Holocaust

This is not a review, but a question: what is the total run-time of the version of "Holocaust" presented on these discs? I would ask the question elsewhere if there was such an option; alas, I can't find a link for that. When I purchased this three-disc set I was happy to see it listed as being 475 minutes long, but now that I actually have it in my hand, its length is indicated as 449 minutes. If true, that means that 26 minutes' of footage has been cut from the version I watched on television back in 1978. If anyone would be so kind to confirm the actual length, I would very much appreciate it. Thank you.

i remember how this series touched me when it first aired on tv. i was about 17 years old. it's gripping, horrifying, and seems too awful to have really happened, but it did. i just wanted to say my criticism is for the editing out of certain scenes that i remembered from the original airing, but are not present here. it seems that the people who release these sets figure the stupid buying public won't know or care that they chopped out certain bits of the original film. Please, put the film back together and charge me a few dollars more.

Picture quality is ok. No special features or bonuses for buying on blu-ray for $43. Also CBS decided to cut off the original closing logos (Worldvision) that were on the dvd version. Probably not a big deal to some but i like seeing the original logos. Also the picutre does not look like a true widescreen. Looks like they took a full frame and enlarged it to make it appear widescreen. Seems like some of the top and bottom of the picture is cropped out at times.

I can’t tell you this is an enjoyable story, but it is representative of the lives of millions of Jewish families during the ghastly Nazi genocide. I consider it is a valuable cinematic reminder of a black time that should be presented to every generation going forward so we never forget what godless men did to six million Jewish people who were unjustly vilified. The Nazis carefully crafted their propaganda to make the average German citizen think the evil aimed at the Jewish citizens was well-deserved and necessary. In only 10 years time, their Jewish neighbors and friends became disposable. It is horrifying that such a complete change in thinking was so quickly accomplished. How could that happen? Satan is real, alive, entirely evil, and is continually active, as much now as he was then. Keep your eyes open — read your Bible so you will recognize events that demonstrate Satan’s continual hatred of God, which are demonstrated by attacks against Jews and Christians.I highly recommend a movie series called “The Chosen” which can be watched for free on their app for Apple and Windows computers. It portrays an entirely biblical account of the life and ministry of Jesus Christ, who is arguable the most well known Jew that ever lived on Earth, I love it because it shows the full humanity of our Lord as both a driven, holy man with a God-given, eternal purpose, and a very human man who experienced joy as we do; a smiling Jesus as He talks with His disciples and welcomes children.. Typically cinematic portrayals of Jesus portray him as a man who too serious to ever smile, but I can’t believe that is accurate. Spend some time watching Bible history acted out before you. You won’t be disappointed!

