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.
Facing the Phantoms (2009)
French film and WWII historian Sylvie Lindeperg analyzes Alain Resnais's seminal 1956 film, "Night and Fog", and attempts to place it in the context of the historical treatment of WWII, and specifically of the Holocaust, in the decade following those harrowing events. Oddly, she argues that the images of Resnais's famous film are "powerless", in her words.
The Liberation of Auschwitz (1986)
This chilling, vitally important documentary was produced to mark the 40th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz Concentration Camp. The film contains unedited, previously unavailable film footage of Auschwitz shot by the Soviet military forces between January 27 and February 28, 1945 and includes an interview with Alexander Voronsov, the cameraman who shot the footage. The horrifying images include: survivors; camp visit by Soviet investigation commission; criminal experiments; forced laborers; evacuation of ill and weak prisoners with the aid of Russian and Polish volunteers; aerial photos of the IG Farben Works in Monowitz; and pictures of local people cleaning up the camp under Soviet supervision. - Written by National Center for Jewish Film
X-Ray Audio: The Documentary (2016)
Cold War Leningrad: In a culture where the recording industry was ruthlessly controlled by the state, music lovers discovered an extraordinary alternative means of reproduction: they repurposed used x-ray film as the base for records of forbidden songs. Giving blood every week to earn enough money to buy a recording lathe, one bootlegger Rudy Fuchs cuts banned music onto such discarded x-rays to be sold on street corners by shady dealers. It was ultimate act of punk resistance, a two-fingered salute to the repressive regime that gave a generation of young Soviets access to forbidden Western and Russian music, an act for which Rudy and his fellow bootleggers would pay a heavy price.
Drancy 1941–1944, the Internment Camp Next Door (2012)
The untold story of a world-renowned place of remembrance of the Holocaust in France, the internment camp of Drancy, which was the central transit for the near totality of the 76 000 deported Jews of France during World War II.
Zoya (2021)
Fall of 1941. Freshly graduated from school, Zoya Kosmodemyanskaya volunteers for a partisan unit. During an assignment, her comrades are ambushed, and she is captured by the Nazis. She endures hours of grueling interrogations and horrendous torture, but defiantly refuses to divulge any information that would compromise other units’ partisan missions. She doesn’t even tell her captors her real name. Zoya’s sacrifice was not in vain; it ignited fire in the hearts of millions of people and became the symbol of selfless heroism during WWII. She is one of the most celebrated heroes of that time.
Mr. Kingstreet's War (1973)
A couple sets up an African game preserve, only to have British and Italian armies fight over the waterholes.
The Cardinal (1963)
A young Catholic priest from Boston confronts bigotry, Nazism, and his own personal conflicts as he rises to the office of cardinal.
D-Day: Code Name Overlord (1998)
From the search to find the appropriate landing site, the planning of the landing, its execution and aftermath, this is the complete story.
Fort Saganne (1984)
In 1911, a willful and determined man from peasant stock named Charles Saganne enlists in the military and is assigned to the Sahara Desert under the aristocratic Colonel Dubreuilh.
The Witnesses (1961)
This film brings to life a vanished world: that of the Warsaw Ghetto, destroyed by the Nazis after the 1944 uprising. Two authentic "reconstruction" sources have been used to this end: photographic and cinematographic documents recorded at the time and discovered in Poland, East Germany, Israel and France; and the oral testimonies of 44 survivors, invited to evoke their personal tragedy in front of the images put before their eyes.