Holocaust Documentary Films in Leavey Library (DVDs): Holocaust (In General)

After Auschwitz: Battle for the Holocaust
"Why exactly does the Holocaust loom so large in our consciousness? To what political purposes has this memory been put? Filmed in the U.S., Europe and Israel, this controversial documentary charts the evolution of our idea of the Holocaust, from 1945 to the present, critically examines the international campaign for restitution, ponders the relationship between the Holocaust and the contemporary politics of the Middle East and challenges conventional historical viewpoints."

Banking on Hitler
"Swiss banks are accused of collaborating with the Nazis during World War II, but U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, who began investigating this collaboration also found that both British and American bankers continued to do business with Hitler, even as Germany was invading Europe and bombing London. This investigative film shows in detail the roles played by the Anglo-German banking clique. Key members of the Bank of England together with their German counterparts established the BIS, the Bank for International Settlements, which laundered the plundered gold of Europe, while other banks froze the accounts of French Jews depriving them of the money to escape."

Broken Silence
"Some Who Lived weaves together testimonies of Holocaust survivors now living in Argentina and Uruguay with archival and contemporary footage. In Eyes of the Holocaust, survivors describe the slow erosion of their lives followed by panic when the Nazis took over and attempted to liquidate the Hungarian Jewish population. Children from the Abyss illustrates the horror of the Nazi invasion of Russia, with the mass killings conducted by the Einsatzgruppen after the Wehrmacht had moved further into the country. I Remember is in black and white and juxtaposes the testimonies of four Polish Holocaust survivors with images of young people taking part in the annual March of the Years in the extermination camp at Auschwitz. Hell on Earth tells of the inhabitants of the 'model' ghetto at Theresienstadt, which was set up by the Nazis to deceive the world about how they treated Jews."

Children of the Holocaust
"Four people who, as children, survived the Holocaust describe how they kept themselves alive."

The 81st Blow
"Historical documentary made up of footage and stills shot by the Nazis. A compilation of testimony from witnesses who appeared at the Eichmann trial provides a telling narrative."

Genocide
"Genocide (1982) presents a very good overview of the WWII Nazi atrocities committed against the Jewish people. The documentary begins with a recounting of the conditions in Europe that resulted in the rise of the Nazi party and a discussion of their hatred toward Jews and other peoples. The documentary moves on to describe how the Nazis began invading other countries and shipping the Jewish populations to ghettos and then the death camps. With narration by Orson Welles, the documentary covers a surprisingly large amount of material in under 90 minutes. Of course, with such breadth, it sometimes lacks detail, and there were numerous times when I wanted more information about specific events and so forth."

The Holocaust: What the Allies Knew
"This documentary delves into never-before-seen archival footage and documents to investigate how much the Allies knew about the mass murder of Europe's Jews during World War II and why they did not do more to stop it. [This documentary] examines the immigration policy, top secret documents, personal prejudice and government policies that resulted in the deaths of millions."

Human Failure
'The expropriation of assets from German Jews, during the Third Reich, benefitted virtually every German citizen. It was not only the Gestapo who invaded Jewish residences in order to confiscate all property, from bank accounts to the last shirt, it was the German tax officials. A competition evolved between bureaucrats as to how to organize the robbery of the Jews before they were expelled, or sent to their deaths. Larger assets went to the tax offices, and the smaller assets and goods were sold to friends and neighbors in public auctions of "non-Aryan" property. Many of the documents proving this expropriation were lost or destroyed; the ones that remained were hidden away. Using first-hand accounts, award-winning filmmaker Michael Verhoeven goes on a search to unearth evidence documenting one of the greatest robberies in human history"--Container.

A Journey into the Holocaust
"...is a detailed and deeply personal exploration into genocide and how something this atrocious happened, and continues to happen repeatedly, even today. First-time filmmaker Paul Bachow travels around the world and taps into a vast knowledge base of historians, psychologists, and data derived from countless interviews with experts from around the world. Facts are corroborated and woven with first-hand accounts of Holocaust survivors."

Messengers Without an Audience
"A documentary featuring interviews with Jan Karski, Gerhart Riegner, Jan Nowak and Wladislav Bartoszewski, who were among the handful of eyewitnesses who first brought news of the Nazi extermination camps and the genocide of the European Jews during WWII to the attention of Western leaders. The failure of the U.S. or Britain to act on the information is examined, and two former U.S. State Dept. employees discuss these failures."

Mr. Death: The Rise and Fall of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr
"Provocative and chilling true story of Fred A. Leuchter, Jr., the son of a prison worker and a self-taught execution expert who consulted with prisons across the country to make capital punishment more humane. When Leuchter is called in as a high-profile expert in a sensationalized Canadian Nazi war crimes trial, his ego, bravado and absurd testimony reaches international media prominence. Ironically, what Leuchter thought was going to be an apex in his career serves to ruins it."

The Nazis: A Warning from History
"Use interviews with witnesses and perpetrators, along with archival film and records, to examine how a political party as fundamentally evil as the Nazis could come to power in a modern European nation. Discusses the factors that enabled the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in the economically-devastated Germany of the post-World War I era and looks at the role of ordinary Germans in the Nazi regime. Follows the rise and fall of Nazi Germany, from its early promises through the atrocities and suffering of World War II. Includes segments focusing on the occupation of Poland and on the holocaust and concentration camps, particularly Treblinka."

Radical Evil
"Radical evil is a documentary asking why ordinary people become mass murderers. Its particular focus is on Nazi soldiers who murdered Jewish civilians with pistols and rifles in the years 1941 to 1943. About two million Jewish civilians are estimated to have been killed by these death squads in Eastern Europe."

Recollections: Eyewitnesses Remember the Holocaust
"Survivors share their experiences of the Holocaust."

Wansee Conference: 11 Million Sentenced to Death
"Examines the political and social forces that fueled anti-Semitism in Germany in the 1930s and led to the Wannsee Conference in 1942 where Nazi leaders formulated their plans for the world-wide eradication of the Jewish people."