Because the  Holocaust  miniseries aired on TV before I was even born, it wasn't until it was shown again on The History Channel sometime in the late 90s that I saw it for the first time. At that time, I was very disappointed by the lack of closure for the characters at the end of the movie. But because I'd seen it on TV, in what I assumed was syndication, I just thought that some of the scenes had been cut in order to make room for more commercials and that I'd get to see those scenes when it was released on home video (or later on, on DVD or Blu-Ray). But several years later, when the movie was finally released on DVD, and I bought one, I saw that the ending of the movie was still just as abrupt as the version I saw on TV, and was hugely disappointed to read that the DVD "may be edited from its original network version". Since I wasn't even born yet, when the network version aired, I never got to see that version, so I had no way of knowing what scenes had been cut (and were missing) from the DVD version -- and even though I got an official VHS set that said it was the original full-length version of the movie, the ending was still the same as both the TV version I saw as well as the DVD set.I have been extremely interested in the subject/era of the Holocaust ever since I was around 9 years old, and I saw some of the concentration-camp scenes in  War and Remembrance  which had a profound effect on me. Although it gave me terrible nightmares for awhile (as did reading Viktor Frankl's  Man's Search for Meaning  which I'd read some passages of around that same time) it sparked a very deep & lifelong interest (some family members have even called it an "obsession") in the Holocaust.Although this is a GREAT movie, the DVD release itself is very shoddy! Not only have they admitted that scenes have been cut (though I don't know/can't tell yet what they are) the quality of the video & sound shows how cheaply its been produced and released -- utterly NOT representative of all the technology available at their disposal to remaster the video & sound to modern, digital & even HD standards!***** 5 STARS for the movie itself!*** 3 STARS for this MEDIOCRE DVD Release!**** 4 STARS overall but yet a HUGE DISAPPOINTMENT!!From the "blurb" on the back of the DVD set box:A Story of Hope in a Time of DespairOscar winner Meryl Streep, James Woods and Michael Moriarty star in this epic miniseries, winner of numerous awards including eight Emmy Awards, two Golden Globes and a Peabody Award. This three-disc anniversary edition marks the first presentation of the groundbreaking miniseries on DVD.Holocaust follows the tragedy and triumph of the Weiss famly of Berlin, and intertwines their fate as European Jews with the story of a German family, the Dorfs, whose members include a high-ranking Nazi officer. Filmed on location in Germany and Austria, Holocaust uses the stories of these fictional families to portray the atrocities against the Jewish people from the 1930s to 1945, and presents a heart-wrenching portrait of their struggle.** POSSIBLE SPOILERS AHEAD!! ** Holocaust  is the harrowing & heartbreaking story of two German families from Berlin, prior to, and during World War II -- one a Christian family who become Nazis out of economic necessity, and eventually become bloodthirsty, remorseless mass murderers, and the other, a Jewish family who become their victims, and whose lives are gradually but systematically destroyed in the diabolically evil genocide known as the "Shoah, or more commonly called the HOLOCAUST.The "Aryan" Dorf family, is headed by Erik (played to CHILLING perfection by Michael Moriarty [of the early seasons of the  Law & Order  TV series]) a charming & brilliant, yet unemployed German lawyer who struggles to to find work to support his wife Marta (Deborah Norton) and two young children, Peter and Laura. At the insistence of sickly (but yet, still extremely ambitious-for-her-husband) wife, Erik joins the Nazi Party out of sheer desperation to earn income, but then rapidly advances within the SS, and in a short time, becomes essentially the "right-hand man" for Reinhard Heydrich (David Warner) a top-level Nazi and one of the engineers of the "Final Solution". As Erik rises up the ranks, and is constantly bombarded with & brainwashed by Nazi ideology, he is soon transformed from someone who, in the beginning, had little to no interest in politics, and is such a meek, mild-mannered & gentle man, that seems the type unable to harm even a fly and becomes a ruthless cold-blooded killer who's main & primary concern is career advancement, and loyalty to "the Fatherland" & the Führer. Encouraged by Marta, who is insanely obsessed with her husband's ambition (and at least in the beginning, his lack thereof!) and career advancement to the exclusion of nearly everything else, Erik abandons all morals, empathy, values & ethics, and is able to not only justify but order and even actively participate in the slaughter of millions.The other family is the completely assimilated German-Jewish, and at least in the beginning, the middle to upper-class Weiss family, headed by Dr. Josef Weiss (Fritz Weaver) a Polish-born & raised, general physician, and his cultured, aristocratic, and usually domineering German-born & raised wife, Berta (Rosemary Harris), who came from a "Hoch-Deutsch" family, whose ancestors were ethnic German "court Jews" and friends of princes & cardinals. Together, Josef & Berta have three children -- and in the beginning of the book, they are twenty-something artist, Karl (James Woods), teenage athlete & star soccer player Rudi (Joseph Bottoms), and preteen Anna (Blanche Baker) Holocaust  begins in 1935 in Berlin, with the wedding of Karl and and Inga Helms (Meryl Streep) an "Aryan" Christian woman. Meanwhile, the unemployed Erik and his ill wife Marta, go to see Dr. Josef Weiss, who diagnoses a systolic heart murmur, and discover that Dr. Weiss had also treated Erik Dorf's parents, as well as Erik during his childhood, decades earlier. Later, unable to find decent employment, and struggling to support his family, at the insistence of his wife, Erik interviews with Reinhard Heydrich for a job in the Nazi Party and as the old saying goes, "the rest is history!"Beginning with the wedding of Karl & Inga in 1935, this miniseries spans the period from 1938 to 1945 and covers all the events in the Holocaust, from Kristallnacht to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, the Sobibor death camp revolt, and ultimately the end of World War II & the liberation of the camps. It portrays all the crimes of the Nazis, including "Kristallnacht", the "Action T4 euthanasia" murders of the disabled, the Babi Yar massacres, the deportations to & imprisonment in the ghettos, and of course, the murders of millions in the death camps. Holocaust  is a searingly moving story, that drives home the magnitude of death, pain & destruction caused by the Hitler and his Nazi thugs during the Third Reich -- and how utterly senseless it all was. After seeing this TV miniseries, I just felt so bereft at the thought of how many happy & loving families like the Weiss family were ruthlessly destroyed for no reason.Just like with the majority of the Holocaust-related books or films that I've read or seen over the years, I was left feeling drained, defeated and devastated at how millions of innocent people were senselessly & brutally murdered -- and especially that the rest of the world just sat by day after day, week after week, and month after month for YEARS and just let it happen, and worse, keep happening. For all the claims & promises of "Never Again", the rest of the world has still sat by while genocide after genocide continues to happen -- in Cambodia, in North Korea, in Israel/Palestine, in Serbia/Croatia/Bosnia-Hercegovina, in Rwanda, the Sudan, and Sierra Leone, and in Uganda, the Congo, Darfur and so many others!Unfortunately, the world seems to have learned NOTHING from the Holocaust, and that is one of the saddest & scariest things of all!! :(

