They Are Personally Responsible for Crimes Against Humanity!

Ján Kadár / Czechoslovakia / 1946 / Czech Premiere / 7 min.

synopsis

Post-war cinematic reckoning with People’s Fascism and its representatives.

In Slovakia, too, a few accounting titles were created shortly after the war, with the ambition to clearly name and personify war crimes, to punish them, and thereby to accelerate the cleansing of society. They Are Personally Responsible... is a sharply edited “agitational” montage, compiled from wartime weeklies. The film is an absolute indictment of the “Tiso regime”, letting loose, it is not known whether directly or only temporally parallel, during the trials (within the framework of the National People’s Courts) to aggravate the defendants.

biography

Ján Kadár (1918–1979)
Ján Kadár’s Slovak career is relatively short: studies at the School of Arts and Crafts, a stay in a Jewish labour camp, one feature film (the building comedy Katka), and three remarkably mature short films. By the early 1950s, he was already working at Barrandov, in a team with Elmar Klos.