Halfway through the 12 years Claude Lanzmann worked on his epic documentary “Shoah,” he decided to take a brief break by taking a swim in the Mediterranean Sea.
Hollywood movies and television have shaped the way most of the world perceives the Final Solution, narrator Gene Hackman observes at the beginning of \”Imaginary Witness: Hollywood and the Holocaust.\” It is a statement that may not sit too well with generations of historians and authors, but the evidence validates the conclusion.
\”We wanted to use four [American] towns as examples to get to know people — those who fought and those who stayed at home — and to get to their experiences as it happened.\”
The result is Burns and co-director Lynn Novick seeing the war as it was unfolding through the eyes of soldiers from Mobile, Ala.; Sacramento; Waterbury, Conn., and Luverne, Minn., to show, in so many ways, the ongoing hellishness of even a necessary war.
Just when it seems that all the World War II and Holocaust stories have been told, a little-known tale from a far corner of the world comes along to add another dimension to the saga of the Shoah.
\”I tell you, there was never a trip like this before. The motives are terribly sad, but we are going to have a lot of fun. This is another dimension of history.\” With these words, Arnost Lustig and Jan Wiener, both Jewish survivors of the Shoah, embark on a trip to the Europe of their childhoods, documented in the film \”Fighter.\” Premiering at the Los Angeles Independent Film Festival, \”Fighter\” is a unique exploration of both the Holocaust and the Communist era of Eastern Europe.
\”There was no magic to our survival. It was sheer, pure, unadulterated luck, for men and women infinitely more worthy perished,\” Congressman Tom Lantos said at an advance screening of \”The Last Days.\”
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