i agree it is a massive stretch from liking a movie to nazi sympathiser - or any other personal judgment like that

i don't believe Benigni was trying to trivialise what happened - or that he was making fun ... he's making a statement about the individual character's survival mechanism - which in this case is humour ... not a popular choice obviously - but I believe in Benigni's right to make his statement

Elaine wrote: "You would like the novel from which this is taken, same title, by Jonathan Safran Froer.

Thanks, actually I have the book.

So, I suppose you take issue with Lubitsch's To Be or Not to Be as well? Brooks' version even more so, much less The Producers. I don't take issue with you disliking either film or any other, but calling someone who does merely appreciate the film a Nazi sympathiser is ludicrous and indefensible.

George wrote: "I have to think.... you are a Nazi sympathizer? That's quite a stretch at best. it's indefensible and unnecessary and you really should apologize. Both Life is Beautiful and The Boy in the Striped ..."

I am unregenerate. Anyone who makes fun fantasy out of a truly horrible circumstance like Genocide -- not only towards Jews but anyone else -- is ameliorating the guilt of the perpetrators and saying, "This wasn't so bad now, was it?" Well it was so bad and humans have to face of to the evils they are capable of with no outs.

You would like the novel from which this is taken, same title, by Jonathan Safran Froer.

Here's one that no one has mentioned in this string that I do particularly like, Everything is Illuminated. It takes place in the present when a young Jewish man goes to Ukraine to try to find his grandfather's village which disappeared during the Nazi occupation. He hires a young Ukrainian man as a guide as well as his grandfather as a driver, although after a while it's hard to know who is guiding whom. there's a peculiar sense of humor that runs throughout and a fairly mystical approach to the subject matter that is unusual in American films, but it's well worth seeing. Elijah Wood's performance as the young American is fun, and the actor who plays the grandfather is something to watch. The film makes time for both beauty and horror, occasionally simultaneously.

I have to think.... you are a Nazi sympathizer? That's quite a stretch at best. it's indefensible and unnecessary and you really should apologize. Both Life is Beautiful and The Boy in the Striped Pajamas are essentially fantasies, more dream than real. I really don't think these films intended to exonerate evil. But lots of people liked both. I didn't personally care for either a great deal. But of the people I know who liked them none were Nazi sympathizers. I don't know any, anyway.

I gagged when I saw Life is Beautiful. Someone brings his little boy to a death camp to protect him? And he manages to hide the boy's existence from the heaviky guarded camp which had very thorough daily inspections of the bunks? And how did he feed this kid? As vile as the food was, prisoners got less than 900 calories a day total and there was no way that someone could carry food back to wherever he had the child hidden, and he certainly couldn't bring the child to the dining hall. Also, most if not all the food for prisoners was soup. How do you carry soup in your hands? To so misrepresent the horrors of the camps is a whitewash of what went on. Many parents were taken to the camps with their children, but the parents were not able to protect those children in any way. That was part of their Hellish grief. The Germans were wholly thorough. To think they'd miss a little boy in a barracks for adult men is absurd beyond belief. Sorry, Mike, but if this is your second favorite movie ever, I have to think you don't know what went on in the Holocaust or that you are a Nazi sympathizer and want to believe, "Oh it wasn't so bad." Well it was. And a movie like that has no purpose whatsoever beyond exonerating pure evil

I'm glad someone finally mentioned Life is Beautiful.

When I first heard about it, I thought it was a terrible idea, but it's become probably my second favorite movie ever.

I watched Bent recently and really enjoyed it. And of course, I LOVE Life is Beautiful

rachel wrote: "anna, where did you find "po - lin"? i can't find it anywhere..."

I had seen it in a cinema. I think it would be avaiable on Polish sites similiar to amazon.com. There are also parts of the movie on youtube (unfortunately in Polish).

202331 Tom wrote: "I remember EUROPA EUROPA, a very interesting movie from Agnieszka Hollander. Well worth a look. I remember reading though that there were some doubts as to how truthful the story really is. But there's no denying the excellence of the film. "

This movie by Agnieszka Holland was really great.

I think we are all on the same boat regarding Schindler. It was too obvious to miss, being only a few years old.

I've never seen Shoah, but I've heard it is well worth watching.

The most unusual holocaust film I've ever seen was from Argentina. Done entirely in Spanish, it retells the holocaust experience of a Polish/Jewish man who eventually settled in Argentina after the war.

As a native Spanish speaker myself, I found it unnerving to hear Nazis and victims speaking Spanish.

Actually, I liked Schindler over all, but it's so well known I didn't see any need to mention it.

i'm not such a fan of schindler's list, that's why i never mentioned it.

yeah, shoah is available on dvd. i rented it years ago (and saw it on the big screen when it was first released in a two-part screening). maybe one of the finer docs on the hollocaust.

not a film about the camps, but au reviour, les enfants is an excellent louis malle film on the subject.

