In 1933, the monstrous Adolf Hitler was elected chancellor of Germany. What would follow would be one of the greatest atrocities ever committed in the history of humankind. The Nazi regime would create a network of concentration camps meant for political prisoners and those they deemed “undesirable.” Dachau was the first camp to open (just two months after Hitler was sworn in) on March 22, 1933, and the very next day Hitler became the dictator of Germany with the passing and implementation of the Enabling Act, which transferred power to him from President Paul von Hindenburg.
After this, the Nazi regime began to isolate Jewish communities into ghettos and boycott their businesses. In November 1938, eight months after Germany annexed Austria, Jewish businesses and buildings were set ablaze and ransacked in an event that is now called Kristallnacht (or the “Night of Broken Glass”). On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland, igniting World War II and changing the face of the modern world.
By 1941, Hitler began to enact the “Final Solution,” which would lead to the systematic genocide of an estimated 11 million people, with over six million of those people being Jewish. The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, would last until the end of the war in May 1945. During the Holocaust, the Nazi regime would murder two-thirds of the European Jewish population and instilled a sorrow that would remain through generations. These atrocities and events were documented in a variety of mediums, with film being a way to capture this history in real-time. The following documentaries have revealed the horrors of the Holocaust in a way that continues to stay with us long after their conclusions, and keep the memory of this awful history alive.
The Last Days
The Last Days (1998) tells the stories of five Hungarian Jews during the final years of the Holocaust. When the Nazis occupied Hungary they began mass deportations of the Jewish communities, primarily to Auschwitz. Even as the Allied forces defeated the Nazis, the regime stopped at nothing to enact their brutality. Director James Moll tells their story through archival footage, photographs, and interviews with survivors, including Representative Tom Lantos, who was the only Holocaust survivor ever elected to the United States Congress.
The film takes some survivors back to their hometowns and the camps they survived, giving a raw and honest look at the pain inflicted by this evil. Moll depicts the horrors of the camps with chilling visuals while stressing the optimism and perseverance of the survivors. This film was produced by Steven Spielberg and went on to win an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. The Last Days has been remastered and is available for streaming on Netflix.
50 Children: The Rescue Mission of Mr. And Mrs. Kraus
50 Children: The Rescue Mission of Mr. And Mrs. Kraus (2013) tells the story of Gilbert and Eleanor Kraus, a Jewish couple from Philadelphia who travel to war-torn Europe in 1939. Their goal was to save 50 Jewish children from a Nazi-occupied country and bring them back to America. Due to the strict immigration quotas at the time, lawyer Gilbert Kraus struggled to obtain the visas needed for the children and did everything in his power to find a way. The Krauses traveled throughout occupied Europe doing whatever they could to rescue the children out of Vienna, eventually finding them homes in Philadelphia.
This story comes from the memoirs of Eleanor Kraus, who died in 1989, and interviews with some of the children that were rescued. Liz Perle, who is the wife of the director of the film, Steven Pressman, was the granddaughter of the Krauses and thought of her grandparents as heroes. Mamie Gummer beautifully reads entries written by Eleanor, which Pressman overlays with photographs and clips of the couple. 50 Children: The Rescue Mission of Mr. And Mrs. Kraus is now streaming on HBO Max.
Night and Fog
Night and Fog (1956) was one of the first documentaries made about the Holocaust. The French short film was directed by Alain Resnais and was made about ten years after the liberations of the camps. The title, Night and Fog, comes from the Nacht und Nebel (“Night and Fog” in German) program, which was the abductions and disappearances of political targets and those the Nazis deemed “undesirables.” Resnais was hesitant to make the film until screenwriter Jean Cayrol, who survived the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp, signed on.
Resnais and Cayrol found the film very difficult to make due to the graphic material and upsetting subject matter. The film transitions between shots of the abandoned grounds at camps like Auschwitz and archival footage while describing the horrors perpetrated at the camp. A supremely poetic and haunting meditation on the camps, Night and Fog was even considered "the greatest film ever made" by the famous French New Wave director Francois Truffaut. Night and Fog is available for streaming on HBO Max.
There Is Many Like Us
There Is Many Like Us (2015) is a hybrid documentary that crosses interviews of Pawiak Prison Camp survivors Max and Rena Fronenberg, with reenactments by actors including Kayleigh Gilbert and Eric Roberts. The film, directed by Josh Webber, tells the true story of his grandparents and how they met in Pawiak. Using his position, Max was able to protect Rena (née Rosenbaum) who was concealing her Jewish descent for fear discovery would send her to her death. Max was eventually able to escape from the camp with his father and 15 other survivors but was forced to leave Rena behind. This harrowing tale is a story made for Hollywood and the love between Max and Rena radiates off the screen. There Is Many Like Us is currently streaming on Amazon Prime.
#AnneFrank Parallel Stories
#AnneFrank Parallel Stories (2020) tells the stories of five women who survived the Holocaust paralleled with entries from Anne Frank’s diary. The great Helen Mirren reads the entries in the annex where Anne and her family hid for over two years, spending time in her room and the areas she would go to be alone. The gut-wrenching tales of the survivors, who were all deported to concentration camps around the same age as Anne, mixed with Anne’s own words works to deliver a powerful piece. #AnneFrank Parallel Stories is available now on Netflix.
Genocide
Genocide (1981) was narrated by the brilliant director Orson Welles and the actor Elizabeth Taylor, and was the first Holocaust documentary to win the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature. The film, directed by Arnold Schwartzman, features archival footage mixed with interviews with survivors of various camps. Genocide depicts the plight of the European Jewish community from the rise of Hitler until after the end of World War II. Schwartzman gives a look into the political climate that would eventually lead to the Holocaust while celebrating the hope and strength of the survivors. Genocide is now available for streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
Shoah
Shoah (1985) is a French documentary directed by Claude Lanzmann. Shoah was filmed over 11 years and the original runtime was over nine hours long. The film includes interviews with bystanders, perpetrators, and survivors, including Simon Srebnik, who was forced to sing songs to entertain the Nazis. Shoah compiles striking images from multiple camps and was filmed across multiple countries. This film chooses to only use subtitles when necessary and instead includes the voice of the interpreters. Shoah received numerous nominations and awards at film festivals around the world and was broadcasted by PBS over four nights in 1987, and the entire masterpiece is available through The Criterion Collection.
One Survivor Remembers
One Survivor Remembers (1995) recounts survivor Gerda Weismann Klein’s six-year ordeal at the hands of the Nazis. The film was directed by Kary Anthony and won an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Subject and a Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Informational Special. In 2012, One Survivor Remembers was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry, and remains one of the most powerful short documentaries of all time. One Survivor Remembers is now streaming on HBO Max.
Hitler’s Children
Hitler’s Children (2011), directed by Chanoch Ze'evi, interviews relatives of Hitler’s inner circle and discusses how they have dealt with their surnames and their family ties to the Holocaust. These interviewees are decedents of some of the most powerful people in the Third Reich including, Rudolf Höss, Heinrich Himmler, and Amon Göth, who was portrayed by Ralph Fiennes in Steven Spielberg’s The Schindler’s List. This film discusses the guilt they carry and how they handle the question of nature verse nurture.
Now, nearly 80 years after the end of World War II, most of our survivors have passed on, taking their stories with them. To save these stories from being forgotten, filmmakers have taken on the task of documenting as many accounts as they can, creating countless documentaries and series. With the end of this generation, the importance of these stories are even more significant because the world can never forget what happened during the Holocaust. Although atrocious and upsetting, the Holocaust is part of our history, and to remember the events of those times may help prevent them from happening again.