The Mystery of the Black Book

Description: Budapest, Chelm, Krakow… Most regular viewers of Holocaust documentaries can recognise these hometowns of Jews massacred during the war. Relatively few have heard of Kharkov, Chernigov and Nowogrodek. Yet, some 2.7m Jews from the occupied territories of the Soviet Union perished during the holocaust. While the locations of the worse atrocities in other parts of Eastern Europe are well known, these inside the USSR remained virtually uncharted for many years. Not by accident. Soviet journalist Ilya Ehrenburg collated war survivor testimonies into a document named The Black Book but the authorities prevented its publication. This film explores the history of the project and the reasons for its suppression. This is discussed in the context of the evolving Soviet policy towards Jews in the period preceding, during and following the war. The film relies on rarely seen archival footage and extensive interviews with both Russian and foreign historians and experts.

Merits: Boris Maftsir immigrated to Israel from Latvia in 1971 having been convicted for Zionist activities. He is a passionate chronicler of the fate of Soviet Jewry during WW2. He spent years re-visiting the scenes of Nazi atrocities in the former Soviet Union, collecting testimonies and interviewing locals. Many of these have not been included in this documentary but can be viewed on his YouTube channel. (Some clips, though not all, are subtitled in English.)

In this film Maftsir narrows his focus to the history of the Black Book and Soviet Jewish policy. Although cinematically conventional, his documentary eschews simplistic explanations of Soviet antisemitism. It appears that the reasons for suppressing the publication were pragmatic if not morally legitimate. This film packs a fascinating, sophisticated and nuanced understanding of this complex history into its seventy minutes. An excellent educational resource.

Rating: Descriptions of atrocities.

Programming considerations: Consider pairing with a panel discussion on Soviet-era antisemitism.

Asia

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