The Identity ES(2022)

2 or 3 Things I Know About Him(de)

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)

Cartas(es)

Ravensbrück: The forgotten camp(fr)

Located nearly 80 kilometres north of Berlin, Germany, the former municipality of Ravensbrück was home to a prison between 1939 and 1945 that became a concentration camp designed specifically for women. It was built by order of Heinreich Himmler, a high dignitary of the Third Reich and head of the SS. Of the more than 130,000 people who were deported there, almost 90,000 never returned. Based on witnesses, international experts and computer-generated images, the document reveals the atrocities committed in Ravensbrück.

Destination Unknown(en)

They endured the death camps. They hid in remote farms. They fought as partisans in Polish forests. But when the war ended, the struggles of the Holocaust survivors were only just beginning. Destination Unknown paints a uniquely intimate portrait of survival, revealing pain that has never faded but hasn't crushed the human spirit.

Death Mills(en)

Originally made with a German soundtrack for screening in occupied Germany and Austria, this film was the first documentary to show what the Allies found when they liberated the Nazi extermination camps: the survivors, the conditions, and the evidence of mass murder. The film includes accounts of the economic aspects of the camps' operation, the interrogation of captured camp personnel, and the enforced visits of the inhabitants of neighboring towns, who, along with the rest of their compatriots, are blamed for complicity in the Nazi crimes - one of the few such condemnations in the Allied war records.

Seeds of Destiny(en)

Oscar winning postwar propaganda film in support of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration. Strident but poignant, focusing on children. The film surveys the Nazi/Japanese atrocities, post-war devastation and the early relief efforts. This film was responsible for raising over $200,000,000, making it a top moneymaking film. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2005.

Elmondták-e...?(it)

Exodus 1947(en)

Exodus 1947 is a one hour PBS documentary narrated by Morley Safer with a score by Ilan Rechtman. The Exodus 1947 voyage acted as a catalyst in forming the new State of Israel. The documentary focuses on clandestine and "illegal" American efforts to finance and crew the most infamous of ten American ships that attempted to bring Jewish refugees to Palestine.

In Their Name(en)

Filmmaker Peter Hegedus embarks on the challenging journey to make Sorella's Story, an immersive 360° film set on the beaches of Latvia in December 1941, when thousands of Jewish Women and children perished at the hands of Nazi collaborators. Along the way Peter teams up with Jewish-Australian 90-year-old Ethel Davies whose family was also killed in the same massacre.

Hell on Earth(en)

From Steven Spielberg and Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation comes Broken Silence, a series of five films about human courage, heroism, and triumph over intense adversities during World War II. Hell on Earth: Renowned Czech filmmaker Vojtech Jasny directed this Czech-language documentary, a look at Theresienstadt, the "model" Czech ghetto set up by the Nazis to deceive the world about how well the Jews were treated.

Monsieur Mayonnaise(en)

Artist and filmmaker Philippe Mora (Mad Dog Morgan; The Howling II; Swastika) is producing a graphic novel about his late father, Georges, widely known in Melbourne as a beloved contemporary art patron and owner of bohemian eateries Mirka Café, Café Balzac and the Tolarno Restaurant and Galleries. Less known, however, is Georges' astonishing history as part of the French resistance during World War II, his friendship with renowned mime Marcel Marceau (Philippe's godfather), and how together they saved thousands of Jewish lives with a fiendishly simple trick involving baguettes and mayonnaise.

Shadows(he)

How the Holocaust Began(en)

Historian James Bulgin reveals the origins of the Holocaust in the German invasion of the Soviet Union, exploring the mass murder, collaboration and experimentation that led to the Final Solution.

Austerlitz(en)

The new film from Sergei Loznitsa (Maidan, The Event) is a stark yet rich and complex portrait of tourists visiting the grounds of former Nazi extermination camps, and a sometimes sardonic study of the relationship (or the clash) between contemporary culture and the sanctity of the site.

Umsonst Gelebt: Walter Schwarze(de)

“This film is part of a series of films on gay men who survived the Nazi era. I met Walter Schwarze when he was already in his eighties. My camera recorded his first public account of his five-year incarceration as a homosexual at Sachsenhausen concentration camp. He was in his fifties when he met Ali in his hometown of Leipzig; the two men became partners and remained close until his demise. And yet, Walter told me, he felt he had lived in vain because he had not had the good fortune of today's gays, who are able to grow up in freedom. Walter Schwarze died of cancer on May 10, 1998.” Rosa von Praunheim

Algeria 1943: A Colony Under Vichy Control(fr)

World War II, June 1940. France has fallen and suffers the relentless boot of Nazi Germany. But Algeria, the prized French colony in North Africa, remains part of the territory controlled by the Vichy regime of Marshal Pétain. A strict colonial order is maintained: the French of European origin rule, while local Jews are stripped of French citizenship and discrimination against the mainly Muslim population increases.

The Man Who Made Angels Fly(en)

When the lights dim and the stage is revealed, Meschke channels life through the strings of his puppets, triggering the spiritual connection between the creator and his alter-egos: the charismatic Don Quixote, the loving Penelope, the inquisitive Baptiste, or the mysterious Antigone. THE MAN WHO MADE ANGELS FLY is a poetic story about a master of his craft that has inspired audiences to reflect upon common issues of suffering and the mortal coil. Visionary and un-biographic, imaginary tribute to the puppeteer.

The Pope and Hitler - Opening the Secret Files on Pius XII(en)

The Vatican opened once-secret records on Pope Pius XII on March 2020. This gave researchers a brand new insight into the Catholic Church during the Nazi era. What did the Pope know about the Holocaust?

The Last Survivors(en)

Documentary compiling the testimonies of the last remaining Holocaust survivors living in Britain, all of whom were children at the time, and following them over the course of a year as they embark upon personal and profound journeys.

“May Your Memory Be Love“ - The Story of Ovadia Baruch(en)

In March 1943, twenty-year-old Ovadia Baruch was deported together with his family from Greece to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Upon arrival, his extended family was sent to the gas chambers. Ovadia struggled to survive until his liberation from the Mauthausen concentration camp in May 1945. While in Auschwitz, Ovadia met Aliza Tzarfati, a young Jewish woman from his hometown, and the two developed a loving relationship despite inhuman conditions. This film depicts their remarkable, touching story of love and survival in Auschwitz, a miraculous meeting after the Holocaust and the home they built together in Israel. This film is part of the "Witnesses and Education" project, a joint production of the International School for Holocaust Studies and the Multimedia Center of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In this series, survivors recount their life stores - before, during and after the Holocaust. Each title is filmed on location, where the events originally transpired.