The history of the Warsaw Ghetto (1940-43) as seen from both sides of the wall, its legacy and its memory: new light on a tragic era of division, destruction and mass murder thanks to the testimony of survivors and the discovery of a ten-minute film shot by Polish amateur filmmaker Alfons Ziółkowski in 1941.
The secret Nazi death camp at Sobibor was created solely for the mass extermination of Jews. But on the 14th October 1943, in one of the biggest and most successful prison revolts of WWII, the inmates fought back.
The stories of Eitan, Yigal and Miri show how long the past can cast its shadows. Their Holocaust-surviving parents were abused by the Nazis, then became abusers themselves—their fear and grief transformed into aggression and anger towards their children. For the first time on-screen, children of Holocaust survivors talk openly about the mental and physical suffering they experienced. Stories of abuse contrast with cheerful-looking black-and-white photos of the families. Even the grandchildren appear to be suffering from their parents’ burden of sorrow and pain. The children's attempt to talk about the past, as with Eitan and his ailing mother and Miri with her son, seem futile. The palpable inability to make contact is almost unbearable. Shadows asks the unavoidable questions: how long will the Holocaust continue to exert its evil influence on future generations, and how can the demons of the past be exorcised?
Historian James Bulgin reveals the origins of the Holocaust in the German invasion of the Soviet Union, exploring the mass murder, collaboration and experimentation that led to the Final Solution.
Emmy Awards nominee for "Outstanding Individual Achievement in a Craft: Research: Multi-faceted portrait of the man who succeeded Lenin as the head of the Soviet Union. With a captivating blend of period documents, newly-released information, newsreel and archival footage and interviews with experts, the program examines his rise to power, deconstructs the cult of personality that helped him maintain an iron grip over his vast empire, and analyzes the policies he introduced, including the deadly expansion of the notorious gulags where he banished so many of his countrymen to certain death.
Documentary of Daniel Schubert's grandmother, Martha Katz, a Holocaust survivor.
What starts out a standard talking head doc about one woman's experience in Auschwitz during WW2 turns into a picture of an aging Hungarian woman - Ms Emmy - and how having red hair saved her life. The filmmakers don't hide their involvement in the making of the film, rather are continually bossing her around, which allows us to appreciate the density, detail and focus of Ms Emmy's reflections.
Chaja Florentin and Mimi Frons have been best friends for 83 years. Born and raised in Berlin, they had to escape from the Nazis to Palestine with their families in 1934. They talk about their complicated relationship with Berlin in a Tel Aviv café where they meet everyday. A film about friendship, homeland and identity.
For six female Holocaust survivors, liberation from the camps marked the beginning of a lifelong struggle.
Soviet documentary shot right after liberation of Auschwitz. It was used as evidence by the Soviet prosecution at the Nuremberg trials. In 2014, footage shot by cameraman Aleksandr Vorontsov, as well as his interview given in 1986 for German television, were included in Andre Singer’s documentary “Night Will Fall”.
The Neiger family was living a peaceful life in the Jewish community in Krakow when the arrival of World War II changed their lives forever. When Nazi soldiers forced the family from their home into the harsh life of the Ghetto, they made a vow to escape as a family. But when circumstances forced the family to separate from older brother Ben, their will to survive was put to the test. They Survived Together" is the incredible, true story of one family as they desperately tried to stay alive... and together as a family with four small children, attempted to escape certain death at the hands of the Nazis. They are believed to be one of the only families to escape and survive as a family.
Marcel Ophuls' riveting film details the heinous legacy of the Gestapo head dubbed "The Butcher of Lyon." Responsible for over 4,000 deaths in occupied France during World War II, Barbie would escape—with U.S. help—to South America in 1951, where he lived until a global manhunt led to his 1983 arrest and subsequent trial.
On July 4th, 1946, the crowd in Kielce, Poland, slaughtered forty-two Jews and wounded many others. Forty years later, in 1987, Marcel Łoziński visited those places and met some witnesses of the carnage.
Whitwell, TN is a small, rural community of less than two thousand people nestled in the mountains of Tennessee. Its citizens are almost exclusively white and Christian. In 1998, the children of Whitwell Middle School took on an inspiring project, launched out of their principal's desire to help her students open their eyes to diversity in the world and the horrors and enormity of the holocaust.
Every year since 2011, a unique beauty contest has been taking place in Haifa. The contestants are female survivors of the Holocaust. In the midst of this flashy spectacle, their personal traumas remain as deep as ever. There are many things about this contest that are controversial: it is organized by the right Zionist organization, the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem, and the dubious contest itself rises the public indignation of various speakers, including other survivors.
Maryla Michalowski-Dyamant, born in Poland, survived Ravensbruck, Malchow, and Auschwitz, where she was the forced translator of the “Angel of Death”, Dr. Mengele. She dedicated her post-war life to publicly speaking of her survival to the young generations, so that it would never be forgotten or repeated. Alice and Serena, her daughter and granddaughter, explore how Maryla’s fight against intolerance can continue today, in a world where survivors are disappearing, and intolerance, racism and antisemitism are on the rise.
At the beginning of 1979, after more than 30 years of collective repression, a dramatized and emotional US television miniseries ensured that the German population was suddenly reminded of the terrible Nazi crimes against the Jews. What is now expressed with the hitherto unknown word Holocaust, hits many millions of people in the heart. The unexpected echo and the audience reactions were fierce. Even before the TV broadcast neo-Nazis blasted in vain transmitting towers in Germany to prevent this. From the creation and the shooting over the broadcast to the tremendous reactions, documentary filmmaker Alice Agneskirchner tells the story of this emotional television event, which led to a paradigm shift in the perception of German Nazi crimes.
It was arguably the deadliest conference in human history. The topic: plans to murder 11 million Jews in Europe. The participants were not psychopaths, but educated men from the SS, police, administration and ministries. The invitation to the meeting at Wannsee came from Reinhard Heydrich, head of the Reich Security Main Office. The Wehrmacht's campaigns of conquest in Eastern Europe marked the beginning of the systematic murder of Jews in Poland and the Soviet Union. In mid-September 1941, Hitler made the decision to deport all Jews from Germany to the East. Although there had been transports before, Hitler's order represented a further escalation in the murderous decision-making process. Persecution and discrimination had been part of everyday life since 1933. But as a result, the living conditions for the Jews in the Third Reich became even more difficult, among them the Berlin Jew Margot Friedländer, born in 1921, and the Chotzen family.
Located nearly 80 kilometres north of Berlin, Germany, the former municipality of Ravensbrück was home to a prison between 1939 and 1945 that became a concentration camp designed specifically for women. It was built by order of Heinreich Himmler, a high dignitary of the Third Reich and head of the SS. Of the more than 130,000 people who were deported there, almost 90,000 never returned. Based on witnesses, international experts and computer-generated images, the document reveals the atrocities committed in Ravensbrück.
Samuel Willenberg and Kalman Taigman, the last two survivors of the Nazi extermination camp Treblinka, recount the horrors they experienced during the war and talk about their lives after their escape in a prisoner uprising in 1943. Willenberg would go on to become a hero of the 1944 Warsaw uprising while Taigman would be called as a witness during the infamous trial of Adolf Eichmann.