The Officer's Wife :: Director's Statement


	I heard about the Katyn massacre only because my grandfather was one of the officers murdered. It interested me in a way like, “Oh, that’s interesting.” It was a long time ago, it was wartime, it was Stalin, it involved a man I knew nothing about and no one in my family discussed. Katyn is not in any American history book in schools and it wasn’t in any Polish textbooks until after the fall of the Soviet state in 1990. For me, Katyn was just another massacre among the millions of other murders that Stalin committed during his reign of terror. It wasn’t until I attended a unique presentation about Katyn did I really begin to understand the breadth of what happened and the international fallout it generates to this day. It shocked me to learn to what extent the West, meaning Britain and the United States, were involved. They may not have pulled the trigger but they are most definitely accomplices after the fact. It was at that point that I realized this story needed to be told.
	Once I realized what the story is about, the discovery of my grandmother Cecylia’s manuscript in a safe deposit box became like a bible. It was a direct, succinct, non-poetic telling of what Cecylia remembered of that time. This story had to be told from a first-person perspective, someone who lived this, who survived, for better or worse. Telling the story of Katyn and the 2 million deportees strictly within a historical context would be a colossal mistake. Using this personal context is the way I made the story relevant to a much wider audience. Everyone wants to know about their family, their identity, what molds them, what makes them who they are.
	I sought out other survivors, other children of these officers and men that were murdered in Katyn. There are not many left and those that are out there, few are interested in reliving their experience - especially in front of a camera where their deepest, darkest emotions are laid bare for everyone to see. I needed to stay honest and true to these people and their story. This is not something that could or should be sensationalized and it doesn’t need to be, it’s epic in scope on its own. Most importantly, I wanted to be respectful of these survivors, of their families, their experience, their feelings. I didn’t want their memories to disappear with them like my father’s. As I conducted the various interviews, it was a vicarious way for me to learn about my dad.
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