The Last Days

The Last Days
by James Moll

The Last Days
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DVD details

Actor: Alice Lok Cahana, Bill Basch, Martin Basch, Michael Cahana, Randolph Braham
Director: James Moll
Brand: UNI DIST CORP. (MCA)
Producer: Aaron Zarrow
Producer: Elyse Katz
Producer: Fransciszek Palowski
Producer: June Beallor
Producer: Ken Lipper
Producer: Steven Spielberg
Producer: Victor Trakhtenberg
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); German (Original Language); Hungarian (Original Language)
Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.33:1
Running Time: 87 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2002-11-05
Audience Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: Universal Studios

DVD Reviews of The Last Days

DVD Review: Told in Four Unique Perspectives
Summary: 5 Stars

Of course, we all know the horrifying stories of the holocaust (or shoah, as the Jews call it). How can a society, how can a single person, inflict such cruelty upon another person? Well, instead of addressing that familiar question it presents three distinct perspectives on the holocaust.

First, the survivors tell of their life before it: life in a regular town, living a regular life. They tell of how that changed, usually by insidious degrees as opposed to all at one moment. It is horrifying to see how it happened, how it started. The Nazi's suppression was so subtle at first, gradually becoming more harsh, and yet seemingly not that far out of the ordinary, at least not as much so as what was to follow. You can see how it could happen to anybody. People didn't think to run. This is the first perspective.

The second perspective is of the survivors talking about their experiences in interviews, the horrors they saw, the last time they saw they their father, the way people were executed by a perfectly efficient system. They tell how they swallowed jewels to keep them safe. The survivors recount their stories from memory.

The third perspective is the most unusual: the survivors actually visiting the ruins of the camp they had witnessed such horror in, lived in for a period of months. They walk over to a decrepit foundation of a building and say "This was the latrine," and then tell how they performed a ceremony in there. You get to see the places where the attrocities happened, which of course you've seen before probably, but this time you have a guide who was actually there. This is not a history lesson, but a personal narrative.

There is actually a fourth perspective too: a Nazi doctor from Auschwitz, who is interviewed both by one of the documentarians and also by one of the survivors. You get to hear her perspective on his tale.

An extremely well rounded story, which will help you understand on an emotional level what was going on.
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Description of The Last Days

FILMMAKER JAMES MOLL PROFILES FIVE HUNGARIAN JEWS WHO SURVIVEDTHE HOLOCAUST.
In the last year of World War II, German defeat was inevitable. Yet rather than reinforcing his troops and focusing his efforts on battle, Hitler chose to renew his campaign to eliminate the Jews of Europe. Hungary, which had remained mostly untouched during the war, found her Jews being rounded up and shipped off to concentration camps where they were systematically and brutally killed during these last days. This documentary, directed by James Moll and produced through the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, whose goal is to document the memories of those who lived through the Holocaust, records the stories of five Hungarian Jews who managed to survive.

The five survivors, all now living in the United States, movingly tell how they made it and recount the tragedies they witnessed: Tom Lantos, a Congressman from California, whose 17 grandchildren are a gift from his two daughters to try to make up for the families Lantos and his wife lost; Alice Lok Cahana, an artist who uses her painting to testify to what she saw and to grieve for the meaningless death of her sister Edith; Bill Basch, who while working for the resistance escaped from Hungarian police by joining a group of Jews that were, unknowingly, being led to Buchenwald; Renee Firestone, an educator at Simon Wiesenthal Center's Educational Outreach Program, whose touching connection to the past is discovered in the simple gift of a bathing suit given to her by her father; and Irene Zisblatt, a grandmother who smuggled out, at tremendous risk, a few precious diamonds in order to buy bread when there was no more food to be had. Other interviewees include American liberators, a superkommando, and a Nazi doctor who performed experiments on camp inmates.

While the stories are tragic and watching this documentary is a tearful experience, the final message is one of hope, as the five people return to Hungary and the camps with their families to confront their pasts and say their prayers. While the occasionally graphic footage will disturb, this Oscar-winning film is one that should be shared with family as a way of educating and reminding us, "Never again." --Jenny Brown

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