In September 1943, 17-year-old Stanisław Zalewski was arrested in Warsaw as a member of a Polish resistance group and taken to the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp for labour service. From there, he was sent to Mauthausen and finally to the Gusen camp, where the prisoners were forced to work for the German armaments industry under inhumane conditions. For a long time, Stanisław Zalewski, like many other victims of Nazi terror, remained silent about his painful experiences. It was only after forty years that he began to talk about it, at events, memorial services, and in schools, and he continues to do so to this day, even at the age of 99. Now, for the first time, he tells his stirring life story in a film as a deeply impressive ‘ambassador of remembrance’.
Self
In September 1943, 17-year-old Stanisław Zalewski was arrested in Warsaw as a member of a Polish resistance group and taken to the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp for labour service. From there, he was sent to Mauthausen and finally to the Gusen camp, where the prisoners were forced to work for the German armaments industry under inhumane conditions. For a long time, Stanisław Zalewski, like many other victims of Nazi terror, remained silent about his painful experiences. It was only after forty years that he began to talk about it, at events, memorial services, and in schools, and he continues to do so to this day, even at the age of 99. Now, for the first time, he tells his stirring life story in a film as a deeply impressive ‘ambassador of remembrance’.
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The story of black and mixed race people in Nazi Germany who were sterilised, experimented upon, tortured and exterminated in the Nazi concentration camps. It also explores the history of German racism and examines the treatment of Black prisoners-of-war. The film uses interviews with survivors and their families as well as archival material to document the Black German Holocaust experience.
Documentary about Japan's Unit 731 of World War II.
What would your family reminiscences about dad sound like if he had been an early supporter of Hitler’s, a leader of the notorious SA and the Third Reich’s minister in charge of Slovakia, including its Final Solution? Executed as a war criminal in 1947, Hanns Ludin left behind a grieving widow and six young children, the youngest of whom became a filmmaker. It's a fascinating, maddening, sometimes even humorous look at what the director calls "a typical German story." (Film Forum)
When the British army looks set to defeat Mussolini’s Italian forces, Hitler sends reinforcements; the Afrika Korps led by General Rommel. The Desert Fox is on winning form until Montgomery, the British commander, sets up a plan to crush his opponent. After the American landing in North Africa, the Axis armies have no choice but to surrender and put an end to the Desert War.
This is a rare look at one of the worst horror stories in the long infamous history of warfare. This series features captured German and Russian film footage, much of which has never been seen before. For decades the Cold War prevented us from looking closely at what really happened between the Russians and the Germans on the Eastern Front during World War II. More than a struggle between nations, it pitted maniacal tyrant against maniacal tyrant, evil ideology against evil ideology. The lives of tens of millions of human beings were consumed by its raging hatreds and appalling indignities. One in every ten Russians died. One in every four Poles died. Whole divisions of Italians, Romanians, Hungarians disappeared with barely a trace. An average of 17,800 people died on every single day and this, the war on the Russian German Front, lasted for 1,400 days. This series features captured German and Russian film footage, much of which has never been seen before.
Documents the major trial of the Nazi war criminals and the violent acts that they were accused of.
Film journalist and critic Rüdiger Suchsland examines German cinema from 1933, when the Nazis came into power, until 1945, when the Third Reich collapsed. (A sequel to From Caligari to Hitler, 2015.)
An hour long documentary on the war in the Pacific. Using Marine Corps color footage, the only footage of its kind, it traces the major battles, including Saipan, hew Jima and more narrated by Marine Corps veteran Lee Marvin.
A remarkable film that takes a special look at the first war to be truly reported and recorded by one of the more unsung heroes of World War II: the combat photographer. Through the unflinching eye of their camera's lenses, these courageous soldiers continually risked their lives in their brave attempts to capture history.
Documentarians Andre Heller and Othmar Schmiderer turn their camera on 81-year-old Traudl Junge, who served as Adolf Hitler's secretary from 1942 to 1945, and allow her to speak about her experiences. Junge sheds light on life in the Third Reich and the days leading up to Hitler's death in the famed bunker, where Junge recorded Hitler's last will and testament. Her gripping account is nothing short of mesmerizing.
A documentary about the decisions parents made in evacuating their children out of harm's way (the Nazis), and being forced to stay behind, the parents realize that this may possibly be the last time they will see their loved ones.
Documentary detailing the successful Operation Mincemeat in 1943, which led to the Allies successfully invading Sicily and the war turning in their favour.
On March 24, 1944, in the heart of Nazi Germany, 76 British, Canadian, Norwegian and French pilots who were held in Stalag Luft III, a prison camp of the Luftwaffe, escaped. Unique testimony from the last survivors, recreations and today’s digital images sheds new light on the audacious escape.
World War II comes to an end. Tokyo is a destroyed place, without law, driven by hunger and greed. From over 100,000 pages of declassified CIA documents and hours of newly discovered footage, recorded by American occupation charges and private individuals, the documentary shows Tokyo during this crucial year, Year Zero. Observed from the point of view of a young man who finds himself transported in time, the NHK documentary uses color images and state-of-the-art video techniques to reveal how a desperate population is published as the foundations of today's megalopolis.
This chilling, vitally important documentary was produced to mark the 40th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz Concentration Camp. The film contains unedited, previously unavailable film footage of Auschwitz shot by the Soviet military forces between January 27 and February 28, 1945 and includes an interview with Alexander Voronsov, the cameraman who shot the footage. The horrifying images include: survivors; camp visit by Soviet investigation commission; criminal experiments; forced laborers; evacuation of ill and weak prisoners with the aid of Russian and Polish volunteers; aerial photos of the IG Farben Works in Monowitz; and pictures of local people cleaning up the camp under Soviet supervision. - Written by National Center for Jewish Film
We’ve all heard of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, but most people have no idea how widespread and prevalent Jewish resistance to Nazi barbarism was. Instead, it’s widely believed “Jews went to their deaths like sheep to the slaughter.” Filmed in Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Israel, and the U.S., Resistance – They Fought Back provides a much-needed corrective to this myth of Jewish passivity. There were uprisings in ghettos large and small, rebellions in death camps, and thousands of Jews fought Nazis in the forests. Everywhere in Eastern Europe, Jews waged campaigns of non-violent resistance against the Nazis.
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."
On the morning of June 6, 1944, thousands of ships reached the French coast of Normandy as part of an Allied operation to take back France from the Germans. For the next 85 days, U.S., British, and Canadian soldiers engaged in conflicts of unimaginable violence, conquering and liberating the region's cities, but at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives. From the D-Day invasion to the final Nazi surrender in Argentan, this is the definitive story of the three-month Battle of Normandy as it's never been seen before.
The incredible story of Bruno Lüdke (1908-44), the alleged worst mass murderer in German criminal history; or actually, a story of forged files and fake news that takes place during the darkest years of the Third Reich, when the principles of criminal justice, subjected to the yoke of a totalitarian system that is beginning to collapse, mean absolutely nothing.