The United States Congress established the Days of Remembrance as our nation’s annual commemoration of the Holocaust. This year Holocaust Remembrance Day is April 18 2012.  In honor of that, here is my annual list of Holocaust films  I feel are worth seeing.

The Holocaust has always been sporadic material for Hollywood.  Every few years a small budget independent or documentary will show up.  Mainstream Hollywood rarely invests big dollars.  While many Holocaust films are done, very few are big budget.  A great documentary on the subject of how Hollywood has addressed the Holocaust is Imaginary Witness:Hollywood and the Holocaust.

There is no denying that sentiments and views of the Holocaust have changed over the years since the end of World War II.  Hollywood has changed right along with those sentiments and views and changed the types of movies and the way events are depicted.  A review of the Internet Movie Database reveals that from 1945-2008  there were over 400 theatrical productions and documentaries made which addressed the Holocaust in one form or another.  Of those, the majority were foreign-made documentaries.

Here is my list of Hollywood movies and television media that I feel offer the most to the viewer in the portrayal of events and figures of the Holocaust.   I am only including films I have seen and whose main focus are the Holocaust as compared to the Holocaust being just one historical event in the movie.  An example would be Band Of Brothers. This mini-series addresses the Holocaust but is not about the Holocaust.

“Lidice“  was not released mainstream in the United States and it is not directly a Holocaust Movie.  I am including it because it is such heart-wrenching story I can’t believe it has never been done mainstream.  It revolves around the  assassination of the “Butcher Of Prague,  Reinhard Heydrich by Czech partisans and the Nazi retaliation against and massacre of the entire town of Lidice.  The movie is hard to find and subtitled but its a must see.

Sarah’s Key addresses the very sensitive and hushed subject of French complicity in the Holocaust.  It revolves around the Vel’ d’Hiv roundup, in which French police arrested thousands of Jews in Paris in July 1942.

Julia Jarmond, an American journalist married to a Frenchman, is commissioned to write an article about the notorious Vel d’Hiv round up, which took place in Paris, in 1942. She stumbles upon a family secret which will link her forever to the destiny of a young Jewish girl, Sarah. Julia learns that the apartment she and her husband Bertrand plan to move into was acquired by Bertrand’s family when its Jewish occupants were dispossessed and deported 60 years before.

Defiance is the story of the Jewish Bielski brothers. succeeded in escaping from the massacre of the German in their village where their parents were killed. They hide in the woods and sooner other runaway Jews join them.  They guerrilla resistance created a makeshift village in the woods to shelter and protect more than 1,200 Jews.  Five generations later, “20,000 Jewish people are alive because of the work the Bielski brothers.

“The Boy In The Striped Pajamas”  and “The Reader”.

The Boy In The Striped Pajamas.  Adapted from the book of the same name by John Boyne.  A short, faithful adaption to the book.    The story is told from the perspective of the child of a Concentration Camp Commandant who befriends a Jewish child imprisoned in the a camp. The child has been shielded by his father from the horror, brutality and the truth of the purpose of the camp.  This movie received quite a bit of criticism in portraying an unrealistic view of German ignorance of the Holocaust.

The Reader(2009).   Ralph Fiennes reminds us of his brilliant performance in Schindler’s List to once again tackle the Holocaust in a much different light. His character has an affair with his care-taker. Years later, while a law student observing a Nazi war crime trial, he is re-united in a shocking way.   She is a defendant charged with war crimes. The Reader has sparked some revisionist sentiment in the Jewish community.  The criticism is that  film through its central theme attempts to  legitimize a notion that ordinary Germans were completely ignorant of The Final Solution until after the war.

Paperclips(2004) An extraordinary documentary that I stumbled across surfing cables channels once night.  Whitwell Middle School in rural Tennessee is the last place you would think would be a hot bed of Holocaust study.  It however is the setting for this documentary about a unique experiment in Holocaust understanding. The students at Whitewell collect six-million paper clips to better understand the extent of Holocaust and share that understanding with Holocaust survivors.

The Diary Of Anne Frank(1959). The 1959 version appears to be Hollywood’s first mainstream attempt to bring the Holocaust to the masses although it did so by sacrificing the depth and emotion of the Holocaust to give the public a Hollywood blockbuster movie. The movie itself was a Hollywood hit by the standards of the day. It won three Oscars. An interesting side note is that Audrey Hepburn turned down the role of Anne Frank because she herself lived in occupied Holland and witnessed Nazi atrocities first-hand.  To get a feel for early Hollywood treatment of the Holocaust, the Diary of Anne Frank is a must see, but be sure to view the original before viewing the remakes.

