Forgotten Transports: to Latvia

Latvian capital, Riga, and into the local camp Salaspils, which is mentioned less often than other work-, concentration- and annihilation camps. In 1942, three thousand people – men, women and children from Bohemia and Moravia – were deported into this camp. In this documentary, the survivors from Czechoslovakia, Germany and Austria, now living on different continents, tell their stories. The narrations are accompanied by archive pictures of the described places, photographs of the victims and their murderers and details of important documents. However, the memories of the deported don’t only pertain to days filled with sorrow and cruelty, but also friendship, love or topics such as sexuality or menstruation. The memoirs of the interviewees thus compose a mental map, on which the good and the bad are not polarized and on which these categories blend together in regard to human characters, nationalities and their life-motivations. Therefore, this film is not only a reminder of the deportation-trains leaving for the east as well, but mainly as a warning lamp in times in which some people still keep doubting the holocaust.