Custaryans

Łódź Ghetto

1989 · ★ 8

The Polish city of Łódź was under Nazi occupation for nearly the entirety of WWII. The segregation of the Jewish population into the ghetto, and the subsequent horrors are vividly chronicled via newsreels and photographs. The narration is taken almost entirely from journals and diaries of those who lived–and died–through the course of the occupation, with the number of different narrators diminishing as the film progresses, symbolic of the death of each narrator.

Four Years of Night

2013

For four years (1977-1981) Esaias Baitel documented a violent Parisian neo-Nazi gang. Having gained their trust, he was able to get close to them. Living among the gang members, he witnessed horrific events, and while hiding his real identity, he photographed a one-of-a-kind collection of gripping stills. Over thirty years have passed. Esaias Baitel has laid his camera down. He returns to the dark nights he spent in the City of Lights, the city where he lived a double life, going back and forth from the gang to the young family he had just started.

Forgiving Dr. Mengele

2006 · ★ 7.8

Eva Mozes Kor, who survived Josef Mengele's cruel twin experiments in the Auschwitz concentration camp, shocks other Holocaust survivors when she decides to forgive the perpetrators as a way of self-healing.

Charlotte

2022 · ★ 6.5

The true story of Charlotte Salomon, a young German-Jewish painter who comes of age in Berlin on the eve of the Second World War. Fiercely imaginative and deeply gifted, she dreams of becoming an artist. Her first love applauds her talent, which emboldens her resolve. When anti-Semitic policies inspire violent mobs, she escapes to the safety of the South of France. There she begins to paint again, and finds new love. But her work is interrupted, this time by a family tragedy that reveals an even darker secret. Believing that only an extraordinary act will save her, she embarks on the monumental adventure of painting her life story.

Maria Theresa’s Dark Side

2024 · ★ 7.5

Shortly before Christmas 1744, Vienna, the center of power in the Habsburg Empire, is the scene of a disastrous drama with repercussions for the whole of Europe. Against the spirit of enlightenment and tolerance, the very young Maria Theresa orders the expulsion of the allegedly disloyal Jews from Prague.

A Postcard for the Executioner

A documentary film about the Nazi criminal Stefan Rojek. Rojko was an SS-Oberscharführer in the Small Fortress Terezín during World War II, the "right hand" of the fortress commander Heinrich Jöckel. After the war he fled to Graz, later sentenced to life imprisonment, and was paroled on 24 June 1975. The film was made in cooperation with the SPB and the Memorial of National Suffering in Terezín.

The Pianist

2002 · ★ 8.4

The true story of pianist Władysław Szpilman's experiences in Warsaw during the Nazi occupation. When the Jews of the city find themselves forced into a ghetto, Szpilman finds work playing in a café; and when his family is deported in 1942, he stays behind, works for a while as a laborer, and eventually goes into hiding in the ruins of the war-torn city.

Schindler's List

1993 · ★ 8.6

The true story of how businessman Oskar Schindler saved over a thousand Jewish lives from the Nazis while they worked as slaves in his factory during World War II.

"KZ Buchenwald. Aushalten. Wir eilen euch zur Hilfe"

1995 · ★ 6

Former inmates and American soldiers remember the cruel conditions in Buchenwald concentration camp.

Umsonst Gelebt: Walter Schwarze

2005 · ★ 8

“This film is part of a series of films on gay men who survived the Nazi era. I met Walter Schwarze when he was already in his eighties. My camera recorded his first public account of his five-year incarceration as a homosexual at Sachsenhausen concentration camp. He was in his fifties when he met Ali in his hometown of Leipzig; the two men became partners and remained close until his demise. And yet, Walter told me, he felt he had lived in vain because he had not had the good fortune of today's gays, who are able to grow up in freedom. Walter Schwarze died of cancer on May 10, 1998.” Rosa von Praunheim

Lee

2024 · ★ 7

The true story of photographer Elizabeth "Lee" Miller, a fashion model who became an acclaimed war correspondent for Vogue magazine during World War II.

Erna, Helmut and the Nazis

2021 · ★ 7.3

Germany, 1929. Helmut Machemer and Erna Schwalbe fall madly in love and marry in 1932. Everything indicates that a bright future awaits them; but then, in 1933, Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party rise to power and their lives are suddenly put in danger because of Erna's Jewish ancestry.