Holocaust(1978).  A four-part made-for-TV mini-series. That was the first major network big time portrayal of the subject. The series was a monstrous success, drawing a 49 percent market share. So many people watched this mini-series in New York City when first broadcast, that when commercials were on, the local water pressure dropped due to the large number of people using their toilets at once. It won Golden Globe and Emmy awards. It was instrumental in rocketing the career of Meryl Streep.  Michael Moriarty is brilliant as an out of work lawyer who enters the Nazi party and advances through brutality and helping implement “The Final Solution.”

Schindler’s List(1993). The Holocaust comes to Generation X with the Steven Spielberg story of Oskar Schindler, a German industrialist and Nazi party member who started out getting rich off the backs of Jewish slave labor and ended up finding his own humanity.  He went on to save thousands of Jews from the gas chamber, risking both his personal wealth and his safety to save as many Jews as possible. He spent his entire fortune to bribe Germans and buy the lives of the  Jews who worked for him.  He kept them for the most part safe until Germany’s surrender.  He ended up penniless.  Today, there are more than 6000 descendants of “Schindler Jews” living around the world.   The movie is done in and black and white and riveting from beginning to end.  The movie itself was a huge critical and box office success winning seven Oscars

Sophie’s Choice(1982). Sophie’s Choice is a brilliant performance by Meryl Streep as a Holocaust survivor with dark secrets in her family’s past. Her performance as Sophie Zawistowska is ranked #3 on Premiere Magazine’s 100 Greatest Performances of All Time.  She won an academy award for her performance.  It should be noted that this film was released 11 years prior to Schindler’s list. It contains one of the most heart wrenching moments in movie history when Sophie recounts the night she arrived at Auschwitz with her children, and of how she was forced by a Nazi officer to choose life for one child and death for the other.

Life Is Beautiful(1997).   Life Is Beautiful is told from the view of a man who uses the gift of humor to protect his only son from the inhumanity while in a concentration camp. The film is incredible in that it allows you to smile and laugh with Guido right up until the tragic end and not feel sad.  This movie won three Academy Awards. While classified as a Holocaust film, this film is also a joyous celebration of the human spirit.

The Pianist(2002). This movie is told from the viewpoint of a very talented piano player played by Adrian Brody.  He  hides out in the Warsaw Ghetto throughout the Warsaw Ghetto Liquidation and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.  When the German occupation begins, he simply wonders when he will be able to return to his music. When the killing begins, he is forced to hide and change his priorities to simply trying to survive. Even though he can no longer play, music is the hope and salvation that keeps him alive.

The Grey Zone(2001). The Grey Zone is gritty, dark and sometimes hard to follow.  It is, however, a must-see for all those who want an understanding of the Holocaust beyond the basics. The Grey Zone deals with an issue that is very sensitive to Holocaust survivors.  Jews sending other Jews to the gas chamber.  These Jews were called “Sonderkommandos“.  Sonderkommando members did not participate directly in the killing  which was reserved for the guards.  While their primary responsibility was disposing of the corpses, they often took a much more active role in getting the inmates ready to enter the gas chambers. These inmates were kept in close groups and had much better living conditions than the average inmate.  They were also killed off at regular intervals to prevent any word of the inner workings of the Nazi death apparatus from leaking to the outside world.  This movie is about one of several Sonderkommado revolts that took place.  It features an outstanding peformance by Harvey Keitel.

Playing for Time.    Playing for Time is a made-for-T.V piece that is worth seeing.  It ias another movie that gives a perspective on the inner workings of  Nazi concentration camps in which some inmates were forced to play music for the others as they marched to the gas chambers or life-death selection process. The purpose was to keep them calm and reduce the chances of revolt.

Europa Europa(1991). A young Jewish boy poses as a German “Aryan” orphan and joins the Hitler Youth in the early days of World War II.  An interesting look at the racial, moral and religious identity struggles faced by Jews as they did what they could to prevent their extermination in Nazi Germany.

Music Box(1989).This is one of the few movies dealing with the issues of aging former Nazis and Nazi sympathizers who committed war crimes living in the United States.  Jessica Lange and Armin Mueller-Stah give great performances. The movie is based on the true story of John Demjanjuk.   While the premise of a daughter representing her father on trial with such high stakes is a stretch, it works well here.  Jessica’s emotional opening statement is also unrealistic and inadmissible. The movie is incredibly moving on all levels. You are torn between her father as a loving grandfather and a brutal murderer guilty of terrible war crimes. In an interesting twist of life imitating art, the father of Joe Eszterhas who wrote the screenplay, was accused of writing anti-Semitic propaganda before and during World War II. Like the character in Music Box, his father denied being the person who wrote these materials. Mr. Ezterhas denies knowing anything about his father’s past at the time he wrote the screenplay.

