The Mystery Of The Black Book

70 Minutes, 2019
Genre:
Documentary
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Directed by: Boris Maftsir
Production:Boris Maftsir, Zvi Shefi
Photographer: Roni Katzanelson
Original Music: Avi Benjamin
Languages: Russian, Hebrew
| Subtitles not available

This film by Boris Maftsir is part of the director’s documentary megaproject, Searching for the Unknown Holocaust, in which he traces the genocide of Jews at the hands of the Nazis and their collaborators in the countries that comprised the former USSR.
After World War II, a document known as The Black Book was due to be published in the USSR. The document was to recap all testimonials and accounts of mass murders of Jews in Nazi-occupied Soviet Federation territories – however, under Stalin’s orders it was subsequently shelved.
Through a series of interviews with historians, authors, and experts, the film explores a litany of horror stories originally included in the mothballed book, as well as the stories of Vasily Grossman and Ilya Ehrenburg – the two military reporters who were also the original authors of The Black Book which they tried to get published. The interviews raise a rather pertinent question: had the book been published in real-time, would the Holocaust of the USSR Jewry have been given a more prominent place in Holocaust remembrance, right up with there with the murdered Jews of central and western Europe?
Maftsir’s film also explores the change in the public status of Soviet Jews who, pre-WWII were considered loyal and welcomed partners in the revolution – only to then be branded as second-class citizens in the postwar age of institutionalised Antisemitism that also saw them accused of having dual loyalties.

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