noncommunist political parties were brutally suppressed, and genuinely democratic elections were never held.

***

It's worth digging deeper into these topics:

- https://www.britannica.com/event/Yalta-Conference
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yalta_Conference
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoah_(film)
- https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0090015/
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oq_wHbdVRuk
- https://youtu.be/tP0asi_z0KY?t=3
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extermination_camp