A Documentary Film and TV Program
How a huge mass shooting of the Holocaust changed a family, a country and our world today.
Rumbula's Echo is the first film and TV program focused on documenting the Rumbula Forest murders of 25,000, more than a third of Latvia's Jews. It is among the largest mass shootings of its kind of the Holocaust.
The documentary places this genocide within the setting of the Holocaust in Latvia, during which Nazis and collaborators murdered an estimated 98% of Latvian Jews trapped in the country. Its weave of archival film and photos is narrated by those who were there as viewers see Latvia's Jewish community wiped out in six months in 1941. Rumbula's Echo is documenting Rumbula, and other pivotal Holocaust history in film, while the few remaining survivors can tell the story behind historic photos and silent film images. Rumbula's Echo offers the most profuse and detailed eye witness descriptions of a large Holocaust mass shooting, within a local context, ever seen on film or television.
This is wrapped within the remarkable story of Jews in Latvia before and after the Holocaust. Rumbula's Echo begins with a narrative device, an American father's true genealogy search for his new daughter's namesake, his great grandmother from Latvia. That leads him and the film's viewers to the documentary's story. The pre-war period includes luminaries such as philosopher Isaiah Berlin, Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook and painter Marc Rothko. The post-war Soviet era sees young activists gather on Sundays to express their Jewish identity and mark the unmarked massacre site at Rumbula, transforming it into a major birthplace of the historic Refusenik movement. The film's ending is unique, poignant and thought provoking.