Yom HaShoah Movies

Bring your community together at the synagogue to watch a Holocaust related film… or a series of films.

A film showing can be used as the basis for an interfaith program or dialog designed to bring teenagers and adults together. Coordinate with your congregation’s Post B’nai Mitzvah class or youth groups. You might even have them select the film!

Each film is briefly introduced prior to its showing. Following the conclusion of the film, a brief discussion is held. In addition to the Yellow Candles™ you already distributed by hand or mail, have additional ones available. As people leave they are reminded to light theirs or encouraged to take one home with them and make a donation toward future Holocaust education.

The following companies and their websites distribute or have produced films with Holocaust content. These are independent companies and the FJMC is not responsible for their content:

 

 

Suggested Films

A list of suggested films includes:

 

Above and Beyond

 

 

 

 

A group of Jewish American pilots, in secret and at great personal risk, smuggled airplanes out of the U.S., trained behind the Iron Curtain in Czechoslovakia and flew for Israel in its War of Independence.

 

Paper Clips

As a part of their study of the Holocaust, one child asked how many is “six million.”  The teacher had the children of the Whitwell, Tennessee Middle School (a town without any Jewish residents) try to collect six million paper clips representing the six million Jews killed by the Nazis.  The story of how the children collected the paperclips and more, is riveting.

One Clip at a Time homepage

 

Europa, Europa produced by CCC Films

Separated from his family, Salomon Perel, a Jewish boy, tries to survive the Second World War by passing as an Aryan German. He enlists in the German army and winds up in the Hitler Youth. Salomon is reunited with his family at the end of the war.                                                                                                     IMDb Europa Europa Webpage

 

 

The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

 

 

 

 

This dramatic film shows the horror of life in a Nazi death camp through the eyes two eight year old boys.  One is the Nazi Commandant’s son, and the second is a Jewish inmate on the inside of the fence.    IMDb The Boy in the Striped Pajamas Webpage

 

Wagner and Me

Stephen Fry, a British actor and writer, probably best known to Americans for his appearances on the TV-series Bones, is a lifelong fan of the music of Richard Wagner but is also Jewish. He knows of Hitler’s enthusiasm for the composer. Stephen journeys in this film to explore and confront this legacy. Can the music be untangled from its history?

 

 

The Pianist

 

 

 

 

The Pianist is based on the memoir of pianist and composer, Wladyslaw Szpilman. It tells his story from his playing the last live music head live over the radio in Poland as the German Army invaded, through the deportations to the death camps, the Warsaw Ghetto and his ultimate survival. The movie starred Adrien Brody as Wladyslaw and won three Oscars.

 

The Flat

When his grandmother passed away at the age of 98, a man and his family were called to the flat to clear out what was left. Objects, pictures, letters and documents awaited them, revealing traces of a troubled and unknown past. (Hebrew with English Subtitles)

IMD The Flat

 

 

Everything is Illuminated

A young Jewish American man seeks to find the woman who saved his grandfather during World War II in a Ukrainian village that was ultimately razed by the Nazis, with the help of an eccentric local.

 

 

 

The Devil’s Arithmetic

Hannah, a young girl, hates going to her family seder as her family tells the same stories and is tired of hearing about the past. However, during the seder she opens the front door to let in the prophet Elijah, but sees a Polish village instead of the outside of the apartment. She not only is – all of a sudden – in a new place but also in the year 1942.