That is my list of Holocaust films that I feel are must sees for anyone wanting to get a good understanding of the subject through Hollywood and also be entertained.  Is this a definitive list?  Absolutely not. There are numerous other US and foreign mainstream films and documentaries dealing with general and specific issues surrounding the Holocaust.

Please feel free to comment and add you own movies to the list with an explanation of why you feel it is an important film or simply why you enjoyed it

2008-2009 has seen the return of the Holocaust in Hollywood with several movies either dealing with the subject directly or tangentially. The Holocaust has always been sporadic material for Hollywood. Every few years a small budget independent or documentary will show up, but mainstream Hollywood rarely invests in a Holocaust masterpiece.  If a big budget film about the Holocaust manages to become a reality, the result is generally an accurate account of genocide delivered in epic dimensions.  The Holocaust is such a sacred, emotional and controversial subject that it would be Hollywood suicide to make a historically inaccurate or irresponsible film.   A film that varies from the basic facts of actual events risks being considered revisionist which would be a disaster for a mainstream film as well as the people behind it.

Hollywood is acutely aware that a Holocaust film, to be accepted on any level, must always stay faithful to basic accepted concepts and historical outlines regarding a specific event or specific issue within that event.  It is acceptable to create fictional people and places and subplots around a particular event but to alter a Holocaust event even slightly is very risky and frankly taboo.  The Holocaust is such a sacred and risky subject for film makers that while many Holocaust films are done very few are released in wide distribution or considered mainstream.  Most are, in fact, documentaries.  A formidable documentary on the subject is Imaginary Witness:Hollywood and the Holocaust.  It had very limited release and is unfortunately very difficult to locate.   If you want to see it you are going to have to get lucky on Ebay.

There is no denying that sentiments and views of the Holocaust have changed over the years since the end of World War II.  Hollywood has changed right along with those sentiments and views and changed the types of movies and the way events are depicted. A review of the Internet Movie Database reveals that from 1945-2008 reveals that there were over 400 theatrical productions and documentaries made which addressed the Holocaust in one form or another. Of those, the majority were foreign-made documentaries. One explanation for this is that Europe as a whole was much more willing to face and deal with the horror of what happened than the United States as a whole. This would make sense just in terms of the sheer numbers of Holocaust survivors in Europe and Israel as compared to the United States starting from the end of the war. The vast majority lived, and still live, in places other than the United States. The numbers would obviously balance out over time to some degree based on shifting demographics and the extremely high mortality rates of aging survivors.

If you look at the types of movies that were made, there is no escaping that up through the 1980′s the Hollywood treatment of the Holocaust was very shallow and dismissive not counting documentaries.  Here is my list of Hollywood movies and television media that I feel offer the most to the viewer in the portrayal of events and figures of the Holocaust.   I include foreign films if they had mainstream United States release.   I am only including films whose main focus was the Holocaust as compared to the holocaust being just one historical event in the movie.  An example would be Band Of Brothers. This mini-series addresses the Holocaust but is not about the Holocaust.  Another recent two films I left off because I did not consider them  Holocaust films are Defiance(2008) and Good(2008).  I will start with the most recent entries into the Holocaust genre, “The Boy In The Striped Pajamas”  and “The Reader”.

The Boy In The Striped Pajamas.  Adapted from the book of the same name by John Boyne.  A heart ripping movie along the same lines as Life Is Beautiful.  This time told from the side of the child of a Concentration Camp Commandant who befriends a Jewish child imprisoned in the camp. The child has been shielded by his father from the horror, brutality and the truth of the purpose of the camp.  I consider this one of the best if not the best film of 2008.  A must see.

The Reader(2009).   Ralph Fiennes harkens back to his brilliant performance as the brutal Plasow Concentration Camp Commandant Amon Goeth in Schindler’s list to once again tackle the Holocaust in a much different light.   His character has an affair with his care-taker and  Eight years later, while a law student observing the Nazi war crime trials, he is re-united in a shocking way. She is a defendant charged with war crimes.

