Highlights from the Film and Video Archive in the year 2006

Orphans 5 Presentation, SC Julien Bryan Collection Orthodox Jews in the Jewish quarter of Krakow, 1936. Old market square and synagogue. Close-ups of Jewish boys. 3:05 minutes, Silent Stanley Baker Collection This collection consists of amateur film shot by members of an American family who were living in Vienna when the Germans entered Austria in 1938. One clip shows jubilant crowds celebrating the Anschluss. Another sequence documents the damage done to Jewish shops immediately after the German takeover and shows Helen Baker as she is prevented from entering a Jewish shop by an Austrian member of the SA. 3:55 minutes, Silent Claude Lanzmann Shoah Collection Interview with Paula Biren Paula Biren and her family lived in the Łódź ghetto from 1940 until its liquidation in 1944. In this clip she relates the agonizing choice she was forced to make about whether her family should attempt to hide from the Germans or travel on a special transport organized by Jewish Council chairman Rumkowski. 4:15 minutes, English Claude Lanzmann Shoah Collection Interview with Heinz Schubert Heinz Schubert was Otto Ohlendorf's adjutant in Einsatzgruppe D. He was convicted and sentenced to death after the war but his sentence was commuted to ten years in prison. Lanzmann filmed the interview without Schubert's knowledge, and in this clip he asks Schubert what he meant when he spoke at his trial about his "burdened soul." Schubert answers that anyone's soul would feel burdened if they found themselves among a group of people who must be executed, without knowing specifically why. In the abstract, Schubert says, the reason is that Hitler had decreed that they must die. Schubert's wife interrupts to insist that her husband did not participate directly in executions. 1:40 minutes, German Claude Lanzmann Shoah Collection Interview with Benjamin Murmelstein Benjamin Murmelstein, a controversial figure in Holocaust history, was a rabbi and leader in the Jewish community (Israelitische Kultusgemeinde Wien) and later acted as the last head of the Jewish Council in Theresienstadt. Here Murmelstein complains that after the war everyone claimed to be part of the resistance, complete with hidden weapons and clandestine radio stations. 2:30 minutes, German Claude Lanzmann Shoah Collection Interview with Ruth Elias Ruth Elias, a Czech Jew, gave birth to a child in Auschwitz. While the baby perished at the hands of Josef Mengele, Elias survived and was liberated from a labor camp in Leipzig. She tells the story of how she met her husband while giving a concert performance for the SS early in 1945. 5:30 minutes, English Tony Brooke Collection Anthony "Tony" S. Brooke was a U.S. Army Signal Corps cameraman and a member of George Stevens' film unit. This film clip from original Kodachrome shows American GIs assisting survivors into Red Cross ambulances at Buchenwald during liberation. 1:10 minutes, Silent Oral History Interview with Budd Schulberg Budd Schulberg, 92, wrote the novel What Makes Sammy Run? and the screenplay for the film On the Waterfront. As an officer in the U.S. Naval Reserve, he served in a special unit of the O.S.S. (Office of Strategic Services, a precursor of the C.I.A.) responsible for capturing film evidence against the major Nazi war criminals in 1945. This oral history documents his unique experience heading the team that rushed to assemble the Nazis' own film record of their crimes. The resulting film, The Nazi Plan, was shown in the courtroom in Nuremberg. In this clip, Schulberg discusses how his search for damning film evidence produced by the SS ended in frustration when he discovered that the film had been destroyed shortly before he arrived. 3:35 minutes, English