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A Polish director with Jewish heritage made a movie about the migrant crisis. The government compared it to Nazi propaganda.
(JTA) — Poland’s justice minister is embroiled in a feud with one of the country’s best-known filmmakers after comparing her award-winning new movie about Europe’s migrant crisis to Nazi propaganda.
The director, Agnieszka Holland, is the daughter of a Catholic mother and Jewish father, both of whom were part of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. Her paternal grandparents died in the ghetto.
Holland’s latest film, “The Green Border,” tells the story of Syrian and Afghan refugees whose fates collide with a guard at the Poland-Belarus border. It premiered at the Venice Film Festival earlier this month, where it garnered rave reviews and won the special jury prize.
But reception has been much more hostile in Poland. Last week, several of the country’s right-wing ministers, including justice minister Zbigniew Ziobro, attacked the film by saying its depiction of border agents insulted the country. Ziobro’s attacks, in particular, stoked Holland’s ire when he likened it to Nazi propaganda on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter.
“In the Third Reich, the Germans produced propaganda films showing Poles as bandits and murderers,” Ziobro wrote. “Today they have Agnieszka Holland for that.” He later compared Holland to a communist.
The film’s social media pages have since been swarmed with antisemitic trolls, according to its sales agent. An irate Holland has threatened legal action against Ziobro, who is mentioned by name in the film. She has demanded that he apologize and make a donation to a Polish organization supporting Holocaust survivors.
An association for European filmmakers has come to Holland’s defense. “Agnieszka Holland was compared to the propagandists of the Third Reich by the Minister, even though the filmmaker is the daughter of a liaison officer of the Warsaw Uprising and the granddaughter of victims of the Holocaust,” the European Film Academy said in a statement, adding that Ziobro’s comments represented “personal hostility and threats.”
The episode demonstrates how intensely the current migration crisis has divided Poland, which has become the European frontline for the wave of refugees since Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko started encouraging mass migration across his country’s border in 2021. Lukashenko, a key ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, is thought to be pursuing a strategy to flood Poland with migrants as a means of destabilizing the West.
As Poland’s government has shifted far to the right in recent years, Polish leaders have attacked local historians who suggest the country was complicit during the Holocaust, drawing condemnation from international bodies. The government has also become increasingly anti-migrant, although it has opened its borders to Ukrainian refugees fleeing the war with Russia. Just this week, it became engulfed in a scandal regarding work visas that officials were allegedly being sold to migrants in exchange for bribes.
Holland has a history of making provocative films about the Holocaust, even drawing the ire of leading European Jews. “Shoah” director Claude Lanzmann accused her of antisemitism for her Oscar-nominated 1990 film “Europa, Europa,” which tells the true story of a Jewish child who disguised himself as a Nazi in order to survive during the war. Some Jews were also angered by another film Holland wrote about the Jewish doctor Janusz Korczak, who tried and failed to save hundreds of Jewish children in the Warsaw Ghetto. Holland’s 2011 film “In Darkness,” also Oscar-nominated, is about Jews in hiding in Nazi-occupied Poland.
“The Green Border” is scheduled for release later this month in Poland.
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Iran Currency Plunges to Record Lows Amid Escalating US Tensions
ILLUSTRATIVE: The Iranian flag waves in front of the IAEA headquarters before the beginning of a board of governors meeting, in Vienna, Austria, March 1, 2021. Photo: Reuters/Lisi Niesner
Iran’s currency fell on Saturday to a new all-time low against the US dollar after the country’s supreme leader rejected talks with the United States and President Donald Trump moved to restore his “maximum pressure” campaign on Tehran.
The rial plunged to 892,500 to the dollar on the unofficial market on Saturday, compared with 869,500 rials on Friday, according to the foreign exchange website alanchand.com. The bazar360.com website said the dollar was sold for 883,100 rials. Asr-e-no website reported the dollar trading at 891,000 rials.
Facing an official inflation rate of about 35%, Iranians seeking safe havens for their savings have been buying dollars, other hard currencies, gold or cryptocurrencies, suggesting further headwinds for the rial.
The dollar has been gaining against the rial since trading around 690,000 rials at the time of Trump’s re-election in November amid concerns that Trump would re-impose his “maximum pressure” policy against Iran with tougher sanctions and empower Israel to strike Iranian nuclear sites.
Trump in 2018 withdrew from a nuclear deal struck by his predecessor Barack Obama in 2015 and re-imposed U.S. economic sanctions on Iran that had been relaxed. The deal had limited Iran’s ability to enrich uranium, a process that can yield fissile material for nuclear weapons.
Iran’s rial has lost more than 90% of its value since the sanctions were reimposed in 2018.
The post Iran Currency Plunges to Record Lows Amid Escalating US Tensions first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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US Envoy’s ‘Zionist’ Ring Sends Shockwaves on Social Media
Lebanon’s army chief Joseph Aoun walks after being elected as the country’s president at the parliament building in Beirut, Lebanon, Jan. 9, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Mohamed Azakir
i24 News – A photo showing US President Donald Trump’s deputy Middle East envoy donning a ring embellished with the Star of David to a meeting with Lebanon’s leader triggered outrage in Arabic social and broadcast media.
As Morgan Ortagus, who is Jewish, shook hands with Lebanese President Joseph Aoun, her Star of David ring was visible in the frame, sparking accusations such as her being “more Zionist than her predecessors.”
Her direct superior, Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff, is likewise Jewish-American, as is his predecessor Amos Hochstein, who was born in Jerusalem and served in the Israel Defense Forces.
Ortagus is the first senior Trump admin official to visit Lebanon amid the fragile ceasefire agreed by Israel and the Lebanon-based Shiite jihadists of Hezbollah.
The post US Envoy’s ‘Zionist’ Ring Sends Shockwaves on Social Media first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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UK: Pro-Palestinian Activists Applied for a March Permit on Oct 7 as Massacre Was Ongoing
Supporters of Hizb ut-Tahrir at a pro-Hamas rally in London. Photo: Reuters/Martin Pope
i24 News – Anti-Israeli activists in Britain applied for a permit to stage a demonstration through London on the morning of October 7, 2023, as Gazan jihadists were rampaging through southern Israel and slaughtering civilians, the Daily Telegraph reported.
At 12:50 PM, as the deadliest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust was still ongoing, the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) notified the Metropolitan Police that they intended to hold a rally the following week.
Reports and videos of the Hamas-led onslaught began appearing on social media, and Israeli and then international broadcast media, several hours earlier.
“The Met was contacted on Saturday Oct 7 at approximately 12.50pm via telephone call and informed of the intention to protest,” a police spokesman was quoted by the Telegraph as saying. “The Met committed this to our systems on the same day and are satisfied being contacted by telephone was a sufficient means in which to notify the MPS as the event was taking place seven days after notification.”
The group’s spokesperson defended the move, telling the Telegraph it was “clear” as early as Saturday noon that “the Israeli attacks on Gaza would be of an indiscriminate violence we had not witnessed before, and that 2.3 million people in Gaza – more than 50 percent of them children – were at severe risk.”
The post UK: Pro-Palestinian Activists Applied for a March Permit on Oct 7 as Massacre Was Ongoing first appeared on Algemeiner.com.