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From:Tom Bell , Joseph Bottoms , Tovah Feldshuh , Marius Goring , Rosemary Harris , Paramount , Marvin J. Chomsky ,
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 Still a great mini series, 2008-11-12
I remember watching this when I was a junior high student. It was the first I had heard of the horrible fate of six million European Jews under Hitler's Nazi Europe. It was so moving and heartbreaking that I remember crying several times. When I visited the Holocaust museum in Washington, D.C., one of the curators told me that this series really gave Americans their first realistic glimpse of Jewish life in Nazi Germany
I watched it again and was still incredibly moved. The Family Weiss is the story of many families in 1930's Germany, Josef, the kind hearted doctor, heads the family, his wife Berta, the strong musically gifted mother, Karl, the shy sensitive artist so in love with his Christian wife Inga, Rudi the hotheaded athlete just coming into manhood and finally teenager Anna. Paralleling the lives of the Weiss family is the Dorf family Erik is the up and coming SS man and his wife is the ambitious proud Aryan who totally believes in the new Germany.
This movie unfolds over time and the viewer sees the seeds of Nazi destruction right from the beginning. Karl, played by a very good James Woods, is married to his wife Inga (Meryl Streep, also very good) right before laws are passed forbidding marriage between Jews and Christians. Brown shirts are visible even at the wedding.
Soon more anti-Semitic Nazi ideology is sweeping across Germany and the Weiss family is separated, Karl is imprisoned in Buchenwald and Dr. Weiss, a Polish citizen is deported to Poland, even young Anna is separated due to a breakdown. These scenes are absolutely heart wrenching, especially so is Anna's.
Feeling restless, Rudi leaves the family and joins resistance fighters in Eastern Europe. Along the way he finds a woman he grows to care for greatly. The horrors they see of mass killings are nightmarish.
Meanwhile Berta joins her husband in Poland and there they try to piece together a semblance of sanity without their children in Warsaw. Soon, though the empty freight trains headed toward Auschwitz arrive to empty the Warsaw ghetto.
Inga and Karl's love is touching and Inga is willing to do anything to be with her husband, even if it means demeaning herself. Meryl Streep is fantastic; she adds just the right touch of desperation in her voice whenever she even mentions her husband's name.
The Dorf family's rise to fame is parallel to the Weiss's demise and the amazing part of this story is that these two families know one another, were once cordial and friendly. So easily Erik Dorf (Michael Moriarty is good as a shy somewhat awkward SS man in the beginning) forgets his scruples all in the name of personal ambition.
This is a must see miniseries because the content is so important. I highly recommend it.
Holocaust, 2008-10-30
I watched this series when it first screened many years ago. It is as I remembered, well worth watching My only criticism is the accents. No effort appears to have been made to make the accents authentic, otherwise an excellent production. One would hope that the events portrayed are never allowed to happen again. Watching this series is very harrowing but very worthwhile.
2 of 2 customers found the following review helpful:
 THE MINI SERIES ' HOLOCAUST' , 2008-10-30
I am a a student of history and militaria and first saw this programme whilst in hospital in 1978. When I saw the DVD was available and I had to obtain it for my library as it such a good production. I could finally 'pension off' my old VHS tapes.
That said, my complaint concerns the uniforms. The rank collar patches for some of the SS Officers, especially Heydrich, were incorrect and on one occasion an SS-Obersturmbannfuhrer [ Lt Colonel ] is referred to a Major [ SS-Sturmbannfuhrer ].
The black SS uniform was phased out in 1938 and replaced by the field gray to match the Army and Waffen [ armed ] SS formations. The SS Officers in 'Holocaust' are still, on occasion, seen wearing the black uniform.
The ReichsSicherheitDienst [ SD ] RFSS was the internal and external intelligence and information office and its members wore the field grey uniform and carried SS ranks. The right hand collar patch in the SS carried the runes but in the SD the patch was black. The SD was identified by the letters SD inside a diamond shaped badge called a rauter that was displayed on the lower left sleeve of the tunic.
If a member of the SD was also in the Geheime StatsPolizei [ GeStaPo ] the silver letters SD were edged in silver instead of the plain black badge. When Dorf joined the SS he was depicted with both the SS runes and the SD rauter on his uniform - the two were not worn together.
The collar rank patches for the SS were re-designed in 1942 when a new rank of SS-Oberstgruppenfuher [ eq to the Army's Generaloberst ] was promulgated. The new rank had three oak leaves pointed inward and three diamond shaped pips.
At the time of his assassination in Prague Heydrich was an SS-Obergruppenfuhrer [ General ] and his collar patches in the later part of the series should have been depicted as three oak leaves pointed inward above two diamond shaped pips. I don't believe this was accurately illustrated.
I have noticed on many occasions concerning German [ especially SS ] uniforms where accuracy has been ignored. The SS - Standartenfuhrer [Colonel ] in 'Indiana Jones/ Last Crusade' was wearing at one time the SS black uniform then, in the desert scenes, a uniform I don't believe ever existed in the SS. He also had black lampassen [ stripes on the trouser legs ]- this distinction was only for generals. I may be wrong but I believe the SS generals did not have lampassen on their uniforms.
Himmler, Reichsfuhrer - SS, was very pedantic on uniform matters and issued orders that SS men were not to address each other by Army titles, as some did. Some SS officers also wanted to have coloured piping on their caps to denote their specialist fields [ as the Army did ]. Himmler insisted that the piping was to be silver only.
Roger DESHON
1 of 1 customers found the following review helpful:
Excelent quality but no subtitles, 2008-09-30
This TV series are a classical for those who collect material from the II World War and the Nazis Horror. The image quality is excellent, sound is mono aural and it comes exactly as it was aired with fades to black for commercials. The only thing I regret is that it doesn't comes with subtitles or close captioned for the hearing impaired.
Holocaust DVD Review, 2008-09-20
I first saw this series as a 9 year old on TV in 1979 and I really loved it back than. At that age, most of the ideas of the series went straight over my head. I have seen the series on DVD in 2008 and this is really awesome. It's really worth watching. And also serves as a really good example of history coming to life on TV too.
Another thing. On TV, this series ran for 9.5 hours. On DVD (and VHS) it runs for 7.5 hours. The quantity 60 * 7.5 / 9.5 gives 47.4 . ie 47.4 minutes of TV show per hour and 12.6 minutes of adverts per hour. The legal maximum of TV adverts per hour is 13 minutes here in Australia. I guess it's the same in the USA as well. This calculation assumes that on TV, Holocaust was interrupted by adverts. Being on NBC, I think this would be true.
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