The Jewish Experience: 1933-1967
March 2006 Reviewed by: Marc Mickelson Format: DVD	(all ratings out of 5): Overall Enjoyment Picture Quality Packaged Extras Sound Quality

It is a sad fact that the Holocaust is a defining event in contemporary Jewish history, but as the seven individual movies that comprise The Jewish Experience: 1933-1967 show, the Holocaust has many facets. From an unknown collection of photographs of the Lodz Ghetto that became the catalyst for Photographer, to the discussion of why the Allies didn't liberate the concentration camps sooner that's at the center of They Looked Away, these movies go beyond the villainy of the Holocaust to present it with greater historical perspective. Two of the movies, Genocide and The Long Way Home, won Academy Awards, and all convey the gravity of their subjects with purpose and insight. This set is a worthy companion to The Sorrow and the Pity and Schindler's List, the most renowned movies about the Holocaust.

Even so, seven movies on such a somber subject are not easy to watch, especially in a condensed period of time. There is a sequence to these movies, however, so you can watch them one after another over the course of time and get a sense of their interconnectivity. Genocide discusses the historical underpinnings of anti-Semitism in Europe, the Nazi rise to power, and the atrocities perpetrated on European Jews. Photographer, Unlikely Heroes, and They Looked Away cover individual little-known aspects of the German extermination. Liberation deals with winning the war and freeing those Jews still living after years of torture and death, while The Long Way Home chronicles the plight of Holocaust survivors immediately after World War II. In Search of Peace documents the establishment of the State of Israel, the first two decades of its history, and the origins of the conflict in the Middle East.

The video quality of these DVDs varies from OK to awful. Genocide, for instance, looks like a VHS rental copy. Some of the DVDs have Dolby Digital 5.1 sound, which makes the mediocre video all the more confounding.

These movies put faces on the Holocaust by portraying the victims along with the suffering and killing they were forced to endure. As empathy pours forth, the movies are at their most affecting. We don't enjoy such movies, but we do learn from them. You should be able to rent individual titles of The Jewish Experience: 1933-1967, but the entire set should be considered necessary for public libraries everywhere.

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