Holocaust Remembrance Day

Today marks the 64th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau by Soviet troops. I've thought about this all day and about how I should approach it, but somehow nothing seems to do it justice. I cant even begin to imagine what happened there so I'm not going to try to add my two cents to this matter.

If you would like to read more about it though, I found this article from Yahoo! news to be very interesting.

Instead, I'm going to add my contribution to the remembering by introducing you to all the films concerning the Holocaust that Menemsha Films has to offer.

First off is Belzec. The horrifically efficient Nazi death camp, Belzec, was in operation for less than one year, but witnessed the murder of at least 600,000 Jews. Once the Soviet counterattacks began, the S.S. eliminated all traces of the camp, and the name Belzec faded from the collective conscience. Conceived of by Executive Producer Claude Lanzman as the last chapter to his epic Shoah, helmer Guillaume Moscovitz has created a chilling account that's as much about remembrance as it is about the past.

After that we have The Rape of Europa. The Rape of Europa is an epic journey through seven countries, into the violent whirlwind of fanaticism, greed, and warfare that threatened to wipe out the artistic heritage of Europe. For twelve long years, the Nazis looted and destroyed art on a scale unprecedented in history. But heroic young art historians and curators from America and across Europe fought back with a miraculous campaign to rescue and return the millions of lost, hidden and stolen treasures.

Next up we have The Ritchie Boys. The Ritchie Boys is the riveting, untold story of a group of young men who fled Nazi Germany and returned as soldiers in U.S. uniforms. They knew the psychology and the language of the enemy better than anyone. In Camp Ritchie, Maryland, they were trained in intelligence and psychological warfare. Determined, bright, and inventive, they fought their own kind of war; they were victors, not victims.

Another interesting documentary is As Seen Through These Eyes. As Maya Angelou narrates this powerful documentary, she reveals the story of a brave group of people who fought Hitler with the only weapons they had: charcoal, pencil stubs, shreds of paper and memories etched in their minds. These artists took their fate into their own hands to make a compelling statement about the human spirit, enduring against unimaginable odds.

Adding to the list of documentaries, we have Inside Hana's Suitcase. The delivery of a battered suitcase to Fumiko Ishioka at the Tokyo Holocaust Museum begins the true-life mystery that became the subject of Karen Levineʼs best-selling book Hanaʼs Suitcase. The suitcase came from the Auschwitz Museum and had Hana Bradyʼs name painted on it. Larry Weinsteinʼs masterful film follows Fumikoʼs search to discover the details of Hanaʼs life, which leads to the discovery of her brother George in Toronto.

And rounding out the documentaries is Human Failure. The expropriation of assets from German Jews, during the Third Reich, benefitted virtually every other German citizen. It was not the Gestapo who invaded Jewish residences in order to confiscate all property, from bank accounts to the last shirt, it was the German Tax officials.
A bizarre competition evolved between bureaucrats as to how to organize the robbery of the Jews before they were expelled, or sent to their deaths.
Larger assets went to the tax offices, and the smaller assets and goods were sold to friends and neighbors in public auctions of “Non-Aryan“ property.


Finally we have Saviors in the Night. SAVIORS IN THE NIGHT (UNTER BAUERN) is based on the memories of Marga Spiegel. In her narrative, published in 1965, she describes how courageous farmers in southern Münsterland hid her, her husband Siegfried {named Menne} and their little daughter Karin from 1943 until 1945, thus saving them from deportation to the extermination camps in the East. The film tells this story of survival with a sense for the absurd in daily life and not without the typical Westphalian humor.

If anybody has questions about any of these films, feel free to leave a comment or send me an e-mail.

What is your favorite Holocaust-related film?