Steven Spielberg’s film “Schindler’s List” and the opening last April of the National Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., have inspired renewed interest in one of history’s darkest chapters. But just as there are those working diligently to keep alive painful lessons and legacy of the Holocaust, there are others working just as fervently to convince people that it never happened.
Home video is playing an increasingly vital educational and preventive role, preserving personal histories, witness’ testimonies and archival footage, some of it photographed by the perpetrators themselves.
Ergo Video (800-695-3746), a Jewish video publisher based in Teaneck, N.J., had added to its catalog several new Holocaust documentaries, including “A Generation Apart,” which explores the effects of the Holocaust on the children of survivors, and “Theresienstadt: Gateway to Auschwitz,” an award-winning portrait of the ghetto and transit camp for Jewish deportees as experienced by the few who survived.
New York-based SISU Home Entertainment (800-223-7478), suppliers of Israeli and Jewish music and video, also distributes Holocaust histories, including “Not Like Sheep to the Slaughter: The Story of the Bialystok Ghetto,” and a recently released five-volume boxed set, “Israel: A Nation is Born.”
Locally, MPI Home Video (708-687-7881) addresses the Holocaustin “Witness to Genocide,” which comprises shocking Nazi footage of the death camps, and in Volume 5 of the “History of the 20th Century” series.
Also available is the Dec. 28 “Nightline” broadcast, “America Remembers the Holocaust,” featuring “Sophie’s Choice” author William Styron.
Public Media Video (312-878-2600) now distributes the docudrama “The Wannsee Conference,” that re-creates in real time the fateful secret meeting in a suburb of Berlin during which the German high command discussed the implementation of Hitler’s “Final Solution.”
Although these videos represent the best defense against Holocaust deniers, their primary importance is educational, scholars and distributors say.
“There are people who simply don’t know about the Holocaust,” said Deborah Lipstadt, author of “Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory.” “Holocaust denial is not a clear and present danger. It is a clear and future danger unless we ensure that people know about it. It will be easier to deny once the eyewitnesses are gone.”
SISU President Haim Scheininger knows this from experience. “I am part of a family of survivors,” he said. “My father still cannot talk about what happened to him. My mother recently passed away, and I know very little from the few stories she told me. Video is a very powerful medium. It may inspire other stories to be told.”
– When you rent or buy “Shane,” you’re bringing home not just a classic Western but a certified national treasure. It was one of 25 “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant” films recently inducted by the Library of Congress into the National Film Registry.
Of 1993’s inductees, 17 are available on videocassette. Unless otherwise noted, each costs less than $20. They include: “An American in Paris” (MGM/UA Home Video); “Badlands” (Paramount Home Video); “Blade Runner” ($39.99, Columbia TriStar Home Video); “Cat People” (Turner Home Entertainment); “Chulas Fronteras” (a documentary about Tex-Mex music available from Flower Films, 800-472-7618, for $49.95); “The Godfather, Part II” ($29.95, Paramount); “His Girl Friday” (Hollywood Home Movies); “It Happened One Night” (Columbia); “Lassie Come Home” (MGM/UA); “A Night at the Opera” (MGM/UA); “Nothing But a Man” ($89.95, New Video Group); “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” (Republic Pictures Home Video); “Shane” (Paramount); “Sweet Smell of Success” (MGM/UA); “Magical Maestro” (a Tex Avery cartoon included on the MGM/UA video “Tex Avery’s Screwball Classics”); “Touch of Evil” ($29.95, MCA/Universal Home Video) and “Yankee Doodle Dandy” (MGM/UA).
