Top 10 Holocaust Movies: Best Holocaust Movies of All Time

Schindler's List is based on a story by Thomas Keneally dating from 1982. It relates the extraordinary actions of Oskar Schindler, a businessman close to the Nazis who saved more than a thousand Jews to from deportation.

Contrary to other Spielberg's films, Schindler's List is a very simple one. It honors the courage of a man during the darkest moments of the history of mankind. A very brilliant and touching movie won seven Oscars in 1994 including best picture and best director.

After making this movie Spielberg established the Shoah Foundation, an organization whose objectives are to collect the testimonies of Holocaust survivors and produce documentaries promoting the duty of society to preserve memories.

Year of Production: 1993

Director: Steven Spielberg

Stars: Liam Neeson, Ralph Fiennes and Ben Kingsley

Oscars won:

Best Art Direction-Set Decoration: Allan Starski, Ewa Braun

Best Cinematography: Janusz Kaminski

Best Director: Steven Spielberg

Best Film Editing: Michael Kahn

Best Music, Original Score, John Williams

Best Picture: Steven Spielberg, Gerald R. Molen, Branko Lustig

Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material Previously Produced or Published: Steven Zaillian

Plus 5 nominations. Also won 70 other awards.

It is difficult to emerge unscathed from Roman Polanski's The Pianist. The fate of the iconic virtuoso Wladyslaw Szpilman will upset you, but that's not all. The refined classicism and crude realism of the images t you will absorb you, will devour you, making words powerless. Then silence falls, and Chopin's "Nocturne", which seemed to have been stolen from us throughout the film, returns to haunt us long after the end of the credits. Little by little, everything goes back in place: the archive footage of Warsaw well alive, like the resurgence of the Polish-born filmmaker's memories in black and white, and then the vision of a walled city in agony, and then that of an eradicated people. The pianist Wladyslaw Szpilman, brilliantly played by Adrien Brody, is first and foremost a powerless witness to the unspeakable, almost indifferent to the horror. Yet it is he that Polanski's camera has chosen. Probably because music has no place in a ghetto. Neither does humanity. But music and humanity are omnipresent in the narrative. A paradox, as both had been wiped out at that sad moment of history. Yet, it is in this paradox that lies the magic of this great movie.

One of the Best Holocaust Movies of All Time.

Year of Production: 2002

Director: Roman Polanski

Stars: Adrien Brody, Thomas Kretschmann and Frank Finlay

The Pianist won the following awards: Academy Award for Best Actor - Adrien Brody; Academy Award for Best Director - Roman Polanski; Academy Award for Writing Adapted Screenplay - Ronald Harwood; Palme d'Or, 2002 Cannes Film Festival; BAFTA Award for Best Film; BAFTA Award for Best Direction - Roman Polanski; Cesar Award for Best Actor; Cesar Award for Best Director; Cesar Award for Best Film; Cesar Award for Best Music Written for a Film; Cesar Award for Best Cinematography; Cesar Award for Best Production Design; and Cesar Award for Best Sound; Goya Award for Best European Film.

The Sorrow and the Pity, which was produced in 1971, has the merit of being the first movie to reject the myths that emerged after the Liberation: France resistant as a whole, liberated by herself, the myth of a united and unity free France.

Marcel Ophuls constructs his story as a Chronicle of a French city Under the Occupation. Numerous interviews of anonymous or famous people. Some are vibrant with intelligence and emotion (the testimony of Pierre Mendes-France is shocking). Others take the shade of confessions: Christian de la Maziere, engaged in the Charlemagne Division, explains the reasons for such a commitment. His testimony demonstrates a honesty that will not be found in others, like the lawyer Rene de Chambrun, who was close to Marechal Petain.

Year of Production: 1969

Director: Marcel Ophuls

Stars: Georges Bidault, Matthäus Bleibinger and Charles Braun

Nomination for Oscar:

Best Documentary, Features: Marcel Ophüls

In 1947, Stingo, a young writer from South America, arrives in after-war Brooklyn. He befriends Sophie Zawistowski, a beautiful Polish immigrant, a survivor of Nazi camps, and her lover Nathan Landau. The relationship between Sophie and Nathan is endangered by their past. She is haunted by his sufferings, he is obsessed by the Holocaust. Stingo's feelings for Sophie's become stronger and stronger. A complex relationship is established between the three characters, gradually revealing the origins of Sophie's Choice...

