Shoah: An Oral History of the Holocaust [All-Region]
![Shoah: An Oral History of the Holocaust [All-Region]](/images/Shoah-An-Oral-History-of-the-Holocaust-All-Region-B000AS4L16-L.jpg)
Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada
Canada
DVD details
Primary Contributor: Dominique ChapiusPrimary Contributor: Jimmy Glasberg
Primary Contributor: William Lubchansky
Producer: Claude Lanzmann
DVD: Region Code 0.0
Audio: English (Unknown); Yiddish (Unknown); French (Unknown); English (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); Korean (Subtitled)
Format: Color, Full Screen, Import, NTSC, Subtitled
Running Time: 566 minutes
Studio: Premier Entertainment
DVD Reviews of Shoah: An Oral History of the Holocaust [All-Region]
DVD Review: Great documentary...poor editing
Summary: 3 Stars
I have only seen part of the first DVD and the author asks the translator in French a question for the interviewee. The translator then asks the interviewee in German, Yiddish, or Polish etc. The interviewee then answers in his native tongue while the audience is awaiting the subtitles to tell us what in the world is going on. Meanwhile, we can see the anguish and tears on the persons face as they are reliving this horrible nightmare but the words are very slow in coming in a subtitled fashion. Truthfully, it wore me out watching the film. The subject matter is very critical for all of us to hear and understand. The editing was very poor in the sense that I lost interest in awaiting responses.
I will watch all of the rest of it, but hope I get used to the slowness of the dialog. The author had a very low budget but could have saved a considerable amount of time, money, film and effort by cutting out some of the stages from question to response. The subject matter and people in the film are real and important, as they are the last generation to know first hand what really happened under Hitler's vicious murdering regime.
I am disappointed as I wanted to learn and for others to learn and "take in" subject matter that I felt was so very important and necessary for the world to know. Maybe it's just my impatience and others can learn and not be distracted as I have been. I am not ADD just the kind of person that needs emotions and words to coincide in a timely manner. The film is very good from what I've seen so far and I guess I have to realize the author is not a Spielberg.Watch it and lets us know what you think.
DVD Review: The Human Side Of The Holocaust
Summary: 5 Stars
The contents of this DVD is usually only obtained in libraries, research institutions and colleges.
If one desires to get a complete understanding of the Holocaust and it's result, there is not a better investment you can make!
Unlike stereotypical black and white Army documentaries of the result of Hitler's "Final Solution," "Shoah" brings to light the personal human stories of the Holocaust, both from the side of the surviving perpretrators and the victims. Also brought to light are the testimonies of the casual witnesses in the countries that were involved. It is far more personal than Schindler's List. It is over 9 hours of history in your face.
No archival footage was used in this presentation. It was filmed in the late 70's and early 80's by Claude Lanzmann. He interviews hundreds of surviving victims, SS officers and native populations of that era. Vividly through filming of the extermination camp sites, the "De-Jewed" villages in Poland, the forests where hundreds of thousands were burnt and buried, he brings the Holocaust to us in a personal, gut-wrenching manner.
This is especially important today. One must obtain a heartfelt experience of the Holocaust to appreciate the efforts of the hundreds of thousands of American lives sacraficed then to put an end to that mad "Thousand year Reich" that sponsored the industrial scale butchery of humanity. Relying on the thousand year hatreds of ethnic groups in Europe, Hitler and his goons fanned those fires in the hopes of "purifying" humanity of those they personally hated. Never in the history of humanity has this been possible until the Industrial Revolution made possible the machinery, technology and science required to make death an industry, where even the by-products of the butchery were a commodity.
In this movie you will see aged Jewish survivors of the "Aktion Reinhard" program. You will see them open up to Claude. You will see them break down in tears as he makes them remember the horrors that will haunt them the rest of their days. You will see many native Poles of that era, now as old people, as they reenact the slitting of their throats- the sign that they gave the trainloads of jews as they passed by them on their way to Treblinka. You will see hidden camera interviews of some surviving SS personell of those camps. As these people are being interviewed, Claude takes us on a visual tour of the camp properties as they appear today.
