“Сompassion and respect for everything that is alive, all the creatures of Earth, is the only “power” that we should strive for in life”

A conversation with Kasia Hertz

Interview by geo

First of all I want to thank you for your activism, and for recording the stories of asylum seekers who survived dreadful violence on the Polish-Belarusian border last year. Unfortunately, this topic has now faded from global public consciousness, so my first question would be: How are things at Białowieża right now?

First of all I have to say that I was not involved in direct activism before the crisis, and still feel a little bit awkward associating myself with that label – me and many local people in the area got involved in humanitarian aid activities because there was no one else who could do it, and we felt a moral obligation, as well as basic human empathy. But there was a cost. We were not trained to operate in such circumstances, either physically or psychologically. I need to say that I have not been directly involved in rescuing people on the border for at least six months. I got emotionally wrecked, exhausted, and my personal life was also crushed partly due to that situation, so I detached for almost all of this year. In spring, the government finished building the wall/fence, hoping to stop people from crossing the border. But of course that didn’t happen. They continue but at even greater cost – people are risking more physical damage, trying to jump over or dig under the fence. Often these are women, children and teenagers, including pregnant women. Recently there were new reports from Grupa Granica, describing the injuries suffered by migrants. The crisis continues, but people get tired of hearing about it. Also war in Ukraine, and general economic threats, turn people’s attention away, which is natural. There are still no humanitarian organizations located at the border to help and assist, even though the closed zone, which was implemented by the state, ended months ago.

If we return to the start of this story, what motivated you to join Grupa Granica? What was your ordinary activist routine like? How have these events in Białowieża changed your life?

As I mentioned above, I didn’t really “join” Grupa Granica. We were simply living in the area and everything started naturally, so to speak. We started getting information about people needing help, or we bumped into them in the forest during routine walks. There was no other option than to somehow organize ourselves and join forces to create some bigger structure. Then Grupa Granica formed: the members were NGOs and people already experienced in working with migration and humanitarian support, some activists, and us, the locals. We needed that structure, because working alone was too risky, but the truth is that everyone was also learning how to operate and there were many mistakes made before a functional system was established. We had to trust each other. I think it’s extremely impressive what a grassroots, civic-based organization of people who didn’t know each other before managed to achieve in such a short period of time and in dreadful, oppressive circumstances. 

The ordinary routine is simply waiting and being prepared for the “call”. We have to know about locations, needs, risks, and also about security management, so we don’t take too great a risk, either for ourselves or for them. At the beginning we were extremely impulsive, wanting to run to help immediately without proper preparation, which sometimes does more harm than good. It’s crucial to stay calm, prepare well, take all the necessary tools, be rested, and have some support. Sometimes of course these things are not possible or available, or there are too many calls, so you have to make decisions: who is more in need, who can wait a bit longer, how you yourself are feeling, etc. 

These events changed my life profoundly. I am actually really grateful for the experience, even though it was traumatic and completely unnecessary from the perspective of the people suffering. It should have never happened like that, it’s a massive crime. But I learned so much about myself and humanity in general, that with this knowledge I think I can see more clearly what’s important to me in my own work, what kind of relationships I would like to have with people, what I am capable of; which values I truly believe in, and how they should set my path. I also met lots of amazing human beings on the way, had the most intense connections, moments of truth happening in front of my eyes, emotions that run wild through your body: mostly fear and love, but also lots of anger, some joy, sadness, exhaustion, sometimes numbness. These experiences really equipped me with knowledge that I never expected to get, especially in the forest, where people predominantly move to live in quiet, peaceful, not very sociable conditions, close to nature.

It seems to me that this film was partly a way for you to cope with this traumatic experience, to make sense out of the events, to heal yourself…So I was wondering, when did you feel the need to start filming? What encouraged you to keep on and when did you decide to make a documentary from the footage?

We were filming with my ex-partner. As we lived there and we are both filmmakers, we felt some kind of obligation to document what was happening. That came naturally. I didn’t really plan to make a proper film from the material, I tried to focus on creating an archive for others and myself to use later, as a witness to these events. There were many people filming actually, but I haven’t really seen other material. I also tried to preserve some details that would vanish from my memory with time, maybe to make something out of it, but I didn’t think of anything specific, it just felt very random and surreal, kind of like we were on some nightmarish film set, maybe involved in some social experiment. Nobody could actually believe it or process it in real time, so the filming itself also gave us a sense of control, purpose maybe. We didn’t have the medical skills to help people, but at least we could document what was happening, while bringing water and clothes for them. I actually wish I had focused more on documenting myself and the people around me as well: my friends, their emotional state. That is missing from the material. (not for the narcissistic reasons of course, but mostly for us – to have a clear view of what  happened and how it influenced us). I’m also not sure if the film is actually helping me to deal with trauma – maybe in some way, yes, but it’s obviously not enough. And there is no way to make sense out of these events, other than what we already know – which is that compassion and respect for everything that is alive, all the creatures of Earth, is the only “power” that we should strive for in life.

