A place: Theresienstadt. A unique place of propaganda which Adolf Eichmann called the "model ghetto", designed to mislead the world and Jewish people regarding its real nature, to be the last step before the gas chamber. A man: Benjamin Murmelstein, last president of the Theresienstadt Jewish Council, a fallen hero condemned to exile, who was forced to negotiate day after day from 1938 until the end of the war with Eichmann, to whose trial Murmelstein wasn't even called to testify. Even though he was without a doubt the one who knew the Nazi executioner best. More than twenty-five years after Shoah, Claude Lanzmann's new film reveals a little-known yet fundamental aspect of the Holocaust, and sheds light on the origins of the "Final Solution" like never before.
Elie Wiesel Goes Home (1997)
A documentary chronicling the adolescent years of Elie Wiesel and the history of his sufferings. Eliezer was fifteen when Fascism brutally altered his life forever. Fifty years later, he returns to Sighetu Marmatiei, the town where he was born, to walk the painful road of remembrance - but is it possible to speak of the unspeakable? Or does Auschwitz lie beyond the capacity of any human language - the place where words and stories run out?
Modus Operandi (2008)
Between 1942 and 1944 some 24,916 Jews were deported from Belgium to Auschwitz. The roundups and deportations were organized and carried out by the Nazis with the - not always conscious - cooperation of Belgian authorities. The attitude of the authorities here varied from outright resistance to voluntary or unwitting collaboration.
Umsonst Gelebt: Walter Schwarze (2005)
“This film is part of a series of films on gay men who survived the Nazi era. I met Walter Schwarze when he was already in his eighties. My camera recorded his first public account of his five-year incarceration as a homosexual at Sachsenhausen concentration camp. He was in his fifties when he met Ali in his hometown of Leipzig; the two men became partners and remained close until his demise. And yet, Walter told me, he felt he had lived in vain because he had not had the good fortune of today's gays, who are able to grow up in freedom. Walter Schwarze died of cancer on May 10, 1998.” Rosa von Praunheim
Goering's Catalogue: A Collection of Art and Blood (2021)
For more than a decade, Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering, Adolf Hitler's right-hand man during the infamous Third Reich, assembled a collection of thousands of works of art that were meticulously catalogued.
America and the Holocaust: Deceit and Indifference (1994)
As the campaign to force Jews out of Germany ramps up, the American government blocks efforts to help rescue many of these displaced persons, and Americans' antisemitism only seems to get worse.
The Smuggler and Her Charges (2016)
A captivating and personal detective story that uncovers the truth behind the childhood of Michaël Prazan's father, who escaped from Nazi-occupied France in 1942 thanks to the efforts of a female smuggler with mysterious motivations.
Peter Eisenman: Building Germany's Holocaust Memorial (2009)
This documentary explores the creation of the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin as designed by architect Peter Eisenman. Reaction of the German public to the completed memorial is also shown.
St. Louis (2019)
Hamburg, Germany, 1939. Getting a passage aboard the passenger liner St. Louis seems to be the last hope of salvation for more than nine hundred German Jews who, desperate to escape the atrocious persecution to which they are subjected by the Nazi regime, intend to emigrate to Cuba.
2 or 3 Things I Know About Him (2005)
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)
Raoul Wallenberg: Buried Alive (1983)
A profile of Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, the film covers his role in saving the lives of Jewish refugees from the Holocaust, as well as exploring the evidence that he may still have been alive in a Soviet gulag as late as the early 1980s.
Besa: The Promise (2012)
A documentary exploring how Albanians, including many Muslims, helped and sheltered Jewish refugees during WWII at their own risk, and trying to help the son of an Albanian baker that housed a Jewish family for a year return some Hebrew books that the family had to leave behind.
Dead Gay Men and Living Lesbians (2008)
As a result of the Holocaust and later, AIDS, the male homosexual community has sustained bitter losses and, according to Praunheim, lesbian women have now placed themselves at the head of the so-called queer movement. The female protagonists in the film represent two different generations; they also incorporate the past and present status of homosexuals in society.
Forgiving Dr. Mengele (2006)
Eva Mozes Kor, who survived Josef Mengele's cruel twin experiments in the Auschwitz concentration camp, shocks other Holocaust survivors when she decides to forgive the perpetrators as a way of self-healing.
Let's Keep It (2018)
Let's keep it is a cinema documentary (99') about the still problematic attitude of the Republic of Austria towards the restitution of "aryanized" real estate which - for whatever reason - became the property of Austria after 1945. The film is also the director's bow to the victims of the darkest chapter of Austria's recent history. A chapter that seems to have been extended to a certain extent when it comes to restitution of looted property to the descendants of Holocaust victims.
Inside a Nazi Mind: The Kindly Ones by Jonathan Littell (2023)
An analysis of The Kindly Ones, Jonathan Littell's controversial novel, published in 2006, which dissects the ruthless mechanisms of the Shoah from the detached point of view of Maximilian Aue, a high-ranking Nazi officer.
1944: Should We Bomb Auschwitz? (2019)
In 1944, two prisoners miraculously escaped from Auschwitz. They told the world of the horror of the Holocaust and raised one of the greatest moral questions of the 20th century.
Łódź Ghetto (1989)
The Polish city of Łódź was under Nazi occupation for nearly the entirety of WWII. The segregation of the Jewish population into the ghetto, and the subsequent horrors are vividly chronicled via newsreels and photographs. The narration is taken almost entirely from journals and diaries of those who lived–and died–through the course of the occupation, with the number of different narrators diminishing as the film progresses, symbolic of the death of each narrator.
Wall of Silence (1994)
In the small town of Rechnitz a terrible crime against humanity was performed during the holocaust. Until now, no-one dares to talk about it.
Paper Clips (2004)
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.