The Palmnicken Tragedy — Claims Conference Film Grants

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The last page of the Holocaust is the Palmnicken Massacre, where about 3,000 prisoners of the Stutthof concentration camp were shot by the sea, as told by its witnesses and participants.

Synopsis

On the night of January 31, 1945, in the town of Palmnicken in East Prussia (now the settlement of Yantarny, Kaliningrad Region, Russia), Nazis shot on the seashore about 3,000 prisoners of the Stutthof concentration camp, mostly women and teenage girls. The advancing Soviet troops reached the execution site just one day after the execution.

Three main characters of the film – Martin Bergau who was a member of the Hitler Youth in February 1945; Gunter Nitsch, an American writer of German descent; and Simcha Koplowicz, a descendant of the surviving prisoner Sheva Koplowicz – are recalling this story before our eyes.

About the Director

Andrey Proskuryakov was born in 1976 (Tver, Russian Federation). Now lives in Haifa, Israel. Creative and visionary Director and Scriptwriter with 14 years of career experience working for independent TV production companies and Russian TV channels, including Russia-K (Culture channel), Moscow-24, Moscow-Confidence, Stolitsa, TVC, CTC, RBK-TV, MatchTV. Possesses exceptional multi-tasking abilities adept in leading multi-functional teams in delivery quality TV projects and documentaries.

Artistic Statement

For me, this film began in the summer of 2016, when I met Kaliningrad journalist Alexander Aderikhin and learned about a very strange story: allegedly, on the night of January 31, 1945,several thousand people were shot by the Nazis on the Baltic Sea coast. At the time of our conversation with Alexander, witnesses of these events were still alive, but there were no traces of murder. A mass grave of Jewish prisoners shot by the Nazis has disappeared. I didn’t try to prove with the film that it was. I wanted this to never happen again. I wanted to talk about the nature and the banality of evil. About people for whom killing was “just a job.” Unfortunately, since the moment we started making the film, the world has changed unrecognizably. But I am sure that this story is even more necessary for this “brave new world”.