Among the Righteous: Lost Stories From the Holocaust in Arab Lands
"...recounts Robert Satloff's eight-year effort to provide a hopeful response to the problems of Holocaust ignorance and denial in the Arab world by asking a question no one had ever before posed: Did any Arabs save any Jews during the Holocaust?"
Cuba's Forgotten Jewels: A Haven in Havana
"Visually vibrant, this documentary tells the little known story of Jewish refugees who escaped the horrors of Nazi-occupied Europe and found safe haven in Cuba, supporting themselves in a newly created industry: polishing diamonds in Havana."
The Danish Solution|
"When the Final Solution was attempted in Denmark the plan was averted and over 95 percent of the country's Jewish population survived the war. Examines how and why the Jews, helped by a massive citizen-driven action, escaped the Nazi's blueprint for their extermination."
The Dead Nation
"A work of startling power and originality, acclaimed director Radu Jude's documentary-essay, The Dead Nation, examines the rise of anti-Semitism in Romania prior to and during World War II almost entirely through audio of diary entries belonging to a Jewish doctor and black-and-white photographs of provincial life in Romania between the years 1937 and 1944."
Following Shira's Journey: A Greek Jewish Odyssey
"The history of Greece's Jewish communities and their near destruction during the Holocaust."
Into the North
"A group of Czech Jewish teenagers sets out on a journey to the North. Without their parents to look after them, they must rely on each other. That's how their great adventure starts. They spend four years in Denmark, an oasis in the midst of raging WWII. More than seventy years later, they are ready to tell their story, a coming-of-age refugee story with a happy ending, courtesy of thousands of openhearted Danes."
The Last Refuge: The Story of Jewish Refugees in Shanghai
"As Hitler's plan to eradicate the Jewish People was becoming abundantly clear, millions of European Jews were desperately seeking refuge in any country that would accept them. Under pressure from Nazi Germany, most countries closed their doors to them, except for Shanghai, China, a city that most European Jews had never heard of. Shanghai became the only place in the world that required no entry visas or permits. Thus, from 1938 to 1942, about 18,000 Jews successfully escaped to Shanghai. However, at the time when these Jewish refugees arrived in Shanghai, most of the city was occupied by the Japanese. In such an unfamiliar city, along with their Chinese neighbors, the Jewish refugees went through the most extraordinary experience in their lives: the hardship of wartime Shanghai; surviving the Japanese ghetto; and the moment of liberation. Some lost their lives, but most of the refugees survived the war in that city whereas their families and friends, who were not able to find their ways to escape, lost their lives in the Nazi concentration camps."
Living Testimony from the Holocaust
"Prior to the Second World War, some 2,000 Jews lived in Norway; today, only a handful are still alive. This documentary features interviews with five of the survivors, three men and two women. Three are alive because they succeeded in evading arrest, the other two because chance enabled them to survive incarceration in Auschwitz. Common to them all is that they lost many of their closest relatives - in some cases, all of them. In this program they provide a sober account of their harrowing experiences. Those taking part are: Jo Benkow, who fled across the border to Sweden with his father in autumn 1942. The female members of the family, who had to be left behind in Norway, were all deported, to die in German concentration camps. Sammy Steinmann was arrested on 26 October 1942 and deported in the cramped hold of the SS Donau on 26 November that same year. He was sent to Auschwitz, where he was a prisoner from December 1942 until his liberation by the Red Army in January 1945. All the rest of his family perished in the death camps. Julius Paltiel was arrested in Trondheim in October 1942. Held first in a labor camp at Falstad, outside Trondheim, in January 1943 he was deported to Germany on board the SS Gutenland. He remained a prisoner in Auschwitz from February 1943 until January 1945. Both his brother and his parents died in German concentration camps. Fanny Rascow escaped to Sweden with her husband early in 1942. The rest of her family were deported and murdered in German concentration camps. Jenny Wulff, who was married to an Englishman, Ilai Wulff, was arrested on 26 October 1942, together with the other members of her family. Because her husband was English, she was sent to Bretvedt women's prison and thus escaped the fate of the rest of her family, who were deported to Germany on the SS Donau. Later, she too was deported. Following imprisonment in Germany and France, she was liberated by the Americans in 1945. Her parents, two of her sisters and both her brothers died in German concentration camps>"
A Matter of Time
"A two-part documentary, originally produced for Israeli television, that tells the story of of North African Jews during World War II through archival and new footage and stills, interviews with surviving eyewitnesses and historians, and computer-generated animation. The question is raised whether the 'final solution' would have been carried out on the Jews of Libya, Tunisia, Algeria and Morocco had the war continued and their experience of the Holocaust, including the deportation of some Libyan Jews to Bergen Belsen, is recognized and examined."
Once Upon a Time at 55th and Hoover
"Tells the story of the Sephardic Jews from the island of Rhodes who arrived in Los Angeles in the first half of the 20th century and established a community in the area around 55th St. and Hoover, what is today South Central Los Angeles. Through compelling interviews with two immigrants born in Rhodes --what will probably be the last recorded testimony from this generation-- and one second generation Rhodesli who grew up in the area, we learn how the Sephardim of Rhodes, as all immigrants of that era, were torn between assimilating into mainstream American culture and maintaining their identity. The film is also a valuable historical document: filled with seldom seen movie footage and previously unpublished archival photographs it brings to life a little known aspect of the history of Los Angeles."
The Optimists
"Tells the story of how Bulgarian Christians and Muslims found ways to protect 50,000 Bulgarian Jews from the Holocaust."
Saved by Language
"...tells the story of Moris Albahari, a Sephardic Jew from Sarajevo born in 1930. Moris spoke his mother tongue, Ladino (Judeo-Spanish), to survive the Holocaust. Separdic and Bosnian music are weaved into Moris's story along the backdrop of multi-reliious and multilingual Sarajevo, his little Jerusalem. Explore Moris's story of survival and he preservation of his Sephardic heritage. Meet the remaining speakers of Ladino in Sarajevo today."
Sosua: A Haven in the Caribbean
"Focuses on the Jewish community of Sosúa, in the Dominican Republic, created in 1941 in order to provide a haven for those fleeing Nazi Germany."
Sosúa: Make a Better World
"Tells the story of Jewish and Dominican teenagers in New York City's Washington Heights neighborhood, who together with the legendary theater director Liz Swados, put on a musical about the Dominican Republic's rescue of 800 Jews from Hitler. Through the young actors' eyes, we are introduced to a morally complex history in which the Dominican dictator took in the Jews largely because they were white, at the same time he was also murdering tens of thousands of Haitians because they were not. This forgotten story is shown in rare archival images of the Dominican rescue effort, from FDR's Evian Conference, to boatloads of refugees in New York harbor, to the tiny rural outpost of Sosua in the Dominican Republic where the Jews launched their new lives. But the main story lies in the present. Over the course of the film, we are engrossed by the alchemy of the cast members who come together in making the musical. We see a disparate group of young, untested, talented Dominican and Jewish kids who through dancing, singing, crying and creating theater together, form new bonds forged on old ties."
Transnistria: The Hell
"Authors Aharon Appelfeld, Shmuel Ben-Tzion and Sonia Palti, artist Beno Friedel, and other survivors describe the fate of Romanian Jews exiled to Transnistria (an area of Ukraine bordering on Romania) during the period of 1941-1944. Unlike Auschwitz, the Jews of Transnistria were murdered using starvation, disease, executions, sub-human living conditions, and similar methods."