A People Uncounted

NEW DOCS

Holocaust documentaries such as this one remind us that the Allied victory in World War II did not eradicate genocide. This deeply moving film unearths the long-buried history of the Porrajmos, the “devouring” of the Romani people during the Nazi era, and with harrowing intimacy, bears witness to an ongoing chronicle of shocking injustice. Survivors bravely recount their experiences as children being deported to death camps: One is turned away from the Auschwitz crematorium because the Zyklon B has run out; another becomes a victim of Dr. Mengele. Director Aaron Yeger acknowledges the difficulty of fully representing either individual traumas or the enormity of the war’s death toll: an estimated 90 percent of the Roma in Europe perished. Yet he also implicates decades of postwar human rights abuses of this misunderstood minority (recently declared the group in the European Union that suffers from the most discrimination) as a reason the world does not know this profoundly important history.  MP

Director

Aaron Yeger

Producers

Marc Swenker, Tom Rasky

Executive Producer

Lenny Binder

Editor

Kurt Engfehr

Cinematographer

Stephen C. Whitehead

Release Year

2011

Festival Year

2012

Country

Canada

Run Time

99 minutes