SPOILER ALERT-ending is discussed. I saw this film a number of years ago with a Polish friend. She said that the version she saw in Poland had a different ending. The English version shows the boxcar fading into a cloud and then Korczak and the orphans emerging and fading up into the sky. I forget what ending she said the Polish version had, but it was more stark. I'm wondering whether anyone knows about this, and whether the director was involved in offering different final scenes. I think an interesting parallel are the endings of the 1975 East German and 1999 US remake of Jakob the Liar. Andrzej Munk's last film (he died in a crash during filming and it was finished by his student) The Passenger (1963) is another Holocaust-themed film that involves multiple possibilities and perspectives on what happened.