Paperclips(2004) An extraordinary documentary that I stumbled across surfing cables channels once night.  Whitwell Middle School in rural Tennessee is the last place that you would think would be a hot bed of Holocaust study.  It however is the setting for this documentary about a unique experiment in Holocaust understanding. The students at Whitewell collect six-million paper clips to better understand the extent of Holocaust and share that understanding with Holocaust survivors.

The Diary Of Anne Frank(1959). The 1959 version appears to be Hollywood’s first mainstream attempt to bring the Holocaust to the masses although it did so by sacrificing the depth and emotion of the Holocaust to give the public a Hollywood blockbuster movie. The movie itself was a Hollywood hit by the standards of the day. It won three Oscars. An interesting side note is that Audrey Hepburn turned down the role of Anne Frank because she herself lived in occupied Holland and witnessed Nazi atrocities first-hand. To get a feel for early Hollywood treatment of the Holocaust, the Diary of Anne Frank is a must see, but be sure to view the original before viewing the remakes.

Holocaust(1978).  A four-part made-for-TV mini-series. That was the first major network big time portrayal of the subject. The series was a monstrous success, drawing a 49 percent market share. So many people watched this mini-series in New York City when first broadcast, that when commercials were on, the local water pressure dropped due to the large number of people using their toilets at once. It won Golden Globe and Emmy awards. It was very instrumental in rocketing the career of Meryl Streep. Michael Moriarty is brilliant as an out of work lawyer who enters the Nazi party and advances through brutality and helping implement “The Final Solution”. Interestingly the series was only as of May 2008 available on DVD in the United States. It had previously only been released in Europe. I am not sure if that was an economic issue, a rights issue, or once again an example of a much more apathetic view of the subject in the United States.

Schindler’s List(1993). The Holocaust comes to Generation X with the Steven Spielberg story of Oskar Schindler, a German industrialist and Nazi party member who started out getting rich off the backs of Jewish slave labor and ended up finding his own humanity. He went on to save thousands of Jews from the gas chamber, risking both his personal wealth and his safety to save as many Jews as possible. He spent his entire fortune to bribe Germans and basically “buy” the Jews who worked for him. He kept them for the most part safe until Germany’s surrender. He ended up penniless. Today, there are more than 6000 descendants of “Schindler Jews” living around the world.   The movie is done in and black and white and riveting from beginning to end. When I saw this movie, I could hear sobbing all over the theater. Ralph Fiennes is absolutely brilliant as Amon Goeth, the brutal commandant of the Plazow forced labor camp. I view this movie as the first mainstream attempt to bring the true graphic brutality of the Holocaust to our doorsteps. This is the Holocaust movie of our generation. If you asked 100 people under 40 what movie they last saw about the Holocaust, I would be shocked if the majority did not say Schindler’s List. The movie itself was a huge critical and box office success winning seven Oscars

Sophie’s Choice(1982). Sophie’s Choice is a brilliant performance by Meryl Streep as a Holocaust survivor with dark secrets in her family’s past. Her performance as Sophie Zawistowska is ranked #3 on Premiere Magazine’s 100 Greatest Performances of All Time. She won an academy award for her performance. It should be noted that this film was released 11 years prior to Schindler’s list. It contains one of the most heart wrenching moments in movie history when Sophie recounts the night she arrived at Auschwitz with her children, and of how she was forced by a Nazi officer to choose life for one child and death for the other.

Life Is Beautiful(1997). Life is Beautiful is a Holocaust film told like no other. Instead of focusing on the tragedy, brutality and death of the Holocaust, it is told from the view of a man who uses the gift of humor to protect his only son from the inhumanity while in a concentration camp. The film is incredible in that it allows you to smile and laugh with Guido right up until the tragic end and not feel sad. It sends the strong message that our ability to laugh and make others laugh is ours alone, no matter what forces pull at us. This movie won three Academy Awards. While classified as a Holocaust film, this film is also a joyous celebration of the human spirit. I almost did not see this film, but I have now seen it a total of four times.

The Pianist(2002). This movie is told from the viewpoint of a very talented piano player hiding out in the Warsaw Ghetto throughout the Warsaw Ghetto Liquidation and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Adrian Brody does a brooding, self-absorbed pianist. When the German occupation begins, he simply wonders when he will be able to return to his music. When the killing begins, he is forced to hide and change his priorities to simply trying to survive. Even though he can no longer play, music is the hope and salvation that keeps him alive.

