Dorchester-On November 8th, nearly 90 people watched A Trip to Nowhere at the Lipke Auditorium to learn about life in the Polish labor camps of the 1930’s and 40’s.The 30-minute film featured Krystyna Balut and Joanna Brodniewicz who lived and worked in the Soviet Union camps. The two survivors also watched A Trip to Nowhere alongside a crowd of both young and old people.

Shannon Hart Reed, director of the animated film made it known that the Polish boys and girls went to classes where teachers taught them to worship Joseph Stalin; “their god”. Polish workers, including Balut who is now 79 and Brodniewicz who is 82 obeyed the Soviet Union officers until 1941 when Stalin ordered their dispersal to various countries and the communist leader joined the Allies in order to defeat Nazi Germany on account of Adolph Hitler’s betrayal of the Soviet Union. Visit the Harbor art gallery to watch more showings of the movie.

Balut feels happy that the world will be informed about “this horrible tragedy of humanity,” she says “[The information] has been in the background and has never really been acknowledged by the world”.

Brodniewicz says A Trip to Nowhere was a “beautiful video”.

Reed who agreed to make the film on request relayed a thought that the camp survivors told authentic stories. She also said that the entire film premiere went “just right”.Reed who has also directed My, My, My Hey: A Let’s Talk-umentary just got her feet wet with animation. She animated A Trip to NoWhere with the help of her husband and several other professionals.

“We did [the film] in animation because we were trying to get it into the short-film festival…[The Polish Camp Survivors] wanted to get their story out there…and we were afraid that the it might sit there amongst the other 30 minute documentaries…so for animation; most film-festivals love animated films because it is so time-consuming…we also wanted to gear the film to a younger generation,” says the director.Grazyna Balut Ostrom, the daughter of Krystyna Co-produced the film. She also helped raise funds for the project.

“There have been some documentaries made about this tragedy but a lot of it has just been dry interviews so [Reed] wanted to create something that was more geared towards a younger generation. My mother was against ‘the cartoons’ because she thought it was a mockery and we explained to her that the [the vision] was an artistic one…we are trying to tell other people the story…animation could captivate them; that was our hope” says Ostrom.

Ostrom met with ten other survivors, helped write their biographies, and scanned them onto aparatfilms.com. Visit the website to learn more about the concentration camps of the Soviet Union along with World War II.

“It was a pleasure working with [the survivors],” Ostrom said.

After most of the guests of November 8ths event left the Lipke Auditorium, Joanna made one last point.

“We pray that [genocide] will never happen again to our children, grandchildren, and to next generations,” Brodniewicz said.