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On Yom HaShoah, Three New Holocaust Films Are Worth Watching
The entrance to Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.
As we mark Yom HaShoah this year, three Holocaust films stand out.
The first is a gripping drama about the first Jewish escape from a death camp. The World Will Tremble is directed by Lior Geller and features excellent acting by Oliver-Jackson Cohen, who plays Solomon, a Jew who makes an unlikely escape from Chelmno. The cast of Jews and Germans is all stellar but Geller, who wrote and directed the film, is the real star. Geller crafted a gripping film that soaks you in a bath of horror and despair only to embrace you with a towel of freedom and hope. It is an impressive movie that is full of heart, and tells a story that is not well known.
UnBroken is a documentary that shares the seemingly implausible story of seven Jewish siblings who survived the Holocaust, largely due to gentile farmers who chose to hide them. It is directed with deft and passion by Beth Lane, who goes to Germany to see the places where her family, including her mother, hid.
Unbroken explains how Lane’s grandmother was extremely daring, and when she loved a Christian man, she got him to convert. There is some unexpected humor toward the beginning of the film, and at a time when few survivors are alive, it is a blessing to see a film in which some appear and are completely cogent. The film is also based on the writings of Alfons, one of the seven siblings who survived. Was that result due to luck, kindness of farmers, or the work of God? The film is not overly preachy and allows the viewer to come to their own conclusions.
Lane’s film is an exquisite look at how the morality of two people can impact more than 70 lives, as the siblings have children and grandchildren. At one point, Lane asks if young people today would risk their lives to hide her. We can never really know what one would really do, but I suspect that few would risk their lives to save strangers.
Both The World Will Tremble and UnBroken would be excellent choices to show high school or college classes.
And if you want to learn about something you most certainly haven’t heard of, none other than the iconic Martin Scorsese has done an episode of his series The Saints that involves an unexpected hero of the Holocaust. Available on Fox Nation, the episode tells of Maximilian Kolbe, a Catholic priest who started the first Christian radio station in Poland. Interestingly, Kolbe at one time preached antisemitism, believing that the sick conspiracy book The Protocols of The Elders of Zion was actually true.
But that did not stop him from doing something unthinkable when the Gestapo sent him to Auschwitz. When one Jew escaped, a Nazi decided 10 would have to die. When Kolbe heard that one Jewish man cried that he had a wife and child, Kolbe asked the Nazi if he could be killed instead. He agreed. And a Jewish man named Franciszek Gajowniczek was saved, and lived until 1995 and attended the canonization of Kolbe.
There is not much dialogue, but the acting of Milivoje Obradovic is strong as Kolbe, who isn’t dramatic, doesn’t yell and chooses his fate to die for a Jew as if it is a totally normal request, even though the Nazi seems dumbfounded.
It is unclear whether or not he realized The Protocols of The Elders of Zion was a lie, or he simply realized that the barbarity of the Holocaust was an affront to God. Earlier in the episode, as a child, he says he wants to be pure and a martyr and may have been affected by his father’s death.
At a time when some people think they know all of the Holocaust stories already out there, here are three new ones — and all are worth telling.
The author is a writer based in New York.
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Iranian Media Claims Obtaining ‘Sensitive’ Israeli Intelligence Materials
FILE PHOTO: The atomic symbol and the Iranian flag are seen in this illustration, July 21, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
i24 News – Iranian and Iran-affiliated media claimed on Saturday that the Islamic Republic had obtained a trove of “strategic and sensitive” Israeli intelligence materials related to Israel’s nuclear facilities and defense plans.
“Iran’s intelligence apparatus has obtained a vast quantity of strategic and sensitive information and documents belonging to the Zionist regime,” Iran’s state broadcaster said, referring to Israel in the manner accepted in those Muslim or Arab states that don’t recognize its legitimacy. The statement was also relayed by the Lebanese site Al-Mayadeen, affiliated with the Iran-backed jihadists of Hezbollah.
The reports did not include any details on the documents or how Iran had obtained them.
The intelligence reportedly included “thousands of documents related to that regime’s nuclear plans and facilities,” it added.
According to the reports, “the data haul was extracted during a covert operation and included a vast volume of materials including documents, images, and videos.”
The report comes amid high tensions over Iran’s nuclear program, over which it is in talks with the US administration of President Donald Trump.
Iranian-Israeli tensions reached an all-time high since the October 7 massacre and the subsequent Gaza war, including Iranian rocket fire on Israel and Israeli aerial raids in Iran that devastated much of the regime’s air defenses.
Israel, which regards the prospect of the antisemitic mullah regime obtaining a nuclear weapon as an existential threat, has indicated it could resort to a military strike against Iran’s installations should talks fail to curb uranium enrichment.