It is as if ghosts come back to life. We witness the ghosts of forgotten landscapes give up their dead to our view.
I cannot more powerfully reccomend you to obtain a copy of "Shoah" whatever the price. These days we are assaulted by Holocaust deniers, whether thay are Neo-Nazis spewing their excuses and hatreds through the media of Community Television of the internet, or Presidents of countries! Worst of all, there are even regimes in the world who sponsor Anti-Holocaust conventions in their country to discount and deny the reality of the Final Solution. This film is neccesary for everyone to examine the truth and examine their conciousnesses. ONLY through personal experience that this film depicts can collective humanity purify their souls so "never again" can such inhumanity and horror be revisited upon the world.
After viewing this film, you will never hear a train whistle in the same way again!
Look at the cover of this DVD set. You can see that aged train engineer, and the sign Treblinka. What you can't see there is shown in this film. It is that same engineer slitting his throat with his finger after the train passes that sign! All the people shown in this film have now died. But their ghosts, their souls and their stories are preserved forever in Shoah.
DVD Review: Shoah As Truth
Summary: 5 Stars
Shoah, by Claude Lanzman, is best understood, in my opinion (I've watched the entire series three times: something like 27 hours of film), if you read the book, and then, also, consider Ron Rosenbaum's "Explaining Hitler." Rosenbaum blasts Lanzman as a sort of elitist who has the ONLY proper view of Hitler: can't explain it. A sacrilige to even try.
Lanzman may have that view, but why individuals who want to learn about the Holocaut experience "Shoah," is that it has no footage of the Holocaust taken during the Holocaust. Everything is seen through visits to the places where the Holocaust took place, and, through interviews with those who survived.
The SS man scene is good. I think folks should understand that the more I've delved into the Holocaust (ever since Adolph Eichmann was arrested in 1961 and tried and hanged for his part in that monstrous experience), the more I've come to see that many, many THOUSANDS of SS men, including many who actually were part of the Holocaust machine, or the Gestapo, for instance, not only survived, but never received much penalty by the German government for what they'd done.
In fact, thousands got off fairly lightly. The fact is, for a myriad of reasons, there were many governments, including ours, that didn't push retribution for many Nazi perpetrators.
Since the most ghastly concentration camps were in Poland, much of the film occurs in Poland.
Lanzman compliments a busty Polish lady, who carries on a conversation with him, that illuminates how she came to possess such a nice home that faces out onto a town plaza.
Oh, no, it's not her original house. The house belonged to the Jews who were here, and now ... are gone. The Jews moved out and Poles moved in. We Poles, she said, had no indoor toilets ... we had privvys, out back. The Jews had the money to pay for ornate door frames, and good craftsmanship.
And one man describes how "we knew ... the Jews had gold hidden .." and his eyes flash with evil, as he SEES the hidden treasures the Jews had as they vacated their houses, and the treasure hunt by succeeding Poles began.
One thing that I am not sure many folks get is that the resentments Poles had towards Jews weren't all without foundation.
Over the years, I've studied the photos of many Jews leaving their homes in various nations, being marched to a rail line, and looked at how they were dressed. What kinds of apartments or homes they lived in. And in Poland, the complexities of ghettoization and marginalization of Jews into specific crafts and trades, gave them, besides the negative side ... a positive, in that they (the Jews) were able to use their education and insularity to enhance their wealth and assets. The negatives (pogroms, ghettoization, less freedom to hold certain jobs), in Poland, Belorusse, Ukraine, Russia ... were serious. But there were opportunities to be THE silver smith in villages. Or, the notary. Or, doctors. And so, Poles had resentments that were twisted by jealousy of what Jews often HAD, in the way of possessions, that led to a sense that "good riddance" to Jews, when they'd been herded up by the Nazis and "disappeared."
Lanzman shows that Poles knew what was up.
But again, a close reading of how the Germans treated the Poles as "untermenschen" should also be put in context. Poland was THE most Jewish state in Europe, followed by Russia. There, the shetle Jews were harassed and could not live "Beyond The Pale." Envy, jealousy, hatred, feelings of self worth were amplified in Poland, for sure. Lithuania and Latvia, also, were virulently anti-Semitic, as were parts of Hungary and Rumania.
