Holocaust Feature Films in Leavey Library (DVDs): Titles C-D

Il Cielo cade  = The Sky Falls
"In 1944, newly-orphaned sisters, Penny and Baby, come to live in the Tuscan villa of their aunt and uncle. Their uncle is a German-Jewish intellectual, and discourages the pro-Mussolini and fascist sympathies the girls inherited from their late father. Penny and Baby gradually make friends in their new surroundings and become somewhat smitten with their uncle; but as war rages around them, the family receives a warning from the local priest to flee to Switzerland as the Nazis make towards their town."

Conspirancy
"On January 20, 1942, 15 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."

Council of the Gods = Der Rat der Götter
"A chemist who is neutral in the war allows poison to be produced in his factory that is being used in the Nazi concentration camps to kill the masses."

The Consul of Bordeaux
"A prominent conductor tells a young journalist how he was saved during the Holocaust by Portuguese diplomat Aristides de Sousa Mendez; who also saved many other Jews fleeing France during the Nazi occupation."

The Couple
"A Jewish Hungarian is forced to hand over his wealth to the Nazis for the safe passage of his family out of occupied Europe, only to find his two remaining servants are left trapped in a web of deceit and danger, and he is their only hope for survival."

The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler
"As a social worker, Irena had access to the Warsaw Ghetto, making it possible for her to rescue the daughter of a Jewish friend and safely hide the young girl with a Catholic family. Realizing that thousands of children were still in danger, Irena recruited sympathetic friends and co-workers to smuggle children out and place them in safe homes, farms and convents. At great personal risk, she devised extraordinary schemes to sneak the children by Nazi guards, bringing them out in ambulances, suitcases and even wheelbarrows."

Defiance
"The deep forests of Poland and Belorussia are the domain of the occupying Germans during World War II. The three Bielski brothers go into the forests to undertake the impossible task of foraging for food, weapons and survival, not just for themselves but for a large mass of Polish Jews fleeing from the German war machine..."

Denial
"When Deborah Lipstadt speaks out against Holocaust denier David Irving over his falsification of history, she discovers that the stakes are higher than ever in the battle for historical truth. Now faced with a libel lawsuit in British court, Lipstadt and her attorney have the heavy burden of proving that the Holocaust actually happened, in a riveting legal fight with stunning consequences."

La dernière lettre  = The Last Letter
"In 1941, a Russian-Jewish doctor recites her final letter to her son as she awaits her destruction at the hands of the Nazis in a Jewish ghetto in German-occupied Berdychev. In her letter, she describes conditions within the ghetto and the futile but necessary efforts to maintain a semblance of normal life."

The Devil's Arithmetic
"An American Jewish teenager dreams that she has been transported through time to a Polish concentration camp."

The Diary of Anne Frank
"An extraordinary portrayal of humanity set during one of history's most inhumane periods. Features Millie Perkins as the insightful 13 year old biographer of her family's two-year hiding in an Amsterdam attic. At first, the strong-willed teenager embraces her fugitive lifestyle as an adventure. But in time, the ever-increasing fear of discovery and close quarters prove nearly unbearable for the eight personalities in hiding."

The Diary of Anne Frank (BBC)
"The story of a young girl who had to go into hiding during World War II for being different. Anne Frank's diary manages to create a truthful and timeless picture of domestic life in all its pettiness and normalcy, while never letting us forget the extraordinary threat of death that awaits the characters if they are discovered. This is the first authorized film based on actual entries of the real diary."

Distant Journey
"One of the first theatrical films about the Holocaust, banned for decades in the Czech Republic and then rediscovered, follows the struggles of Dr. Hannah Kaufman and her family from the time of the Nazi Occupation of Prague through her experiences in the transit camp of Theresienstadt."

Drancy avenir
"Three stories about the Holocaust and how it effected the lives of three people: one the last Holocaust survivor, one doing research on a concentration camp in Drancy, and the third about a ship's captain and his journey into an unknown territory..."