Holocaust Educational Resources
U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
What Is This “Holocaust Resource Page”?
This is not a comprehensive guide to learning about this defining period in world history. If you’re a parent or educator, a more comprehensive overview is at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s page “For Teachers.” That Web site does a great job of breaking down Essential Topics to Teach and even Lesson Plans with resources you can use immediately. This page is focused on NEWS—on the best newly available materials we’ve spotted—because so many new resources related to the Holocaust get lost in today’s flood of media.
NEW on DVD: Warsaw Ghetto
unearthed in ‘A Film Unfinished’
Michael Berenbaum, an internationally recognized leader in Holocaust education who played a role in creating the Washington D.C. memorial, appears in a special introduction to the new DVD “A Film Unfinished,” a March 2011 release from Oscilloscope. Berenbaum explains why this disturbing DVD represents important historical evidence. This is not a film for young viewers, but college-age and adult discussion groups will find that it is a startling revelation into the nature of Nazi propaganda.
Using victims as stage props, SS-directed filmmakers staged a fake, documentary that argued the Jews were responsible for their own destruction. Now, that original Nazi film has been carefully analyzed by scholars—and Warsaw survivors—and its truth is revealed.
ALSO on DVD: LONG LEGACY of NAZI FILM “JUD Süß”
“Harlan: In the Shadow of ‘Jew Suss,’” (a title rendered in various spellings) looks at the long tail of Holocaust propaganda through families and global culture. (Link goes to our full story.) There’s a direct family connection between Veit Harlan, who created the most famous of all Nazi anti-Semitic films, and the late director Stanley Kubrick, for example.
ALSO on DVD: Polish Tragedy of “Katyn”
Millions were heartbroken in April, 2010, about the crash of a Polish plane on its way to honor the victims of Katyn. That one word—Katyn—is a defining milestone in Polish history. In the Katyn forest in 1940, under orders from Joseph Stalin, more than 20,000 Polish officers and intellectuals were murdered and dumped in mass graves.
This was during the brief period when Nazis and Soviets controlled separate spheres of Poland. Later, many Poles themselves collaborated in blaming this massacre on Nazis—because post-WWII Poland quickly was controlled by new Soviet masters. Soviet propaganda machines worked overtime to convince Poles of this entirely new “truth,” which many Poles knew was a lie about this particular war crime. Not only had Katyn wiped out Poles’ top pre-war leadership, but many new Polish leaders were complicit in spreading the big lie about that tragedy.
(Note: “Holocaust” and “Shoah” are terms focused on the systematic attempt by Nazis to wipe out the Jewish population. The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum includes coverage of the Nazis’ similar attempts to wipe out other populations as well. By including “Katyn” on this page, we are not trying to confuse the definition of “Holocaust.” Rather, we are noting that the Katyn massacre shares similar urgent concerns about discerning the truth of mass murders in this WWII era.)
DVD set: 2 Historic Holocaust Films
The Chicago-based non-profit group, Facets Video, focuses on bringing important films from around the world to American audiences and also has a strong commitment to educational programs. Facets has released a double-DVD set of two important Holocaust films.
FILM REVIEW: “The Fifth Horseman Is Fear”
Produced in 1964, this Czech film dared to explore the Holocaust and Communist oppression in the same movie. (Wikipedia offers a more detailed overview of this landmark black-and-white production.)
The film focuses on a Jewish doctor forced into slave labor by Nazi forces. He is forbidden to practice medicine and, instead, works as a clerk making inventories in a warehouse of possessions confiscated from Jewish families. We see mountains of books, a vast wall displaying elaborate clocks, a cavernous room full of grand pianos—all awaiting selection by Nazis plundering Eastern Europe.
What filmmaker Zbynek Brynych does best is convey the paranoia of living under constant threat of arrest and death. An eye peers through a crack in a doorway; a stranger in a pub spyies from a distance; and a resident in an apartment building checks his watch nervously as if filing reports on his neighbors. This was Brynych’s commentary both on the Holocaust and the Communist era. Some scenes are vivid slices of 1940s life; others jump into the 1960s. The doctor’s dramatic crisis in the film comes when an injured man stumbles into his apartment building and the doctor agrees to save his life. For this act of life-giving goodness, he may lose his own life.
FILM REVIEW: “Distant Journey”
First released in 1949, then banned for years by the Soviets, this is one of the world’s first accurate films about the Holocaust—produced courageously by filmmaker Alfred Radok. Soon after the movie’s release, Soviet forces clamped down on Prague and such productions were banned, because the official Soviet view of the Holocaust did not focus on Jewish losses. (Wikipedia provides more history on “Distant Journey.”)
This film focuses almost entirely on Jewish life. Clearly, it was a personal passion for Radok, whose father and grandfather both died in Theresienstadt—the actual setting where more than half of “Distant Journey” was filmed. Radok’s courage and creative resolve is startling. Within just a few years of the war’s end, he took his film crew back into the heart of the ghetto streets and buildings where his relatives had so recently been tortured and killed.
The plot focuses on a married couple: two doctors, one Jewish and one Gentile. Radok’s own family was mixed, so he knew first hand about such tragic dilemmas during the Nazi regime. Two things are especially striking about this film: One is Radok’s innovative style of editing. He took short clips from Nazi propaganda films, including “Triumph of Will,” and recut the Nazi sequences to add imagery of the deadly violence that resulted from these early Nazi rallies.
The other striking truth in “Distant Journey” is the intensity of the personal testimony it represents. In scene after scene, we can feel the depth of Radok’s own trauma. We see families, at home, scrambling to pack for train transports to the ghettos. In another extended scene, we see men gathered for prayer in a synagogue, knowing that they’re about to make this “distant journey.” Once the characters wind up in Theresienstadt, Radok builds on this almost documentary feel of ghetto life—right down to the claustrophobia once thousands of humans were packed into that tiny walled town. This is a journey that’s far from easy—but one you won’t forget!
Click here to visit Amazon for this 2-DVD set: “Distant Journey/The Fifth Horseman Is Fear.”
FILM REVIEW: “The Last Stage”
Another important Holocaust-era artifact is “The Last Stage,” a film produced by an Auschwitz survivor who returned to the actual location shortly after the war ended. Like “Distant Journey,” “The Last Stage” is as close to direct survivor testimony as one can get from this era. Here’s a link to our earlier full review of that film, which also is distributed by Facets.
TV and DVD REVIEW: “As Seen Through Their Eyes”
PBS broadcast this documentary, based on surviving artworks created by Jewish artists during and after the Shoah. Then, the film was released on DVD for ongoing viewing. At Hanukkah 2009, we featured a review of the film.
FILM REVIEW: “Belzec”
Earlier this year, we reviewed an in-depth examination of this nearly erased chapter of Holocaust history: the death camp at Belzec. Attempting to cover their tracks, Nazi forces destroyed the camp, tried to incinerate the remaining mass graves—and many local residents tried to deny that anything happened in their town. This film proves that such a crime cannot be erased from our global memory so easily. Here’s our review of “Belzec,” which we coupled with a second documentary film review on “Examined Life.”
(Originally published at http://www.ReadTheSpirit.com/)
