Approved Audiovisual Resources for the Classroom
SB 1828 assigns the THGAAC the task of approving audiovisual resources that can be used in the classroom. The following resources are approved. SB 1828 allows each Texas school district to decide which THGAAC-approved materials are age-appropriate for their students.
Educators should screen in advance anything shown to students to ensure appropriateness.
A Daughter's Life in the Shadow of the Holocaust, 2023. Anna Salton Eisen shares her journey to uncover her father’s hidden Holocaust past. Using her father’s artwork, original Nazi documents and photographs from her research and trips with her father back to Poland, Anna shares her detailed search. This 20-minute presentation is designed for middle and high school students; view here
A Lasting Image, directed by Kirstin Stevens Schmidt, Ana Villareal, Scott Huddleston, and Christine Veras, 2022; American short film features Texas survivor Dr. Zsuzsanna Ozsváth, whose memoir, When the Danube Ran Red, is also approved for classroom use; view here
A Night at the Garden, directed by Marshall Curry, 2017. American documentary film; employs archival footage of 1939 American Nazi rally; TV-PG; 7 minutes; view here
Alma Rosé: A Tribute with the Ranana Symphonette Orchestra, 2016. Israeli television news story about Gustav Mahler’s niece, who served as Kapo for the women’s orchestra in Auschwitz, where she was killed; music teachers may find this of interest; 3 minutes; view here
Birthplace, directed by Pawel Lozinski, 1992. Subtitled Polish documentary film; features survivor who returns to Poland decades after the war to find out what happened to his father and baby brother; 47 minutes; view here
Blessed is the Match, directed by Roberta Grossman, 2010. American documentary film; features the story of Hannah Senesh, who was part of a small team of Jews that parachuted into Yugoslavia on a mission to save Hungary’s endangered Jews; she was captured and executed, but her poems are widely read; 86 minutes; view here
Bogdan’s Journey, directed by Michael Jaskulski, 2016. Partly subtitled Polish American documentary film; features a contemporary Catholic Pole who fights antisemitism through commemoration of the 1946 Kielce pogrom against Holocaust survivors; 90 minutes; view here
Brundibár: How the Nazis Conned the World (60 Minutes story), 2007. American television news magazine story featuring the story behind the children’s opera, Brundibar, which was written and performed in Terezín; the Nazis filmed the performance along with other art to convince outsiders that Jewish children were being treated well; theater teachers may find this of interest; 13 minutes; view here; also view here
Comparing the Holocaust to Other Genocides, Yad Vashem, 2008. This Yad Vashem lecture by historian Professor Yehuda Bauer highlights the unprecedented features of the Holocaust and where to locate parallels to other genocides; 21 minutes; view here
European Antisemitism from Its Origins to the Holocaust, USHMM, 2021. American documentary film; presents an overview of the growth of hatred and persecution of the Jewish people; 14 minutes; view here
Europa Europa (eugenics lesson scene only), directed by Agnieszka Holland, 1990. Subtitled clip from German-French feature film; depicts student hiding his Jewish identity from everyone at an elite Nazi school while instructor applies Nazi pseudo-science to “prove” to the class that the teenager is an Aryan; this is a great resource for showing how the fascist, antisemitic regime miseducated young people; 5 minutes; view here
Imaginary Witness: Hollywood and the Holocaust, directed by Daniel Anker, 2004. American documentary film; 92 minutes; view here
Lithuanian Holocaust Fraud (talk by Grant Gochin at Cape Town Genocide Center), 2022. Presentation exposing Lithuania's falsification of Holocaust memory, its portrayal of Holocaust perpetrators as rescuers and national heroes, and its more recent antisemitic discrimination against Jews; 59 minutes (plus introduction); view here
No Place on Earth, directed by Janet Tobias, 2013. American documentary film; survivors who hid in the world’s second-largest underground cavernous formation during the Holocaust return decades later to tell their story; the picture book, The Secret of Priest’s Grotto: A Holocaust Survival Story, tells of the same family; PG-13; 83 minutes; view here