Shoah's interviews with survivors also opens up the understanding that those who survived, as part of sonderkommandos in the gas chambers or crematoriums, may have scrambled over their own fellow Jews, in order to live. There had to be moments when those burning bodies, or herding fellow Jews into gas chambers wanted to tell the truth, and some did, but others wanted to live just one more day. Lanzman makes that clear through interviews with survivors.
Who could say they'd not do some shady things in such circumstances. "Shoah" is a complex picture, and the impact of millions of dead people (in this case, the Jews), seeps in quickly, and can numb some, to turn away.
The Jews were the most singled out community, but there were literally millions of others the Germans hated and tried to exterminate.
Only the Jews, though, suffered such a blast furnace mentality the Nazis had to rid the world of every single living member of the group.
"Shoah" is worth watching. Please, try to remember that there were reasons, albeit not necessarily valid ones, for some of the Poles, et al, to feel resentment and anger towards the Jews, and not all were cultivated by Germans.
Anti-Semitism was rampant throughout the world, and even in the U.S., there was not much effort to truly bring up the subject, once we knew what was up. And we did know. Read many of American novels that came out immediately after WW II and you'll see that anti-Semitism was part of the American landscape, too.
The Polish officer who visited the Warsaw Ghetto DID get out, and go to America,
and try to explain what he'd seen there. Every allied government had it's own anti-Semites who soft peddled such reports as overblown or exaggerations. "Shoah" could not have happened if there weren't so many people who disliked or hated Jews, throughout the world.
It's no wonder to me that Israel is so truculent about not bending any towards a Palestinian state.
Sadly, that won't work much longer.
Once the last Holocaust survivors are gone, there will be too many people who know nothing about that period, and will only ask: why are the Israelis ghettoizing Palestinians, as they were one ghettoized?
Why are Palestinians in a kind of Middle Eastern apartheid arrangement with Israel, as Jews were in Germany and most of Western and Eastern Europe, by Nazis?
How could THAT happen? knowing what Jews and Israelis know about "Shoah?"
Do we expect too much of Israelis now?
"Shoah" won't make it any easier to deal with the present conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. It does illustrate why many Israelis are what they are, so far as the Palestinians are concerned. But, Lanzman shows us the complex nature of those who were perpetrated upon, and those who were perpetrators. Not many of the latter will own up to the full truth there.
They, too, are fast disappearing. There's nothing easy about this horrible period in human history. It's important to understand that only our inner values and moral guidelines will help us if ever confronted by such terrible times, so we can "do the right thing," if ever confronted by such horrors.
DVD Review: A Mile Wide and an Inch Deep, with Misconceptions and Biases: Corrections Provided
Summary: 2 Stars
This newly-reissued work includes interviews with Jewish sonderkommando survivors of Auschwitz, Polish peasants, Jan Karski (the legendary Polish Underground courier who vainly tried to warn the world about the Holocaust), Holocaust historian Raul Hillberg, a German official at Treblinka, and others.
Lanzmann should have examined fewer topics, and done so more thoroughly and objectively. He used only 9.5 hours out of 350 hours of taping, making one wonder what he left out. Intentionally or not, his work comes across as anti-Polish. Students of the Holocaust deserve better, and I now provide some context, a few of the necessary corrections, and books for further study from solely Jewish sources. From there, read my reviews. [I originally provided direct links. These, for some reason, have been removed by Amazon's software. So I have replaced the ellipses with the titles of the books themselves.]
The Polish peasants interviewed by Lanzmann exhibit a "Jews owned everything" mindset. In fact, there were many wealthy Jews and, even with the formal and informal discriminatory policies enacted to reverse Jewish economic dominance, the average Jew remained wealthier than the average Pole. See: SOCIAL AND POLITICAL HISTORY OF THE JEWS IN POLAND, 1919-1939. In Poland, most peasants lived in poverty, and were stuck in it because the next-higher economic niche (the shopkeepers, tailors, shoemakers, etc.) was largely pre-occupied by Jews. This (rather than simple prejudice against, or jealousy, of Jewish successes) explains frequent Polish peasant resentments against Jews. Also, the employer-employee, seller-buyer, and lender-borrower relations are partly adversarial in nature. When there are different ethno-religious groups on each side of the divide, this will naturally generate friction between groups.
