Quoted By:
1940s
Year Country Title Director Notes
1940 United Kingdom Night Train to Munich Carol Reed First feature film to depict concentration camps.
1940 United States The Mortal Storm Frank Borzage One character is sent to a concentration camp and dies there, while his family is trying to leave Nazi Germany.
1940 United States The Great Dictator Charlie Chaplin A condemnation of Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, fascism, antisemitism, and the Nazis. The film focuses on two men: a ruthless fascist dictator named Adenoid Hynkel (a parody of Hitler) and a persecuted Jewish barber. The Jewish barber is sent to a concentration camp, but manages to escape (and ends up mistaken for Hynkel, while Hynkel is mistaken for the Jewish barber, and sent off to a concentration camp). In one scene, Herring (a parody of Hermann Göring) makes a passing mention that they have discovered a new poison gas, that will kill everybody. In his 1964 autobiography, Chaplin stated that he could not have made the film if he had known about the true extent of the horrors of the Nazi concentration camps at that time.[2]
1942 United States To Be Or Not To Be Ernst Lubitsch One villain is jokingly -and repeatedly- called “concentration camp Erhardt”.
1944 United States The Seventh Cross Fred Zinneman Seven inmates, one Jewish, escape from a concentration camp
1944 Poland Majdanek: Cemetery of Europe Aleksander Ford One of the first films to include footage of concentration camps
1945 Soviet Union The Unvanquished Mark Donskoy First feature film to show mass murder of Jews and hunting for them on the occupied territories. 1946 Venice festival award.
1946 United States The Stranger Orson Welles First feature film to include footage of concentration camps[3]
1946 Germany Die Mörder sind unter uns Wolfgang Staudte The first Rubble Film and the first German film to address Nazi atrocities. English title: Murderers Among Us
1947 Poland The Last Stage Wanda Jakubowska English titles: The Last Stage, The Last Stop
1947 Germany Ehe im Schatten Kurt Maetzig One of the earliest DEFA productions. English title: Marriage in the Shadows
1947 Germany Zwischen Gestern und Morgen Harald Braun One of the first German films to be made in Munich after the war and the first to openly address the Holocaust. English title: Between Yesterday and Tomorrow
1948 Germany Morituri Eugen York
1948 United States The Search Fred Zinnemann In post-war Berlin, an American private helps a lost Czech boy find his mother.
1948 Poland Ulica Graniczna Aleksander Ford A Polish film about the uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto, it premieres at the Venice Film Festival; it is released in English as Border Street in 1950.[4][5]
1949 Italy L'ebreo errante Goffredo Alessandrini First Italian film to openly address the Holocaust
1949 United States
West Germany Lang ist der Weg Herbert B. Fredersdorf
Marek Goldstein Yiddish title: Lang iz der Veg; English title: Long Is the Road
1950s
Year Country Title Director Notes
1950 Czechoslovakia Distant Journey Alfréd Radok English title: Distant Journey
1953 United States The Juggler Edward Dmytryk In 1949, former concentration camp inmate and Berlin native Hans Muller immigrates to Israel where, due to psychological problems, he cannot adjust to peacetime life.
1956 United States Singing in the Dark Max Nosseck Musical about Holocaust survivors with amnesia
1958–59 United States Pursuit Ian Sharp Anthology series
1959 East Germany
Bulgaria Stars Konrad Wolf English title: Stars
1959 United States The Diary of Anne Frank George Stevens Won three Academy Awards, including Best Supporting Actress
1959 Italy
Yugoslavia
France Kapò Gillo Pontecorvo
1959 Poland Biały niedźwiedź Jerzy Zarzycki A Jew who escaped from a transport to a concentration camp is hiding by posing for tourists disguised as a polar bear.
1960s
Year Country Title Director Notes
1960 Czechoslovakia Romeo, Julie a tma Jiří Weiss English title: Romeo, Juliet and Darkness. Concerns Operation Anthropoid.
1960 United States Exodus Otto Preminger Based on the novel by Leon Uris; screenplay by Dalton Trumbo.
1960 Yugoslavia Deveti krug France Stiglic English title:The Ninth Circle
1961 Italy Gold of Rome Carlo Lizzani Italian title: L'oro di Roma
1961 United States Judgment at Nuremberg Stanley Kramer Winner of Academy Awards for Best Actor and Best Adapted Screenplay
1961 Poland Samson Andrzej Wajda
1961 Belgium L'enclos Armand Gatti Italian title: Otto ore al buio. Prix de la Critique at 1961 Cannes Festival.
1963 Poland Passenger Andrzej Munk
1963 East Germany Naked Among Wolves Frank Beyer
1964 United States The Pawnbroker Sidney Lumet A Jewish pawnbroker, victim of Nazi persecution, loses all faith in his fellow man until he realizes too late the tragedy of his actions.
1965 East Germany Chronik eines Mordes Joachim Hasler English title: Chronicle of a Murder
1965 Czechoslovakia The Shop On Main Street Ján Kadár & Elmar Klos
1965 Germany The Investigation Peter Weiss Also as TV play "Die Ermittlung" (1966)
1966 United States The Last Chapter Benjamin Rothman & Lawrence Rothman, S. L. Shneiderman The Last Chapter is the destruction of Polish Jewry by the Nazi onslaught, depicted here with sensitivity and high drama. The film includes rare footage of Jewish life in early 20th century Poland.
1967 United States The Diary of Anne Frank Alex Segal TV movie: Harrowing story of a young Jewish girl who, with her family and their friends, is forced into hiding in an attic in Nazi-occupied Amsterdam.
1969 France Army of Shadows Jean Pierre Melville
