The Daily Telegraph - Features
ALEKSANDRA KOŁODZIEJCZYK, THE RESISTANCE FIGHTER TO WHOM JONATHAN GLAZER DEDICATED HIS AWARD
There are some rare moments in Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest when it breaks from its pseudodocumentary approach. Filmed in negative with a thermal camera, these intermissions have a fairytale-like quality. But, as they recur, it becomes clear that a girl whom we first see hiding apples is smuggling food to prisoners working in the fields.
The girl is a real-life figure. “Aleksandra Kołodziejczyk, the girl who glows in life as she does in this film,” said Glazer in his speech. “I dedicate this [award] to her memory and to her resistance.”
Kołodziejczyk was born in July 1927, just six miles from the eventual site of the Auschwitz II-Birkenau camp. In 1941, aged 14, she joined the ZWZ-AK resistance movement.
“They risked their lives and the lives of their families to help the prisoners,” says Paweł Sawicki from the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum. “People were arrested and incarcerated for their help. She and her family were in danger.”
Code-named “Olena”, Kołodziejczyk and her sister acted as liaisons between prisoners and the outside world. Under the guise of working in a mine, she smuggled food, medicine, warm clothes and messages to prisoners. She worked at night, stashing supplies in the fields where the prisoners could find them.
Kołodziejczyk stayed in the same town after the war. She graduated from technical college, but communist authorities prevented her from pursuing further studies. She was happy to share her experiences with Glazer.
“She lived in the house we shot in,” Glazer said. “It was her bike we used, and the dress the actor wears was her dress. That small act of resistance, the simple, almost holy act of leaving food, is crucial because it is the one point of light.”
Sadly, Kołodziejczyk died during the making of The Zone of Interest, yet thanks to Glazer’s Oscar-winning picture, her courage will now be better known.