I remember this being on tv but never saw it, I guess I was working and pre-video recoreder that meant you just missed the programme. I do know that it won awards and is highly praised, however, when I watched it I found it really dated (not in a good way) lacking in any sense of the true enormity and cruelty of the persecution of Jews leading up to WWII and the Holocaust itself.I wondered how my perceptions matched how others saw it. When I read into it there were many who identified historical inaccuracies. The most damning judgement comes from the noted Holocaust survivor and author Elie Wiesel who described it as:“Untrue, offensive, cheap: as a TV production, the film an insult to those who perished and to those who survived. spite of its name, this “docu‐drama” is not about what some of us remember as the Holocaust.Am I too harsh? Too sensitive, perhaps. But then, the film is not sensitive enough. It tries to show what cannot even imagined. It transforms an ontological event into soap‐opera. Whatever the intentions, the result is shocking.”Elie Wiesel (1978) ”Trivializing the Holocaust: Semi-Fact and Semi-Fiction.” 16 April 1978. The New York Times.

An excellently done tv series made in the late 1970's about the rise of anti-semitism and the Holocaust in Germany and wider Europe. Despite showing its age a bit re filming format etc this series did attempt to convey to a considerable degree the insidious burgeoning horror of what happened seen through the experiences of a German Jewish family and also that of a Nazi one. This is a very difficult subject to film convincingly as the sheer scale and enormity and dreadfulness of what happened can somehow seem lessened or toned down by a film drama, and this series has been criticised for being over-sanitised. But bearing in mind these limitations and the fact that this was made for a tv audience viewing nearly forty years ago, it is still pretty hard-hitting and doesn't shrink from portraying the random tragedy such as happens to the daughter of the Jewish family or the sheer chilling cold indifference of the Nazi's re murdering vast numbers of innocent people. It also shows examples of the Jewish resistance fighting back, as in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising and one son joining the Russian fighters. The main thing that comes across so clearly though is on the one hand the terrible tragedy of seeing a normal loving happy family gradually destroyed by an evil regime, for which you can multiply that family by hundreds of thousands of other family's and individual's who suffered the same fate, and on the other the almost incomprehensible indifference and or fanatical conformism of the Nazi family and others. The Germany of today is a beacon of democracy and human rights etc in Europe and the world, but sadly we are seeing in other countries a disturbing rise in anti-Semitism again.

Considering this is billed as a “30th Anniversary Collector’s Set”, it’s more like a “recorded off the telly in the 80’s and transferred onto a DVD at home”. There are strange jump-cuts throughout, the picture quality is pretty poor in comparison to the vast majority of DVD releases, the sound quality is less than perfect, even if it IS something that has been transferred directly from video tape to DVD (ranging from muffled to bits that go silent partway through dialogue).Revelation can do much better than this. Hopefully someone will get hold of the rights and do a decent job on it, someone like Network!

This is an awful attempt to portray the Holocaust with largely American and British actors who attempt to portray Germans without any attempt to disguise their accents. This alone makes the entire series completely stupid and, as has been said, an insult to those who died in the Holocaust. James Woods and Meryl Streep are wasted in this rubbish. They are great actors with authentic American accents but don't even attempt the German accent. Don't waste money on this rubbish! Instead, watch the infinitely superior "Winds of War" and the sequel "War and Remembrance".

It's been a very long time since I watched this series but I'd yearned to see it again, so when I saw it available in DVD, I hit 'buy it' immediately. Sometimes the films I remember are disappointing, but this is still as awfully great as in 1978 (really? Wow!). The story covers a wide story without strain, the cast is fabulous - Nigel Hawthorne in a one-line part - and all their performances are top notch. You will SO need lots of paper hankies. Really. Lots.