One interviewed German tries to relativize German conduct. In fact, despite the fact that anti-Semitism existed in countless nations since time immemorial, it was only in Germany (Haman excepted) that it ever developed into a never-before-seen effort to exterminate the Jews. Also, the sources and course of anti-Jewish policies in pre-Nazi and Nazi Germany, and those in prewar Poland, were entirely different. See: THE JEWISH WAR FRONT.
Poles are portrayed as generally laughing at Jewish deaths, and mocking Jews with the you-will-die gesture. Against both misrepresentations, see: AM I A MURDERER? TESTAMENT OF A JEWISH GHETTO POLICEMAN.
As for the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, the conduct of the Polish Blue Police is incorrectly conflated with that of the collaborationist Ukrainian police. For the truth, see: MARTYRS AND FIGHTERS (by Friedman). Also, mention is made of some Poles turning-in Jews who had fled after the Uprising, but not the circumstances behind it. Besides imposing the automatic death penalty for the slightest assistance to individual Jews, the Germans had created draconian collective terror against the Polish population of Warsaw for any semblance of assistance to, or connection with, the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Some Poles made life-or-death decisions to turn Jews in rather than risk large groups of Poles shot by the Germans in reprisal for the Germans killed by Jews during the Uprising. See: MURANOWSKA 7: THE WARSAW GHETTO RISING.
Finally, Lanzmann's analysis is so Judeocentric that it is completely sanitized of any reference to Polish suffering. Did you know that Poles lived in daily fear of their lives, under near-starvation conditions, during the German occupation? Did you know that 3 million Polish gentiles (including about half of all educated Poles) were murdered by the Germans? There's much more: See the Peczkis Listmania: FORGOTTEN HOLOCAUST...
For further analysis of Lanzmann, see: CLAUDE LANZMANN'S SHOAH.
DVD Review: Pain-stakingly informative documentary
Summary: 5 Stars
Shoah is a pain-stakingly informative documentary told from the point of view of survivors, witnesses, and perpetrators. Without showing any footage or images from the 1930s or 40s, Lanzmann is able to get to the details that other documentaries fail to take into account. Meant to be watched in 2 viewings, I watched it in 4 and was still completely compelled.
This particular box set is the Korean edition, but because there are subtitles and English language settings, it is a better purchase than spending upwards of $120.
Description of Shoah: An Oral History of the Holocaust [All-Region]
SHOAH is a magical film about the most barbaric act of the 20th century. Previous commentaries on the Holocaust, with its ravished skeletons and corpses, have left us shaken, but now for the first time, we experience it in our heads, in our flesh. Claude Lanzmann spent eleven years spanning the globe for surviving camp inmates, SS commandants, and eyewitnesses of the Final Solution-the Nazi's effort to systematically exterminate human beings. without dramatic enactment or archival footage, but with extraordinary testimonies, SHOAH renders the step-by-step machinery of extermination: the minutiae of timetables and finances, the logistics of herding victims into the gas chambers and disposing of the corpses afterward, the bureaucratic procedures which expedited the killing of millions of people without mentioning the words "killing" or "people". Through haunted landscapes and human voice, the past comes brilliantly alive. SHOAH is a heroic endeavor to humanize the inhuman, to tell the untellable. It is an immensely disturbing, even shattering experience, yet in its solemnity and beauty not a morbid or disheartening one. There are few works of art which leave one with such a deep appreciation for the preciousness and meaning of life. *** English, French, German, Hebrew, Polish, Yiddish languages *** Optional English / French / Korean subtitles *** 4:3 Full Screeen ***History DVDs
