All films listed below will be shown only during the days indicated, 24/7, unless otherwise indicated. Revisit this page soon to learn about new short films that will shown at the museum during these two months.

 Inquiries about our Film Program may be directed to info@museumoffamilyhistory.com.

The films are best viewed using Internet Explorer.

To learn the full extent of the Museum's multimedia collection, please visit the Museum's Audio and Video Indexes at www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/multimedia.htm.

The Films of Tomek Wisniewski:  new!

You can now see forty very interesting short films created by Tomek Wisniewski, a native of Białystok, Poland. These are not part of the Museum's Film Series per se, as they are now currently available to you, the Museum visitor, indefinitely.

His films mostly concern various towns and cities within Poland, i.e. the Poland of today and of pre-World War II Poland, but there are others about towns that are located within today's Belarus, Ukraine and Lithuania.

More of Tomek's films will be added in the future. You can find the links to all of his films that are being shown at the Museum at www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/tomek/films.htm .
 

No Longer Showing:

World War II and the Holocaust:

Nazi Death Camps (5 mins, 03 secs):

In April 1945, U.S. and British troops entered the Nazi death camps and filmed the horrors they found there. For decades the film was stored at the Imperial War Museum in London. This documentary was unfinished and was missing soundtracks. The directors, including Alfred Hitchcock, had developed a script to go with the pictures. Frontline, a British television program, presented this documentary unedited. It was a film the British Government deemed too grisly for release after World War II. The film has received its public debut on British television. Fifteen minutes of the black-and- white film, which was shot by the armed forces after the war. From YouTube.

Nazi Murder Mills (8 mins, 16 secs):

First actual newsreel pictures of atrocities in Nazi murder camps. Helpless prisoners tortured to death by a bestial enemy...Here Is "The Truth" (Real-life horror pictures revealing the unbelievable atrocities committed by the Nazis in their murder camps.)

Grasleben: Wounded and emaciated Yanks, captured in von Runstedt's Bulge attack of last winter, are fed and given medical care by the Yank armies of liberation.

Hadamar: Protected by gas masks, grave diggers open reeking graves at this converted insane asylum. They discover that 35,000 political prisoners had been slain here, largely by poisoning.

Camp Ohrdruf : General Eisenhower, General Patton and General Bradley can hardly believe their eyes when they view torture-gallows, heaps of charred human bodies and lime pits filled with corpses. From You Tube.


Monday , April 5 to Sunday, April 18

The Al Jolson Film Festival - Jolson sings in "Hallelujah, I'm a Bum!" (3:15):

The film trailer.

"The picture, some persons may be glad to hear, has no "Mammy" song. It is Mr. Jolson's best film and well it might be, for that clever director, Lewis Milestone, guided its destiny, and the supporting cast includes Frank Morgan, the beautiful Madge Evans, the pathetically comic Harry Langdon and that veteran of Keystone days, Chester Conklin. It is a combination of fun, melody and romance, with a dash of satire, all of which make for an ingratiating entertainment..."-- From the New York Times, Feb. 9, 1933.

Don't forget to visit the Museum's large Al Jolson exhibition titled "The Immortal Al Jolson" (and see and hear many more videos, not to mention more than forty sound clips) at www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/ajolson.htm .

World War II and the Holocaust:

"The Jews of Krakow's Kazimierz District" (3:26):

Archival film from 1936 showing the Jewish district of Kazimierz in Krakow. Most of these buildings can be visited today and are in a similar condition - only the people who walked those streets are long since gone.

The original [version] of this film is in the Polish film archives in ul. Chelmska in Warsaw.  -- From Alan Heath, YouTube.

Note that there is another version of this film on YouTube that states the film is of
 Kazimierz in 1938-9, not 1936.


From the exhibition "The Jewish Ghetto," coming to you sometime in 2010:

"The Ghettos of Dąbrowa Górnicza and Będzin" (10:51):

A film in two parts, shot in the ghettos of Dąbrowa Górnicza and Będzin, probably at the beginning of the ghettos.

Dabrowa Górnicza is part of the Katowice conurbation. Jews settled in Dąbrowa Górnicza
in the middle of the 19th century. There were 4,304 Jews living in Dąbrowa Górnicza
according to the 1921 census (11% of the total population).

The German army captured Dąbrowa Górnicza on 3 September 1939. In the fall of 1940 several hundred young Jewish men were deported to slave labor camps in Germany. Several hundred more were deported in the course of 1941. At the end of that year a ghetto was established. On 5 May 1942, the first deportation took place in which 630 Jews were taken to Auschwitz and exterminated. In the second deportation, conducted on 12 August 1942, another few hundred Jews were sent to their death in Auschwitz. On 26 June 1943, the ghetto in Dąbrowa Górnicza

 was liquidated and all its inmates were transferred to the ghetto in Srodula (a suburb of Sosnowiec), the only ghetto still existing in Upper Silesia. It too was liquidated and all its inhabitants, including the Jews from Dąbrowa Górnicza, deported to Auschwitz and killed.

