- Occupation
Director - Country
Slovak Republic
Palonder František
My Father Gulag
None of his names is his real one. He never met his father, he doesn`t know whether he is a child of love or violence. He doesn`t even know his homeland. This documentary is a story of Jan Antal who was born 57 years ago in a Russian gulag to a wrongfully deported Slovak mother. This is the first time he has traveled to where he was born and spent the first three years of his life. He reached the end of the world with one question: "Did you know my father?". A story of a man deeply troubled by his unknown origin. He has had three names during his lifetime, yet none of them was really his own. He has never known whether he was born out of love, or crime. Will he find it out now? In an old blue-collar quarter, in a small apartment, there lives Jan Kawasch with his wife and four daughters. He is 54 years old, he was born in the middle of the last century. Four years after his birth, an empire of evil and violence, the empire of Stalin´s Russia started to fall apart. Jan Kawasch hates the stalinist regime, because it robbed his mother of her family, her husband and daughter, her property and eight years of her life which she had to spend as a convict in the gold mines of Magadan. His mother gave birth to him in the labor camp of the gold mines, where the Soviet Army dragged her after she was accused of espionage. Since she spoke German, her mother´s tongue, in everyday life, Soviet Army martial court convicted her to 15 years in prison in the early days after the end of war. His father was an unknown guard in the camp and the circumstances of his mother pregnancy are not known. Jan Kawasch himself believes that his father was a good man and even wanted to marry his mother. But no evidence supports his point. The fact is, that an undernourished child around 1 kilogram of weight was born to Irena Kawaschova and unlike most of the camp children who were left to a certain death, they found a wet-nurse in nearby village for the baby boy and Irena Kawaschova was even allowed to visit her son from time to time as a reward for good work. When the boy turned three years old, he was taken to a foster home. After Stalin´s death the falsely accused prisoners started to be released and so was Irena Kawaschova. She returned to her home town just to fi nd out that the she was pronounced dead and her husband started a new family. She found refuge with her mother and started looking for her lost son in Russia. The baby was found in a Moscow orphanage and sent to his mother. In the documentary fi lm, the man who was born due to an injustice and crime against his mother, speaks about his life, why he in spite of all that loves to live. The crew will visit the site of the camp in Magadan and will try to locate the village, where Jan lived the fi rst three years of his life, and to fi nd his “milk brother”, the wet-nurse´s own baby of nearly the same age. This documentary is a part of three part documentary series on innocent people taken to Soviet prisons and gulags, and their life experience.
None of his names is his real one. He never met his father, he doesn`t know whether he is a child of love or violence. He doesn`t even know his homeland. This documentary is a story of Jan Antal who was born 57 years ago in a Russian gulag to a wrongfully deported Slovak mother. This is the first time he has traveled to where he was born and spent the first three years of his life. He reached the end of the world with one question: "Did you know my father?". A story of a man deeply troubled by his unknown origin. He has had three names during his lifetime, yet none of them was really his own. He has never known whether he was born out of love, or crime. Will he find it out now? In an old blue-collar quarter, in a small apartment, there lives Jan Kawasch with his wife and four daughters. He is 54 years old, he was born in the middle of the last century. Four years after his birth, an empire of evil and violence, the empire of Stalin´s Russia started to fall apart. Jan Kawasch hates the stalinist regime, because it robbed his mother of her family, her husband and daughter, her property and eight years of her life which she had to spend as a convict in the gold mines of Magadan. His mother gave birth to him in the labor camp of the gold mines, where the Soviet Army dragged her after she was accused of espionage. Since she spoke German, her mother´s tongue, in everyday life, Soviet Army martial court convicted her to 15 years in prison in the early days after the end of war. His father was an unknown guard in the camp and the circumstances of his mother pregnancy are not known. Jan Kawasch himself believes that his father was a good man and even wanted to marry his mother. But no evidence supports his point. The fact is, that an undernourished child around 1 kilogram of weight was born to Irena Kawaschova and unlike most of the camp children who were left to a certain death, they found a wet-nurse in nearby village for the baby boy and Irena Kawaschova was even allowed to visit her son from time to time as a reward for good work. When the boy turned three years old, he was taken to a foster home. After Stalin´s death the falsely accused prisoners started to be released and so was Irena Kawaschova. She returned to her home town just to fi nd out that the she was pronounced dead and her husband started a new family. She found refuge with her mother and started looking for her lost son in Russia. The baby was found in a Moscow orphanage and sent to his mother. In the documentary fi lm, the man who was born due to an injustice and crime against his mother, speaks about his life, why he in spite of all that loves to live. The crew will visit the site of the camp in Magadan and will try to locate the village, where Jan lived the fi rst three years of his life, and to fi nd his “milk brother”, the wet-nurse´s own baby of nearly the same age. This documentary is a part of three part documentary series on innocent people taken to Soviet prisons and gulags, and their life experience.
Born July 4, 1954. Education: 1976 – 1981 Studied directing at the VGIK, Moscow. Since 1992, free-lance writer, director and cameraman, cooperating with the Slovak Television (STV), Bratislava. 1980 – 1992 Director, writer, cameraman in STV. During his career he has directed, written and co-written over 400 programs for STV - dramas, documentaries, music films, entertainment programs as well as sports, educational and children's programs. Currently he is the vice chairman of the Union of Slovak Television Artists and SC PEN. Selected projects: Pretend You Love Me (feature, Hungary, Russia 1979); A Day without Angle (feature, 1980); Eternal Traveller (semi-doc, 1997); The Ultimate Punishment (feature, 1997); Leonardo (educational series, 9 parts, 1984 – 1986); Silent School (Tichá škola, documentary 1986); Smile (Úsmev,1989); The Map of Guilds and Manufactures (Miestopis cechov a manufaktúr, 1990 – 2002); Living and Dead Water (Živá, mrtva voda). Books: Harbours (Prístavy, 2003).