Roman Polanski

Roman Polanski´s life is so full of adventures and incidents that it can make for a book or a movie in itself. He escaped the Nazis during the Second World War, his mother died in a concentration camp; his girlfriend was killed by the Manson Family; he was tried for raping a minor in the USA. Below this there is an account of Polanski´s early life in Poland…

Para saber: statutory rape y en vocabulario: foretaste, prodding y welling out.

Dirty water welled out of the damaged pipe.

Polanski, who was then hiding from the Germans, remembered seeing his father being marched off with a long line of people. Polanski tried getting closer to his father to ask him what was happening, and managed to get within a few yards. His father saw him, but afraid his son might be spotted by the German soldiers, whispered, "Get lost!"

Roman Polański (born Raymond Thierry Liebling, 1933) is a Polish-French film director, producer, writer, and actor.

Since 1978, Polanski has been a fugitive from the U.S. criminal justice system; he fled the country while awaiting sentencing in his sexual abuse case on charges of drugging and raping a 13-year-old girl and after pleading guilty to statutory rape.

Polanski was born in Paris. His father was a painter and manufacturer of sculptures. Polanski´s father was Jewish and originally from Poland; Polanski´s mother, born in Russia, had been raised Roman Catholic and was of half Jewish ancestry. His mother had a daughter, Annette, by her previous husband. Annette managed to survive Auschwitz, where her mother died, and left Poland forever for France. Polanski´s parents were both agnostics. Polanski stated "I'm an atheist" in an interview about his film, Rosemary's Baby.

Ghetto de Cracovia, 1942

The Polański family moved back to the Polish city of Kraków in early 1937, and was living there when World War II began with the invasion of Poland. Kraków was soon occupied by the German forces, and the racist and anti-Semitic Nuremberg Laws made the Polańskis targets of persecution, forcing them into the Kraków Ghetto, along with thousands of the city's Jews. Around the age of six, he attended primary school for only a few weeks, until "all the Jewish children were abruptly expelled," writes biographer Christopher Sandford. That initiative was soon followed by the requirement that all Jewish children over the age of twelve wear white armbands with a blue Star of David imprinted for visual identification. After he was expelled, he would not be allowed to enter another classroom for the next six years. Polanski then witnessed both the ghettoization of Kraków's Jews into a compact area of the city, and the subsequent deportation of all the ghetto's Jews to German death camps. He watched as his father was taken away. He remembers from age six, one of his first experiences of the terrors to follow:

“I had just been visiting my grandmother ... when I received a foretaste of things to come. At first I didn't know what was happening. I simply saw people scattering in all directions. Then I realized why the street had emptied so quickly. Some women were being herded along it by German soldiers. Instead of running away like the rest, I felt compelled to watch.

One older woman at the rear of the column couldn't keep up. A German officer kept prodding her back into line, but she fell down on all fours... Suddenly a pistol appeared in the officer's hand. There was a loud bang, and blood came welling out of her back. I ran straight into the nearest building, squeezed into a smelly recess beneath some wooden stairs, and didn't come out for hours. I developed a strange habit: clenching my fists so hard that my palms became permanently calloused. I also woke up one morning to find that I had wet my bed.”

Judíos con estrellas identificatorias, 1941

His father was transferred, along with thousands of other Jews, to Mauthausen. His mother was taken to Auschwitz, and was killed soon after arriving. Polanski, who was then hiding from the Germans, remembered seeing his father being marched off with a long line of people. Polanski tried getting closer to his father to ask him what was happening, and managed to get within a few yards. His father saw him, but afraid his son might be spotted by the German soldiers, whispered (in Polish), "Get lost!"

Polański escaped the Kraków Ghetto in 1943 and survived with the help of some Polish Roman Catholics, including a woman who had promised Polański's father that she would shelter the boy. Polański attended church, learned to recite Catholic prayers by heart, and behaved outwardly as a Roman Catholic, although he was never baptized.

As he roamed the countryside trying to survive in a Poland now occupied by German troops, he witnessed many horrors, such as being "forced to take part in a cruel and sadistic game in which German soldiers took shots at him for target practice."

After the war, he was reunited with his father and moved back to Kraków. His father remarried and died of cancer in 1984. Time repaired the family contacts; Polanski visited them in Kraków, and relatives visited him in Hollywood and Paris. Polanski recalls the villages and families he lived with as relatively primitive by European standards:

“They were really simple Catholic peasants. This Polish village was like the English village in Tess. Very primitive. No electricity. The kids with whom I lived didn't know about electricity ... they wouldn't believe me when I told them it was enough to turn on a switch!”

He stated that "you must live in a Communist country to really understand how bad it can be. Then you will appreciate capitalism."

Para saber

In common law jurisdictions, statutory rape is no forcible sexual activity in which one of the individuals is below the age of consent (the age required to legally consent to the behavior.

Vocabulario

Foretaste: a sample or suggestion of something that lies ahead.

The factory closures are just a foretaste of the recession that is to come.

Prod: to push someone with your finger.

I prodded her in the back to get her attention.

Well: to appear on the surface of something.

Dirty water welled out of the damaged pipe.

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