Genocide

Genocide (1981)

*** 1/2 (out of 4)

Elizabeth Taylor and Orson Welles narrate this Oscar-winning documentary that takes a look at the horrors Jews had to suffer at the hands of Hitler and Germany during WWII. The documentary starts off talking about what life was like for the Jews pre-WWII and year by year it gives a rundown of how things were changing and eventually getting to the point where it turned to mass murder. GENOCIDE isn't an easy film to watch but it's certainly an important one that takes a look at a very important subject. I think film buffs will enjoy the quality behind the material and if anyone is doing research for a school project or whatnot then there's certainly a lot of information here about these tragic events. It should also be said that there are some very graphic photos and videos here of people in horrific physical shape and countless images of death. The images of a hole dug fifteen feet into the ground and filled with bodies is something you can never get over or used to no matter how many times you see it. We hear about the "Angel of Death," a German doctor who was doing experiments on people including removing body parts and trying to change genetics so that Germany could create one race. The brutality of these images are impossible to forget and it's just amazing that anyone could do this type of thing. Welles' narration is perfect and he hits all the right notes and of course that voice is just something you could listen to all day. Taylor, on the other hand, is good at times but there are moments where she just goes way over the top. In one of the most horrifying sequences, a woman gets thrown into a hole full of bodies and more bodies are being thrown on her and she has to dig her way out from all the bodies. This is emotional enough without having Taylor's narration adding all sorts of dramatics to it. I think there were times where her emotional narration wasn't needed. With that said, the documentary is still very impressive and is worth watching if you can take the graphic subject matter.

An upsetting, powerful, and mostly well made documentary on The Holocaust. The archive footage is shocking, but perhaps just as disturbing were the suggestions that many countries that weren't Germany had limited sympathy for the Jewish population too.

1,000,000 Jewish deaths was shown as page 6 news in an American newspaper circa 1942/43, and many countries were said to not accomodate nearly as many fleeing Jewish refugees as they could have during the 1930s.

It's another documentary that makes those who deny this ever happened look absolutely ridiculous.

This is an intense documentary of the extermination of the Jewish people in the Holocaust, with much archival footage. The scenes are often gripping and horrifying in their veracity, but it is a must see for any student of the Holocaust. There is a reference close to the end of a letter from 93 virgins requesting the kaddish for them in the future - this particular letter was proved later to be a hoax (http://www.hashkafah.com) Regardless, it is an excellent documentary even with the often melodramatic voice of Elizabeth Taylor. Most Holocaust literature attempts to play down such drama because the reality simply cannot be conveyed. I will use this in film class.

If only one documentary film of the holocaust should be preserved, this is probably it. Riveting in its content, rich in its emotion, and outstanding in its technique, this film flirts with greatness. Indeed, the moving narration provided by both Elizabeth Taylor and Orson Welles is among the most impassioned, most heartfelt, in cinematic history.

Alas, despite its overall excellence, the film must be "marked down" because of its apparent disregard for internal consistency. Don't get me wrong - everything (and more) of what it recounts is factually true. And all of the documentary evidence it presents is as real as the screen you're looking at. No, what bothered me was the tendency over and over again for the filmmaker to use photographic material inaccurately. So, for example, to help paint the picture of the Holocaust on the Eastern Front, we are presented with multiple black and white photographs of hangings. The trouble is that many of the photos were neither of Jews nor of the Holocaust. They were of partisans and commissars (also hunted and slaughtered by the Nazis). Likewise, while the narration describes an 'aktion' in Lithuania, the photos we see are from assaults on Jewish women in Lvov. I could go on, but think you get the idea.

Again, please don't misinterpret me. I am not at all challenging the general veracity of the film nor the importance of its message. My quarrel is, simply, that too many of the illustrations used to complement the narrative are out of place and inaccurate. By and large, this probably makes little difference to things overall (whether someone was murdered in 1943 or 1944, and whether by hanging or by a bullet to the back of the neck, is irrelevant in the total enormity of the Holocaust). However, given the reality of revisionists and deniers, the last thing one would want to do, especially when making a film that in some sense "proves" the Holocaust, is to give the disbelievers any ammunition for their perverted cause. Frankly, I'm distressed by such careless selection and use of photos. I fear that this could cost the film credibility - credibility in the eyes of those who most need to have them opened.

I gave this documentary a "10" because in my opinion there is no reason whatsoever for it to receive anything less. Along with the footage we have all pretty much come to expect (concentration camp survivors, footage of Hitler orating, and so on,) there are the wonderful narrations by Welles and Taylor.

I admit it has some flaws- Goering never made the "When I hear the word 'culture,' I reach for my gun" remark, and the idea that Hitler was furious at the outcome of the 1936 Olympic Games (and refused to shake Jesse Owens's hand for racial reasons) have long been known to be false. Still, I think the rest of the material more than makes up for these minor gaffes.

The film gives us quite a lot of background of the conditions in which European Jews lived prior to the Hitlerian horror. We see life in the shtetls of Eastern Europe, where the 1,000 year-old Ashkenazic culture still existed and where the "old ways" were honored; we also are reminded of how Jews had been fully assimilated into the cultures of Western Europe (particularly Germany, which interestingly enough had the most thoroughly mixed culture of all mainland European nations and among the highest educational standards in the world prior to Nazism,) and of their great contributions to science, literature, and the arts.

And it was all destroyed in a mere 12 years' time by legislation, the gun and the death camp. In a truly unsettling scene, we see Jews being shot to death in a pit by members of the Einsatzgruppen while the romantic song "Lili Marlene" (a favorite of German soldiers) plays and is sung slowly and softly in the background. This reminded me of the fact that one of Nazism's hallmarks was its insistence upon juxtaposing sentimental culture with indescribable brutality.

By 1945 the Ashkenazic civilization was a memory; it literally went up in smoke and ashes at Auschwitz-Birkenau, Belzec and Treblinka, among other places.