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This touching documentary, in which students from the last Jewish school in Berlin to be shut down by the Gestapo are reunited in 1996, was produced in association with Steven Spielberg's Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation. The purpose of the foundation is to videotape testimony of Holocaust survivors, and this documentary, which is hosted by actor Anthony Hopkins, is a microcosmic look at the foundation's ambitious mandate. The students from Gross Hamburgerstrasse School tell personal stories of how Nazi persecution escalated throughout the 1930s, eventually destroying what should have been their happy teenage years. Some of the students were able to escape the Holocaust by making their way to other countries, though some suffered terribly in concentration camps. Those from the school who survived generally thought they might be the only survivor among all their classmates, so it was particularly touching to hold the unprecedented reunion in this documentary. But despite some happy aspects of the reunion, there is a palpable sadness, such as when an elderly man who was a student at the school reads the list of classmates who perished. Each name is intoned, along with the name of the concentration camp where the student was killed. This is an intelligent and ultimately hopeful look at one of history's greatest tragedies.
--Robert J. McNamara
Product Description
Anthony Hopkins narrates this unique film from Steven Spielberg's Shoah Visual History Foundation which tells the story of 50 Holocaust survivors who reunited at their former school in Berlin.
Documentary, approx. mins.
