of actual characters, such as Kapo Ernst (no. 5) and Kapo Walter (no. 14).
The number 5 in KL Auschwitz was assigned to Hans Bock, who served first as Blockältester and then as Lagerältester of the Haftlingskrankenbau (the older prisoner hospital, located in block 20). The most famous kapo named Ernst, on the other hand, was Ernst Krankemann, who arrived at Auschwitz in August 1940 from Sachsenhausen and was marked with the number 3210. He served as kapo of the penal company, among others. The survivors remember him as one of the most ruthless executioners who abused and murdered the camp prisoners. In July 1943, he was part of a transport of prisoners sent to the euthanasia facility in Sonnenstein, where they were murdered with carbon monoxide. Accordingly, none of the stories mentioned above corresponds to the film character of Kapo Ernst.
The film Walter, whose original was Walter Dünning, a pre-war German boxer that served as a Kapo in Auschwitz, was erroneously marked with the number 14. In reality, this number was given to Jansen Winnant, a bricklayer by trade, who became the Oberkapo of the bricklayers' Kommando in Auschwitz. Based on surviving camp documents, it has not been possible to establish the number of Walter Dünning at Auschwitz. He arrived at the camp in August od 1941 and received number between 3188-3287.
In the forty-second minute of the film, the figure of a bearded giant, a prisoner marked with a black triangle (the category "asocials") and number 31504, appears to fight Teddy. He eventually loses the fight, and in one of the subsequent scenes, his body, deposited on a wooden cart among other corpses, is taken outside the camp. Despite the tragic fate that ultimately befalls him, this character - with some kind of feral aggression, furiously attacks the protagonist in the ring - and thus evokes neither pity nor compassion due to the camp's victims, but rather fear and aversion in the viewer. Who then is prisoner number 31504? The filmmakers do not bother to explain, but an apparent inconsistency emerges when confronted with archival documents.
The number 31504, registered on 19 April 1942, belonged to Felix Wachsberger, a fifty-three-year-old Slovak Jew and office worker who barely survived a month in the camp (he died on 21 May 1942). He obviously had nothing to do with the character portrayed in the film. Here, the filmmakers used the camp number completely unreflectively, disregarding the fact that there is a completely different story behind it than the one presented on screen. It leads one to assume that the marking with numbers of the film Calvary Captain, Klimko and Janek may be a coincidence rather than a genuine concern for the identity of the victims.
In concluding the discussions on how KL Auschwitz prisoners are portrayed in Barczewski's film, one should pay attention to the small depicted in the film. In reality, however, the camp was overcrowded. Surviving fragments of documents show that the number of prisoners in the camp exceeded 11,000 on the first day of March 1942. On the first day of May the same year, there were more than 14,000 prisoners. Meanwhile, the film’s Auschwitz appears in almost all scenes as a deserted place, with isolated characters in striped uniforms wandering around. It is absolutely bizarre to juxtapose the commandant's words, who, while planning Teddy's fight with Hammerschlag, orders that Every prisoner is supposed to see it, with the later image of a ring surrounded by no more than a few dozen men in striped uniforms. It completely fails to reflect the historical realities of Auschwitz and creates yet another misconception.
SUMMARY
Summing up, the attention given to the visual aspect of the film is undoubtedly noticeable and deserving of recognition. Equally notable is the effort invested in the physical and athletic conditioning of Glowacki, who plays the leading role. Unfortunately, equal attention was not accorded to the factual content, which, as one might assume, is of fundamental importance for a historical film. Although the filmmakers tried to familiarise themselves with Tadeusz Pietrzykowski and Auschwitz's history, they failed to reconstruct it authentically and credibly in the film. They did not avoid simplifications that trivialise Pietrzykowski's biography through minor misstatements and factual inaccuracies, as well as grave factual errors that are crucial and unacceptable in the context of teaching about Auschwitz. Many images and phenomena portrayed in the film are indeed reproductions of contemporary stereotypes and popular beliefs, distant from the perspective of people who participated in those events and from the objective knowledge accumulated over the post-war years. What the makers of The Champion lack is a broad understanding of the realities of the camp, which can only be obtained through reliable and in-depth acquaintance with memoirs and literature on the subject. Something it seems the creators did not fully realise.
To make matters worse, some of the misrepresentations seem deliberate, aimed solely at stirring up emotions. In interviews, the filmmakers - Barczewski and Głowacki - flaunt their knowledge of Auschwitz history, which is not reflected in the picture ultimately offered to the viewer. As an example, the gruesome phenomena described earlier are depicted inappropriately for the time or place in question. It is unfortunate, given that the events specific to the period of Pietrzykowski's stay in the camp are by no means less significant or dramatic. An analysis of the transports of Polish political prisoners deported to Auschwitz between June 1940 and spring 1943 reveals that, in many cases, 50-70% of them died in the first weeks of incarceration, and often, none of the new arrivals, especially those deported in autumn and winter, survived this period. Out of the 50 deportees to Auschwitz from the Montelupich prison on 26 June 1941, only four survived, while 54 of the 63 transported on 29 July 1941 from the Tarnów prison died in Auschwitz - half of them in the first two months. Of the 141 prisoners brought from Częstochowa on 30 January 1942, 122 died, most before the arrival of spring, while nine of the 171 brought on 20 February 1942 lived to see the liberation.
