LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Holocaust Films
built 243 days ago
Length: Five video cassettes, 570 min. This film, directed by Claude Lanzmann, is considered by many to be one of the greatest Holocaust films ever made. It includes interviews with death-camp survivors and Nazi functionaries; It ... shows a present-day view of some of the concentration camps. Interviewees speak in their own languages with a French translation and English subtitles. It was originally produced as a motion picture in 1985. (Available: Tulsa City County Library)
Source:
This year’s event features scholars of the Nazi genocide, U.S race relations, and Holocaust films. On Monday, April 14, at 7 p.m. in the Shepherd Union Wildcat Theater, the Babcock Performing Readers will present readings from literature depicting slavery and the Holocaust. Following their presentation, film historian Steven Alan Carr will place recent Holocaust films in a broader historical context.
Source:
[A]dvancing another dimension to the Holocaust film incorporating comic relief with the backdrop of the Holocaust during the Nazi occupation, is the wonderfully vibrant film Life is Beautiful. As Roberto Bernigni’s Life is Beautiful begins, one finds himself in a small community in Italy (The film is in Italian with English subtitles). Benigni’s role is that of a charming waiter gifted with a colorful imagination and an irresistible sense of humor who wins the heart of a woman he calls "princess." The couple, along with their young son, reflect an ordinary family life, until the war affects Italy and Gudio (Benigni) and his son, Joshua, are taken to concentration camps. However, Dora, Guido’s wife, is not sent away because she is not Jewish. Since Dora loves her family so much, and cannot bear to live without them, she begs her way on the train that, ultimately, ends the lives of over six million Jews. This is the audience’s first "reality check." Some wonder: "Would I have gone on that train knowing it would probably lead to the end of my life?" The audience is forced to vicariously live through the charming characters of Guido, Dora and their young son. The film does a fine job of allowing the viewer to feel the joys, sorrows and complete desperation of those imprisoned during the Holocaust.
Source:
There are ... a surprising number of comedies or attempts at humor among Holocaust films. The very first anti-Nazi efforts were the Warner Brothers cartoons parodying Hitler. A few years later, Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator was one of very few early films to refer directly to Hitler and the threat to Europe's Jewish community. That film includes quite a bit of drama, but its political points are most powerful in the moments of slapstick humor.
Source:
Holocaust films narrate or document the persecution and genocide of Jews and others under the Nazi Third Reich of Adolf Hitler (1933–1945). From the 1935 Nuremberg Laws that excluded Jews from citizenship of the Reich, to the 9 November 1938 Kristellnacht attacks on Jews, their synagogues, and their businesses, to the 1941 Wannsee meeting at which Nazis planned the final solution, to the rounding up of Jews not only in Germany but in all German occupied territory, to the operation of the Nazi death camps and other acts of mass murder, these most tragic and traumatic events in modern history constitute the Holocaust, or as it is ... called, the Shoah.
Source:
As the Holocaust increasingly has been incorporated into public education, feature films, often based on fiction that is intended for young readers, are being made. Professor Baron will review this trend, starting with Disney's The Devil in Vienna and proceeding through Dustin Hoffman's production of The Devil's Arithmetic. While of interest to a broad audience, this event should have a particular appeal to those who teach, or may one day teach, Holocaust-related topics in the schools.
Source:
MORE ABOUT
Holocaust Films