Is there a reason why no one has mentioned SCHINDLER'S LIST? Or is it just too obvious?

I've been wanting to see SHOAH for a while now. Is it on DVD yet?

I remember EUROPA EUROPA, a very interesting movie from Agnieszka Hollander. Well worth a look. I remember reading though that there were some doubts as to how truthful the story really is. But there's no denying the excellence of the film.

The first time I ever read a book about the holocaust, I was a sophomore in high school. It was called "The Holocaust Kingdom" about a Polish/Jewish family who got caught in the nightmare. I had dreams about it for years.

I also seem to remember an incredible German film called "Europa Europa" the true story about a Jewish teenager (I dont remember if he is Polish or German) who passes as Aryan and gets drafted by the Germans and then later by the Russians. There is an unforgettable scene where the teenager is desperately trying to conceal his circumcision before Nazi doctors.

anna, where did you find "po - lin"? i can't find it anywhere...

i am oddly obsessed with holocaust movies. my grandmother, her parents, and two aunts escaped poland shortly before hitler invaded; the rest of her family perished in concentration camps. i guess i love watching these movies because it's a part of my history, but at the same time it is incredibly painful to watch them.

thanks for the tips on "escape from sobibor" and "po-lin." are there any other movies or books you guys know of specifically related to the jews in poland?

on a side (but still related) note, if you "enjoy" holocaust movies you MUST read "the book thief." it's a young adult fiction novel about a german girl during the holocaust. it is one of the most incredible books i have ever read. i cannot recommend it highly enough.

I think Holocaust films have a purpose and a place. I remember being in high school when the TV series "The Holocaust" first came out. Yes I had read about it in books and we studied it in class, but seeing on the screen made it more frightening.

"The Winds of War" was a TV mini series dealing more with the whole scope of WWII, but they did a great job dealing with the Holocaust within the context of one American family who's relatives get caught in it.

Angela wrote: "The Boy In The Stripped Pyjamas is fiction but I'd love to think that kind of friendship happened somehow. Bruno and Shmuel's invite us to reflect about the true horror of war. Book and film are gr..."

i so didn't like this movie. it wasn't at all believable to me. i thought it was manipulative - it blatantly set out to yank on your heart strings. i prefer a more subtle approach i guess.

it's been a while for me as well. I think maybe it just felt black and white, not a lot of color inside the wire.

George wrote: "Sobibor. Alan Arkin and a number of others. Sobibor was connected to the death camp Treblinka. the inmates overthrew the guard force, killing a number and escaping out the wire. most of those who e..."

I sort of remember the escaping out the wire part. I saw a copy of the movie in the net and am a little surprised that it's colored. Was it really colored before? I vague remember it to be in black and white... weird

I am Ashkenazi & we knew Italian Jews were Sephardic, but still were surprised at the fact that we couldn't even recognize the Shema. We did figure out when they were citing the names of the dead because of the intonation of names being called out in a list. In Israel, they lump the Arabic Jews together with Sephardim, bit none of this has to do with the movies. Another topic entirely

Elaine, you probably know that there two main Jewish groups - Sephardic (generally those from Portugal and Spain, whose after the events in 1490s emigrated to Italy, Balkans, Middle East, Maghreb) and Ashkenazi Jews (those from Poland, Hungary, Russia, Ukraine, Bielorussia, Lithuania and part of Germany). And to not forget smaller group of Mizrachims (Arabic Jews).

Now back to the right subject. I have Escape from Sobibor on shelf and I still don't have time to watch it in peace and quiet.

Alex DeLarge wrote: "I recommend de Sica's THE GARDEN OF THE FINZI-CONTINIS. I also liked Costa-Gavras' film AMEN. Of course, Resnais great documentary must be seen though it is only a half-hour long.
George, thanks ..."

I have seen GARDEN several times. I actually had a classmate in junior high who was an Italian Jewish girl whose last name is Ottolenghi. When we were in Rome, we went to services at the synagogue and the names were totally unlike what we think of as "Jewish" names. Also the Sephardic service was totally strange to us. And the people looked Italian, not Jewish. Don't ask me what it means to look like one or the other, but it's a sort of "Jewdar"

I recommend de Sica's THE GARDEN OF THE FINZI-CONTINIS. I also liked Costa-Gavras' film AMEN. Of course, Resnais great documentary must be seen though it is only a half-hour long.
George, thanks for mentioning ESCAPE FROM SOBIBOR! I had never heard of it but it looks very good: hope it's available on DVD.

Paper Clips is a FANTASTIC documentary.

didn't mean to start a discussion on the topic. just curious.

Yes, I did read Bury My Heart & have read many accounts of what was done to Native Americans, but that merits a full discussion not under this thread. Perhaps I'll do a blog post on my blog.

I read Bury my heart at Wounded Knee. Beautiful and great book.

elaine,

yeah, i read hitler's willing executioners. my people had their holocaust. have you read bury my heart at wounded knee? what a world...

