Review by hof-4

Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany began June 22 1941. Romania, then under the rule of fascist dictator Ion Antonescu joined the Germans and provided them with troops, vital transportation services as well as access to Romanian oilfields. Mass murder of Jews began shortly after. Dduring the war between 280,000 and 380,000 Romanian and Ukrainian Jews were killed in Romania and territories under its control, sometimes (but not always) with German assistance.

On June 29, 1941, Jews in the northeastern city of Iasi were taken to police headquarters while being beaten and abused by Romanian police and civilians. Some were shot on the spot. The rest were crammed without food or water into two death trains comprised of sealed, overheated freight cars where most died of suffocation or lack of water. Some 15,000 victims, almost a third of Iasi's Jewish population, were killed. Iasi is one of the most documented massacres of WWII; around 100 pictures of the event exist, along with about 600 portraits of the victims.

Director Radu Jude tells (or doesn't tell) the tale in a spare, austere fashion. The first and longest part of the movie is a slideshow. Each slide is a photograph of one of the victims (some from IDs, others family photos) accompanied by the reading of primary accounts from survivors, mostly relatives, describing the atrocities that befell the victim and cause of death. The last part consists of photographs of the actual atrocities. Some are self explanatory, others we understand after the declarations in the first part. What makes the photos more chilling is their quality; they were taken by a professional photographer obviously with the consent of the executioners, who appear in relaxed poses. The cumulative effect of these images is powerful and makes this film a outstanding contribution to Holocaust history.