On 27 January 1945, 7,000 prisoners were liberated from the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration and extermination camp. More than one million people were killed here. Holocaust Memorial Day pays tribute to the victims of the Holocaust and reaffirms its commitment never to forget and always to fight resolutely against antisemitism, racism, and other forms of intolerance.
With a selection of six documentaries, we aim to remind everyone of this promise.
The Dead Nation
by Radu Jude
RO / 2017 / 83 Min
The Dead Nation is a documentary-essay, which shows a stunning collection of photographs from a Romanian small town in the 1930’s and 1940’s. The soundtrack, composed mostly from excerpts taken from the diary of a Jewish doctor from the same era, shows us what the photographs do not: the rising of the anti-Semitism and eventually a harrowing depiction of the Romanian Holocaust.
Peter Eisenman: Building Germany's Holocaust Memorial
by Micheal Blackwood
US / 2006 / 59 Min
This documentation chronicles Peter Eisenman's creation of a major public sculpture in the center of Berlin. Eisenman succeeded brilliantly in the face of controversy and critique, most of which vanished with the dedication of the memorial in May 2005. Prominent German politicians, literati, academicians as well as general visitors comment on their feelings and impressions of the memorial.
A Man Can Make a Difference
by Ullabritt Horn
DE / 2015 / 90 Min
This documentary portraise the adventurous life of Benjamin Ferencz, a Hungarian-born Jewish lawyer who fled to the U.S. as a child and later became chief prosecutor for war crimes in the Nuremberg trials of 1945-1949 and one of the founding members of the International Criminal Court, which came into effect in 2002.
Fields of Ashes: The George Zeff Story, Surviving the Holocaust
von David Tietmeyer
US / 2014 / 38 Min
A documentary film with Holocaust survivor George Zeff. George tells his story of Nazi occupation, work camps and surviving as a child during this time in history. Fields of Ash is an on-going series about Holocaust survivors and those who risked their lives to save Jewish children and families from concentration camps.
Night Will Fall
by André Singer
UK / 2014 / 75 min
In 1945, when the first concentration camps in Europe were liberated, the need arose to document the unimaginable. While the Americans quickly go public with a short film, Alfred Hitchcock's work disappears into British archives because in the beginning of the Cold War, it no longer seemed opportune to confront the West German population with their deeds. After some sixty years, it is possible to reconstruct the Hitchcock film in its entirety. NIGHT WILL FALL shows unsparing and startling images of one of the darkest chapters of the 20th century.
Watchers of the Sky
von Edet Belzberg
US / 2014 / 120 min
WATCHERS OF THE SKY interweaves stories of remarkable courage, compassion, and determination, telling the story of the forgotten life of Raphael Lemkin– the man who created the word "genocide" and believed the law could protect the world from mass atrocities. Inspired by Samantha Power's Pulitzer Prize-winning book, A Problem From Hell, WATCHERS OF THE SKY takes you on a provocative journey from Nuremberg to The Hague, Bosnia to Darfur, criminality to justice, and apathy to action.
