The true portrait of Anne Frank both before and after she went into
hiding. Get to know her before the war. Experience the challenges of those
who risked their lives to keep her safe. Explore the mystery of who
betrayed the Frank family and what happened next.
Family members, childhood friends, and the people who hid the Franks
bring life to the girl behind the diary. Academy Award-winning documentary
narrated by Kenneth Branagh with selections from Anne's diary read by
Glenn Close. German, Dutch, and English with English subtitles.
Based on the director's life, this film chronicles Louis Malle's
experiences during the German occupation of France in World War II. French
with English subtitles.
Oprah Winfrey interviews author and Holocaust survivor, Elie Wiesel, at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum in Oswiecim, Poland. Wiesel talks of his personal experiences at Auschwitz and the meaning of the Holocaust which he detailed in his book, Night. Includes historical documentary footage of the concentration camp.
Auschwitz: Inside the Nazi State. Not rated. 2005. DVD 940.5318 A
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.
Inside the Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II, members
of a bizarre prison orchestra struggle against all odds to spare
themselves from death. Now, in 1999, on the fiftieth anniversary of
Auschwitz, eleven of the members of the Auschwitz Orchestra meet again.
The French village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon was inhabited by rough
farmers of Huguenot descent. They knew a lot about religious persecution
from their history. During World War II when Hitler imposed his heinous
laws and set out to arrest all Jews, this village would not stand for it.
Under the courageous leadership of a Christian pastor, this village risked
extermination by the Nazis to provide safety and refuge for 5,000 Jewish
children. French with English subtitles.
On January 20, 1942, fifteen German officials attended a conference at
Wannsee -- on the outskirts of Berlin. The meeting comprised of
mid-ranking SS commanders and a variety of government ministers. The
meeting was organized by SS Major Adolf Eichmann under the direction of
Chief of Security Reinhard Heydrich. It was a polite conference, but under
this thin veneer of manners lay an evil intent. By the end of the meeting,
the fate of six million lives would be decided and the shape of the world
would be altered forever.
Sixteen-year-old Hanna Stern was a typical American teenager who
ignored her family's heritage until a mystical Passover seder takes her
back in time to German-occupied Poland on an emotional journey of life,
death, and survival.
Teenaged Anne Frank, a Dutch Jew, perished along with most of her
family in a concentration camp, but her hopes, dreams, and optimistic
outlook has endured through the publication of her diary in 1952. Her
diary conveys the precariousness of the Frank family and that of their
fellow exiles, the Van Daan family and fussy dentist Mr. Dussel. They
spent their time hiding from the Gestapo in a tiny Amsterdam attic.
During World War II and the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia, a
couple, Josef and Marie, decide to hide a young Jewish neighbor in their
small apartment. They keep getting a visit from their neighbor, Horst, who
is a German sympathizer and has his eye on Marie. When she rejects his
advances, he seeks revenge by trying to move a Nazi clerk into their home,
forcing the couple to tell a lie that will change their lives forever.
Czech and German with English subtitles.
Elie Wiesel Goes Home. Not rated. 1996 DVD B W6517el
Elie Wiesel returns to the village of his birth and to Auschwitz and
Birkenau, the camps where he was interned during World War II.
The true story of a Jewish teenager who survived World War II by
living as a Nazi. Based on the autobiography of Solly Perel. German and
Russian with English subtitles.
Facing Hate, Elie Wiesel with Bill Moyers. Not rated. 1991. VHS 303.387 F
Holocaust survivor Wiesel examines the logic of hatred as expressed in
books, religion, history, and personal experience.
The story of Raoul Wallenberg, who with the help of the Swedish
Embassy, moved to Budapest to help protect Jews from Eichmann's
Sonderkommando. Swedish, German, and Hungarian with English subtitles.
Stars Charlie Chaplin in his first "talkie" playing two totally
opposite roles. One is a Jewish barber facing the constant threat of storm
troopers and religious persecution. The other is the dictator, Adenoid
Hynkel, Chaplin's brilliant lampoon of Adolph Hitler.
Based on real-life events, a chronicle of a unit of Auschwitz's
Sonderkommandos, a special squad of Jewish prisoners, who staged the only
armed revolt that would ever take place at Auschwitz.
Real-life Hungarian Jew Hannah Senesh became a martyr to the cause of
freedom during World War II. Though safely ensconced in Palestine at the
outbreak of the war, Hannah volunteers to venture behind enemy lines in
Europe on a life-or-death mission. Unfortunately, she is captured,
undergoing unspeakable tortures before the Germans are finished with her.
The life-affirming tale of 10,000 children saved from Hitler's grasp
and placed with foster parents and hostels in Great Britain at the
outbreak of World War II. Includes archival footage and decades-later
remembrances of both the rescuers and the rescued.
Irene Sendler: In the Name of Their Mothers. TV-PG. 2011. DVD 940.5318092 I
This is the story of 29-year-old Irena Sendler, who saw the suffering of Warsaw's Jews, reached out to her most trusted colleagues for help, and outwitted the Nazis during World War II. Together, they rescued over 2,500 Jewish children.
