Recollections > Documentary > Unknown Holocaust

Documentary project "Unknown Holocaust"

The Holocaust on the Soviet Union  territories  was largely unknown during the first decades after the war. There were ideological and political reasons for the Soviet government do not recognize the tragic fate of Jewish people.  Boris Maftsir's Israeli documentary project opens the eyes on what happened with Jewish people on the Soviet Union territories under German occupation  in 1941-1945,
how people fight, survived and killed there.
"Guardians of Remembrance"
"Holocaust.The Eastern front"
"Beyond the Nistru"
"We allow you to die"
"Until The Last Step"
"Drawers of memory"
"Gotenland"
The road to Babi Yar
The Mystery of Black Book
"Guardians of Remembrance"
In the “The Guardians  of Remembrance”, the first film of the project, “The Holocaust in the Soviet Union,” Boris Maftsir offers a comprehensive and accurate picture of the events of the Holocaust in Belarus.
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It happened there:
N Town District Province
1 Bobruisk  Bobruisk  Minsk
2 Cherven (Igumen) Igumen Minsk
3 Khatyn  Minsk Minsk
4 Kolyshki  Vitebsk  Vitebsk 
5 Luban  Bobruisk  Minsk
6 Minsk Minsk Minsk
7 Mir  Novogrudok  Minsk
8 Novogrudok  Novogrudok  Minsk
9 Suhari  Chausy Mogilev
10 Vitebsk  Vitebsk  Vitebsk 
"Holocaust.The Eastern front"
The city of Pushkin near Leningrad-St. Petersburg. The main square of Catherine Palace at the foreground. The Palace is the most popular tourist destination for those coming to St. Petersburg and the square is the site where in 1941 Nazis executed a group of men, women and children. They are buried somewhere under the concrete square.
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"Beyond the Nistru"
The film  depicts some of the Holocaust events that took place during the first year of the greatest patriotic war in Romanian occupied Soviet Union territories. The film depicts the story of the suffering and death of hundreds of thousands of Jews – victims of the Holocaust perpetrated by the Romanians.
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"We allow you to die"
The Fall of Odessa – 200 thousand Jews lived in Odessa before the war. Only half managed to leave before the arrival of the Romanians. The remaining Jews endured murderous round ups in the initial days of occupation. 40 thousand Jews were murdered in Odessa and another 70 thousand Jews were deported to camps and ghettos in Transnistria. The majority were murdered there, or died of starvation.
"We allow you to die" – The story of the starvation camp Pechora on the border between Transnistria and the German occupied Vinnytsia district in the Ukraine. A “model” camp that illustrates the murderous policy of the Romanians towards the Jews: death by starvation and disease.
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"Until The Last Step"
Towards the end of winter 1941-42 almost all of the campaigns of the murder of the Jews in Eastern Belarus were already complete. In many places in western Belarus, there were still ghettos. The uprisings in Lachva and in other ghettos in shtetls surprised the oppressors. For the first time they came upon Jews who were willing to resist. Until the Last Step presents stories of heroism and death in the ghettos of Nesvitch, Lachva, Gluboki and the brave story of escape through a tunnel in the Novogrudek ghetto. The film also exposes the Nazi’s attempt to obscure the massacre of Jews that was taking place.
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"Drawers of memory"
The drawers of memory open as the search exposes the complex history of the Jews of Latvia: before-during and after the Holocaust. First drawer - an unusual attempt by a group loyal to the memory of the victims to put together a full and detailed list of all the Jews who were in Latvia on the eve of WWII.
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"Gotenland"
The film about Holocaust in Crimea. In November 1941, the German  Army occupied the Crimea peninsula. The Nazis planned to turn the Crimea into an inseparable part of the Third Reich. They called it GOTENLAND - the land of the Goths. The shores of Crimea were supposed to be the shores of a German Riviera.
This documentary talks about the uniqueness of the tragedy of the destruction of the Crimea Crimchaks  community and the liquidation of the Jewish kolkhozes - together with the other Jewish communities of the Crimea.
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The road to Babi Yar
““The Road to Babi Yar” traces the first hundred days of the Holocaust in Ukraine and asks how this mass extermination system evolved. Through interviews with historians, local eyewitnesses and Holocaust survivor Jews, the film paints a broad and painful picture of the fate of Ukrainian Jews in the Holocaust.​
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The Mystery of Black Book
​Stalin wanted to prevent this book from being published. Why was he so dangerous in his eyes? Boris’s Maftsir new film implores the story of the Black Book, which, if seen light, would have changed for all of us the way we perceive the Holocaust, modern anti-Semitism and Jewish life in the Soviet Union.
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Additional information about project  "Searching for the Unknown Holocaust"