AVENGING EVIL

UK/US, 2018, 79 minutes, Colour/black and white.
Directed by Nick Green.

This is a documentary about the Nazi invasion of Lithuania, the rounding up of the Jewish population, the brutality of exterminations.

It is also a documentary about a plan for revenge, survivors of the Nazi atrocities in camps, their coming together after the end of World War II and planning as a group the extermination of 6 million Germans.

The film explains how the leader of the group, Abba Kovner, student during the war, later a poet, had tapes of various meetings of the group – not made available until 1985. There are many excerpts from the tapes, the voice of Kovner himself, and other members of the group and their relatives and children.

The film has a great deal of historical footage, from the invasion of Lithuania and black-and-white records of the time. There are also interviews with members of the group, a focus on Nuremberg after the war leading to the trials and the presence of Americans in Germany.

The film is something of a docudrama as actors re-create various episodes, meetings, the attempts to use poison in rivers and water systems and, eventually, in the kitchen of the camp guarded by German soldiers.

There are some contemporary interviews from the period – and many of the protagonists in later life, reflecting on what they did, their attitudes for revenge, many of them still bitter into the 21st-century. To that extent, the voices are a powerful witness.

With the plan to kill so many, there are details of what the planners did, especially the acquiring of poisons, storing them. There are also the logistical difficulties in carrying out the plan. As it turned out, a number of the soldiers were affected by the poison in the loaves in the camp – but no deaths recorded.

The film is a challenge to Jewish memories, memories of anti-Semitism in Europe before and during the war, the atrocities of the concentration camps.

Then, there are the attitudes of the audience as they learn of the plans, hear the intensity of the motivations of the members of the group, respond to their reflections on the actions of decades earlier.

To that extent, in a short running time, the film is disturbing and challenging.