The Touch of an Angel

This poetic documentary is the personal story of Henryk Schönker, a Jew from Oświęcim (called Auschwitz by Germans). In 1939, his father was the chairman of the Jewish community, whose task was to organize the Bureau of Emigration of Jews to Palestine, at the behest of the German military authorities. This chance for legal immigration to save thousands of people has been completely unknown to the world. It poses difficult questions of timeless significance: had other countries been willing to accept Jewish refugees, how many could have been saved? Director Pawlowski developed new and exciting ways of telling a story - a kind of journey into the past, creating short, silent impressions with imaginative staging and stylized use of archival material. The artistic language of the film escorts the contemporary viewer through the six years of World War II.