Holocaust studies - Video: Home

Film is the result of three years of research, drawing on the close involvement of world experts, recently discovered documents and nearly 100 interviews with camp survivors and perpetrators, many of whom are speaking on the record for the first time. Their stories are brought to life through the innovative use of archive footage and dramatic recreations.

Film tells the life story of Hungarian-born poet and Holocaust heroine Hannah Senesh, who was only 22 when she parachuted into Nazi-occupied Europe as part of a rescue mission to save the Jews of Hungary. Dramatizations, interviews, photographs, newsreel footage, letters, and diary entries are used to illuminate Senesh's early years, her immigration to Palestine, her involvement in the perilous rescue mission, and her capture and eventual execution in Hungary.

FEATURE FILM
A Jewish boy separated from his family in the early days of WWII poses as a German orphan and is taken into the heart of the Nazi world as a 'war hero' and eventually becomes a Hitler Youth.

At the end of WWII, 60 minutes of raw film in an East German archive was discovered. Shot by the Nazis in Warsaw in May of 1942, the film became a resource for historians seeking an authentic record of the Warsaw Ghetto. The later discovery of a long-missing reel, including multiple takes and cameramen staging scenes, complicated earlier readings of the footage. This film examines the people behind and before the camera of this reel in an effort to expose the extent of the cinematic manipulation.

Film uses archival clips from German films and television, and readings from Goebbels' own diaries, to explore the Nazi propaganda machine run by Goebbels before and during World War II.

Filmed at present-day Auschwitz, this program discusses what, if anything, should be preserved. Presents opinions of those who believe that the camp should be preserved as a warning to future generations and those that believe it and its artifacts should be allowed to crumble naturally.

The architecture of doom: A documentary about the National Socialist aesthetic, and how attempts to create the Aryan Ideal caused the extermination of millions.

In the shadow of the Reich: Nazi medicine - Documentary studies the step-by-step process that led the German medical profession down an unethical road to genocide.
The cross and the star: Film explores anti-Semitism in the Gospel of St. John, the sermons of St. Augustine, the writings of Martin Luther and in the writings of the Crusaders and the Spanish Inquisitors.

The eye of Vichy: This movie is only made of archive pictures: the official newsreels that were broadcasted on French movie screens during 1940 and 1944 (the Occupation). Those newsreels were controlled by the government of Vichy, which collaborated with the Nazis, so most of them are propaganda. The filmmakers' purpose is to show what the disinformation was then, and the problem of the power of the mass media.

From the halls of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Walter Cronkite chronicles the entire story of the Holocaust-- from the rise of the Nazi party and its plan to exterminate the Jewish people, to tales of incredible bravery among Holocaust survivors and those who liberated the concentration camps. Combines original footage and personal photographs with oral histories by those who survived.

This drama unfolds through the lives of two families living in Nazi Germany. Follow the tragedy and triumph of the Weiss family. Parallelling their saga is the poignant transformation of Erik Dorf, an unsuccessful lawyer prodded on by his ambitious wife to join the SS and enlist as aide to Heydrich, chief strategist of "the final solution." Their compelling stories make Holocaust a riveting and unforgettable experience.

FEATURE FILM
Circumstances compel Jacob, trapped in a Polish ghetto with thousands of other Jews, to pass on the good news of hope after overhearing a radio broadcast of a Russian victory for the Allies while being detained in Gestapo headquarters. In order to be believed, he feigns access to a hidden, strictly forbidden radio. Quickly he becomes a one-man bulwark against despair, a reluctant hero, but a tragic figure still, a man ultimately powerless to see or change the fate of his people.

This notorious Nazi propaganda historical costume melodrama is based on the real historical character of Josef Süss Oppenheimer who was a Jewish tax advisor to Karl Alexander during the early 1700's and was publicly executed in Stuttgart for manipulation of state funds.

A chronological account of life in the Łódź Ghetto through over 1,000 carefully sequenced filmed images, made at great risk and left deliberately by the doomed community members. Includes a supplement following the program describing the making of the film, as well as interviews with people connected with the ghetto

Using actual film footage from untapped German archives, the story of the rise and fall of German fascism is graphically portrayed. Among the subjects covered: German economic chaos between the wars, rise of fascist ideology, beginnings of WW II, the extermination of European Jews, and the ultimate defeat of Hitler.

Nazi concentration camps (59 min.): The official film record of the Nazi death camps as photographed by Allied forces advancing into Germany. Film shows surviving prisoners, victims of medical experiments, gas chambers, and open mass graves.
Nuremberg (80 min.): A film record of the trials of the Nazi leaders at Nuremberg, Germany. Film includes scenes from films made by the Nazis which were presented as the documentary evidence of the atrocities committed at concentration camps.

FEATURE FILM
In World War II, after a period of living hell on earth in the concentration camp of Dachau with other catholic priests, Father Abbé Henri Kremer (Ulrich Matthes) gets a nine days leave to return to his home town for his mother's funeral. Along this period, the SS Gestapo lieutenant Gebhardt (August Diehl) tries to persuade Henri, who is a member of an influent Luxembourgian family, to convince the local bishop to give-up resisting to the Germans and write a letter to the Vatican in the name of the Catholic Church of Luxembourg convincing the Pope to support Hitler and the Nazi regime. Torn between duty, faith, fear for his own life and for the lives of his loved ones, Henri must find a way to ease his conscience, protect his family, and uphold his vows.

This American Experience production uses rare archival material and eyewitness accounts to re-create the Nuremberg trials of 1945.

FEATURE FILMS
Based on the memoirs of Wladyslaw Szpilman, a Polish Jew, who was a brilliant pianist. He watched as his family was shipped off to Nazi labor camps. He managed to escape and lived for years in the ruins of Warsaw, hiding from the Nazis.

FEATURE FILM
After the death of her father, Hannah becomes concerned with the strange behavior of her mother. Posing as a journalist investigating intermarriage, Hannah hears the story of a week in 1943 when the Jewish husbands of Aryan women were detained in a building on Rosenstrasse. The women gather daily for word of their husbands. The film goes back and forth to tell this story.

FEATURE FILM
The film presents the true story of Oskar Schindler, a member of the Nazi party, womanizer, and war profiteer who saved the lives of more than 1,100 Jews during the Holocaust.

The stories of Jewish children hidden from the Nazis in extraordinary acts of kindness by non-Jews.

The Nazi extermination of Jews is examined through interviews of survivors, witnesses and perpetrators and through footage of the sites of the death camps and environs as they appear today. Those interviewed include Jewish survivors of the death camps and the Warsaw ghetto uprising, Polish farmers and villagers who lived near the camps and Nazis who worked in the camps and the ghettos.

Contents:
Disc 1: 1st era, 1st part -- Disc 2: 1st era, 2nd part
Disc 3: 2nd era, 1st part -- Disc 4: 2nd era, 2nd part.

This documentary tells the story of Japanese diplomat Chiune Sugihara, consul to Lithuania during World War II. Sugihara defied Tokyo authorities and wrote transit visas that allowed hundreds of Jewish families to flee Europe through Russia to Japan and other countries. Film includes home movies, photographs, film footage, and interviews with Holocaust survivors.

The story of the Terezin ghetto during World War II leading up to the deportation of its residents.

Depicts the conference at Wannsee in Berlin January 2, 1942, attended by Nazi leaders to determine the fate of the Jewish people.