To combat the overwhelming depression and suicide that pervades a
ghetto in Nazi-occupied Poland during World War II, Jakob, a poor Jewish
cafe owner, invents fictitious news bulletins about Allied advances
against the Nazis.
A peaceful, isolated community is engulfed by the hatred and violence
of the outside world in this taut drama set in pre-war Germany. Levi, the
Jewish cattle dealer, makes his annual trip to a remote farming village
but things have changed since his last visit. Nazi propaganda has infected
the town and Levi realizes that he has become a target. German with
English subtitles.
During the final days of the Warsaw uprising, a group of Polish
citizens and patriots attempt to flee the Nazis through the sewer system.
Polish with English subtitles.
Kovno Ghetto: A Buried History. Not rated. 1997. VHS 940.5318 K
This documentary pieces together the story of the Jews of Kovno who
risked their live to record their fate in thousands of photos and
documents, many of which survived the war. Eighteen survivors of Kovno,
including photographer Zvi Kadushin, whose images are the heart of Kovno's
legacy, tell their harrowing stories of survival and loss.
A French actor refuses to cooperate with the Nazis when he learns the
horrifying truth about Terezin, a concentration camp filled with artists
and children to prove to the world how well the Nazis treat the imprisoned
Jews.
The film traces the compelling experiences of five Hungarian Holocaust
survivors who fell victim to Hitler's brutal war against the Jews during
the final days of World War II.
In Nazi-occupied Paris, Jewish director Lucas Steiner is forced to
hide in the basement of his theatre while his wife stars in its latest
production. Romantic tensions mount as she and her leading man begin to
fall in love. At the same time, a pro-Nazi theatre critic ensconces
himself in the theatre causing stress to the entire cast. French with
English subtitles.
Using archival footage, contemporary radio broadcasts and enthralling
first-person accounts, Liberation recreates the heady atmosphere of Europe
emerging from Nazi domination.
A Catholic Polish woman rescued over 2,500 Jewish children from certain death during the Holocaust in Poland. Her heroic actions were never told until three students in Kansas were looking for information for a National History Day project. Their research led to the Life in a Jar Project, a play recounting the story of Irena Sendler, and her story became known to the world.
An account of life in the Lodz Ghetto through over a thousand filmed
images made at great risk and left deliberately by the doomed community.
The Lost Children of Berlin. Not rated. 1997. VHS 940.5318 L
In April 1942, the last Jewish school in war-torn Berlin was shut down
by the Gestapo. In April 1996, fifty of its former students traveled from
around the world to the recently re-opened school for an unprecedented
reunion. The film bears witness to the events surrounding the most bitter
period of their lives. Anthony Hopkins hosts this presentation by the
Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation.
One Jewish woman's true story of surviving the Holocaust by marrying a
Nazi officer. Narrated by Susan Sarandon, this documentary provides a
unique perspective in its story of defiance and strength.
Through interviews, photographs, and footage shot in the actual
locations of her memories, Gerda Weissman Klein takes the viewer on a
journey of survival.
Perl spent WWII in charge of the woman's infirmary at Auschwitz.
Hoping to leave her nightmares behind her after the liberation, she
applies for American citizenship in 1946. However, she is hauled into
military court to explain how much she "collaborated" with the Nazis
during the war. The U.S. officials are especially disturbed by the number
of illegal abortions Perl performed at the camp. Perl struggles to explain
how she terminated the lives of the unborn to save thousands of pregnant
women from the gas chambers.
Skillfully blended songs, newsreels, and archival footage with
interviews of over forty Holocaust survivors to paint an eye-opening
portrait of the courageous Jewish resistance who staged a sabotage
offensive against the Nazis in the Polish city of Vilna.
Struggling to grasp the concept of 6 million Holocaust victims, the
students at Whitwell Middle School in rural Tennessee decide to collect 6
million paper clips to better understand the extent of this crime against
humanity. Because Norwegians invented the paper clip and used it as a
symbol of solidarity against the Nazis, students started collecting them
to help visualize such vast numbers of victims. As word spread online and
in the media, paper clips poured in from around the world, 11 million of
which are enshrined in an authentic German railcar standing in the
schoolyard.
In 1987, 400 color slides were found in a secondhand bookstore in
Vienna. The photographs were taken in the Lodz Ghetto by Walter Genewein,
the Nazi's chief accountant for the notorious slave labor camp for Jews.
A movie based upon the memoirs of brilliant pianist Wladyslaw
Szpilman, a Polish Jew. 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.
After the death of her father, Hannah becomes concerned with the
strange behavior of her mother. As her mother's troubled childhood is
revealed, Hannah realizes how little she ever knew.
A psychological study of Jakub Gold, a Polish Jew imprisoned for
killing a schoolmate. He is released from prison at the outbreak of World
War II, only to be confined to the Warsaw ghetto. Escaping the ghetto, he
is confined by the fear of being Jewish in a world hostile to Jews. Polish
with English subtitles.
