Unvergessene Geschichten

A city in the countryside, the houses beautifully decorated and brightly painted. The place looks idyllic. This wasn't always the case. The film takes us back in time, interviews residents and former residents of the Lubusz town of Trzębiel, formerly known as Triebel. Contemporary witnesses use city maps and postcards to reconstruct topographical information: where was the market, the school, the hairdresser? Photo albums tell personal stories. Poles who were expelled from what was then eastern Poland after 1945 and subsequently settled here remember what, for them, was a new beginning. Germans who were expelled from here reflect on a farewell. There are memories of escape, but above all of the immediate post-war period. The city was almost completely intact at the time, yet the houses around the market were demolished in order to free up the bricks to rebuild Warsaw, which had been destroyed by the Germans. Other contemporary witnesses also speak of well-organised gangs involved, at the time, in an illegal trade in bricks. WMH