Dasha is Coming Back + Kazik and the Kommanders Car

Event information

Dasha is Coming Back: Four decades on, Dasha visits her birthplace in the beautiful mountain region of Beskydy. Nothing is familiar to her there anymore. She had to leave when she was 2 years old. Her mum was imprisoned in 1949 for helping Mr.Vrba, a wounded anticommunist foreman. Her father had been chased by Members of State Secret Police until they ran him down in the local deep forest Small Dasha was brought up by her grandparents in Ostrava, a big town far-away from her native village. Even though Dasha’s memory is wretched, that of local citizens and neighbours is much richer. What does Nový Hrozenkov have for Dasha to discover? One episode from a major Czech project, Children of Stalinism.

Kazik and the Kommanders Car: On June 20th 1942, Kazik Piechowski, then a Polish boy scout, and three other prisoners, disguised themselves as SS officers, stole the commandant's car, and escaped from Auschwitz I. This short documentary follows the songwriter Katy Carr's visit to Poland in August 2009 to meet Kazik, now 90, and play him her song 'Kommander's Car', a tribute to his do-or-die escape. Through Kazik's strong and moving response to Katy's song, we are given a direct window into his memory and experience of the last 80 metres of his escape, where he and the other prisoners drove up to the outer checkpoint of the camp, and all their lives depend upon five seconds of daring and inspiration.