The true story of Oskar Schindler, Nazi party member, womanizer and
war profiteer who saved more than 1,100 Jews during the Holocaust. Based
on the novel by Thomas Keneally.
A strong Jewish woman enters into a marriage with a man she dislikes
believing it will save her from deporation to a Nazi labor camp in
Czechoslovakia in 1942.
A man who takes a job as an "Aryan comptroller" for a Jewish-owned
button shop befriends the owner and decides to shield her from the Nazis.
Best Foreign Language Film, 1965. Czech with English subtitles.
Two Polish-American Jews return to the small village of Bransk, Poland
to uncover the true story of life in the shtetl before and after the
village's 2,500 Jews were transported to Treblinka.
A personalized view of the Holocaust and its devastating effect on one
woman who survived it. Based on the novel by William Styron.
Spark Among the Ashes:
A Bar Mitzvah in Poland. Not rated. 1986. DVD 296.4424 S
Tells the story of Eric Strom, a thirteen-year-old Connecticut boy, who journeyed to Kraków, Poland, with his family to take part in the first bar mitzvah held in Kraków in forty years, an occasion that became the center of controversy.
Chronicles the events of the Holocaust as witnessed by those who
survived. Includes a segment hosted by Ben Kingsley, which takes the
viewer behind the scenes at the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History
Foundation.
The evidence of what the Allies knew about the existence of Auschwitz
and their reasons not to bomb the camp are examined through archival
footage and interviews with camp survivors, historians, and military
pilots, bombardiers, and photo interpreters directly involved in Allied
missions over the Auschwitz region.
They Were Not Silent: The Jewish Labor Movement and the Holocaust.
Not rated. 1998.
VHS 940.531503 T
A documentary highlighting the American Jewish labor community's
anti-Nazi and rescue efforts after the rise of Hitler, the suppression of
free trade unions in Germany, and the widespread terror against Jews and
others which culminated in the Holocaust. Features interviews with
scholars, Holocaust survivors, and labor leaders, as well as archival film
footage and photographs from Germany and the United States.
The year is 1941, and a tiny Jewish community in France is faced with
some shocking news: the Nazis are coming. But Shlomo, the not-so-foolish
village idiot, has a plan--before the Germans can dispatch them to camps,
the townspeople will "deport" themselves to freedom. French with English
subtitles.
Commissioned by Hitler, this film was designed both to introduce the
new German leaders to the nation and to impress foreign audiences. It
features policy speeches by Goebbels, Goering, Streicher, Himmler, and
Hess. German with English subtitles.
Actor John Turturro delivers a powerful performance as a man whose life is changed forever by World War II. He must rediscover the simple joys of life that war threatened to destroy forever-- friendship, love, laughter, and hope.
Twentieth Century with Mike Wallace: Nazis in America. Not rated. 2002.
DVD 324.27338 T
Scholars and sociologists trace the origins of the Nazi movement and
explore the reasons why people choose to ally themselves with a doctrine
that is universally reviled. See how it differs from home-grown hate
groups like the Ku Klux Klan, and examine the Nazi's use of modern
technologies like the internet to spread their message. In an exclusive
interview, William Pierce, the leader of the most influential Neo-Nazi
group in the nation and author of The Turner Diaries, the book
widely cited as a prime motivator for the Oklahoma City bombings, shares
his disturbing views.
After Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, the Germans forcibly
detained 350,000 Warsaw Jews in the area known as the "Warsaw Ghetto." In
fear for their lives, the Polish Jews form the Jewish Fighting
Organization (JFO) to fight against this oppressive force. When the German
troops march into the Ghetto, they are surprised and repulsed by the JFO
fighters. The resisters may not be able to achieve victory, but they
intend to live or die with honor as well as light the torch for resistance
in the occupied territories. Their resolve will be tested as the Nazi's
promise to completely eradicate the Ghetto as a birthday present for
Hitler. English dialogue; English, French and Spanish subtitles.
The story of Varian Fry, a forgotten hero of World War II. He
constructed an elaborate underground rescue network saving some of the
most influential figures of that era, including painter Marc Chagall. The
safe arrival of these individuals in the United States permanently changed
the face of American culture.
Depicts the conference attended by Nazi leaders in Berlin on January
2, 1942 to determine the fate of the Jewish people. German with English
subtitles; introduction and credits in English.
The story of the surviving members of the Viennese Hakoah sports club
women's swim team, a world-dominating competitor in the 1930s. The club
was eventually shut down during Hitler's reign, though all the women
managed to escape capture. Combines historical footage and contemporary
interviews to reconnect the women's lives and memories.
We Were So Beloved: The German Jews of Washington Heights.
Not rated. 1985.
DVD 940.5318 W
Examines the experiences of Jewish refugees who settled in Washington
Heights, New York, after fleeing Germany in the 1930s.
