550,000 Jewish American men and women fought in World War II. In their own words, veterans both famous and unknown (from Hollywood director Mel Brooks to former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger) bring their war experiences to life: how they fought for for their nation and their people, struggled with anti-Semitism within their ranks, and emerged transformed, more powerfully American and more deeply Jewish.
The story of Estelle Ishigo, one of the few Caucasians interned with Japanese Americans during World War II. The wife of a Japanese American, Ishigo refused to be separated from her husband and was interned along with him. Based on the personal papers of Estelle Ishigo and her novel Lone Heart Mountain.
The true story of the massacre of a small Czech village by the Nazis is retold as if it happened in Wales.
Filmmaker Alain Resnais documents the atrocities behind the walls of Hitler's concentration camps.
Over a 50-year career and more than a hundred movies, filmmaker John Ford (1894-1973) forged the legend of the Far West. By giving a face to the underprivileged, from humble cowboys to persecuted minorities, he revealed like no one else the great social divisions that existed and still exist in the United States. More than four decades after his death, what remains of his legacy and humanistic values in the memory of those who love his work?
Violinist and songwriter Kishi Bashi travels on a musical journey to understand WWII era Japanese Incarceration, assimilation, and what it means to be a minority in America today.
When World War II broke out, John Ford, in his forties, commissioned in the Naval Reserve, was put in charge of the Field Photographic Unit by Bill Donavan, director of the soon-to-be-OSS. During the war, Field Photo made at least 87 documentaries, many with Ford's signature attention to heroism and loss, and many from the point of view of the fighting soldier and sailor. Talking heads discuss Ford's life and personality, the ways that the war gave him fulfillment, and the ways that his war films embodied the same values and conflicts that his Hollywood films did. Among the films profiled are "Battle of Midway," "Torpedo Squadron," "Sexual Hygiene," and "December 7."
How was the Second World War experienced in Rouveen, Overijssel? This Orthodox Christian village near Staphorst was self-sufficient during the war. And largely isolated from the outside world. The last eyewitnesses of the war, the children of that time, are now all very old. In the Duutsers, residents of the Overijssel village of Rouveen talk movingly openly about their war memories to fellow villager and filmmaker Geertjan Lassche. Their stories are interspersed with historical video fragments and photos from the past. This is how an honest child's view of growing up in a rural village unfolds. How did the war come to the village? Who is that stranger in the village in front of them, that German? And in what those of other strangers? When does unrest arise, and unrest in fear of hatred? What about the Jewish labor camps in the village and how did they view the Canadian liberators?
How did the USSR - a country considered a second-rate industrial power, economically inferior to Germany, the USA and the UK - shape its victory over the armies of Hitler's regime, and secure its place among the winners?
The incredible story of the Avro Lancaster, one of the finest bombers of the Second World War, which played a crucial role in the long and savage campaign to defeat Hitler's Third Reich. This documentary features interviews with surviving veterans of Bomber Command, who share frank personal accounts of their part in an aerial battle of attrition which claimed the lives of 55'000 aircrew.
In 1935, German scientists dug for bones; in 1943, they murdered to get them. How the German scientific community supported Nazism, distorted history to legitimize a hideous system and was an accomplice to its unspeakable crimes. The story of the Ahnenerbe, a sinister organization created to rewrite the obscure origins of a nation.
Pulitzer Prize -- winning journalist John Hersey caused a sensation when he published "Hiroshima", the first account for American readers of the horror experienced by victims of the 1945 Hiroshima atomic bomb attack. "Hiroshima" stunned readers with its descriptions of the terrible aftermath of the bombing, yet Hersey never spoke about his experience in Hiroshima.
Syndrome K is the true story about a highly contagious, highly fictitious disease created by three Roman Catholic doctors during the holocaust to hide Jews in a Vatican-affiliated hospital.
Part of the Canada Carries On series, this short film portrays the First Division of the Canadian Active Service Force in Aldershot, England. Using an intimate letter home as a narrative device, this film reveals how the troops were received, what their living conditions were like, how they would get along with their English allies and how they spent their leisure time.
A tribute to the cameramen of the newsreel companies and the service film units, in the form of a compilation of film of the cameramen themselves, their training and some of their most dramatic film.
A documentary looking at Operation Anthropoid during World War II.
Combining personal accounts with archive footage, this film features the voices of some of the only people left on earth to have survived a nuclear bomb.
Nazi troops massacre 30,000 Jews over a three-day period in September 1941. Babyn Yar ravine in Kyiv, Ukraine.