DVD Video
- Action & Adventure
- African American Cinema
- Animation
- Anime & Manga
- Art House & International
- Classics
- Comedy
- Cult Movies
- Documentary
- Drama
- Educational
- Fitness & Yoga
- Gay & Lesbian
- Horror
- Kids & Family
- Military & War
- Music Video & Concerts
- Musicals & Performing Arts
- Mystery & Suspense
- Science Fiction & Fantasy
- Special Interests
- Sports
- Television
- Westerns
Bestsellers in History DVDs
We Shall RemainPBS; Release date: 2009-05-12; DVD
Best price: $22.32
Price in other shops:
The Ascent of Money: The Financial History of the WorldAscent; Release date: 2009-09-01; DVD
Best price: $13.39
Price in other shops:
Hitler in ColourRelease date: 2005-09-13; DVD
Best price: $4.64
Price in other shops:
Bela Fleck: Throw Down Your HeartNEW VIDEO GROUP; Release date: 2009-11-03; DVD
Best price: $10.69
Price in other shops:
![The Universe: The Complete Season 1 [Blu-ray] Image](/images/The-Universe-The-Complete-Season-1-Blu-ray-B001AQT8BA-X.jpg)
The Universe: The Complete Season 1 [Blu-ray]A&E HOME ENT.; Release date: 2008-11-18; DVD
Best price: $36.98
Price in other shops:
Unmistaken ChildOSCILLOSCOPE PICTURES; Release date: 2009-11-03; DVD
Best price: $17.87
Price in other shops:
In the Shadow of the MoonTHINKFILM LLC; Release date: 2008-02-22; DVD
Best price: $10.96
Price in other shops:
The Universe - The Complete Season One (History Channel)A&E; Release date: 2007-11-20; DVD
Best price: $16.77
Price in other shops:
The Botany of DesireRelease date: 2009-11-03; DVD
Best price: $11.16
Price in other shops:
![The National Parks: America's Best Idea [Blu-ray] Image](/images/The-National-Parks-America-Best-Idea-Blu-ray-B002GWDK6Q-X.jpg){kind=small}
The National Parks: America's Best Idea [Blu-ray]Release date: 2009-10-06; DVD
Best price: $67.79
Price in other shops:
Similar DVDs, VHS Video, Audio CDs
The Grey ZoneLions Gate; Release date: 2003-03-18; DVD
Best price: $6.95
Price in other shops:
Holocaust: The Liberation of AuschwitzRelease date: 2005-09-13; DVD
Best price: $8.23
Price in other shops:
Holocaust: The Liberation of MajdanekRYKODISC; Release date: 2006-05-30; DVD
Best price: $8.02
Price in other shops:
The Destruction of the European Jewsby Raul Hilberg
Holmes & Meier; Published: 1985-09-01; Paperback; Book
Best price: $14.99
Price in other shops:
Auschwitz - Inside the Nazi StateWarner Brothers; Release date: 2005-03-29; DVD
Best price: $21.49
Price in other shops:
![The Holocaust & Concentration Camps: Jewish Life & Death in the Nazi Camps [includes real footage from Penig, Ohrdruf, Breendonck, Hannover, Arnstadt, Mauthausen, Buchenwald, Dachua] BE ADVISED: Contains Graphic Material Image](/images/The-Holocaust-Concentration-Camps-Jewish-Life-Death-in-the-Nazi-Camps-includes-real-footage-from-Penig-Ohrdruf-Breendonck-Hannover-Arnstadt-Mauthausen-B000IX7XK4-X.jpg)
The Holocaust & Concentration Camps: Jewish Life & Death in the Nazi Camps [includes real footage from Penig, Ohrdruf, Breendonck, Hannover, Arnstadt, Mauthausen, Buchenwald, Dachua] BE ADVISED: Contains Graphic MaterialQuality Information Publishers Inc.; Published: 2006; DVD
Best price: $12.99
Price in other shops:
Holocaust - Dachau & SachsenhausenRYKODISC; Release date: 2006-01-31; DVD
Best price: $7.38
Price in other shops:
Night and Fog - Criterion CollectionImage Entertainment; Release date: 2003-06-24; DVD
Best price: $9.20
Price in other shops:
The Sorrow and the PityImage Entertainment; Release date: 2001-04-24; DVD
Best price: $26.59
Price in other shops:
Shoah: The Complete Text Of The Acclaimed Holocaust Filmby Claude Lanzmann
Da Capo Press; Published: 1995-08-21; Paperback; Book
Best price: $7.74
Price in other shops: