Out of the Forest

Documentary about Punar, a memorial in a forest near Vilna (Vilnius, Lithuania) where between 70 and 100 thousand people were shot during the Second World War, most of them Jews. Filmed in Punar and based on the testimonies of survivors and the diary of Kazimierz Sakowicz, a Polish journalist who lived in Punar during the time of the Nazi occupation and who was killed in the last days of the war. His diary was found by Dr Rachel Margolis, a Holocaust researcher from Vilna, who participates in the film. Some of the witnesses in the film miraculously survived the shootings and crawled out from under the pile of corpses. Not everyone manages to recount his story and some prefer to keep silent. Most of the film focuses on local residents who saw and heard, but chose to carry on with their daily lives. It seems that as far as they were concerned, the murders were a profitable business because working for the Nazis, guarding, cooking, laundering and also trading in the victims’ possessions, provided them with an income. The film does not include archival footage and the message is conveyed through filmed testimonies, family films and the writings of Sakowicz.