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The Road to Krasnostav

Synopsis: 

Krasnostav was a Jewish shtetl in Ukraine with a population around 2000 in 1930s.
A half of the population was Jew, another half was Ukrainian. In August 1941 German soldiers and local Ukrainian collaborators carried out a mass execution of all 800 Jews remaining in the town.
Seventy-four years later, in May 2015, the descendants of those Jews gathered in Kiev in order to find out the circumstances of the lives and deaths of their forefathers. This fact-finding trip forms the basis of the film's narrative.
The grim details of Babi Yar’s mass killing of Jews in Kiev was a starting point of their discoveries. Than the group traveled to Krasnostav, which became a small desolated village with only 300 inhabitants, no Jews live there any more. But two aged women still remember past glory of the town, its central plaza, stores, workshops and Jewish neighbors that helped them in the harsh time.
The trail brought the group to the war memorials, mass graves and Jewish cemeteries in and around Krasnostav, Izyslavl, Berezdov and Slavuta. Those monuments and graves surrounded by picturesque landscapes are the only remnant of the former Jewish population.
Why did it happen in this particular Ukrainian town where the Ukrainians and the Jews had lived alongside each other for centuries only to end up as murders and victims? So who killed the Jews? How does hate grow in people's hearts over the course of a day? A lingering sense of a tragedy that can’t be reconciled is punctuating the film treads.
The film is valuable as a historical account about “The Holocaust by bullets” when the Germans entered Ukraine in July 1941 and destroyed every Jewish community in their path. Nearly every Jew who did not manage to flee was killed in the space of two and a half years, between June, 1941 and December, 1943.
According to Ukrainian historian, Alexandre Kruglov: 500 000 persons were exterminated in 1941, over 700 000 in 1942, and 200 000 in 1943 before the Wehrmacht’s retreat in 1944. Just 20% of Ukrainian Jews were deported to Belzec, Sobibor and Auschwitz. The remaining 80% were killed by SS commando and Ukrainian collaborators.

Runtime: 
01:03:00
Information for the Audience: 

Directors: Julia Melamed
Writers:
Producers: Michael Levin, Leonid Vayn
Key cast:

Categories:

Information for theatres: 

Student project: No
Completion date: 2015-12-01
Shooting format: HD
Aspect ratio: 16:9
Film color: Color
First-time filmmaker: No

Total votes: 1367