The Grey Zone(2001). The Grey Zone is gritty, dark and sometimes hard to follow. It is, however, a must-see for all those who want an understanding of the Holocaust beyond the basics. The Grey Zone deals with an issue that is very sensitive to Holocaust survivors–Jews sending other Jews to the gas chamber. These Jews were called “Sonderkommandos”.  Sonderkommando members did not participate directly in the killing, which was reserved for the guards. While their primary responsibility was disposing of the corpses, they often took a much more active role in getting the inmates ready to enter the gas chambers. These inmates were kept in close groups and had much better living conditions than the average inmate, but they were also killed off at regular intervals to prevent any word of the inner workings of the Nazi death apparatus from leaking to the outside world. This movie is about one of several Sonderkommado revolts that took place. The movie features an outstanding peformance by Harvey Keitel.

Playing for Time.    Playing for Time is a made-for-T.V piece that is worth seeing. Another movie that gives a perspective on the inner workings of Nazi Concentration Camps in which some inmates were forced to play music for the others as they marched to the gas chambers or life-death selection process. The purpose was to keep them calm and reduce the chances of revolt. You can read an excellent article on the subject here.

Europa Europa(1991). A young Jewish boy poses as a German “aryan” orphan and joins the Hilter Youth in the early days of World War II. An interesting look at the racial, moral and religious identity struggles faced by Jews as they did what they could to prevent their extermination in Nazi Germany. Based on a true story.

Music Box(1989). This is one of the few movies dealing with the issues of aging former Nazis and Nazi sympathizers who committed war crimes living in the United States.  Jessica Lange and Armin Mueller-Stah give great performances. The movie is based on the true story of John Demjanjuk.   While the premise of a daughter representing her father on trial with such high stakes is a stretch, it works well here.  Jessica’s emotional opening statement is also unrealistic and inadmissible. The movie is incredibly moving on all levels. You are torn between her father as a loving grandfather and a brutal murderer guilty of terrible war crimes. In an interesting twist of life imitating art, the father of Joe Eszterhas who wrote the screenplay, was accused of writing anti-Semitic propaganda before and during World War II. Like the character in Music Box, his father denied being the person who wrote these materials. Mr. Ezterhas denies knowing anything about his father’s past at the time he wrote the screenplay. There is a great article about this that can be read here.

That is my list of Holocaust films that I feel are must sees for anyone wanting to get a good understanding of the subject through Hollywood. Is this a definitive list? Absolutely not. There are numerous foreign films and documentaries dealing with general and specific issues surrounding the Holocaust. There are also some Hollywood selections I left out such as Uprising. Uprising specifically addresses the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. While it is an entertaining mini-series, I felt it the portrayal was a step backwards in that it was too much in the line of the 1978 mini-series Holocaust. It could have been done much more effectively. I feel the above selections are a good starting point for all.

Please feel free to comment and add you own movies to the list with an explanation of why you feel it is an important film or simply why you enjoyed it.

I love disaster films.  I must have an inner desire to see the Earth pulverized or mankind snuffed into extinction by a  biological plague.  Maybe the dogs and cats can do a better job at managing the environment than we have.  There are literally thousands of movies out there that could be classified as “disaster movies”  In coming up with my list, I gravitated to movies that in my opinion  had attention holding story lines as compared to movies that were simply built around disaster special effects.  I tried to include movies from a wide variety a genres such as zombies, historical events, aliens and natural disasters. The minimum requirement was that a large group of people had to have been killed off.  While large is a relative term, I took the pornography approach.  I know it when I see it.  Some notable disaster flicks did not make my list. These include Armageddon, The Day After Tomorrow and The Core.  I viewed these as having no semi-believable story line or simply special effect excuse for movies.  Since it impossible to suspend disbelief in a Zombie movie(unless you believe in Zombies) I only included  Zombie movies that attempted to address underlying social issues. This left out Night Of The Living Dead type movies. I also did not include some of the original disaster genre flicks such as Earthquake and The Towering Inferno. While these were ground breakers for their time I do not consider them particularly good movies.  I also did not include made for television movies which would leave out the very good Testament and  The Day After.  These are intended to be nothing more than my personal choices, feel free to comment with yours and why.

1. Deep Impact.   Full of cliches.  Standard disaster story line.  I don’t care.  This is my favorite disaster movie. The scene where the tidal wave strikes New York City still gives me chills. I think I enjoy it so much because it is rated one of the more scientifically accurate natural disaster movies.  For me a great disaster film is one that does not have to suspend reality too much.