According to the 1921 census, there were 17,298 Jews in Będzin or 62.1 percent of its total population. By 1938, the number of Jews had increased to about 22,500.

Situated close to the border, Będzin was quickly captured by the Wehrmacht. On 7 September, persecution of the Jews began, with the instituting of economic sanctions. On 8 September, the Będzin synagogue was burned, and the first massacre of local Jews took place.

The ghetto was founded in May 1942 but deportations had started as early as October 1940. Despite cooperation with the occupiers as is shown in this film, several large deportations took place in 1942. The last major deportations took place in 1943: 5,000 were deported on 22 June 1943 and 8,000 around 13 August 1943. About 1,000 remaining Jews were deported in the subsequent months. A rising took place in August 1943 which was put down and the ghetto was eliminated.

This film is held in the Polish film archive in ul. Chelmska, Warsaw. -- From Alan Heath, YouTube.

Tuesday, March 16 to Sunday, April 4

The Al Jolson Film Festival - Jolson sings "Mammy" in "The Jolson Story" (3:27):

In 1946, Columbia pictures released "The Jolson Story," a highly fictionalized musical biography of Al Jolson. The film starred Larry Parks as Al Jolson, Evelyn Keyes as Julie Benson (based on Jolson's third wife Ruby Keeler), William Demarest (who played his manager), Ludwig Donath and Tamara Shayne (who played Jolson's parents), and Scotty Beckett, who played the young Jolson (though Beckett did not actually sing in the film, nor did he do young Jolson's whistling.)

"The Jolson Story" was highly successful and did much to revive Jolson's career which had been sagging during the years previous to the film's release. The film won numerous Academy Awards, i.e. for Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture, and Best Sound Recording. Larry Parks was nominated for Best Actor in a Leading Role, and William Demarest was nominated for Best Actor in a Supporting Role. The film was also nominated for Best Cinematography, Color and Film Editing. The great success of "The Jolson Story" spawned a sequel "Jolson Sings Again" just three years later--also successful, but not as much as the first film.

"The Jolson Story" introduced the talents of Al Jolson to a new generation. From YouTube.
 

Friday, March 19 to Sunday, April 4

World War II and the Holocaust - Deportations

"Deportation to the Death Camps" (8:24):

A powerful and at times eerie short film. You may or may not want to watch this with the soundtrack.

From YouTube: "A collection of film showing deportations to death camps taken by Nazi cameramen. The first film shows what I believe to be a village in Galicia in which case the inhabitants would have ended up in Belzec. However they may be in the process of being taken to a ghetto.

In another part of the film we see the Nazis collecting valuables from the condemned who meekly hand them over.

Finally we can see the deportation of the Jewish population of Lodz. The station is recognizable [ Radegast]. I think that this film is from August 1944 and so the people would have been taken to Auschwitz where nearly all of them perished.

[Maybe you'll recognize family members being deported from the Lodz Ghetto.....]

The soundtrack appears to have been added at a later date.

The originals of these films are in the Film Archives in ul. Chelmska, Warsaw."
 

"Deportation to the Krakow Ghetto" (3:39):

"In May 1940, the Nazi occupation authority announced that Kraków should become the 'cleanest' city in the General Government, an occupied, but unannexed part of Poland. Massive deportation of Jews from the city were ordered. Of the more than 68,000 Jews in Kraków when the Germans invaded, only 15,000 workers and their families were permitted to remain. All other Jews were ordered out of the city, to be resettled into surrounding rural areas.

The Kraków Ghetto was formally established on 3 March 1941 in the Podgórze district, not in the Jewish district of Kazimierz. Displaced Polish families from Podgórze took up residences in the former Jewish dwellings outside the newly established Ghetto. Meanwhile, 15,000 Jews were crammed into an area previously inhabited by 3,000 people who used to live in a district consisting of 30 streets, 320 residential buildings, and 3,167 rooms. As a result, one apartment was allocated to every four Jewish families, and many less fortunate lived on the street.

The Ghetto was surrounded by walls that kept it separated from the rest of the city. All windows and doors that gave onto the 'Aryan' side were ordered bricked up. Only four guarded entrances allowed traffic to pass through. In a grim foreshadowing of the near future, these walls contained panels in the shape of tombstones. Small sections of the wall still remain today.

