- Rated: Not Rated
- Closed captioning available
- Run Time: 3 hours
- Video: Color
- Released: March 17, 2009
- Originally Released: 1996
- Label: Wgbh / Pbs
- Encoding: Region 1 (USA & Canada)
- Packaging: Keep Case
- Aspect Ratio: Full Frame - 1.33
Prompted by a Holocaust survivor's search for his roots, Jewish and Gentile villagers in Bransk, Poland recall the November 8, 1942 Nazi roundup in the small town, which took 2,500 Jews to Treblinka's gas chambers. Their reminiscences question local farmers' complicity in the heinous action.
Description by WGBH Boston Video:
On November 8, 1942, Nazi soldiers rounded up the Jews living in a shtetl, a small village, in Bransk, Poland, and ordered the town's farmers to provide horse wagons to transport them to a nearby train station. Within twenty-four hours, 2,500 Jews from Bransk died in Treblinka's gas chambers. Their shtetl died with them.
FRONTLINE embarks on a 3 hour quest to uncover the true story of Jewish life in Bransk, before and after the war. Starting as a pilgrimage by a Holocaust survivor from Bransk to uncover his roots, the quest is joined by a young Polish Gentile historian from Bransk who is also driven to discover the mystery of the last Jewish community.
A haunting account of the tragedy and its legacy emerges as townspeople from Bransk and Polish-Americans, both Jew and Gentile, share their photographs and stories. Today in Bransk, there are no Jews and many residents choose to forget. Interviews in America with immigrants from Bransk create a vivid portrait of a lost community and continuing conflict over who should take responsibility.
An unusual and important film, Shtetl is a universal tale of Jews and those who lived around them, and the controversy over the consequences of their tragic history.