Hotel Polski2009

A mysterious and little known event that occurred in Warsaw during the summer of 1943 that was referred to as the "Hotel Polonia Affair" is the subject of the short documentary from director Kama Veymont, who puts himself on a quest to find out what happened to around 2500 Jews who obtained false passports and documents of deceased citizens from South American and other neutral countries. At the moment when Warsaw had already been announced "Judenrein" (free of Jews), in the Hotel Polski, an embassy for the Jews was created, where they could safely disclose their identities, and for outrages amounts of money buy false documents to save their lives. It began with the romance between a rich Swiss man and Gutta, a beautiful Jewish woman trapped in the Warsaw ghetto. The man and his family used his diplomatic contacts to obtain a Paraguayan passport for her. When they realized that such a simple trick was enough to get Gutta out of the ghetto, they decided to make a list of people for whom it would be possible to issue valid documents not quite legally obtained. This is how the "Sternbuchs' list" was born. Unfortunately only about 260 people would survive. Using extraordinarily disturbing found footage from the Warsaw ghettos, and interviews of historians and holocaust survivors from the Hotels Polski Affair, the director discovers what prevented over 2,000 others who obtained documents from escaping and what happened with those who survived. - Stela Jelincic