The Russian War

During World War II, a group of 800 Georgian prisoners of war were put to work by the Germans on the Dutch island of Texel. A hard, but tolerable, existence; until they were told that they were to be sent to the Western Front to fight in the German army. "We decided it would be better to fight to the death there," is how one of the Georgians, who survived the imprisonment and uprising, sums up the general feeling at the time. The life-or-death struggle -- which initially went well -- had far-reaching consequences, also for the population of Texel. The Germans sent a large detachment of troops to the island to crush the uprising, leading to the deaths of not only many Georgians, but also many islanders. The causes and course of this "Russian War," which took place shortly before liberation, are reconstructed from Dutch and Georgian eyewitness testimony. It soon becomes clear that not everyone shared the heroic impression the insurgents had of themselves. Many islanders are still angry about the consequences of the insurgents' rash actions. Interviews, in which a glimpse of unfathomable grief can sometimes be caught behind the islanders' down-to-earth facade, are interspersed with beautiful shots of nature on the island of Texel -- a peaceful place that was once the scene of an almost-forgotten tragedy.