I decided to make “something” rather than a documentary. It was more like – OK, let’s go through these materials, put them together and see what happens. I tried to think about the editing process, as a kind of throwback into the memory lane, so I didn’t pursue to create a plot, or storyline with a certain narration for viewers to follow,  but rather to see the film as a direct stream of these memories, which form this fragmented, seemingly random composition of scenes, moments, encounters, sounds and flashbacks. I wanted to cut it the way it lives in my head.  So maybe in that sense I did it more for myself first, than for the viewers, as I understand it might be difficult to watch. But also I think emotions don’t need a plot to be felt, recognized and transmuted. I like chaos, I don’t like to explain things, the demand to put things in order bores me. So maybe it’s just the beginning of some bigger thing, a film or something else that will come out later.

It’s common in documentaries about traumatic experiences to show very disturbing scenes of protagonists suffering physically or mentally. Could you tell us why it was important to you to include such powerful but very disturbing scenes? How do you approach this aspect of filmmaking from an ethical, activist, and practical point of view?

First of all – I’ve lost the ability to objectively judge what makes for a “disturbing scene”. If I am honest, I can’t tell anymore. When you see a lot of suffering, you get resilient as a coping mechanism, and then it becomes normalized, you are kind of desensitized. So I didn’t even think that the scenes I put in the film are actually that disturbing, as long as there are no dead bodies and blood on screen. Maybe that’s shocking, but it’s how I feel now. Another thing is: this is the truth, this is what reality looks like there, so why should I spare others the sight, make it more gentle or approachable? Documentaries are there for people to see aspects of reality that could change their perception of the world and other humans, make them more compassionate, curious, tolerant, aware; shake them, move them, make them feel something. I think that’s why we have to be vulnerable, to take risks. As I said, I wish I could add more material presenting the actual impact of these events on the activists and volunteers, their mental and emotional state, how it shook them, what kind of price they had to pay. Especially the locals, because they couldn’t leave whenever they wanted, as could most of the activists who came to help.

In your film we saw how deep your connection with some of your protagonists is. Could you tell us how you built up a connection with your protagonists during and after filming? What happened to them later?

The connection is primarily based on shared experience of trauma. When we meet people in the forest, we are strangers who must immediately and absolutely trust each other. These people’s lives often depend on your decisions, so they become dependent on you for their survival, and you on the other hand take these lives in your hands. You feel this horrifying amount of responsibility, and also care; it’s scary and humbling. If something like this happens and you are given more time to spend with them, a chance to get to know them a bit better, then the connection deepens. Of course they want to open up, release a bit of the tension, tell you stories, share, if you are keen to listen. You also want to get to know their perspective, their history, and their experience becomes yours in some way. Friendships formed on these bases are lifelong in my opinion. Noor, one of the protagonists in the film, became like a daughter to me; I loved her from the very first moment and the feeling only got stronger with time. She told me the same thing: it was one of the most beautiful experiences of my life so far. We are still in close contact, as I am with many of the “forest people”. But she is very special to me. I couldn’t believe how wise, emotionally mature and empathic she is at this very young age, and how she kept thinking of others even when her own life was endangered. My main motivation in making this film was actually to show how people can stay humane, vulnerable and strong even in the most dehumanizing of circumstances. And also how we have to listen to each other, really listen to what we are, without judgment, before putting labels on everything and everyone. Before shutting off in fear of the mythologized “others”. My protagonists are safe now and I am so happy for them.

Did Polish society rethink the events on the Belarusian border after Russia launched a full-scale war on Ukraine? In what way? Did Poles change their attitude towards asylum seekers after helping hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian refugees?

It’s hard for me to judge. It seems to me that media propaganda pushing the concept of dangerous economic migrants “attacking” the Polish border and Polish services in order to illegally cross the border, and the idea that they are mainly young men, probably including terrorists, had and continues to have a very strong influence on public opinion.The fact that the border area was closed to the media for almost a year prevented the truth from being shown. Fortunately, mainly thanks to the work of Grupa Granica and other independent groups and individuals, material and information about the situation reached those concerned, so, it was possible to help effectively for quite a long time. I don’t know exactly what range of people this information reached, what percentage in Poland know what happened and is happening on the eastern border, but I think by this point it is the majority. As for the comparison with the Ukrainian situation – shortly after the outbreak of the war, I went to the border, to Przemysl, fresh from my experience in the forest, to shoot footage for a news outlet and I saw thousands of people freely walking across the border, waiting at stations, in specially prepared halls; brought in buses, private cars; families greeted with hugs, smiles and food by the same services that pushed people back into the forest in the cold on “our” border. In one of the hotels where we stayed overnight, I even exchanged a few words with them, having just returned from service in Bialowieza. I couldn’t get my head around it. At the same time, I saw and talked to students and non-white people of non-Ukrainian origin, usually from Africa, India, the Middle East, who were trying to get out of Ukraine. They had separate queues in which they waited for hours. After they crossed the border, no one wanted to help them. They slept on the streets waiting for any transport, humanitarian aid. I saw this and heard many stories. However, I hope that Polish society is opening up more and more to others, despite our own generational traumas and fears that have not yet been even half worked through; I think we don’t have time to waste and we don’t have a choice. The situation in the world, especially the climate catastrophe, energy crises, military conflicts, all of this requires us to change our thought patterns, our lifestyles, to move away from this Eurocentric approach of walling ourselves off from “others” while benefiting from their resources. We have to learn how to share, and collaborate, and tolerate each other, embracing our differences. There is no other way to survive. We actually have to learn from the forests. Natural forests;)