FRIDAY | 7:00pm

BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE

SPONSORED by Irving House at Harvard

Andrey Proskuryakov

89 min | Germany, Russia, Israel | 2022 | USA Premiere

On the night of January 31, 1945, in the town of Palmnicken in East Prussia (now the settlement of Yantarny, Kaliningrad Region, Russia), Nazis shot on the seashore about 3,000 prisoners of the Stutthof concentration camp, mostly women and teenage girls. The advancing Soviet troops reached the execution site just one day after the execution.

Three main characters of the film – Martin Bergau who was a member of the Hitler Youth in February 1945; Gunter Nitsch, an American writer of German descent; and Simcha Koplowicz, a descendant of the surviving prisoner Sheva Koplowicz – are recalling this story before our eyes.

Director’s Statement: For me, this film began in the summer of 2016, when I met Kaliningrad journalist Alexander Aderikhin and learned of this strange and terrible event. At the time of our conversation witnesses of these events were still alive, but there were no traces of murder. A mass grave has disappeared – a mass grave of Jewish prisoners shot by the Nazis. I wanted to talk about the nature and the banality of evil. About what to do when the Motherland demands to kill. About people for whom killing was "just a job." Unfortunately, since the moment we started making the film, the world has changed unrecognizably. But I am sure that this story not only has not lost its relevance, but has become even more necessary for this "brave new world".

Premiered at the Shanghai Film Festival.

Screened with Am I Not My Brother’s Keeper?