The terrible secret of the Nazi mass graves

ART – Tuesday, May 3, 10:25 pm – Documentary

Filmed in the year 2021 in the Lviv region and around the city of Kyiv, near the infamous Babi Yar valley or near the formerly terrible Januska camp, this touching documentary is not devoted to the bloody conflict that is currently taking place. To atrocities, but to an unknown part of World War II.

It’s about a mysterious « Operation 1005 » (Procedure 1005) and a secret commando tasked with erasing the traces of the crimes committed by the German occupier since 1941 on these Ukrainian lands. For the record, the number of Jews killed by the Germans and their allies in Ukraine is estimated at 1.5 million, 80% of whom were shot.

To analyze the way in which the members of « 1005 Commandos » – mostly Jewish deportees and Soviet prisoners of war – since the beginning of 1942 have opened the mass graves where the victims were buried before being cremated on giant pegs, disappearing ashes and bones and collecting gold teeth before killing themselves, the author chose This documentary follows investigators with very different files.

Collect evidence

On the other hand, Rudiger Shaluk, whose grandfather Walter, a second lieutenant of the SS stationed in Lviv, participated in many operations, including 1005. For many years, the grandson, upset by the story family, tried to collect concrete evidence of the atrocities that It was perpetrated by Walter Shallock and his superiors. A murderer who would escape any punishment after the war and die in 1974—unlike architect Paul Bluebell, guilty of killing nearly 60,000 people in this area, who would end up hanging in June 1951.

« Operation 1005 was decided by Hitler himself. The goal is to eliminate all traces of mass crimes, » says one of the historians.

Other investigators on site are investigators from the French Yahad-In Unum association, whose meticulous job is to locate ancient mass graves and find rare surviving eyewitnesses. To their credit: more than two thousand carefully listed places and numerous testimonials collected. Their work is as difficult as it is exciting. In the small villages around Lviv, a vigilant hundred-year-old woman and an animated woman in her late 90s talks about what they saw. We drown in terror. “There were mass graves in all the villages of the area,” Reassures one of the leaders of the association.

« Operation 1005 was decided by Hitler himself. The goal is to remove all traces of mass crimes », Historian says. It’s up to the descendants of victims and criminals to build Europe on mass graves… « Why do you come only now? » »old witnesses say, with a failed memory at times, was found by investigators in the field.