Young peole of the Akiva youth movement, who had undertaken the publication of an underground newsletter, HeHaluc HaLohem ('The Fighting Pioneer'), joined forces with other Zionists to form a local branch of the Jewish Fighting Organization (ŻOB, Polish: Żydowska Organizacja Bojowa), and organize resistance in the ghetto, supported by the Polish underground Armia Krajowa. The group carried out a variety of resistance activities including the bombing of the Cyganeria cafe, a gathering place of Nazi officers. Unlike in Warsaw, their efforts did not lead to a general uprising before the ghetto was liquidated.

From 30 May 1942 the Nazis deported people to the death camp at Belzec. On 13 - 14 March 1943 the final 'liquidation' of the ghetto was carried out under the command of SS-Untersturmführer Amon Göth. Eight thousand Jews deemed able to work were transported to the Plaszow labor camp. Others were either murdered in the ghetto or transported to Auschwitz where they were killed." -- From YouTube.

"Glimpses of Yiddish Czernowitz" (2:23):

From Forverts, YouTube:

"Bukovina—land of the beech tree spreading its branches across the Carpathian Mountains with its turbulent rivers and rushing streams. More than one generation of forest merchants and cattle drivers in partnership with the local peasantry drew their livelihood from the land. Czernowitz was blessed with resonant names—the Big City, Little Vienna, Jerusalem on the Prut, Jerusalem of Bukovina.

Short, but abundant visually, this filmic essay expresses critical historical moments of Jewish life in the city and region, from the first Jewish language conference to the torment of the Transnistrian deportation and subsequent decline of Jewish life in the post War period. Featuring contemporary interviews alongside original archival images, the film presents Czernowitz through native personalities such as fabulist and pedagogue Eliezer Steinbarg, beloved actress Sidi Tal, drama critic Moyshe Loyev, writer Josef Burg, poet Beyle Schaechter-Gottesman, and linguist Prof. Wolf Moskovich.

Glimpses of Yiddish Czernowitz is a visual tale of an all but lost Jewish community. The film awakens our longing and calls us back to seek out the traces of that city of our dreams—the Jerusalem on the Prut."

Saturday, March 6 to Sunday, March 21

The Al Jolson Film Festival - "Show Business At War" (17:34).
During the Second World War, many in show business did what they could to support the troops and the cause.

On May 21, 1943, the short film titled "Show Business at War" was released. It was part of an effort put forth my various studios to show the newsreel audience the progress of the Hollywood war effort.

Many Hollywood stars appear in this newsreel, one of whom is Al Jolson, who is seen and heard singing "Mammy" to the troops. Many others in show business appear in this film.

Don't forget to visit the Museum's large Al Jolson exhibition titled "The Immortal Al Jolson" (and see and hear many more videos, not to mention more than forty sound clips) at www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/ajolson.htm .
 

World Jewish Communities:
Kovno, Riga, Krakow, Lwów and Bialystok
How quickly a Jewish community can be upended, a city transformed from a 'peaceful' one to one of destruction, occupation, imprisonment and death. Within this World Jewish Communities Film Series, you will have an opportunity to 'compare and contrast' life in these cities cir 1939, i.e. shortly before the Second World War began, and life not long after these cities were invaded, occupied and destruction of both people and property reigned.

Before World War II:

     "Jewish Life in Kovno, Riga and Lwów" (9:42). This documentary was made in the early spring of 1939, just months before the start of the Second World War in Europe.  Narration in Yiddish.

During World War II:

     "Lwów Lemberg 1941" (2: 38). This 1941 8 mm film depicts the Germans entering Lwów (Lemberg in German). You can see attacks against the Jews there, as well as provocative acts. Before the war Lwów was part of Poland, but was annexed by Russia on September 22, 1939. This time, the film short is narrated in German. From YouTube.

     "German Troops in Riga" (8:29). World War II, German troops near Daugavpils (Dunaburg) moving to Riga (Latvia). Fights and the liberation of Riga. Communist war crimes, Nazi behavior to Latvian Jews, Nazi propaganda, Fights near Liepaja (Libau).  Again the narration for this film short is in German. From YouTube.
 

The Museum of Family History's Yiddish World  Under the Stars presents --
Two excerpts of Maurice Schwartz in "Tevye the Milkman" (1939):

Tevye is a dairyman in the Russian Ukraine early in the 20th century. He lives in a cabin outside Boyberik with his wife Goldie, his widowed daughter Tseytl, her two children, and his younger daughter, the unmarried Khave. Khave is being courted by Fedya, a Christian, the son of a local government official. Tevye warns Khave against romance and marriage outside her faith, but Fedya is persuasive too. What will Khave decide, how will Tevye react, and when the Tsar initiates a pogrom, will Tevye's friends come to his defense? Can the stubborn Tevye reconcile his heart and tradition? On the other hand....From YouTube.

Don't forget to visit the Museum's Great Artists Series exhibition about Maurice Schwartz and his Yiddish Art Theatre.