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Genocide

18 votes

The mass murder of Jewish people by the Nazi regime is chronicled, with a warning that anti-Semitism is on the rise and the events of the Holocaust could happen again. The history of European Jewish culture and events before and during the Holocaust are seen in newsreels, photographs, and animated segments. The words of the victims of the era are read, and footage from the liberation os a concentration camp is shown.

Status: Released

Released Date: 1982-03-14

Runtime: 84 mins

Director: Arnold Schwartzman

Writer: Marvin Hier, Martin Gilbert, Arnold Schwartzman

Spoken language: English, Deutsch

Genres: Documentary, History, War

Original title: Genocide

Production Companies: Moriah Films, United Artists

Production Countries: United States of America

Cast

Narrator (voice)

Elizabeth Taylor

Narrator (voice)

Orson Welles

Self

Simon Wiesenthal

Self (archive footage)

Neville Chamberlain

Self (archive footage)

Winston Churchill

Self (archive footage)

Dwight D. Eisenhower

Self (archive footage) (as Josef Goebbels)

Joseph Goebbels

Self - at Nuremberg Trials (archive footage)

Hermann Göring

Self (archive footage)

Rudolf Hess

Self (archive footage)

Adolf Hitler

Self - in 100m Final at the 1936 Olympics (archive footage)

Ralph Metcalfe

Self - in 100m Final at the 1936 Olympics (archive footage)

Martinus Osendarp

Self (archive footage)

Jesse Owens

Self (archive footage) (as The Pope)

Pope Pius XII

Reviews

Geronimo1967

Orson Welles anchors the narration here describing some of the most heinous imagery from human history. He commences with a potted history of the often enforced transient existence of the Jewish communities in Europe before bringing us to twentieth century Germany where millions are unemployed, the economy is still on it’s knees after the defeat in the Great War and homelessness is rife. Skilfully navigating this national maelstrom, Adolf Hitler arrives with a clear and concise message: it’s all the Jews’ fault. Following on from Nero’s proven philosophy that giving people someone to loathe is always an effective way of cementing political power and diverting attention from the real issues, a period of persecution begins. Initially it’s registration, then their property is seized and then as the Nazi regime becomes more firmly entrenched and embarked on pan-European expansion, the rest of the holocaust unfolds before us. The production uses an effective combination of archive and animations to illustrate the story and for some especially poignant readings from many of their diaries, Elizabeth Taylor infuses a poignant degree of emotion as she delivers some perspectives from those tortured souls facing certain death at the hands of brutes in uniform or white coats. Viewers of this type of documentary will have seen much of the library footage before, but it never ceases to disgust as the inhumanity beggars belief, the corpses pile up and those aerial shots of the concentration camps never fail to affect.

2025-10-17

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