Forgotten Transports: To Estonia

Colour, DIGIBETA
Czech Republic, 2008, 85 min
WP – World premiere
Section: Official Selection - Out of Competition

Synopsis

On 5 September 1942 a transport arrived in Estonia bearing one thousand Czech Jews. Roughly a hundred women between the ages of 19 and 25 were separated from their families who were taken by bus to another, apparently “heated” concentration camp. The terrified girls soon formed various groups in which they gave each other total support. With time they began to act together, like a single, large organism. The optimism and naivety of youth helped them to survive the harrowing journeys through a series of other camps in Estonia and later also in Germany. Their instinct for self-preservation urged them to ignore the Holocaust raging all around them. It was not until 5 September 1945, while they were convalescing in Sweden, that they discovered the truth about what happened to their families… Lukáš Přibyl spent seven years putting together his unique project about the little known fates of Czech Jews during the Holocaust. In this, the third part of the documentary series Forgotten Transports, he combines testimonies from survivors with shocking archive footage and documents, which together offer insight into the destiny of women in a “man’s” war.

About the director

Lukáš Přibyl (b. 1973, Ostrava, CR) read political science, Judaic studies and history at Brandeis University and the CEU. He has published work on various aspects of the Holocaust and curated exhibitions at the Jewish Museum in Prague. Forgotten Transports – a series of four feature-length documentaries about virtually unknown concentration camps and the remarkable strategies the inmates used in order to survive – is his first film project.