Holocaust Feature Films in Leavey Library (DVDs): Titles E-H

Edges of the Lord
"Romek is a Jewish boy from Krakow hiding out with a rural Catholic family in Poland in 1943. Romek soons finds himself in an ackward position with the other children of the village, who don't know whether to view the newcomer as a friend or rival. In a catechism class taught by a local priest, Ramek meets Marka, a local thirteen-year-old whose romantic interest sparks some twists that include betrayal, murder, and revenge with religious overtones."

Eichmann
"Based upon the final confession of Adolf Eichmann, made before his execution in Israel as he accounts to Captain Avner Less, a young Israeli police officer, of his past as the architect of Hitler's plan for the 'final solution.' Captured by intelligence operatives in Argentina, fifteen years after World War II, Eichmann, the world's most wanted man, must be broken down and the truth unveiled. As the world waits, two men must confront each other in a battle of wills."

Escape from Sobibor
"The true story about a group of prisoners at a Nazi death camp plan a daring escape for freedom. Based on Richard Rashke's book."

Europa, Europa
"The true story of Solomon Perel, born in Germany in 1925 of Polish-Jewish parents, who survives World War II by concealing his true identity and by living as a Nazi for seven years."

Exodus
"This film dramatizes part of the Israeli independence moment, dealing with various factions involved in the internecine struggle between the moderate Haganah and the radical terrorist Irgun Zvai Leumi. Interspersed throughout are segments showing the migration of European Jews to the new land, paying special attention to the ragged survivors of Nazi death camps on board the vessel Exodus, blockaded in a Cyprus harbor by British warships..."

Die Fälscher = The Counterfeiters
"Germany, 1936. Salomon 'Sally' Sorowitsch is the king of counterfeiters. He lives a life of cards, booze, and women. Suddenly his luck runs dry when he is arrested by Superintendent Friedrich Herzog. He is immediately thrown into the Mauthausen concentration camp. There, Salomon exhibits exceptional skills and is soon transferred to the upgraded camp of Sachsenhausen. Upon his arrival, he once again comes face to face with Herzog, who is there on a secret mission. Hand-picked for his unique skill, Salomon and a group of professionals are forced to produce fake foreign currency under the program Operation Berhard. The team, which also includes detainee Adolf Burger, is given luxury barracks for their assistance. Salomon attempts to weaken the economy of Germany's opponents. But, Adolf refuses to use his skills for Nazi profit and would like to do something to stop the operation. Now faced with a moral dilemma, Salomon must decide whether his actions are ultimately the right ones."

Family Album
"Coincident with the discovery of an abandoned violin, Ruby at the age of 20 finds her grandfather Ben Schwartz standing on her doorstep. The violin enables Ruby to eventually accept her own heritage as the granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor."

The Fifth Rider is Fear  = A pátý Jez̧dec je Strach
"An aging Jewish doctor is forbidden to practice medicine in Prague during the Nazi occupation. He is employed in a warehouse as a clerk, cataloguing confiscated Jewish property. When a partisan is wounded, the doctor reluctantly agrees to treat him. The doctor hides him in his run-down apartment buiding as he sneaks through the black-market underworld of Prague in search of morphine to ease the man's pain, ever fearful of informant neighbors and vigilant authorities. Within a historical context, director Zbyněk Brynych creates a thinly-disguised allegory about contemporary communist Czechoslovakia that is rich in atmosphere and dark in tone. The expressionist cinematography and stellar performances make this lost masterwork an unforgettable viewing experience."

Forced March
"Ben Kline is a method actor desperate for a meaningful role to make him a movie star. When he sets out to play Hungarian-Jewish poet Miklos Radnoti, a hero who died in the Holocaust, he is forced to face the reality of those victimized by the war. As he gets deeper into his role, Ben begins to merge with his character, blurring the boundaries of truth and illusion."

Forget Me Not: The Anne Frank Story
"The story of a remarkable young girl during WW II, told through the eyes of a boy who has fallen into the neo-Nazi movement. He has been whisked away into 1944 to live alongside her as a Jew."

Fragments of Isabella
"The true story of a young Hungarian Jew's struggle to survive at Auschwitz and her escape during the death march to Bergen Belsen."

The Garden of the Finzi-Continis
"Set in Italy in 1938, when Mussolini's anti-Semetic edicts began to isolate the Jews from their communities. Among them were the Finzi-Continis, an aristocratic Jewish family forced for the first time to acknowledge the world beyond its fenced garden."

