Many Holocaust victims were not murdered in concentration camps, but killed by Nazis in mass shootings elsewhere. The Polish organization Zapomniane wants to keep the memory of what's known as the "dispersed Holocaust" alive.
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00:00This forest north of Warsaw holds a secret, a little-known chapter of the Holocaust.
00:12Michael Zev Gordon only recently learned that his grandfather was murdered here by the Nazis.
00:18I came here in September 2022 with two of my sons in this extraordinary silent forest.
00:33And I came here to find something out about my grandfather who was shot here in summer 1941.
00:43A story I knew nothing about because my family never talked about it.
00:50Zalman Gorodetsky, Gordon's grandfather, is one of about 1,500 Jews who were shot and buried in mass graves near the Polish village of Sumowo by German forces.
01:03A victim of what's been called the Holocaust by bullets.
01:08Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941.
01:12In the occupied regions, mobile killing units soon began systematically shooting Jewish men, women and children.
01:20In all, more than 1.5 million Jews lost their lives in these mass executions.
01:32It's believed that about a quarter of all Holocaust victims were killed in mass shootings.
01:41Not in concentration and extermination camps, but in or near the towns where they lived.
01:54In many cases, Magdalena Saryusz-Wolska says, these murders took place in full view or at least with an earshot of the local population.
02:04Yet many details of these mass shootings remain unknown.
02:08The German Historical Institute in Warsaw is conducting a project to study the locations where these executions took place and their post-war history.
02:19Unfortunately, there are many places where there is no remembrance at all, where the mass graves haven't even been identified.
02:28And where they have been identified, where the location is known, and there may be a monument or a memorial plaque, it's mostly locals keeping the memory alive.
02:42One of these initiatives also helped Michael Zev Gordon find his grandfather's final resting place.
02:52Thanks to the Polish organization Zapomniane, Polish for forgotten, a memorial stone now commemorates the 1941 massacre.
03:02The NGO has already located and secured hundreds of mass graves from the Holocaust.
03:15We need to follow Jewish law in terms of dealing with Jewish burials.
03:21So we can't use the traditional archaeology, we can't open graves, we can't dig out the bones.
03:29We can only use the tools of the so-called non-invasive archaeology.
03:36Zapomniane uses ground-penetrating radar and other techniques to locate the graves.
03:43This is followed by commemorative work and analysis, often in collaboration with the German Historical Institute.
03:51The organization also relies on the memories of the local population, which has been involved in the process from the very beginning.
04:00Our stories are very personal. They are personal for us and they are personal for local communities.
04:06Because still we meet people whose grandparents used to remember those Jews.
04:13Whose grandparents used to be in the same bench at school with those people.
04:18We dream that the place that we will at some point commemorate will become a part of their local history.
04:25Because this is their history, it's not ours.
04:29For British composer Michael Zev Gordon, the trip to Poland three years ago marked the beginning of a deeply personal journey.
04:37An experience he processes through his music.
04:41In the last 18 months I've written a piece of music called A Kind of Haunting.
04:46And in it, I try to work through these things, and particularly memories that were surrounded by silence.
04:55I grew up with so much silence, but I wanted to find out.
05:01And somehow, by being here, by making this film, I was able to do that.
05:08And somehow, by being here, by making this connection, it's all the more possible.
05:14And for me it's a vital thing to be able to pass this on to the next generation.
05:20I'm his grandchild, but I can pass it on to my children.
05:26And so somehow his story moves forward.
05:37He's not forgotten.