Wśród nocnej ciszy revisits the 1976 Połaniec murders and the silence around them

A crime almost half a century old

The series Wśród nocnej ciszy revisits the night of 24 to 25 December 1976 near Połaniec. After midnight mass, pregnant Krystyna Łukaszek, her husband Stanisław and her 12-year-old brother Mieczysław Kalita were killed. The crime was committed in front of many witnesses, and some of them later stayed silent, changed their statements or defended a version of events that favoured the perpetrators.

The Spidersweb portal reports that Krystyna was 18 and in the fifth month of pregnancy, and that Stanisław was 25.

The production is by Jan Holoubek and Maciej Kowalewski. It shows how the conspiracy of silence gradually broke apart. Its main inspiration was Wiesław Łuka's reportage Nie oświadczam się. The book is more than a record of the investigation and trial. Its author wanted to understand a community in which fear of exclusion, family loyalty and local hierarchy weighed more heavily than the duty to tell the truth.

Why the village stayed silent

Łuka's attention was caught by the story while he was working on another subject in the former Tarnobrzeg province. He did not replace the investigators, since the facts were established by the militia, the prosecutor's office and the court. What interested him was how a crime could happen in front of so many people, and why so many of them later shielded those responsible. He spoke with the victims' relatives, the accused's relatives, residents and witnesses, and he recorded testimony from the courtroom without embellishment.

In the mouths of the characters, the book's title phrase became a convenient formula that allowed people to neither confirm nor deny. A WP Film article notes that the language of the reportage does not only describe reality but also obscures it.

The book is made up of many voices: fragments of testimony, conversations, and statements by judges, prosecutors and defence lawyers. The author rarely judges the characters directly. Often they do it themselves, when they try to explain away their conduct or shift responsibility onto others.