Gebürtig
"The past catches up on two men, a Jewish emigrant composer Hermann Gëburtig and the German journalist Konrad Sachs. Gëburtig testifies against a former concentration camp supervisor, and Sachs faces the reality that his father was an SS-Doctor."

Die Geträumten
"The tormented romance between celebrated poets Paul Celan and Ingeborg Bachmann – a Holocaust survivor whose parents were killed in the concentration camps and a daughter of a Nazi party member – is the subject of this innovative [film] in which two actors read from their nearly two decades worth of correspondence."

God afton, herr Wallenberg: en passionshistoria från verkligheten = Good Evening Mr. Wallenberg, A Passion Taken from Reality
"The story of Swedish businessman Raoul Wallenberg who helped Jews in Budapest, Hungary in 1944 obtain Swedish passports to get them out of Adolph Eichmann's deadly path. He saved over 60,000 people in Budapest's Jewish ghetto."

God on Trial
"Following the harrowing ritual of selection for death or hard labor, a group of new inmates unsure of their appointed fates begins asking how God could allow for so much suffering. Impulsively, the men decide to put God on trial for abandoning His chosen people. Amid the outside sounds of prisoners being marched to the gas chamber, the trial unfolds. They group address the question: How can there be evil in a universe ruled by an all-powerful, benevolent God?"

Greenhorn: A Story of Friendship in the Aftermath of the Holocaust'
"...is a powerful [film] that gives human dimension to the Holocaust. It poignantly underscores our flawed humanity and speaks to the healing value of friendship. Greenhorn, adapted from the children's novel, is based on the true story of an eleven-year old Holocaust survivor named Daniel who arrives at a Brooklyn yeshiva in 1946. He is befriended by Aaron, a boy with a stutter, and the two of them stand up to the bullies who make fun of them."

Gruber's Journey
"Based on Curzio Malaparte's real wartime experiences chronicled in his 1944 novel Kaputt."

Hannah Arendt
"A brilliant biopic of the influential German-Jewish philosopher and political theorist. Arendt's reporting on the 1961 trial of ex-Nazi Adolf Eichmann in The New Yorker, controversial both for her portrayal of Eichmann and the Jewish councils, introduced her now-famous concept of the 'Banality of Evil.' Using footage from the actual Eichmann trial and weaving a narrative that spans three countries, von Trotta beautifully turns the often invisible passion for thought into dramatic cinema."

The Harmonists
"Based on a true story, The Harmonists portrays the rise and fall of a successful vocal group in Germany that was disbanded in 1934 as part of the mounting persecution of Jews. The Comedian Harmonists did comic and romantic songs in intricate harmony, and were extremely popular, but as the Nazis became more powerful, the group were forbidden to sing songs by Jewish composers--and finally, because three of their members were Jewish, they were banned from performing in public."

Herman Wouk's War and Remembrance
"One week after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, sweeping the United States into World War Ii, the Henry family is forever changed by the war in the Pacific, and the horror of the Holocaust."

Hidden in Silence
"The amazing true story of teenager Stefania Podgorska, who hid 13 Jews in her attic during WWII."

Holocaust
"Follows the tragedy and triumph of the Weiss family of Berlin and intertwines their fate as European Jews with the story of a German family, the Dorfs, whose members include a high-ranking Nazi officer. Kristallnacht, the "night of broken glass" occurs and the Weiss family suffer a series of unspeakable tragedies in the aftermath."

The House on Telegraph Hill
"Victoria Kowelska is tortured in a concentration camp during the final days of World War II, and her family in Poland is slaughtered. Her best friend, Karin, who is ill, hopes to recover and make it to San Francisco, where a wealthy aunt is taking care of her son. But when Karin dies and the camp is liberated, Victoria exchanges identity papers with the dead woman, thereby gaining a new identity and family. After five years in relocation camps, Victoria finally gets to America, only to learn that Karin's aunt has recently died, and her nephew is in charge of the estate and Karin's son."

Hu halakh ba-śadot
"In 1946, a young man returns home from college to his kibbutz to find that his father has joined the British army and his mother is with another man. He meets a young Holocaust refugee and falls in love with her, but he is called to duty as the political turmoil in Israel, on the verge of statehood, reaches a boiling point."