The Return

Today there are but 15,000 Jews living in Poland, down from more than four million in 1939. After World War II, Poland’s few remaining Jews hid their identity from children and grandchildren. With the fall of Communism in 1989 a young generation of Jews began learning of their long-buried ancestry. The Return tells their story by following four women in their 20’s who discovered they were Jewish in their teens, and are now strong, dynamic leaders in their nascent Jewish enclaves. Yet they face the unique challenge of trying to create an identity in a vacuum; having been brought up in a Roman Catholic country with little knowledge of their heritage, they struggle to reinvent a Jewish community in what was once the epicenter of the Jewish world.

At the same time, there is a surprising renaissance in Jewish culture in Poland—initiated and organized by non-Jewish Poles. Yiddish, klezmer music and Jewish dancing are wildly popular, as Polish non-Jews embrace the pre-war shtetl world as a colorful remnant of the country’s history. In Regeneration, director Adam Zucker weaves together the stories of the exoticized “coolness” of being a Jew, with the sincere challenge of creating an authentic, contemporary Jewish identity.