Wall of Silence

Excavations on the outskirts of Rechnitz reveal what has been suppressed: 180 Jewish forced laborers were murdered and buried here immediately before the end of the Second World War. Isidor Sandorffy endeavors to have the victims exhumed and buried according to Jewish ritual - and comes up against a wall of silence.

"It would be so easy to put Rechnitz in the brown corner. With the old Nazi Portschy, who lives there, and then everything is clear anyway," said Eduard Erne in a conversation with Peter Wagner in 1994. He and Margareta Heinrich worked and researched for four years on this remarkable document, which contributed to the emergence of a new culture of remembrance.

"With WALL OF SILENCE, Margareta Heinrich has succeeded in reinventing herself as a filmmaker, both formally and thematically, and it has endured in the Austrian film landscape to this day."

VRÄÄTH ÖHNER