ANGELS OF DEATH
A film by Leo de Boer

Director: Leo de Boer
Camera: Peter Brugman
Sound: Gert-Jan Miedema
Editor : Berenike Rozgonyi
Producent: Pieter van Huystee Film & TV
Premiere: 1997
Length: 56 minutes
Format: 35 mm (English subtitled), 1:1.66, 25 fps, Dolby SR
Also available as Digi Beta, Beta SP en VHS

The area around the Russian village Mjasnoi Bor - 100 kilometres south-east of St. Petersburg - was once a prosperous cattle breeding region. Now it is desolate and abandoned. And it carries a terrible stigma. Tens of thousands of dead and unburied soldiers lie scattered in the swamp near the village. They were part of the Second Shock Army under General Vlasov's command. In the spring of 1942, they were ordered to break the German's siege of former Leningrad. They were forced back into the swamp, surrounded and defeated. However, there is no mention of this in official Soviet history. Although all Russians know this is the place where the traitor Vlasov deserted his army and defected to the Germans. Even in modern day Russia the word "Vlasovite" is a synonym for super-traitor.

Every record of Vlasov's actions during the war, including this operation at Leningrad, have been erased since his defection. The 70,000 soldiers under his command in the swamps at Mjasnoi Bor were also erased. The families of these thousands of abandoned dead soldiers had no choice than to accept that their father, brother or husband had been branded as traitors and collaborators. But now that the swamp's secrets are gradually being unveiled, another story unfolds; most soldiers appear to have fought to the death.

For several years now the 'Angels of Death' are allowed to do their work, after initially having been obstructed by the authorities. Every year a group of motivated people (often students and relatives of the deceased soldiers) gathers at the swamp from all over the former Soviet-Union. Their aim is to expose this neglected injustice before time and the elements make it impossible. The project now has 150 participants. At the beginning of May - when the ground is no longer frozen and there are as yet no mosquitoes - they painstakingly explore part of the 70 square kilometres the swamp measures. Using sticks, knives and their fingers the soldiers' relatives delve, metre by metre, into the ground. They're not interested in the weapons and debris lying all around. They're looking for more personal things. Especially bones and skulls. However, the identification of the victims is not an easy task. The Red Army hardly ever used identification plates. Therefore, the search concentrates particularly on personal belongings such as spoons and food tins in which the soldiers scratched their names.

The 'Angels' also look for letters in which the trapped soldiers tried to inform their beloved about their gruesome fate. These letters are often badly decomposed and hardly legible. But sometimes they provide the last clue to a tragic puzzle. Then the 'Angels' succeed in comforting a fatherless family and end their insecurity. Children and grandchildren often rush to Mjasnoi Bor in order to be present on the 9th of May when the unknown soldiers are taken to their final resting-place. This emotional reunion gives them the opportunity to pay their fathers and grandfathers the respect they had to do without for more than half a century.

In ANGELS OF DEATH we experience the fate of these forgotten deaths as we hear their personal poems and messages. We follow the diggers who are delving in the mud for their memories. Memories that are tainted by the dark shadow of a Collective Memory that dictated what was to be remembered - and what was not...