The 81st Blow

The 81st blow deals with the holocaust which befell European Jewry in the Nazi era. The film is based upon footage and photographs of the 1930s and 1940s, and includes scenes which have never been published before. The film is unnarrated, but accompanied by the testimony of witnesses who appeared at the Eichmann trial, held in Jerusalem in 1961. The State Archives put the recording of the witnesses' testimonies at the disposal of the filmmakers.
The title of the film derives from the story of a Jewish boy living in one of the ghettos. The boy received eighty blows. Surprisingly enough, he survived, and after World War II emigrated to Israel. When he told people his story, he realized that nobody believed him. This for him was the 81st blow. The story, with all its details, came up in the course of the investigation of witnesses at the Eichmann trial. The 81st blow alludes, therefore, to the inability of human beings and of nations to face the unbelievable.
The 81st blow is not a photographed chronicle of the destruction of Jewish communities in Nazi-occupied Europe. Neither is it in keeping with the rules of historical continuity; yet its major elements are easily discernible: the life of the Jews shortly before the holocaust, the Nazis' coming to power, the ghetto and the expulsions, the huge extermination machinery which carried out "the final solution to the Jewish problem" and the Warsaw uprising.