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Richard Bloom Productions is a small, independent film production company, founded by Karen and Richard Bloom.
The Litvak Connection, a documentary depicting the role of Nazi collaborators during the Shoah in the liquidation of Latvian and Lithuanian Jewry, known as Litvaks, and the connection to present day war crimes issues. More than 275,000 Latvian and Lithuanian Jews, 95% of those countries Jewish population were murdered together with tens of thousands ofJews from other countries transported to those countries.Most of these Jews were murdered in the forests, shot in large pits, nearby where they lived, in the five month period before the U.S. formally entered the war in December of 1941 and before the use of the gas chambers in Poland and Germany.Many of these war criminals, immigrated to the U.S and other nations, as displaced persons following the war, lied on their visa forms that they were not complicit in war crimes, were admitted and eventually became citizens of these countries. For more than 30 years, little was done to investigate these collaborators, until the establishment of the OSI, the Office of Special Investigations, in the Criminal Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. The fact that the acts were not committed on U.S. soil and did not involve U.S. citizens meant that the U.S. criminal code had not been violated. These war criminals can only be held accountable for lying on their visa application and deported back from where they came. However, many countries not only refuse to investigate the war crimes of their citizens but also to take back these denaturalized citizens. Eli Rosenbaum, the Director of OSI explains the unique role of the OSI in the investigation and prosecution of those war criminals living in the U.S. and the problem of getting European countries to take in their former citizens, now that they have been denaturalized by the U.S. government and authorized to be deported. Aryeh Rubin, the founder of Operation Last Chance, discusses the worldwide efforts by this joint venture of the Targum Shlishi Foundation and the Simon Wiesenthal Center which offers financial rewards for information leading to the arrest and conviction of remaining Nazi war criminals with the hope of bringing justice for the victims and the problems encountered with European nations and especially Lithuania and Latvia where anti-Semitism is both open and on the rise. Archival photographs from USHMM and Yad Vashem photo archives, and other sources, Holocaust Survivor interviews and the efforts spearheaded by Operation Last Chance and the Office of Special Investigations, U.S. Department of Justice are featured in the documentary. Three musical compositions accompany the film which runs 31 minutes.
Premiere - May 21, 2009 Delray Beach Film Festival, Delray Beach, FL
Available for Jewish Film festivals, non-profit groups and high school and college Holocaust education and Jewish Studies Programs.