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Israel Retrieves Body of Thai Hostage from Gaza
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz looks on, amid the ongoing conflict in Gaza between Israel and Hamas, in Jerusalem, Nov. 7, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
The Israeli military has retrieved the body of a Thai hostage who had been held in Gaza since Hamas’ October 7, 2023 attack, Defense Minister Israel Katz said on Saturday.
Nattapong Pinta’s body was held by a Palestinian terrorist group called the Mujahedeen Brigades, and was recovered from the area of Rafah in southern Gaza, Katz said. His family in Thailand has been notified.
Pinta, an agricultural worker, was abducted from Kibbutz Nir Oz, a small Israeli community near the Gaza border where a quarter of the population was killed or taken hostage during the Hamas attack that triggered the devastating war in Gaza.
Israel’s military said Pinta had been abducted alive and killed by his captors, who had also killed and taken to Gaza the bodies of two more Israeli-American hostages that were retrieved earlier this week.
There was no immediate comment from the Mujahedeen Brigades, who have previously denied killing their captives, or from Hamas. The Israeli military said the Brigades were still holding the body of another foreign national. Only 20 of the 55 remaining hostages are believed to still be alive.
The Mujahedeen Brigades also held and killed Israeli hostage Shiri Bibas and her two young sons, according to Israeli authorities. Their bodies were returned during a two-month ceasefire, which collapsed in March after the two sides could not agree on terms for extending it to a second phase.
Israel has since expanded its offensive across the Gaza Strip as US, Qatari and Egyptian-led efforts to secure another ceasefire have faltered.
US-BACKED AID GROUP HALTS DISTRIBUTIONS
The United Nations has warned that most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population is at risk of famine after an 11-week Israeli blockade of the enclave, with the rate of young children suffering from acute malnutrition nearly tripling.
Aid distribution was halted on Friday after the US-and Israeli-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation said overcrowding had made it unsafe to continue operations. It was unclear whether aid had resumed on Saturday.
The GHF began distributing food packages in Gaza at the end of May, overseeing a new model of aid distribution which the United Nations says is neither impartial nor neutral. It says it has provided around 9 million meals so far.
The Israeli military said on Saturday that 350 trucks of humanitarian aid belonging to U.N. and other international relief groups were transferred this week via the Kerem Shalom crossing into Gaza.
The war erupted after Hamas-led terrorists took 251 hostages and killed 1,200 people, most of them civilians, in the October 7, 2023 attack, Israel’s single deadliest day.
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US Mulls Giving Millions to Controversial Gaza Aid Foundation, Sources Say
Palestinians carry aid supplies which they received from the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, in the central Gaza Strip, May 29, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ramadan Abed/File Photo
The State Department is weighing giving $500 million to the new foundation providing aid to war-shattered Gaza, according to two knowledgeable sources and two former US officials, a move that would involve the US more deeply in a controversial aid effort that has been beset by violence and chaos.
The sources and former US officials, all of whom requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said that money for Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) would come from the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which is being folded into the US State Department.
The plan has met resistance from some US officials concerned with the deadly shootings of Palestinians near aid distribution sites and the competence of the GHF, the two sources said.
The GHF, which has been fiercely criticized by humanitarian organizations, including the United Nations, for an alleged lack of neutrality, began distributing aid last week amid warnings that most of Gaza’s 2.3 million population is at risk of famine after an 11-week Israeli aid blockade, which was lifted on May 19 when limited deliveries were allowed to resume.
The foundation has seen senior personnel quit and had to pause handouts twice this week after crowds overwhelmed its distribution hubs.
The State Department and GHF did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Reuters has been unable to establish who is currently funding the GHF operations, which began in Gaza last week. The GHF uses private US security and logistics companies to transport aid into Gaza for distribution at so-called secure distribution sites.
On Thursday, Reuters reported that a Chicago-based private equity firm, McNally Capital, has an “economic interest” in the for-profit US contractor overseeing the logistics and security of GHF’s aid distribution hubs in the enclave.
While US President Donald Trump’s administration and Israel say they don’t finance the GHF operation, both have been pressing the United Nations and international aid groups to work with it.
The US and Israel argue that aid distributed by a long-established U.N. aid network was diverted to Hamas. Hamas has denied that.
USAID has been all but dismantled. Some 80 percent of its programs have been canceled and its staff face termination as part of President Donald Trump’s drive to align US foreign policy with his “America First” agenda.
One source with knowledge of the matter and one former senior official said the proposal to give the $500 million to GHF has been championed by acting deputy USAID Administrator Ken Jackson, who has helped oversee the agency’s dismemberment.
The source said that Israel requested the funds to underwrite GHF’s operations for 180 days.
The Israeli government did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The two sources said that some US officials have concerns with the plan because of the overcrowding that has affected the aid distribution hubs run by GHF’s contractor, and violence nearby.
Those officials also want well-established non-governmental organizations experienced in running aid operations in Gaza and elsewhere to be involved in the operation if the State Department approves the funds for GHF, a position that Israel likely will oppose, the sources said.
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