One could list countless examples of these dramatic statistics illustrating the death rate among Polish political prisoners deported to Auschwitz in the first years of its existence. They contrast starkly with the picture presented in Barczewski's film, in which only a few Polish prisoners die (most of them as a result of punishment for some offence). The viewer may be under the mistaken impression that the blind extermination involved only Jews, while the political inmates, as long as they were punitive, submissive and diligent in their work and did not commit any offence in the camp, had a pretty good chance of survival, which is not true.
In his review, Łukasz Muszyński described Barczewski's work as another heart-warming story inspired by authentic events . The structure of the film, particularly its ending, seems to confirm that such was the filmmakers' intention. Ultimately, the main character - who embodies goodness, morality and the principles of fair play - wins in an uneven fight with evil personified by Germans, representatives of the camp authorities. He rises from the very bottom of suffering and defeats an SS man in the ring, thus depriving the commandant of the opportunity to enjoy the expected defeat and humiliation of a Polish boxer. He gains respect and the title of champion. The sense of satisfaction he deprived his enemies of becomes shared by his fellow fighters. Pietrzykowski's presence in the camp and his triumph change everyone. Even the Rapportführer seems to have thought and understood something deeply, thanks to his acquaintance with Teddy. Thus, the victory has a moral as well as a sporting significance. Teddy survived this ordeal and returned to life after the war to fulfil his dream of raising the next generation of athletes.
It is another contemporary image that allows one to deceptively believe that the sun just comes out once the war is over, and people joyfully welcome their long-lost loved ones and return to their jobs, to their pre-war lives and work for the sake of a bright future. Such a narrative leaves no room for the authenticity of the post-war dramas. It says nothing about how people counted their losses, licked their wounds, struggled with trauma, searched for and said goodbye to their loved ones after the war, or how they tried to recover from their grief, navigate the new political realities, bear the burden of difficult experiences and survive a reality which only brought misery, fear and uncertainty for many. A happy ending in relation to war, and even more so to the camp experience, is an illusion.
So, is Maciej Barczewski's film worth seeing? Do the factual errors presented in this text invalidate its value? That's a difficult question, especially for a researcher whose profession places factuality, objectivity and reliability in the foreground, which is the complete opposite of artistic work. A scholar may bridle at the notion that the art of cinema should prioritise the construction of a film as an independent work of fiction, treating the historical background as a side issue . They may feel an inner discord at seeing the disregard for authenticity in cultural products and a nonchalant approach to facts. They are entitled to a negative assessment of such practices. Ultimately, however, they have no choice but to accept that art has its rights and cannot expect the creator of a work of art to restrict their imagination and abandon its interpretation in favour of strict adherence to sources. After all, that is what science serves to achieve. Artistic freedom is essential to the cultural process and must not be reduced to documenting or imposing a framework of factual correctness. Inevitably, there must be a conflict here between fiction and reality, between the memory of history and its artistic interpretation. Science is supposed to understand and remember, while art is supposed to move. And since it is impossible to change the assumptions and purposes of art, it seems somewhat reasonable to act didactically in order to change the way viewers think about a historical film (literary work, painting, etc.). Such is the purpose of this review - not to discourage people from seeing The Champion, but to remind them that it is not a biographical film in the strict sense of the word, and even less a documentary as the filmmakers honestly emphasise in interviews. It is merely inspired by real events. It should be treated as such by the viewer - not as a picture upon which one can build knowledge about the fate of Tadeusz Pietrzykowski and the realities of KL Auschwitz, but as an inspiration to seek this knowledge independently, not on the level of art, but in historical sources and scientific creations, with full consent that the story one discovers as a result of this search will turn out to be far more complex and different from that portrayed in the film.
Going back to the question - is this film worth seeing? Firstly, it is worth it for the excellent cinematography by Witold Płóciennik; secondly, for the already acclaimed set design, costumes, and props. Thirdly, for the superb cast, including Marcin Czarnik as Kapo Bruno and Marian Dziędziel's episode as Calvary Captain, and particularly for the acting and physical metamorphosis of Piotr Głowacki. Nevertheless, the film is worth seeing to awaken the desire to learn more about Tadeusz Pietrzykowski and attempt to acquire reliable knowledge about Pietrzykowski. Moreover, it may also provide information about the history of the camp and its first prisoners and the underground and sporting activities carried out behind the wires.