Out of the Forest

This Israeli documentary opens old wounds in the remote Lithuanian village of Polnar, where over 100,000 – mainly Jews – were murdered by the Nazis during WWII. We listen to testimonies from ageing witnesses who everyday lived with the sound of the executioner’s gunfire and the stench of rotting bodies in nearby pits. The more we hear, the more the lines of passivity and responsibility blur as we learn of the villagers’ often cold response to the nearby slaughter. However, some of the most moving memories come from those who actually escaped death by a whisker, sometimes surviving for hours, if not days, in a hellish pile of their dead and rotting relatives and comrades.