Memorable Quote: “We get hit all the time by rocks and meteors some of them the size of cars, some no bigger than your hand, but the comet we discovered is the size of New York City, from the north end of Central Park to the Battery, about 7 miles long. It weighs 500 billion tons”

2.The Poseidon Adventure. I am talking about the original and not the crappy remake. The Poseidon Adventure is considered the father of epic disaster films. I remember seeing it with my parents at a theater that no longer exists in Pittsburgh, Pa. I cried when the priest played by Gene Hackman died at the end saving the lone surviving group of passengers. The pre-digital era special effects of the wave hitting the SS Poseidon is laughable by today standards. Looking at it today you can tell it is pretty much a model boat in a bathtub. It  does not matter.  The Poseidon Adventure is a disaster film from a long gone era where the story line and not the special effects defined the movie.

Memorable Quote:  “They’re suppositories Mr Rogo. You don’t swallow them.”

3.The Ten Commandments The movie that defined Charlton Heston as Moses. How can I not include a movie where the 1st born of Egypt are killed and the Pharaoh’s army is wiped out in the Red Sea. Anyone who has taken the Hollywood Universal Studios tour got to see how they actually parted the waters. Quite impressive for its day. Once again I prefer the films where the production actually tells a story versus being a vehicle for special effects.

Memorable Quote: “You will be mine, like my dog, or my horse, or my falcon, except that I shall love you more – and trust you less.”

4. Titanic The one and only time any of us guys can say we went to a Chick-Flick Disaster Movie and not be talking about simply it simply being a disaster that we were dragged kicking and screaming to a  chick snoozer.  This far and away beats out its terrible chick- flick disaster competitor, Armageddon.

Memorable Quote: ” Do you know of Dr. Freud, Mr. Ismay? His ideas about the male preoccupation with size might be of particular interest to you.”

5. Planet Of The Apes The Charlton Heston original and not the terrible Mark Wahlberg career damaging remake. What makes this one of the great disaster movies of all time is that you do not realize it is a disaster movie until the final chilling Statute Of Liberty scene which many sites have rated one of the greatest endings of all time.

Memorable Quote: “ Get Your Stinking Paws Off Me You Damm Dirty Ape!”

6. The Omega Man Another Charlton Heston flick that is an adaption of the 1954 novel ” I am Legend.” Most are familiar with the visually better but storyline and politically inferior 2007 remake starring Will Smith. The Omega man in my opinion is better because it take a much more introspective look at the dangers of biochemical warfare and the dangers of technology. It does much more with the story and relies much less on special effects as you would expect from of movie of that era. If you have seen  the Will Smith I Am Legend, give the Omega Man a look and compare for yourself.

Memorable Quote: “You know the old song? If you were the only girl in the world, and I was the only boy, well, okay, but until then, don’t bother me? Well, I guess I’m the only boy…”

7. 28 Days Later The U.K version of I Am Legend done with much more style, story and suspense. With all respect to George Romero and his Night Of The Living Dead franchise, this and the sequel 28 days later are two of the best zombie holocaust movies of all time. Great use made of the en vogue, “fast cut” zombie carnage that you see in most horror films now.

Memorable Quote: “Plans are pointless. Staying alive is as good as it gets.”

8. Fail-Safe One of the most unique and riveting disaster movies of its day.  At the height of the cold war with the Soviet Union the Unite States military protocols break down resulting in the dropping of an atomic bomb on Moscow. In order to prevent all out nuclear war, the President Of The United States played by Henry Fonda agrees to the unthinkable.

Memorable Quote:  ” I’ve been making a few rough calculations on the effect of two twenty megaton bombs dropped on New York City in the middle of a normal workday…”

9.Independance Day The dialogue and acting are so campy you are not sure whether this is a disaster flick or parody of a disaster flick ala Mars Attacks. The special effects however are spectacular. This one gets on the list for the destruction of the White House. See it in Blu-ray if you have a compatible blu-ray  player and television.  Boomer Boomer!

Memorable Quote: “If you’re so smart, tell me something, how come you go to M.I.T. for 8 years to become a cable repairman?”

10. The Andromeda Strain A meteorite strike brings an alien virus to earth wiping out a town.  Scientists must work to find a cure before the virus destroys mankind. Great performance by Arthur Hill.  Watch this instead of the dialogue idiotic Dustin Hoffman remake Outbreak.

Memorable Quote: “….the aircraft and pilot’ll have to be sterilized”

11. War Of The Worlds The original adaption of the Orson Wells radio broadcast of the alien invasion that panicked the world.  Much superior to the Tom Cruise remake which  in my opinion is unwatchable save the first 20 minutes of the movie.

