IMDb Rating

last updated: 2024-10-26Update data

Commonsensemedia Rating

last updated: 2024-10-26Update data

The Nazi extermination program against Jews during World War II was a "madman's hell." "The history of the Holocaust should be taught as a chapter in the long history of man's inhumanity to man.” The Holocaust is the kind of horror that can occur when people lose their integrity.

Some survivors feel guilt for surviving when others did not. They mourn lost family members and feel a responsibility to repeat their stories in the hope of preventing such an atrocity from recurring. Survivors show perseverance, and their stories evoke compassion and empathy.

Extreme violence, both in graphic descriptions of torture/murder and photographs and moving images of the same. The violence is all the more shocking in its systematic and cold-blooded nature. Images show everything from a catalog of emaciated prisoners to thousands of dead naked bodies piled high to movies of people being shot and pushed into mass graves. A skeleton is seen in a crematorial oven. Detailed descriptions of rounding people up into cattle cars so crowded that they stood crammed together for days without food, water, or hygiene facilities. The fact that Nazi photographers recorded these atrocities, as if proud of their dirty work, adds to the nearly inconceivable monstrosity of their acts. Surviving concentration camp inmates describe seeing small children being bashed to death and relay reports of babies being torn apart. One witness horrifically describes 2,500 Jews being jammed into a gas chamber designed for 500. Men are asked to take their pants down so Nazis can identify Jews by their circumcisions. A German doctor who performed medical experiments on Jews says that experiments were performed to find quick ways to sterilize them. Some prisoners were blinded in experiments designed to change eye color. Prisoners were assigned numbers that were tattooed on their skin. Some of Hitler's last writings before his death by suicide include a call for citizens to continue to "resist mercilessly the poison of all nations -- international Jewry." Prisoners developed sores and infections from widespread lice infestations. In disturbing color footage, five emaciated, naked, barefoot male prisoners walk slowly and feebly away from the camera.

Nonsexual nudity: The film shows thousands of naked bodies, some dead and some living. Most are emaciated prisoners.

"Damn."