2018: The accidental discovery of several boxes of old film material in provincial Bohemia proved to be a political sensation: they were original recordings of the show trial against the Jewish General Secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, Rudolf Slánský, over an alleged “Trotskyist-Titoist-Zionist conspiracy”.
While inspecting the insolvency estate in a dilapidated research institute, the administrator stumbles across twenty boxes of old audio and film recordings, the existence of which had long been forgotten. They document the largest political show trial in Czechoslovakia, conducted in 1952 against Rudolf Slánský and thirteen other - predominantly Jewish - defendants. The trial, preparations for which were carried out under Soviet supervision for more than a year, ended with eleven death sentences, all carried out immediately.
Director Martin Vandas makes the recordings available to a wider audience for the first time. Using additional archive material such as the memoirs of Slánský's widow, who recalls the kidnapping of her baby in Moscow and the arrest of her husband in Prague, the filmmaker reconstructs Slánský's life and the proceedings of the anti-Semitically motivated trial. Historians such as Petr Koura ensure this is placed in an international context and examine the question of whether Slánský was ultimately a victim of his own politics.
Text: Christina Frankenberg
English: Peter Rickerby
Credits
original title HE WHO DIGS A PIT: RUDOLF SLÁNSKÝ
international title HE WHO DIGS A PIT: RUDOLF SLÁNSKÝ
german title HE WHO DIGS A PIT: RUDOLF SLÁNSKÝ
JFBB section Break or continuity? "Anti-Zionism" and anti-Semitism under socialism and afterwards
country/countries CZ
year 2020
duration 87
Martin Vadas
BIO Czech director, producer, director of photography, script writer. He graduated from FAMU (FILM AND TV SCHOOL OF THE ACADEMY OF PERFORMING ARTS IN PRAGUE) in 1981. Between 1982-2002 he worked as teacher of Documentary section of FAMU. He worked as cameraman, after 1985 and director, after 1992. Editor in Chief of News in Czechoslovaque Television and after 1993, producer on documentaries, features and television programmes. In the last academic year he was Teacher of Television Studies at Prague’s College of Journalism. He has made over seventy films, television and video programmes.