Memorable Quote”  “After all that men could do had failed, the Martians were destroyed and humanity was saved by the littlest things, which God, in His wisdom, had put upon this Earth.”

The United States Congress established the Days of Remembrance as our nation’s annual commemoration of the Holocaust. This year Holocaust Remembrance Day is Sunday, April 11 2010. In honor of that, here is my list of Holocaust films worth seeing.

The Holocaust has always been sporadic material for Hollywood. Every few years a small budget independent or documentary will show up. Mainstream Hollywood rarely invests big dollars. While many Holocaust films are done very few are big budget. A great documentary on the subject of how Hollywood has addressed the Holocaust is Imaginary Witness:Hollywood and the Holocaust.

There is no denying that sentiments and views of the Holocaust have changed over the years since the end of World War II. Hollywood has changed right along with those sentiments and views and changed the types of movies and the way events are depicted. A review of the Internet Movie Database reveals that from 1945-2008 there were over 400 theatrical productions and documentaries made which addressed the Holocaust in one form or another. Of those, the majority were foreign-made documentaries.

Here is my list of Hollywood movies and television media that I feel offer the most to the viewer in the portrayal of events and figures of the Holocaust. I include foreign films if they had mainstream United States release. I am only including films whose main focus was the Holocaust as compared to the Holocaust being just one historical event in the movie. An example would be Band Of Brothers. This mini-series addresses the Holocaust but is not about the Holocaust.

Defiance is the story of the Jewish Bielski brothers. succeeded in escaping from the massacre of the German in their village where their parents were killed. They hide in the woods and sooner other runaway Jews join them. They guerrilla resistance created a makeshift village in the woods to shelter and protect more than 1,200 Jews. Five generations later, “20,000 Jewish people are alive because of the work the Bielski brothers.

“The Boy In The Striped Pajamas” and “The Reader”.

The Boy In The Striped Pajamas. Adapted from the book of the same name by John Boyne. A short, faithful adaption to the book. A movie similar to Life Is Beautiful. This time the story is told from the side of the child of a Concentration Camp Commandant who befriends a Jewish child imprisoned in the a camp. The child has been shielded by his father from the horror, brutality and the truth of the purpose of the camp.

The Reader(2009). Ralph Fiennes reminds us of his brilliant performance in Schindler’s List to once again tackle the Holocaust in a much different light. His character has an affair with his care-taker. Years later, while a law student observing a Nazi war crime trial, he is re-united in a shocking way. She is a defendant charged with war crimes. The Reader has sparked some revisionist sentiment in the Jewish community. The criticism is that the film through its central theme attempts to legitimize a notion that ordinary Germans were completely ignorant of The Final Solution until after the war. The producers were certainly more interested in producing an Oscar winning film than staying true to history. The Reader brought Holocaust sensitivities in Hollywood portrayals front and center again.

Paperclips(2004) An extraordinary documentary that I stumbled across surfing cables channels once night. Whitwell Middle School in rural Tennessee is the last place you would think would be a hot bed of Holocaust study. It however is the setting for this documentary about a unique experiment in Holocaust understanding. The students at Whitewell collect six-million paper clips to better understand the extent of Holocaust and share that understanding with Holocaust survivors.

The Diary Of Anne Frank(1959). The 1959 version appears to be Hollywood’s first mainstream attempt to bring the Holocaust to the masses although it did so by sacrificing the depth and emotion of the Holocaust to give the public a Hollywood blockbuster movie. The movie itself was a Hollywood hit by the standards of the day. It won three Oscars. An interesting side note is that Audrey Hepburn turned down the role of Anne Frank because she herself lived in occupied Holland and witnessed Nazi atrocities first-hand. To get a feel for early Hollywood treatment of the Holocaust, the Diary of Anne Frank is a must see, but be sure to view the original before viewing the remakes.

Holocaust(1978). A four-part made-for-TV mini-series. That was the first major network big time portrayal of the subject. The series was a monstrous success, drawing a 49 percent market share. So many people watched this mini-series in New York City when first broadcast, that when commercials were on, the local water pressure dropped due to the large number of people using their toilets at once. It won Golden Globe and Emmy awards. It was instrumental in rocketing the career of Meryl Streep. Michael Moriarty is brilliant as an out of work lawyer who enters the Nazi party and advances through brutality and helping implement “The Final Solution.”

