On Sunday, August 22nd at 10:55 the First Channel of the Polish Television will broadcast the film “Niewygodny” (“Inconvenient”) of Grzegorz Linkowski. This documentary presents the figure of the metropolitan bishop of Lviv, Andrzej Szeptycki. The director tries to show the controversy connected with the activity of the archbishop and to answer the question: for whom he might have been “inconvenient”. He also tries to understand why Szeptycki – in spite of numerous efforts of the rescued and the hierarchs of the Greek Catholic Church – has not been honored with the title of the Righteous Among the Nations to this day.

The film “Inconvenient” was produced in 2008. The narrators of this story are rev. Stefan Batruch and Kurt Lewin – the son of the Lviv rabbi, saved by Szeptycki during the Second World War. The film was directed by Grzegorz Linkowski, author, screenwriter and producer of numerous documentaries – 7 among them have been awarded at various festivals and reviews. He is manager of the “Chatka Żaka” Academic Center for Culture of the Maria Curie-Skłodowska University in Lublin and the originator and director of the International Festival of Documentaries “Crossroads of Europe”. In 2010 he received the Rev. Emilian Kowcz Award of Reconciliation for the promotion of interreligious and intercultural dialogue – among others, for having produced the films “Proboszcz z Majdanka” (“Priest from Majdanek”) and “Inconvenient”.

Andrzej Szeptycki was born in 1865 in Przyłbice near Jaworów. He came from an aristocratic family and was the grandson of Aleksander Fredro. He studied in Wrocław and Krakow. On May 29th, 1888 he joined the order of the Basilians in Dobromil. He made his monastic vows in the monastery of Krystynopol in 1892. In 1896 he became prior of the Basilian Monastery in Lviv, and in 1900 – the metropolitan bishop of Halicz and archbishop of Lviv. In the interwar period, seeking support for the Ukraine’s independence cause, he visited Rome, Paris, Belgium, the Netherlands and the US. During the Second World War, in March 1942, he wrote a pastoral letter condemning people taking part in murders and massacres, and in August of the same year he informed the Pope about the Nazi crimes in the East, admitting his former misjudgment of the Third Reich. He also defended Jews in his letter to Himmler, written in February 1942. However, his attitude towards the 14th Division of Grenadiers of the SS and to the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) aroused big controversy.

The metropolitan bishop participated in a large-scale action of hiding Jews in orders, he also ordered the hiding of Jewish children. Thanks to his help many people survived the war, among them Lili Pohlmann and her mother, Adam Daniel Rotfeld, Dawid Kahane with his family and the two sons of the Lviv rabbi Jecheskiel Lewin. Together with his brother Klemens – honored with the title of the Righteous Among the Nations in 1995 – he organized a network that helped Jews and he contributed to saving at least a few hundred of people. Andrzej Szeptycki died on November 1st, 1944. Efforts for his beatification have been made twice, but Vatican rejected these motions (they were also blocked by cardinal Wyszyński) – at present another process of beatification is taking place. The proceedings connected with awarding him the title of the Righteous Among the Nations have also been reopened on demand of the people he rescued.