“Tales from the Land of Ovens…” – an ordinary title and an extraordinary story. These tales were secretly written by 30 prisoners of Auschwitz Concentration Camp. For their own children. They also illustrated them beautifully. These tales are the subject of the film.
The concentration camp was so full of evil that one could start doubting the existence of good. But it survived, if only in seemingly trivial booklets about little chicks and flowers. There were about thirty  daring men who wrote and illustrated them in the proximity of crematorium chimneys. One of them was ordered by the Nazis to segregate the belongings of the people killed in the gas chamber. He found a fairy tale left by a child, who was gassed with others. That was when they decided to create tales for their children. These tales kept them alive.
“I don’t know if this tale will ever reach your little hands, and yet  I’ve decided to paint these pictures for you, my dearest fair-haired Zbyś,” Henryk Czulda wrote to his two-year-old son Zbyszek. He decided not to let himself get killed since he had to hand this tale to his son. The story about two little chicks travelling to the mill accompanied him at Auschwitz and five other camps.
“This tale kept him alive. He wanted to deliver it personally. There was no other way to do it,” Zbigniew Czulda says, years later. His younger brother Andrzej, who is a film director, and who wasn’t even born then, has decided to direct one of these adventures.
“You have to love very much to risk and sacrifice yourself. You could expect death penalty for such actions, the paper, paint and time were stolen from the German Reich,” says Andrzej Czulda.
“These tales let me know that my father was alive and thinking about us. And that he surely loved us a lot,” recollects Andrzej Bęć, the son of another author. “It was like bread, sometimes even more important,” adds August Kowalczyk, a prisoner of Auschwitz Concentration Camp, who also read his father’s tales.
Felicjan Świerczyna, who was born after his father had been arrested, knows his father only from family stories and the little book of tales. “ He couldn’t hold me in his arms, he could never tell me ‘son…I love you’,” he says with emotion. His father managed to send this tale to his young son hidden in a German dictionary, delivered by an SS-man. Bernard Świerczyna never returned home. He was hanged. It was the last execution to be carried out in the camp.
/ Renata Kijowska, Justyna Pochanke – TVN Facts /

WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY
ANDRZEJ B.CZULDA
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY
JACEK SIWECKI
SCIENTIFIC CONSULTATION
JADWIGA KULASZA
SOUND
BOGUMIŁA KŁOPOTOWSKA
ROBERT BUCZKOWSKI – MR Studio
MUSIC
BOGUMIŁA KŁOPOTOWSKA
IGOR KŁOPOTOWSKI
EDITING
PAWEŁ MAKOWSKI
PRODUCTION MANAGER
GRZEGORZ STELMASIAK
PRODUCTION LIGHT
GAFFERS SC.
GRZEGORZ WAKTOR
DARIUSZ WOJAS
FIRST ASSISTANT OPERATOR
JÓZEF SIKORA
DOLLY GRIP
MAREK JAWORSKI
PRODUCTION STAFF
PIOTR PRUŻYŃSKI
JANINA CYGAN
EWA PASTERAK
WANDA HUTNY
ANDRZEJ KUKOWSKI
RAFAŁ GOŁDYN
EXECUTIVE PRODUCER DISCOVERY HISTORIA
GRAŻYNA BUKOWSKA
CAST
ANDRZEJ BĘĆ
ZBIGNIEW CZULDA
ANDRZEJ CZULDA
WANDA KONDZIOŁEK – NOSAL
FELICJAN ŚWIERCZYNA
with
ALEKSANDER RACZYŃSKI - Boy
GRZEGORZ STELMASIAK - Father
narrator I  - MARIUSZ SIUDZIŃSKI
narrator II  – PIOTR DOBRZYŃSKI
narrator III  – PAWEŁ SIEDLIK
narrator IV  – ZENON WEIGT
PRODUCTION
EDUCATIONAL FILM STUDIO IN LODZ
DISCOVERY HISTORIA TVN
JOINTLY FINANCED BY
POLISH FILM INSTITUTE
AUSCHWITZ-BIRKENAU NATIONALMUSEUM IN OSWIECIM
© 2008      42’
version: Polish, English