Engelen des Doods plot
The events at the Russian town of Myasnoi Bor, about 100 kilometers southeast of St. Petersburg, were a black page in Russian history for many years. The corpses of about ten thousand soldiers are buried in the swamps surrounding the village. A legacy of the Second World War, when in 1942 General Vlasov ordered his men to liberate what was then Leningrad from the Germans and he himself is said to have defected to the enemy. The soldiers died in the swamp and were labeled a 'traitor army'. Now, fifty-five years later, another truth emerges. Most soldiers have fought themselves to death for their homeland. 'Angels of Death' shows how relatives pay their ancestors a last tribute. In search of notes, poems and other personal belongings, they dig through the desolate area every year to uncover a hidden history.