The Holocaust evidence Stalin tried to erase—rebuilt from voices he couldn't silence.
The Black Book, drafted during World War II, gathers numerous unique historical testimonies, in an effort to document Nazi abuses against Jews in the USSR . Initially supported by the regime and aimed at providing evidence during the executioners’ trials in the post-war era, the Black Book was eventually banned and most of its authors executed on Stalin’s order. Told through the voices of its most famous instigators, soviet intellectuals Vassilli Grossman, Ilya Ehrenburg and Solomon Mikhoels, the documentary, provides a detailed account of the tragic destiny of this cursed book and puts the Holocaust and Stalinism in a new light.
Direction
Ribot weaves testimony like a political ghost story.
Editing
Jarring cuts between 1940s footage and present silence.
Writing
Voiced texts that should've been evidence, now elegy.
Director
Guillaume Ribot
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
The actual Black Book manuscript survived in fragments; one complete copy was smuggled to Israel and published in Jerusalem in 1980, forty years after its suppression.
The film's release in 2020 coincided with renewed debates over Holocaust memory in Eastern Europe, making its excavation of Soviet denialism uncomfortably timely.
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