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Ambassador of Remembrance

In September 1943, 17-year-old Stanisław Zalewski was arrested in Warsaw as a member of a Polish resistance group and taken to the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp for labour service. From there, he was sent to Mauthausen and finally to the Gusen camp, where the prisoners were forced to work for the German armaments industry under inhumane conditions. For a long time, Stanisław Zalewski, like many other victims of Nazi terror, remained silent about his painful experiences. It was only after forty years that he began to talk about it, at events, memorial services, and in schools, and he continues to do so to this day, even at the age of 99. Now, for the first time, he tells his stirring life story in a film as a deeply impressive ‘ambassador of remembrance’.

  • Magdalena Zelasko
    Director
  • Magdalena Zelasko
    Writer
  • Magdalena Zelasko
    Producer
  • Stanislaw Zalewski
    Key Cast
  • Project Title (Original Language):
    Botschafter des Erinnerns
  • Project Type:
    Documentary
  • Runtime:
    1 hour 40 minutes
  • Completion Date:
    September 1, 2024
  • Country of Origin:
    Austria
  • Country of Filming:
    Austria, Poland
  • Language:
    English, German, Polish
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    16:9
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    Yes
  • Student Project:
    No
Distribution Information
  • CEE FILMS
    Distributor
    Country: Austria
    Rights: All Rights
Director Biography - Magdalena Zelasko

Magdalena Żelasko, born in the Polish city Krakow, has lived in Vienna for around 30 years. The certified marketing and advertising expert studied Slavic studies as well as journalism and communication science at the University of Vienna, where she completed her doctorate in 2005. She has worked in management for several international companies and as a journalist for various Austrian and Polish media. Before founding the LET’S CEE association and managing the successful festival of the same name from 2012 to 2018, she worked as a lecturer in the Department of Culture and Communication at the University of Vienna. Since 2022, she has been implementing the innovative EU-funded film education project ‘EU Youth Cinema: Green Deal’, which is now offered in twelve countries.

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Director Statement

When I first met the then-94-year-old Stanisław Zalewski in Vienna around four years ago, I was immediately taken by his personality and his life story: How can it be that someone who spent 600 days in prisons and concentration camps is so full of joie de vivre and still has the strength to work in an office three times a week and keep travelling back and forth between Poland and Austria to speak to young people as a contemporary witness?

Stanisław Zalewski is now also the only active contemporary witness from the Gusen concentration camp who is still able to take part in relevant commemorative events, most recently in May 2023, which was covered by the media for the first time. The previous year was remembered all too well when, for the first time, no contemporary witness was present at the official commemorative event in Gusen, not even Stanisław Zalewski himself.

At the same time, the question arose in my mind: how can it be that someone who has so much to tell – and is still able to do so thanks to his exceptionally perceptive memory – has never had the opportunity to reach a broad, international audience as the protagonist of a documentary film in order to bear witness, especially in times like these, to what it can lead to “when a human stops being a human to another human”. There can never be enough anti-war films that educate young generations about Nazi terror and Nazi crimes of violence. Especially when those who remember that time are still alive.

So I started to accompany Stanisław Zalewski on countless activities with a small camera team and to document his life story and his words for future generations. Over the past three years, around 100 hours of footage have been recorded, with the footage from the former Mauthausen-Gusen and Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camps being some of the most poignant. In addition, several archive recordings, historical footage, television reports, and never-before-seen memorabilia from Stanisław Zalewski’s private archive were edited into a film. The result is an almost 100-minute documentary film about the charismatic contemporary witness.