Amitabh Bachchan Special Guest In Poland; Visits Auschwitz

Amitabh Bachchan had accepted Krakow’s invitation extended to him last year but he was unable to take the flight because of the Icelandic volcano which had paralysed air traffic in 2010. A year later, he accepted the festival’s renewed invitation and visited Poland with his wife Jaya Bacchan and daughter Shweta. Big B wrote on his blog, “My hand prints for the plaque to be placed on the pavement that runs along the great castle. Michael Jackson there too.” He also received the key to the city of Krakow from the Mayor. “A moment of great pride. Not for me but for whose son I was and which nation I came from,” he wrote.

Amitabh Bachchan also met the festival participants in the STU Theatre in Krakow during a poetry evening. He presented his late father, Harivansh Rai Bachchan’s poem ‘Khoon ke Chape’ as he felt it was the most appropriate after he had visited Auschwitz.

The actor was obviously moved by the history of the dreaded gas chamber and tweeted, “AUSCHWITZ !! Read about it heard about it seen it in movies .. but after visiting it today .. numbed and lost for words .. The horror and hideous atrocity of that moment in is simply unfathomable …the shock and barbarity of the holocaust is beyond words… Important to preserve that horrendous and barbaric page of history, to insure that the atrocity of such deeds never happens again.”