This powerful, often intimate documentary is a work of collective memory exploring the lives of European Jews before and during the Holocaust. Jewish interviewees who were children in the 1930s and ‘40s recall the communities in which they lived with parents, grandparents, and neighbors, where they celebrated Sabbaths together, studied the Torah, and ate well. Not all memories of this time are rosy: several here speak of harsh treatment at the hands of teachers, or remember the unfairness of the sexes being segregated at school and in certain services. But all of these concerns were wiped away with the arrival of the Nazis and the beginning of the campaign to eliminate Jews. Survivors talk about being thrown out of their homes and businesses, shut away in ghettoes, and transported to concentration camps, where they were separated from loved ones (often forever). Along the way, viewers will hear stories of heroism and sacrifice as well as unspeakable cruelty and loss. The final third of filmmaker Isaac Hertz's Life Is Strange focuses on the aftermath of World War II, when the interviewees—including former Israeli president Shimon Peres, Nobel laureates Walter Kohn and Robert Aumann, and children's book author Uri Orlev—rebuilt their lives. DVD extras include deleted scenes. Highly recommended. Aud: H, C, P. (T. Keogh)
Life Is Strange
(2014) 53 min. DVD: $24.99. Dreamscape Media ($199 w/PPR). Volume 30, Issue 1
Life Is Strange
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