Sophie's Choice is a masterpiece, one of the Best Holocaust Movies of All Time.

Year of Production: 1982

Director: Alan J. Pakula

Stars: Meryl Streep, Kevin Kline and Peter MacNicol

Oscar won:

Best Actress in a Leading Role: Meryl Streep

Nominations for Oscars:

Best Cinematography: Néstor Almendros

Best Costume Design: Albert Wolsky

Best Music, Original Score: Marvin Hamlisch

Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium: Alan J. Pakula

In July 1942, in Nazi-occupied Holland, Anne Frank and her family settled in a secret apartment in the annex of a building. Anne took her diary with her, and during the two years she lives underground, she notes everything. She records her daily life in the secret annex, the fear of being discovered, and the vision of herself, that of a precocious teenager who tries to grow against all odds ...

The Diary of Anne Frank is Upsetting.

One of the Top 10 Holocaust Movies of All Time.

Year of Production: 1959

Director: George Stevens

Stars: Millie Perkins, Shelley Winters and Joseph Schildkraut

Oscars won:

Best Actress in a Supporting Role: Shelley Winters

Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black-and-White: Lyle R. Wheeler, George W. Davis, Walter M. Scott, Stuart A. Reiss

Best Cinematography, Black-and-White: William C. Mellor

Plus 5 nominations; also nominated for the Palme d'Or at the 1959 Cannes Film Festival

The Murderers Among Us is a very touching story.

It was the first feature film to be produced in Germany after the Second World War. It is set in Berlin just after the surrender of the Nazis. The characters move through destroyed or half-destroyed building. Susanne Wallner is a concentration camp survivor, eager to taste life anew. Dr. Hans Mertens is a former Nazi officer, unable to cope with the guilt of what he and his fellow officers have done. Both must learn to live side by side as they start to reconcile themselves with the past.

A beautiful and sensitive movie.

Year of Production: 1946

Director: Wolfgang Staudte

Stars: Ernst Wilhelm Borchert, Hildegard Knef and Arno Paulsen

The Pawnbroker is based on a novel by Edward Lewis Wallant. It is the story of Sol (Rod Steiger in a superb performance), a lonely camp survivor who has coped with the destruction of his family by suppressing all emotion and sticking to the philosophy that only money matters. Sol cannot accept the friendship of his assistant, Ortiz, or of an equally lonely widow (Geraldine Fitzgerald, also superb). As the 25th anniversary of his wife's murder approaches, he loses his bearings, and it becomes clear that what he really is to join her.

One of the best of Sydney Lumet's, and certainly one of the Best Holocaust movies of all time.

Year of Production: 1964

Director: Sidney Lumet

Stars: Rod Steiger, Geraldine Fitzgerald and Brock Peters

Nomination for Oscar:

Best Actor in a Leading Role: Rod Steiger

Fateless is based on the novel by Nobel prize winner Imre Kertesz.

From his arrest in Budapest to his release from the camp, an adolescent lived the nightmare of a time that had stopped, victim of horror as much as of the instinct of survival which made him compose with the unacceptable.

The story poses the question of what happens to the humanity of a man when he is deprived of any destiny.

One of the Best Holocaust Movies of All time.

Year of Production: 2005

Director: Lajos Koltai

Stars: Simon Srebnik, Michael Podchlebnik and Motke Zaidl

Berlin, 1936. Salomon "Sally" Sorowitsch is the king of counterfeiters, an expert in bank notes. Jew betrayed in Nazi Germany, he is arrested by the Gestapo and interned in the Mauthausen camp. But Sally is soon transferred to the Sachsenhausen camp. He is welcomed by the Commissioner Herzog, who runs an undercover operation there. The Nazis want him to collaborate with them on Operation Bernhard: to weaken the economies of the allies...

Another masterpiece.

One of the Top 10 Holocaust Movies of All Time.

Year of Production: 2007

Director: Stefan Ruzowitsky

Stars: Karl Markovics, August Diehl and Devid Striesow

Oscar won:

Best Foreign Language Film of the Year: Austria