Editorial Content for Three Minutes in Poland: Discovering a Lost World in a 1938 Family Film

THREE MINUTES IN POLAND traces Glenn Kurtz’s remarkable journey to identify the people in a home movie he found in his parents’ closet --- that had been made by his grandfather during a 1938 European tour one year before the outbreak of World War II.

THREE MINUTES IN POLAND traces Glenn Kurtz’s remarkable journey to identify the people in a home movie he found in his parents’ closet --- that had been made by his grandfather during a 1938 European tour one year before the outbreak of World War II.

In 2009, Glenn Kurtz found a home movie in his parents’ closet. The film had been made by his grandfather, David Kurtz, during a 1938 vacation --- a tour of Europe one year before the outbreak of World War II. The scenes include three minutes of footage taken in the Polish town of Nasielsk, where David was born. Children crowd the street, vying for the camera’s attention. Vibrant villagers mingle before storefronts, bathed in August sunlight. More than 70 years later, through the brutal twists of history, these few minutes of home-movie footage would become a memorial to an entire community --- an entire culture --- that was annihilated in the Holocaust. THREE MINUTES IN POLAND traces Glenn Kurtz’s remarkable journey to identify the people in his grandfather’s haunting images. Ultimately, Kurtz locates seven living survivors from this lost town, including an 86-year-old man who appears in the film as a 13-year-old boy. Their surprisingly intertwined stories create a riveting exploration of memory, loss, and improbable survival.