Documentary

A Contribution to History

Rumbula's Echo is the first film focused on documenting two of the largest single day mass murders of the Holocaust prior to the operation of the death camps. These are the meticulously organized and savage shooting of 27,800 people in two separate days during the Rumbula Forest aktions in Latvia in late 1941. Rumbula Forest played a role in the Nazi decision to shift to death camps and gassing as a more impersonal and less emotional method of genocide than face-to-face mass shootings.

The film also documents the murder of thousands at Skede near Liepaja and other events of the Holocaust in Latvia that murdered more than 98% of the Latvian Jews living in the country. These must be documented in film while the handful of remaining survivors can tell the story, creating a unique contribution to Holocaust history.

The True Story

Rumbula's Echo traces the steps of new father Mitchell Lieber who, as he names his baby girl for his great grandmother, begins using the Internet to conduct research about his great grandparents' family. The detective work of genealogical research becomes the storytelling vehicle for the film's striking and sobering story-within-a-story. That is the story of Jews in his great grandparents' small country of Latvia beginning in the late 19th century.

Jews in Latvia at that time have three of the most revered rabbis of the last 200 years to consult. They have synagogues within blocks and perhaps a business of their own. Life flourishes with Latvia's independence in 1920, and in the 1930s the country of just under two million is about five percent Jewish. Children attend one of 71 Jewish schools and there are great authors, doctors and charitable organizations. In June 1940 the mood darkens as the Soviets occupy the country. A year later in late June 1941, a lethal plague descends on Latvia's Jews when the Nazis drive out the Soviets.

On July 4, 1941 most of Latvia's synagogues are burned to rubble including Riga's Chorale Synagogue, which is incinerated with 300 Jews locked inside. Survivors narrate as viewers see the creation of the Riga ghetto, the segregation of able-bodied young men into the small ghetto and the mass shooting of 27,800 in two separate days in the Rumbula Forest aktions of late 1941. A similar mass shooting of thousands follows about one week later at Skede beach near Liepaja and is documented in a series of photos. A photo on screen shows a young girl, two teenagers, mother and grandmother forced to pose in their winter underwear together moments before their execution as survivor Edward Anders tell us about their family and their names.

Following the war and especially after Latvia's independence in 1991, survivors and their children rebuild a small but very vibrant Jewish community with two operating synagogues. Other Jewish community institutions include a hospital, Jewish Community Center for social services, Jewish Museum and Judaic Studies Centre at the University of Latvia. The Jewish community dedicates memorials and markers at most of the country's more than 60 Holocaust killing sites, including at Rumbula Forest.

Three years after Lieber begins to research his great grandparents and deceased relatives, he receives an unexpected e-mail from Michael Roth who saw Lieber's registration at the Jewish genealogy web site. Roth, his sister, their families and their mother are a branch of the Lieber family thought exterminated in the Holocaust 60 years earlier. The families joyously reunite re-forging bonds that Mitchell's and Michael's grandfathers developed as brothers 100 years earlier.

Of 70,000 Jews trapped in Latvia during the Holocaust, 1,000 survived. One survivor discovers the cause of the dinosaurs' extinction. Another founds Latvia's Jewish Museum. A third is pivotal in negotiating peace in Northern Ireland. What of the other 98% - the 69,000 murdered? When they died, what improvements to our world died too?

The Film's Significance Today

Rumbula's Echo shows how family history ties us all to historical events, including the Holocaust, inspiring viewers to explore and document their own family stories. By including the words of victims, rescuers, the rescued, bystanders, collaborators, and perpetrators the film illuminates how a complex dynamic of relationships underlies mass murder. As it concludes, Rumbula's Echo guides the audience to contemplate the overlooked price the world pays for genocide, the loss of the murdered's contributions.