Special Action 1005

A film by Ingolf Gritschneder | ARTE | WDR | 2022

Nobody really knows the exact details of Special Action 1005 until today. How many people were killed? It was at least tens of thousands, murdered right at the beginning of the Nazi Regime, killed and buried carelessly. The people living around the burial sites are still tormented by their existence to this day. Until today many of the anonymous mass graves remain undiscovered, but over 70 years after the end of the war activists in France and Germany are once again investigating the crimes committed under the name of “Special Action 1005”.

The Nazi-Regime did not only meticulously plan and execute mass murder, they were just as thorough when it came to destroying any evidence of their crimes. While they simply put bodies in mass graves in the early days of the war, they became increasingly fearful that their horrific crimes would be discovered, when the tide was turning against them and the red army was approaching. The systematic precision the bureaucrats of mass murder applied in erasing all traces of their crimes and the cruelty in which they did it, remains to be a mostly unknown chapter of the war. Many next of kin of the murdered Jews, Sinti, Roma, partisans or simply civilians, are still waiting to find out where their relatives were buried. And they still hope to one day have at least a dignified memorial site.