BlazeLime Strong and Moving!

Exoticalot People are voting emotionally.

Tobias Burrows It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

Jerrie It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

Robert J. Maxwell In 1988, we had "War and Remembrance," which gave us a graphic and multi-faceted tale of the Nazi's genocidal program. In 1993, we had Schindler's list, which gave us a less panoramic but equally explicit display of what went on in the death camps."Holocaust" was shown in 1978, preceding the others, and is the least careful about the material. It's budget must have been small because there are no epic scenes of the nightmarish conditions and events. It looks like the TV movie it was, even the credits.The performances are mostly fine. Michael Moriarty could hardly be better as the baby-faced, imaginative SS officer. Tovah Feldshuh is perfect as the pretty but tough Czech resistance fighter, and Sam Wanamaker with his gray hair and rugged features does a good job as the pharmacist who finally realizes what's going on. Sam Bottoms disappoints. He looks hardy enough but isn't much of an actor. I've seen better on the stage of a community college in St. George, Utah. Meryl Streep doesn't really have much to do but she certainly looks the very Aryan part, and she's sexy too. The writing doesn't do Moriarty any favors. Unemployed, the non-political lawyer applies for a job with the SS and gets it. Next time we see him, he's fully committed to his awful task. It takes him about ten second of screen time to convert from human to beast. He does away with himself at the end, but I don't know why, and neither will you. Some of the film was shot in the spring and summer, which is a relief because, judging from most other depictions of the events, everything seemed to take place under gloomy skies and in muddy fields with patches of snow.If there's a message, it's that absolutely nobody -- not Nazis, not anti-Nazis, not nationalist partisans, not Christians, not foreigners -- has any interest in the plight of the Jews who are being systematically swept up and exterminated. Their only recourse is to stick together, fight before they die, and hope to reach Palestine some day.The people who put stories like this together have to be careful because they are dealing with one of the more horrible events in recent history and the narrative is extremely emotional, especially to Jews and others who lost family members in Europe. It's rather like the crucifixion is to Christians. The very subject deserves delicate treatment. "Holocaust" reads more like a primer, full of stereotypes.Yet I'm glad it was made. People forget rather easily. And they seem to forget most quickly those things that make them uncomfortable to think about. Moreover, an astonishing number of younger people don't know what happened before and during the war. A survey of high school students about five years ago showed that many of them didn't know who fought against whom. A survey by the Chicago Tribute revealed that almost 25% of 17-year-olds couldn't identify Adolf Hitler. In 2010, a survey showed that one in five Americans didn't know which country the United States had won its independence from. Collectively, we don't seem to show much curiosity about anything that doesn't directly affect our body sheaths.If this was an artistic disappointment, it was a valuable history lesson. It took another ten years for "War and Remembrance" to bring us another, more polished, reminder, and five years more for "Schindler's List." For elderly Jews, history may be a nightmare from which they are trying to awake, to quote another derided ethnic, but for the satisfied kids skateboarding on the quiet residential street of No Problem Drive, and playing video games and watching "World's Wildest Police", it's all becoming as remote as Nova Zembla. "Why should I have to know anything about what happened so long ago, and why do I have to memorize the names of all fourteen planets?" Well, I suppose it's because if your mind finally becomes a complete blank, you'll all follow World War II down the memory hole.

