Ten movies and two TV series to stream on Memorial

Ten movies (and two TV series) to stream on Memorial Day

The horror and madness of the Shoah cannot and must not be forgotten. For this reason, in 2005, the UN created the Memorial Day, which was created on January 27, because on that day in 1945, Red Army troops liberated the infamous Auschwitz concentration camp.

Many films have been produced over the decades telling the tragedy of the Holocaust, the raids, the concentration camps and the murder of 6 million Jews. We’ve, in our own little way, handpicked ten to watch streaming on Netflix, Prime Video and Disney+.

In addition, we’ve added two TV series: one is closely related to the theme of memory, and it’s The Devil Next Door, while the other, Hunters, which doesn’t specifically (and historically) speak about the Shoah, deals with that Topic but still from an original point of view and reveals some dark sides of the post-war period. It’s your choice what you want to see, we all have a duty to remember.

Unbroken (Netflix)

The track and field Olympic champion Louis Zamperini becomes a pilot in World War II and, captured by the Japanese, has to fight for survival.

The Bombing (Netflix)

The fates of several Copenhageners intertwine when a bombing raid accidentally lands on a school full of children during World War II.

The Photographer of Mauthausen (Netflix)

Based on a true story, the film tells the life of Francesc Boix, a photographer who, after ending up in a concentration camp, uses his work to avoid torture and be able to document everything that happened in the camp. The SS asked him to take pictures of the prisoners, pictures that the photographer could keep and take with him from the camp.

My Best Friend, Anne Frank (Netflix)

This feature film tells the story of Anne Frank from the perspective of her friend Hanneli Goslar, a very young Jewish writer. The two girls went their separate ways after the raids, when Anna and her family managed to hide and get Hanneli a passport to flee to South America. Then the two can meet again, but under uncomfortable circumstances, namely in the Bergen-Belsen camp.

Riphagen (Netflix)

Riphagen is a biopic about Andries Riphagen, a Dutch criminal remembered for blackmailing several fleeing Jews and contributing to their deaths and capture.

Good – The Indifference of Good (Prime Video)

In Germany, during the rise of National Socialism, John Halder is a teacher with a neurotic wife, two demanding children and a mother suffering from senile dementia. In a book, John investigates his mother’s drama, supports the choice of euthanasia, and immediately becomes a case viewed as a propaganda tool by the upper echelons of Nazi politics. He’ll try to fight all of that.

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Spring Wind (Prime Video)

On the night of July 15/16, 1942, over 13,000 Jews were arrested in Paris. All families with children are rounded up in the Velodrome d’Hiver and await their deportation. In the morning the children are alone, they have been separated from their parents. All the characters really existed and all the events, including the most dramatic, took place in the summer of 1942. With Jean Reno, Melanie Laurent.

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The Son of Saul (Prime Video)

Forced to assist the Nazis in their plans for extermination, a concentration camp inmate embarks on an impossible mission to redeem himself.

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The Auschwitz Guard (Prime Video)

An SS officer tasked with building a new gas chamber at Auschwitz begins to realize he is contributing to an atrocity.

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Life is Beautiful (Disney+)

Can fantasy change reality? We laugh and cry in Benigni’s three-Oscar-winning film. The story of Guido, a Jew who, along with his son, is deported to a concentration camp where, in order to save the child’s life and protect him from the horrors of reality, he invents them to take part in a game show in which they have to face very hard attempts to win a tank.

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Hunter (Prime Video TV series)

It’s not a movie and it doesn’t talk directly about the Holocaust, but in our opinion, this TV series deserves a place in this list because it managed to create a narrative universe that mixes the gruesome reality of the Holocaust and the escape, more or less protected, the Nazis and the fiction of a group of hunters who want to track them down and avenge the deaths of the Jews they killed. And then there’s an Al Pacino in great shape, which doesn’t hurt…

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Hunter 2 review

The Devil Next Door (Netflix TV Series)

It is a five episode miniseries that tells the story of an elderly man who is brought from Cleveland to Israel to stand trial. He is accused of being Ivan the Terrible, a ruthless executioner guilty of war crimes during the Nazi annihilation.