“When you open a graveyard, you see how the bodies are arranged, they themselves tell the story… They can tell us how they disappeared, how they were killed. ” says forensic anthropologist Meri Gonashvili.
Gonashvili is a woman on a mission. Through detective work, a young Georgian anthropologist at Tbilisi State Medical University hopes to identify victims executed by the Soviet secret police during the Reign of Terror, also known as the Great Purges, of 1936-1938. ing. A totalitarian campaign led by Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin targeted those accused of conspiracy against the state. Many civilians were exiled, imprisoned, or executed. It is estimated that at least 700,000 people were executed across the Soviet Union, including about 15,000 in Soviet Georgia. “For this regime, human life had no value,” Meri said as she reconstructed the skeleton of a victim who had been shot in the head.
Most families did not know what happened to their loved ones. But now six mass graves containing the remains of those executed during Stalin's reign of terror have been discovered in western Georgia. Families of the missing worked with Gonashvili and other experts to find and identify the victims of Stalin's ruthless operations.
Will Meri be able to identify some of the victims who went missing during Stalin's Great Purges and reunite their bodies with their living relatives? Check out Georgia's Missing Persons by Robin Forestier Walker to find out.
credit
Film director: Robin Forestier-Walker
Producer: Nino Shonia
Director of photography: Iago Gogilashvili
Editors: Robin Forestier Walker, Antonia Perello
Sound Editor & Mixer: Linus Bergman
Senior Editor: Donald Cameron
Executive producer: Tierney Bonini
Special thanks: Special thanks: Rustavi 2, IDFI, SovLab
