Never Again?

The indelible testimonial of David Shentow, Canadian WWII immigrant and Holocaust survivor lies at the heart of a remarkable journey that begins in 1942 on Le Chemin des Juifs, a forgotten road in Northern France. David's eloquence and vivid recounting of events will indelibly mark the heart and conscience of every viewer.

What would your family reminiscences about dad sound like if he had been an early supporter of Hitler’s, a leader of the notorious SA and the Third Reich’s minister in charge of Slovakia, including its Final Solution? Executed as a war criminal in 1947, Hanns Ludin left behind a grieving widow and six young children, the youngest of whom became a filmmaker. It's a fascinating, maddening, sometimes even humorous look at what the director calls "a typical German story." (Film Forum)

Nothing predisposed a rural commune in the Loiret region such as Beaune-la-Rolande to embody the height of the Holocaust in France. Yet it was there that a camp was set up where Jewish families were interned, separated, their children abandoned to their fate before being deported alone to their deaths. Long hidden from view, more than eighty years after the events, this tragedy remains a sensitive subject that can still divide opinion on what should or should not be done to ensure it is not forgotten. Following personal journeys and collective commitments, this film meets activists, elected officials, and teachers who are committed to helping a region recover its memory and reconnect with its history, however painful it may be.

Fear and fascination arise in Muriel Grey when she remembers the figure of her father, who passed away when she was still very young. Thirty years after his death, Muriel will tell us the story of José Carlos Grey, a Black Holocaust survivor, freedom fighter in the Spanish Civil War and the French Resistance, and one of the only Black men known to have been imprisoned at the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria.

The Holocaust began with the indiscriminate mass shootings by the Einsatzgruppen in the bloodlands of Eastern Europe and was perfected in the gas chambers at Auschwitz. “Bullets And Blueberries” explores the motives, methods and madness of the perpetrators, using never-before-seen images captured by the killers themselves — images that fully capture the banality of evil.

Based on testimony by Ethel’s brother, David Greenglass, the Rosenbergs are arrested by the FBI. The couple is accused of passing secret information about the atomic bomb to the USSR. Though the Rosenbergs maintain their innocence from the start, the media and public opinion seem to have condemned them from day one. The trial does nothing to change this and ends in a death sentence. On Friday June 19, 1953, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are executed in the electric chair. Julius first, then Ethel. 30 years later, the truth finally comes out. Declassified FBI archives reveal that Ethel was not guilty of being a spy; she was merely married to one. Julius did indeed commit espionage for the Soviet Union, though primarily as a recruiter, nothing at all like the fictional James Bond. This documentary, made entirely of archival footage and animated illustrations, offers a tale of espionage as well as a complex family tragedy.

Surviving against all odds. In 1940, Benjamin Orenstein, just a teenager, was sent to his first concentration camp in Poland. It was the beginning of a journey that would mark him for life. After years of silence, he now bears witness to one of the darkest chapters in history.

"This 20 minute documentary sheds light on the worst antisemitic riot in American history, which occurred in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, in 1991. Triggered by a Hasidic man running a red light and accidentally hitting and killing a young black child, the riot led to attacks on Jews. Stores and police cars were burned and a Hasidic man was killed. David Dinkins, New York’s mayor at the time, allowed the riot to go on for three full days, while the media downplayed the antisemitism at the heart of the violence. The film’s interviews include Rev. Al Sharpton and then-Deputy Police Chief Ray Kelly as well as WSJ Opinion writer Elliot Kaufman. The current wave of antisemitism makes these events newly relevant and worthy of reconsideration" (The Wall Street Journal).

"A Home On The Range" tells the little-known story of Jews who fled the pogroms and hardships of Eastern Europe and traveled to California to become chicken ranchers. Even in the sweatshops of New York they heard about Petaluma where the Jews were not the shopkeepers and the professionals, they were the farmers. Meet this fractious, idealistic, intrepid group of Eastern European Jews and their descendants as they confront obstacles of language and culture on their journey towards becoming Americans. Jack London, California vigilantes, McCarthyism, the Cold War and agribusiness all come to life in this quintessentially American story of how a group of immigrants found their new home, a home on the range.

A portrait of Pope Pius XII (1876-1958), head of the Catholic Church from 1939 until his death, who, during World War II, and while European Jews were being exterminated by the Nazis, was accused of keeping a disconcerting and shameful silence.

Amid the Holocaust’s unimaginable cruelty, a young boy finds hope in music. Eighty years later, Frank Grunwald shares his true story of survival and resilience, intertwined with American jazz, offering a powerful testament to the strength of the human spirit.

A pig farm in Lety, South Bohemia would make an ideal monument to collaboration and indifference, says writer and journalist Markus Pape. Most of those appearing in this documentary filmed in Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Poland, France, Germany and Croatia have personal experience of the indifference to the genocide of the Roma. Many of them experienced the Holocaust as children, and their distorted memories have earned them distrust and ridicule. Continuing racism and anti-Roma sentiment is illustrated among other matters by how contemporary society looks after the locations where the murders occurred. However, this documentary film essay focuses mainly on the survivors, who share with viewers their indelible traumas, their "hole in the head".

In 1938, the Jew and political activist Ernst Federn was arrested by the Nazis in Vienna, taken to Dachau concentration camp and later to Buchenwald. He was imprisoned there for seven years - and survived. In the documentary, Ernst Federn, who emigrated to the USA after the war, talks about the terror he experienced.

A documentary film that tells the fascinating and incredible story of 13 Jewish survivors of the Holocaust in former Czechoslovakia, during the II World War. These men and women, that back then were children, found a legendary Jewish-German character named Fredy Hirsch, who changed their lives forever. The work describes the terrible living conditions in Terezin Ghetto and; on the other hand, the approach to culture and art behind the walls of the concentration camp. Up to this moment, everything develops as a known story, but by the end of 1943 there is an unexpected turn when these children are deported together with their families to the extermination camp in Auschwitz-Birkenau. And there, in the middle of hell, they lived in.

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.

Lithuania, 1941, during World War II. Hundreds of thousands of texts on Jewish culture, stolen by the Germans, are gathered in Vilnius to be classified, either to be stored or to be destroyed. A group of Jewish scholars and writers, commissioned by the invaders to carry out the sorting operations, but reluctant to collaborate and determined to save their legacy, hide many books in the ghetto where they are confined. This is the epic story of the Paper Brigade.

Secret Courage: The Walter Suskind Story

Filmmaker Peter Hegedus embarks on the challenging journey to make Sorella's Story, an immersive 360° film set on the beaches of Latvia in December 1941, when thousands of Jewish Women and children perished at the hands of Nazi collaborators. Along the way Peter teams up with Jewish-Australian 90-year-old Ethel Davies whose family was also killed in the same massacre.

This is the highly acclaimed full length documentary about Pink Floyd legend Roger Waters and his controversial views against Israel, including saying Israel is worse than Nazi Germany. Waters is widely known as a leader of the BDS Movement, which aims to get artists to boycott Israel. Many prominent world leaders and musicians appear in this film, discussing Waters' contemporary antisemitism.

The writer and comedian looks at antisemitism and the progressive left. From theatre to football, Baddiel explores a political blindspot with Stephen Fry, Miriam Margolyes and Neil Gaiman.