Scouts condemn 'degrading' Polish WWII movie

Kamienie na Szaniec. Photo: Press Materials

Robert Glinski's film Stones on the Barricade (Kamienie na Szaniec) is based on the classic 1943 book of the same title by scout leader Aleksander Kaminski.

The work explores an actual prison break in occupied Warsaw in which two scouts liberated a colleague.

The three scouts were members of the so-called Grey Ranks (Szare Szeregi), a formation that cooperated with Poland's official resistance force, the Home Army (AK).

However, both veterans and current scout leaders have denounced the film as playing too fast and loose with the book's legacy.

“What is shown in the film is grossly as odds with the true historical and ideological message of Aleksander Kaminski's work, it undermines the ethos of the Grey Ranks, and diminishes their values,” the statement argued.

“[The director] freely uses storylines and characters presented in Aleksander Kaminski's story, and he degrades and trivializes the message of the book.”

Among the criticisms of the film is that Glinski has been too modern in his approach to sex.

Some historians have claimed it was not until the 1944 Warsaw Rising against the Germans that teenagers from Poland's intelligentsia began to take a more spontaneous attitude towards sex, dispensing with supposed pre-war standards of restraint.

Director Glinski insisted before the premiere that he had made a film about “brotherhood, friendship, love and true patrtiotism.” (nh)

Source: ZHP, wprost