They encounter a German tank column; the soldier, surrounded, grabs a rifle from his cart and begins shooting, while Janek flees for his life.
[1] The third novella, Kropla krwi (A Drop of Blood), begins with young Mirka awakening in an abandoned Jewish tenement after its residents have been deported by the Nazis.
[1] Birth Certificate was produced by the Film Group Rytm [pl], under the artistic direction of Jan Rybkowski and the literary supervision of Aleksander Ścibor-Rylski.
[4] The third novella, Kropla krwi, was inspired by the true story of a Jewish girl, described in the collection Dzieci oskarżają, compiled by Maria Hochberg-Mariańska and Noe Grüss.
[5] The script sparked lively discussion; its artistic value was generally appreciated, but many members of the commission were opposed to starting work on the project.
[9] The music for Birth Certificate was composed by Lucjan Kaszycki [pl], while the film was edited by Czesław Raniszewski and Anna Rubińska.
[11] Bronisława Stolarska wrote that Birth Certificate "concentrates the best qualities of Różewicz's art – governed by the principle of artistic economy – achieving the most with the simplest means".
[12] According to Marek Hendrykowski [pl], "no one before Różewicz managed to tell several wartime stories in such a synthetic and incredibly concise form, emanating with similar expression and having such a dramatic potential for the viewer".
Bryll found the film's conclusion "valuable", summarizing that "what is even more significant, aspiring to the level of a great metaphor, is the child's plea to be recognized as Polish".
James Breen of Sight & Sound noted that Birth Certificate was composed "from beginning to end with raw pieces of tragedy and pathos – each of them shocking, but not all of them appropriately selected and shaped".
According to Tadeusz Lubelski, its essence lay in "the authors' focus on the daily lives of ordinary people, emphasizing the natural motivation behind their actions".
In the first novella, the audience is presented with landscapes that offer no sense of security against "hostile external forces":[23]Empty roads, deserted towns, burned and abandoned houses, bars in empty windows, decaying military equipment in forest undergrowth, forests, endless fields, and vast expanses of chaotic September wanderings.The film's space becomes particularly dangerous in the third novella, where Mirka is constantly forced to hide: "knocking on the door can mean death, and any person encountered could be an enemy.
The help offered to the girl is not always motivated by compassion.Critics such as Aránzazu Calderón Puerta and Tomasz Żukowski cautiously debated Marszałek's and other similar assessments.
[26] While Kropla krwi portrays the dilemmas tormenting a Jewish child – "Mirka is still partly a child but has already internalized the stigma, a product of the overlap between Polish antisemitic traditions and the mechanisms of Nazi extermination"[26] – the film ultimately conveys a strongly anti-German message:[27]Mirka, paradoxically – somewhat contrary to earlier depictions – is portrayed solely as a victim of Nazism.