Product Details

• Actors: Kosinski, Bikel, Warrilow, Rosenblatt
• Directors: Kathryn Taverna, Alan Adelson
• Format: Collector's Edition, Color, Digital Sound, Director's Cut, Full Screen, Special Edition, NTSC
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: G (General Audience)
• Studio: Jewish Heritage
• DVD Release Date: April 25, 2003
• Run Time: 118 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 0967769744
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #266,920 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
• For more information about "Lodz Ghetto, Collector's Edition DVD" visit the Internet Movie Database (IMDb)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

This innovative documentary about the Nazi occupation of a populous enclave of Jews in Eastern Europe weaves archival footage with material shot in the 1980s to evoke the spirit of the trapped inhabitants and their desperate struggle to survive. The Polish city of Lodz held the second largest Jewish community in Europe, and the invading Nazis ringed the Jewish neighborhood with barbed wire. All Jews in the area, nearly a quarter million people, were forced into what soon became known as the Lodz Ghetto. The inhabitants of the ghetto steadfastly endured hunger and other great hardships, and valiant efforts were made just to maintain normal lives. Factories were kept in operation under an audacious plan for the ghetto to survive economically, and to keep some semblance of cultural life, classical music concerts were held. But as survivors of the ghetto movingly relate in the narration, the community was doomed. Deportations to the concentration camps began, and this film presents the drama in heartbreaking fashion as photographs of ghetto children are shown against a voiceover of one of the ghetto's leaders painfully explaining that the Nazis are demanding that the community must hand over 20,000 people. This is a brilliantly conceived film that does a fine job of making history that should be known come to life in very human terms. --Robert J. McNamara

Product Description

Digitally mastered, this DVD edition includes a special SUPPLEMENT, "SOURCES AND SURVIVORS."

With stunning intimacy and openness, LODZ GHETTO brings us the voices of ordinary people trapped in an unbelievable time. They confide precisely what they felt during the darkest days of Nazi persecution. Scripted entirely from the secret diaries they left behind–hidden so the people of the future would know what they endured–this internationally acclaimed film reveals how 200,0000 people in the longest surviving concentration of Jews in Nazi Europe struggled against what seemed an unstoppable war to crush them out. It brings us the voices of people who love life but can only hope for a miracle to save them.

LODZ GHETTO is a film which crosses through time, bringing us into the past by mixing modern and archival footage seamlessly. It is filled with thousands of authentic, poignant images of daily life in the ghetto among people who can not give up their love of family and their drives to think and to create. The heroic writers and photographers who created the materials of this film risked their lives, that we could know what this desperate struggle was really like.

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An excellent, memorable work, July 16, 2007

By 

Henry Greenspan "Henry Greenspan, Ph.D." (Ann Arbor, MI United States) - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Lodz Ghetto [VHS] (VHS Tape)

I have been using this video in my courses since it was released. The film tells the story of the Lodz ghetto through a well-crafted mosaic of first-person accounts and archival films and photos. The former include ghetto diaries, chronicles, speeches by Rumkowski, posted SS "announcements," and similar. The latter include occasional images of contemporary Lodz overlaying images from the time of the ghetto. The voices, including Jerzy Kosiniski who "speaks" Rumkowski (what better choice?), are conveyed with power and precision. The selections read are as various and well-chosen as could be imagined. The work as a whole is somewhere between a documentary and a stark meditation, treating the unique complexity of the Lodz ghetto's history with both restraint and clarity.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Powerful and unique, May 15, 2010

By 

K. Gordon - See all my reviews
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Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Lodz Ghetto (DVD)

Very powerful, moving chronicle of one Polish Jewish ghetto in WWII. As we watch,
its population shrinks from 200,000 souls to only 800 left by the liberation.
All the narration is taken from the diaries and writings of those who were actually
there, and the visuals include some amazing film and stills from the time. A few
historical details are frustratingly sketchy, and intense thought it was, in the end
I wasn't quite as emotionally overwhelmed as I expected. But overall one of the more
accessible and unique holocaust documentaries. I'd imagine it's intimate 1st person
narratives would help make the stories more 'real' for students, making this an
invaluable teaching tool.