Land der Vernichtung

Summary

Land of Annihilation

In the summer of 2003 Romuald Karmakar started to research a feature film project about the Hamburg reserve police battalion 101, which was involved in the murder of 1.7 million Jews in occupied Poland in 1942/43.

This research material, filmed with a simple Mini DV camera, then became the documentary film project "Land der Vernichtung". Karmakar follows the traces of the police battalion and documents the places where the battalion was deployed and stationed, as well as the death camps at Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka and the concentration camp Majdanek. Furthermore, Karmakar talks to contemporary witnesses and survivors to find out how the incidents of the past have influenced the lives of the people in this region today.