Resistance Review – Holocaust Doc Examines Jewish Defiance
- Details
- Category: Indies, Docs, Foreign Film
- Published on Thursday, 25 April 2024 09:49
- Written by Janet Walker
Resistance, from Abramorama, presents a counter argument to a common-held belief that the Jewish population went like sheep to the slaughter during the Nazi invasion, and reconstructs from archival footage, and survivors, stories of Jewish resistance.
The film begins with this quote from the late Professor Richard Freund, "People have this myth stuck in their heads that Jews went to their deaths like sheep to the slaughter. But this is where the real story begins…Jews did not go as sheep to the slaughter…They fought back."
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World War II, in the European Theater, was darkened by the stain of Hitler's determined effort to eradicate the undesirables, the Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals and intellectually challenged. History often explains the death camps, Auschwitz, Dacau, Triblinka and others as Hitler built thousands to exact his 1000-year reign.
Resistance – The Fought Back offers a glimpse of four stories of Jewish resistance across four nations, as this aspect of the Holocaust peels back another layer and exposes truths that had yet to be explored in the opposition to the march of the Nazi's.
The documentary presents poignant and honest accounts of life within the Warsaw Ghetto, children, as young as six, escaping through the walls to beg for food and would become the sole breadwinner for their families as the Jews were fed starvation rations. As they would die of starvation, Hitler's forces would use the emaciated carcasses as propaganda campaigns to turn public opinion against the Jewish population.
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When the Polish Jews were herded into the Ghetto, more than 500,000 people were forced into a walled imprisonment of 1.3miles. The Germans were using physical torture, psychological warfare, and depravation, and still the Jews resisted. Even as disease killed thousands monthly, they found ways to mentally reinvigorate their souls.
Everywhere in Eastern Europe, Jews waged campaigns of non-violent resistance against the Nazis. For those that could they fought, planned, and worked as spies, for others they resisted by maintaining the tradition so their lifestyle and culture could carry on; they worshipped, they smuggled instruments and continued to energize the soul; they formed schools. Parents gave up their children to sympathetic strangers so the child might live.
The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising is widely told, but most people have no idea how widespread and prevalent Jewish resistance to Nazi barbarism was. Letters, found in excavations, piece together last moments which lead to further discoveries of moments that help build a timeline of resistors, one step ahead of the Nazi's, the Jewish resistors understand death was inevitable, in either scenario, so fight and die, or fight and possibly live; live to tell the truths that would otherwise remain buried in the ashes.
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Resistance – They Fought Back also exposes truths about the psychological warfare of the Nazi's, the use of extreme and constant humiliation, of total exposure, of no privacy, of appropriating all property, even the gold in their teeth, and still they found ways to fight against the oppressor.
We hear the stories, from children of those who were active in building paramilitary resistance, without any training they learned to make bombs, some were put in charge of library cataloging and found ways to smuggle out books on building weapons, some were forced to work in weapons factories and smuggled gunpowder. Working together they could, with each person responsible for a single task, cripple, if only momentarily, their oppressors.
Filmed in Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Israel, and the U.S., Resistance – They Fought Back features the narration from Corey Stoll, Dianna Agron, and Maggie Stiff, among many other recognizable names in the entertainment industry and provides a much-needed correction to this myth of Jewish passivity. There were uprisings in ghettos large and small, rebellions in death camps, and thousands of Jews fought Nazis in the forests.
Resistance – They Fought Back is a poignant and expressive portrayal and unearths stories that must be known, must be told, and must be understood. History, unless we learn from it, is bound to be repeated.
Emotional and affecting, Resistance – They Fought Back is a must see.
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Country: Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Israel, and the U.S.
Language: English, Hebrew, Yiddish, Polish with English subtitles.
Runtime: 100 minutes.
Release: May 10, 2024 (Los Angeles). In theaters in New York.
Co-Directors: Paula S. Apsell, Kirk Wolfinger.
Produced by: Lisa Goodfellow, Owen Palmquist, Adam Costa, Paula S. Apsell.
Executive Produced by: Professor Michael Berenbaum, Michael J. Bohnen, Ori & Mirit Eisen, Professor Richard A. Freund, Z"L, Richard A. Salomon, Paula S. Apsell.
Co-Writers: Paula S. Apsell, Jay Owens.
Narrators: Corey Stoll, Dianna Agron, Maggie Stiff, Julie Benki, Andrew Kishino, David Rosenberg, Joel de la Fuente, Lisa Loeb, Mark Zeisler, among many other recognizable names in the entertainment industry.
