Question and Answer with Edward Zwick: Producer of "Defiance"

Q: Well before the film's release, the Polish American Journal wrote a story about the movie that said: "The Jewish partisans, who collaborated with the Soviets, are regarded as war criminals by Poles, because their exploits included the massacre of 128 Polish villagers in Naliboki."

A: It's a very complicated issue. First, that story has been refuted by the most serious historians. In fact, the Bielskis were nowhere near that forest at that time. But it's important to say that even if they were, to try to equate Jews participating in some attack on a village, which no doubt was in reprisal for something else, was in the context of wartime, and I'm afraid to say, understandable. This story is very interesting for another reason. In Poland now there is a right-wing government that is enacting something called lustration laws. It's a witch hunt to try to determine which members of the present government had any affiliation with communists. And they're trying to find any connection between Jews and the present elected officials, and to use, again, anti-Semitism as a way to try to further their agenda.