Current Events - Fall 2009

The Nazi Holocaust film series

The Center for Judaic, Holocaust, & Peace Studies presents a series of feature films on Jewish Society and Humor this semester in Plemmons Student Union. These films will be shown Sunday afternoons at 2:00pm in the Greenbriar Movie Theater of the Student Union on the date indicated below. Each film will be introduced briefly by one of the Center’s co-directors who will be available to answer questions afterward.   All films are free and open to the public.

Download the Fall 2009 Nazi Holocaust Film Series Poster/Schedule

 

Triumph of the Will - 9/20/09

This piece of Nazi propaganda covers the events of the 6th Nuremberg Party Congress. The original intention was to document the early days of the regime, so future generations could look back and see how the Third Reich began. In reality, Triumph of the Will shows historians how the Nazi state drew in the masses through propaganda. (1934) 110 minutes.

Conspiracy - 10/11/09

This film recreates the infamous meeting on January 20, 1942 at which top Nazis planned the implementation of the Holocaust. Chaired by the SS general Reinhard Heydrich and attended by Adolf Eichmann and fourteen other Third Reich members, this two-hour meeting decided how the Jews of Europe would be murdered. The documentary is based on the Wannsee Protocol, the sole surviving transcript of the meeting. (2001) 115 minutes.

The Pianist - 10/25/09

This film tells the story of Wladyslaw Szpilman, a Polish Jew and concert pianist who witnessed the Nazi invasion of Warsaw, miraculously eluded the Nazi death camps, and survived throughout WWII by hiding among the ruins of the Warsaw ghetto. (2002) 150 minutes.

Schindler’s List - 11/1/09

The film presents the indelible true story of the enigmatic Oskar Schindler, a member of the Nazi party, womanizer, and war profiteer who saved the lives of more than 1,100 Jews during the Holocaust. It is the triumph of one man who made a difference and the drama of those who survived one of the darkest chapters in human history because of what he did. (1993) 185 minutes.

Triumph of the Spirit - 11/8/09

Based on a true story, this film follows the nightmare of a Greek boxer who literally fights for his life to entertain SS officers in Auschwitz, knowing that each victory condemns his opponents to the gas chambers. This is the only commercial film about the Holocaust ever filmed on location in Auschwitz. (1989) 120 minutes.

Everything is Illuminated - 11/15/09

A young Jewish American flies to Ukraine in search of his grandfather's past. Armed with only a photograph of his grandfather’s village, he hires the Odessa Heritage Tours, made up of an old man and his Englishspeaking grandson, to journey into the heart of Ukraine to come to terms with his past. (2005) 106 minutes.

 

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