Schindler’s List(1993). The Holocaust comes to Generation X with the Steven Spielberg story of Oskar Schindler, a German industrialist and Nazi party member who started out getting rich off the backs of Jewish slave labor and ended up finding his own humanity. He went on to save thousands of Jews from the gas chamber, risking both his personal wealth and his safety to save as many Jews as possible. He spent his entire fortune to bribe Germans and buy the lives of the Jews who worked for him. He kept them for the most part safe until Germany’s surrender. He ended up penniless. Today, there are more than 6000 descendants of “Schindler Jews” living around the world. The movie is done in and black and white and riveting from beginning to end. The movie itself was a huge critical and box office success winning seven Oscars

Sophie’s Choice(1982). Sophie’s Choice is a brilliant performance by Meryl Streep as a Holocaust survivor with dark secrets in her family’s past. Her performance as Sophie Zawistowska is ranked #3 on Premiere Magazine’s 100 Greatest Performances of All Time. She won an academy award for her performance. It should be noted that this film was released 11 years prior to Schindler’s list. It contains one of the most heart wrenching moments in movie history when Sophie recounts the night she arrived at Auschwitz with her children, and of how she was forced by a Nazi officer to choose life for one child and death for the other.

Life Is Beautiful(1997). Life Is Beautiful is told from the view of a man who uses the gift of humor to protect his only son from the inhumanity while in a concentration camp. The film is incredible in that it allows you to smile and laugh with Guido right up until the tragic end and not feel sad. This movie won three Academy Awards. While classified as a Holocaust film, this film is also a joyous celebration of the human spirit.

The Pianist(2002). This movie is told from the viewpoint of a very talented piano player played by Adrian Brody. He hides out in the Warsaw Ghetto throughout the Warsaw Ghetto Liquidation and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. When the German occupation begins, he simply wonders when he will be able to return to his music. When the killing begins, he is forced to hide and change his priorities to simply trying to survive. Even though he can no longer play, music is the hope and salvation that keeps him alive.

The Grey Zone(2001). The Grey Zone is gritty, dark and sometimes hard to follow. It is, however, a must-see for all those who want an understanding of the Holocaust beyond the basics. The Grey Zone deals with an issue that is very sensitive to Holocaust survivors. Jews sending other Jews to the gas chamber. These Jews were called “Sonderkommandos“. Sonderkommando members did not participate directly in the killing which was reserved for the guards. While their primary responsibility was disposing of the corpses, they often took a much more active role in getting the inmates ready to enter the gas chambers. These inmates were kept in close groups and had much better living conditions than the average inmate. They were also killed off at regular intervals to prevent any word of the inner workings of the Nazi death apparatus from leaking to the outside world. This movie is about one of several Sonderkommado revolts that took place. It features an outstanding peformance by Harvey Keitel.

Playing for Time. Playing for Time is a made-for-T.V piece that is worth seeing. It ias another movie that gives a perspective on the inner workings of Nazi concentration camps in which some inmates were forced to play music for the others as they marched to the gas chambers or life-death selection process. The purpose was to keep them calm and reduce the chances of revolt.

Europa Europa(1991). A young Jewish boy poses as a German “Aryan” orphan and joins the Hitler Youth in the early days of World War II. An interesting look at the racial, moral and religious identity struggles faced by Jews as they did what they could to prevent their extermination in Nazi Germany.

Music Box(1989). This is one of the few movies dealing with the issues of aging former Nazis and Nazi sympathizers who committed war crimes living in the United States. Jessica Lange and Armin Mueller-Stah give great performances. The movie is based on the true story of John Demjanjuk. While the premise of a daughter representing her father on trial with such high stakes is a stretch, it works well here. Jessica’s emotional opening statement is also unrealistic and inadmissible. The movie is incredibly moving on all levels. You are torn between her father as a loving grandfather and a brutal murderer guilty of terrible war crimes. In an interesting twist of life imitating art, the father of Joe Eszterhas who wrote the screenplay, was accused of writing anti-Semitic propaganda before and during World War II. Like the character in Music Box, his father denied being the person who wrote these materials. Mr. Ezterhas denies knowing anything about his father’s past at the time he wrote the screenplay.

Also of interest is that the real life John Demjanjuk has been deported to Germany. He is currently standing trial for war crimes committed at the Sobibor Concentration Camp in what will be the last major Nazi war crimes trial of our lifetime.

That is my list of Holocaust films that I feel are must sees for anyone wanting to get a good understanding of the subject through Hollywood. Is this a definitive list? Absolutely not. There are numerous foreign films and documentaries dealing with general and specific issues surrounding the Holocaust.

Please feel free to comment and add you own movies to the list with an explanation of why you feel it is an important film or simply why you enjoyed it