Forgotten Transports to Poland

This is the latest of four films in the Forgotten Transports cycle of documentaries by director Lukáš Přibyl. It deals with lesser known concentration, labour and extermination camps in Poland. The intricate stories of several men and women from the Czech Republic take us to ghettoes and camps in Lublin, Zamosc, Piaski, Sobibor and Sawin. In this instance, the tales of these Jewish heroes and heroines mostly recount stories of escape and concealment from the Nazis in Hungary and Poland. This adds a new dimension to the story of the Holocaust, which is augmented by the active resistance of captive and brutally treated Jews. They took various routes to freedom, ranging from an uprising in the Sobibor camp to dangerously pretending to be a deaf-and-dumb simpleton who could prove his apparent non-Jewishness with an uncircumcised penis. This last documentary about forgotten transports to the east makes extensive use of archive materials and paints a surprising portrait of the Holocaust, which reshapes the somewhat one-sided view of life and survival of the Jewish population during the Second World War. Consequently, the dichotomy of passive victims and active aggressors gradually dissolves...