One Survivor Remembers, directed by Kary Antholis, 1995. American documentary film; features interviews with Gerda Weissmann Klein, who survived concentration camps and a death march that are also described in the memoir, All But My Life; 40 minutes; opening images depict emaciated corpses; entire film may be found here
Rescue and Return, 2024. Video by filmmakers Anna Salton Eisen and Aaron Eisen of Texas, describing the fascinating activities of two individuals: Irena Sendler, who rescued Jewish children during the Holocaust, and Anna’s own mother, a Holocaust survivor who aided orphaned Jewish child survivors during the postwar period. 20 minutes; view here
Sister Rose’s Passion, directed by Oren Jacoby, 2004. American documentary film; features interviews with Sister Rose Thering, who fought antisemitism and influenced the Vatican’s Nostra aetate proclamation; educators in Catholic schools may find this of particular interest; 39 minutes; view here
Talk by Dr. Bernd Wollschlaeger, posted by JLI, 2021. A Nazi officer's son recounts how he came to reject his father's lies, uncover his family's antisemitic hatred, and build relationships with Jews; 54 minutes;
The Courage to Care, directed by Robert Gardner, 1985. American documentary film; features interviews with rescuers and rescued; 29 minutes; view here
The Path to Nazi Genocide, USHMM, 2014. American documentary film; features the rise of Nazism and Hitler, as well as its impact on Jews; 39 minutes; view here
The Miracle of Shanghai, posted by Shanghai Daily. Short video describing how Shanghai, China, provided refuge to thousands of Jews who fled the Holocaust; 5 minutes (Note: Some of those Jews eventually settled in Texas.) view here
The Vel d'Hiv Roundup, Yad Vashem, 2012. This Yad Vashem video assembles interview clips of Jews who were rounded up by French police and held in Paris's Winter Stadium in July 1942 before deportations to camps; 6 minutes; view here
Two Barns, directed by Haim Hecht, 2014. Subtitled Polish documentary film; featuring Jan Gross, Yehuda Bauer, and others, this film recounts the brutal mass murder of Jews by their own neighbors in Poland, including the example of Jewabne that is investigated in Gross’s book, Neighbors; includes some strong language and description of sexual violence; 62 minutes; view here
Viktor Frankl, Psychology, and the Holocaust, posted by JLI, 2021. Noted psychiatrist survives the Holocaust and shares the importance of a life purpose; 4 minutes; view here
Watchers of the Sky, directed by Edet Belzberg, 2014. American documentary film; features interviews with numerous people and especially highlights the story of Raphael Lemkin, who coined the term, genocide; other genocides are featured; narrated by Samantha Power, whose lengthy book, A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide, received the Pulitzer Prize; Power later served as US Ambassador to the UN; 120 minutes; view here
Approved Songs
"Cable Street." The Young'Uns, 2017. This song describes the Battle of Cable Street in London between anti-fascists and police officers protecting the British Union of Fascists in 1936; lyrics here
"Hi" ["Chai"]. Ofra Haza, 1983. This performance in Munich was first runner-up at Eurovision, where it was the Israeli entry. Decades after the Holocaust and several years after the Olympics massacre in the same city, Haza's dancers boldly wore yellow as she sang about the survival of the Jewish people; Hebrew and English lyrics here
"Red Sector A". Rush, 1984. This song about the camps is based on the experiences of singer Geddy Lee's mother, a survivor. Lee has spoken about the Holocaust in many interviews that can be found online; Lyrics here
"You Want It Darker." Leonard Cohen, 2016. Cohen's Grammy-winning song from his final album reflects his thoughts on the Holocaust; Lyrics here
"Zog nit keyn mol" ["Don't Ever Say"/Jewish Partisans Song]. Chava Alberstein, written in 1943. Inspired by news of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, Jewish partisan groups adopted this song as an unofficial anthem for their cause; Yiddish and English lyrics here
Audiovisual resources on the THGAAC Antisemitism page and the THGAAC Texas Connections page are also approved for classroom use during Holocaust Remembrance Week.