Graham Watson Holocaust was a typical made for TV mini series that were made back in the late 1970's. It followed on the back of the well acclaimed series ROOTS and was later was followed by the WINDS OF WAR and others. Having seen this recently although it's still effective and interesting Holocaust looks a bit wooden and dated by today standards. In addition in the 30 years since there have been a lot of documentaries, movies and other big screen stuff which has perhaps detailed the horrors in a more graphic way as well as providing an even more nightmarish and depressing insight into what Europe's Jews had to endure during Hitler's reign.It's mostly an American and British cast, typically the Weiss family and the Jews are played by the American actors and the Brits play the Germans. Some of them were well known at the time i.e. Fritz Weaver, Sam Wanamaker and T.P. McKenna . Others such as Ian Holm, James Woods and Meryl Streep would soon become household names. It follows the fait of the Weiss family and details on an individual basis how they all coped with the changing anti-Semitic conditions in Germany and their suffering until the war was over. Also a German called Erik Dorf was added to the story who was destined for a legal career but decided to join the SS. He moved through the ranks and became one of the most enthusiastic defenders of the final solution. To some extent they were trying to rationalize how well educated people became brain washed. He was played by Michael Moriarty and did not come across as evil, certainly not at the beginning. He never personally carried out killings but just gave orders and watched from the side lines. Watching the change in him as the episodes unfolded is chilling.Over the years there have been numerous documentaries and movies made which show the hell of the Holocaust but what this series did was tell people things that weren't widely known back in 1978. Although it was well known that the Jews were gassed and put into concentration camps most of my knowledge about this period as well as the war as a whole was based on war films and the British documentary series THE WORLD AT WAR. HOLOCAUST depicts the events that unfolded and how the Jews found themselves in such a hopeless situation! By January 1942 there was to be a fully fledged war against the Jews. The methods of disposal were seemed to be too slow and crude. More efficient ways of extermination had to be found to accelerate the process and make the policy more efficient now that Hitlers initial objectives were unraveling on the eastern front.When I first watched Holocaust I wondered why the Jews didn't put up more of a fight, why so many of them just went to their deaths? Now watching it today two things struck me. After being dehumanized, humiliated, starved and stripped of dignity, they were simply exhausted, frightened and resigned to their fait. Also, most of them were children, old men and women who up against armed soldiers had no chance. Also their predicament was difficult, where do you hide wearing striped pajamas or a star of David on your tunic? Many escapees were betrayed by neighbors and non-Jews. Indigenous governments either through fear of because of Nazi sympathy just capitulated and cooperated with German requests for the Jews to be deported. Events such as Sobibor where out of the 600 who initially escaped only 60 survived the war, not a great success rate. Also, the Warsaw uprising which was eventually crushed in 1944 only highlighted the futility of their position! The other point and this arouses controversy is that more people died in the war itself, why concentrate on the holocaust? It's true that many others, political prisoners, and other ethnic groups were massacred too. Also, more money and lives were spent and lost during the war than the killing of the 6 ½ million Jews, why the distinction?Firstly, the Jews were the largest ethnic group that were killed despite being dispersed all over Europe. Secondly their treatment started way back in the 1930's and of course accelerated up until and in some cases even after the German surrender. Jews were being Killed, massacred and forced on death marches right up until the end of the war. Thirdly, the Germans got the art of killing these none combatants down to a fine art, they industrialized death and suffering in such a way that I don't know if there is anything historically to compare with it? Every step of the way they took away hope and there was a cruel deception right the way down the line, all able bodied were concentrated and enslaved until no longer useful and the others were killed quickly or slowly, which ever suited . By the time they realized what was going on it was too late! They simply never believed the Germans would do such a thing!It was cruelty towards an ethnic group, whole familys which included, the old, the sick and children were all tormented. The perpetrators of this policy and it's executioners took delight in what they were doing, – – – yes, a sense of delight is the right word. I watched a documentary a couple of years ago where a survivor of a camp a Dutch Jew, I think his name was Joseph Greenberg learned a year after the end of the war that his family were probably all killed on the same day they arrived at the death camp. It still haunted him all these years later. This is the enduring legacy of the perverse and twisted war against Europe's Jews. Well worth watching!

ncgordon651 While the Holocaust has been treated in many excellent films and television shows, the 1978 TV mini-series "Holocaust" remains one of the finest. This was the second mini-series ever produced for television, and like it's predecessor, "Roots," the producers attempted to create something that would rival the best that Hollywood could produce for the movies, with the added ability of telling much more of the story by virtue of having much more time to do it in. Thus, the 1978 television mini series "Holocaust" is as well-produced, written and acted as Spielberg's extraordinary film "Schindler's List."Particularly good performances are given by Meryl Streep as the aristocratic German wife to a Jewish artist, Karl Weiss, played by James Woods. (Did you know that Woods can be as good as a good-guy as he can as a bad-guy?) Karl Weiss is the eldest son of a prominent Berliner Jewish family. We follow him into the concentration camps, including Treblinka (the "show" camp) and eventually to Auschwitz (Oswiecim). Streep follows, sacrificing everything to try to stay with him, or at least near him, and to keep him alive. Grandpa Weiss is a Jewish German patriot who fought for the Kaiser during WWI and is proud of it, and never can come to terms with the betrayal of his fellow patriots. Fritz Weaver is Papa Weiss, whose story takes us through the siege of the Warsaw Ghetto as he attempts to create some kind of order and safety in the midst of chaos and doom.David Warner is remarkably sinister and urbane as Reinhard Heydrich, who came up with the legal gobbledygook to create the "Final Solution." Michael Moriarity plays Heinrich's assistant Erik Dorff, a former student and friend of the Weiss family. Moriarty chillingly portrays the seductive nature of National Socialism for the intellectual: He is given the choice of becoming a Nazi, and later Heinrich's assistant, or becoming cannon fodder on the Russian Front. He chooses the former, and goes about his task of carrying out the annihilation of the Jews, including his former good friends the Weiss', with cool logical efficiency. This may be Moriarty's finest hour as an actor.Other actors of note include the actor's actor Ian Holm, former Brittish grand dame of the theater Rosemary Harris, Joseph Bottoms, Sam Wanamaker and Tovah Feldshuh.This is entertaining history at its very best. Don't miss it.

rebelirish1862 I am hoping to be a history teacher after college. As a history buff and a long time researcher on the Holocaust, I have to say the film Holocaust was one of the best movies on the subject I have ever seen. Even though the movie was 7.5 hours, it held my interest the whole way. Merryl Streep, James Woods, and the gentleman who played Doctor Josef Weiss (Fritz Weaver) were very good. Michael Moriarty who played Erik Dorf was very good at acting like the innocent just-out-of-college lawyer and then being a ruthless Nazi. Holocaust was an excellent movie and should be seen by all.