Legnica

"I believe that my grandfather served as a train driver, commuting between the death camps. He stayed in Liegnitz, now Legnica, in a boarding school, so there was a certain separation from the family and between the death camps."

Regional prosecutor Radoslaw Wrebiak said the film crew failed to obtain the required permit for their excavation work and that police in the western city of Legnica were investigating their activities in the basement of an apartment building considered to have historical value.

Legnica, a small city near the German border, is a microcosm of that rift.

The last Soviet soldier departed Legnica in 1993; but the monument of gratitude remained, inflaming divisions in a community riven by its postwar past.

I arrived in Legnica in late March, three days before the monument of the two soldiers and the little girl was dismantled.