Sobibor. Alan Arkin and a number of others. Sobibor was connected to the death camp Treblinka. the inmates overthrew the guard force, killing a number and escaping out the wire. most of those who escaped were eventually turned over to the Germans by the local Poles. but some did survive the war.

I liked Counterfeiters even though I had to watch it without the subtitles. Band of Brothers was good, too, although "The Pianist" is my favorite holocaust film. When I was a kid I remember liking a movie called "Escape from Subibor" but i can't remember anything about it now.

For documentaries, I liked "Apocalypse: The Second World War". It wasn't particularly about the Holocaust but I loved that they used original home videos and propaganda films.

I liked Defiance quite a bit, in particular as the Jews weren't simply victims, and were able to fight and survive, for the most part anyway. the scenes with the Soviet resistance, with their own antisemetic attitudes were very interesting as well. It is too wearing emotionally to simply watch these films one after another. I generally put a lot of space between them with all sorts of other fare, most of which appeals to me as well anyway.

Phillip wrote: "Elaine wrote: " In my neighborhood growing up, kids in the first grade at Holy Name School were already calling me a dirty Jew and a Christkiller...."

you gotta love those compassionate christians..."

I forgot to say that this eas after they found out I wasn't Irish like them. I was a freckled redhead with a tiny nose and a definitely, "funny you don't look Jewish" face, but I didn't go to confession every Saturday afternoon with the rest of the kids and I went to public school. So the word got out that I was a dirty Jew.

Phillip wrote: "i've never seen defiance.

are we only talking about feature films on the holocaust or can i mention documentaries?
if so, shoah is my favorite holocaust film.

i prefer to read on this subject. i'..."

I had forgotten about Counterfeiters. I liked that a lot!! But I agree with you, we know about the horrors of the camps, so what more can a movie show, unless they really want to get horror film graphic about it. Now there's a real horror film: what Mengele did to identical twins!! Even reading about it, I won't read another novel on the subject. Clearly there were 12,000,000 stories of heartbreak and how many can one human digest? I do read histories, however. Have you read Hitler's Willing Executioners?

From documentaries I know one about Jews in Poland before World War II called Po - Lin. Pieces of memories.

Elaine wrote: " In my neighborhood growing up, kids in the first grade at Holy Name School were already calling me a dirty Jew and a Christkiller...."

you gotta love those compassionate christians...

i've never seen defiance.

are we only talking about feature films on the holocaust or can i mention documentaries?
if so, shoah is my favorite holocaust film.

i prefer to read on this subject. i'm not terribly enthusiastic about holocaust films. anna mentioned the pianist, which i liked a lot, along with de sica's in the garden of the finzi-continis. but i think of those as portraits during ww2 rather than films about the camps. you can't really make a successful film about death camps. the pathos and cruelty goes off the scale and what does it all prove? death camps = bad? do we really need movies to figure that out?

counterfeiters came close to doing a good job with this theme, and that's because all the horror was largely left on the other side of the wall...

I watched Defiance soon after its premiere. Maybe the historical facts were "upgraded", but it still was a good movie to watch.

I've owned Defiance for a while but haven't watched it yet. My husband liked it though. I have a bunch of movies to watch & even more books to read but am trying to finish a book & also started a blog on language &literacy (smarthotoldlady.blogspot.com) & am getting used to a new computer so I won't be watching much for a while

I recently watched DEFIANCE (about the Bielski brothers). That was pretty good. It was really neat to go onto imdb.com and read the discussions. The son of Zus and Bella (real name was Sonia) posts to the discussions. His handle is "bellskee".

yes, I agree, it would be nice to think so.

The Boy In The Stripped Pyjamas is fiction but I'd love to think that kind of friendship happened somehow. Bruno and Shmuel's invite us to reflect about the true horror of war. Book and film are great. Books are always better than films, of course. I'm happy the book was read by 6th grade school students here in my little city in the northwest of Spain. The teacher got a point there.

well, in reality, there would have been no little boy running around in a death camp, much less with time to spare for talk and play. it would have been straight off to the gas chamber. there's nothing particularly realistic about the premise, so it either works as allegory or not at all.

The pianist by Roman Polański
Die fälscher by Stefan Ruzowitzky
Episode 9 of Band of Brothers

I keep promising myself I won't watch any more Holocaust films (unless another Pawnbroker comes out), but end up succumbing. The last one I watched was Fateless, a Hungarian story of a Jewish boy who had no real feelings of Jewish identity but was sent to a camp anyway -- a good movie.

The other day, I watched The Boy in Striped Pajamas which was very well reviewed. My problem with it is that I couldn't suspend my disbelief that an 8 year old with a father who ran a death camp would want to be a friend of a Jewish boy in that camp. An 8 year old certainly shares prejudices with his or her parents. In my neighborhood growing up, kids in the first grade at Holy Name School were already calling me a dirty Jew and a Christkiller. The son of a Nazi is more tolerant than that? Other than that, it's a good enough flick.