Film and video for classroom use across the platform's six Units. The entries below come from established archives, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, Yad Vashem, the Spielberg Jewish Film Archive at the Hebrew University, the USC Shoah Foundation, the POLIN Museum, Centropa, and the Anti-Defamation League, among others. Some are free, some are institutional rentals, and some need school licensing. Each entry notes the grade band, the source, the running time where relevant, and the licensing situation.
A note on use. Documentary film on Holocaust and antisemitism material takes careful teacher preparation. The platform recommends previewing every film in full before classroom use, framing it with grade-band sensitivity, and pairing video with the discussion structures the teaching institutions linked here have built over decades. Yad Vashem's International School, the USHMM's Mandel Center, Echoes & Reflections, and Facing History & Ourselves all maintain detailed guidance for using film in Holocaust instruction.
Jewish roots in film
Film is about 130 years old. From its first decades, Jews helped build it in several countries at once, often because the new medium had no established gatekeepers yet.
In Hollywood, most of the people who founded the studios were Jewish immigrants who had been shut out of older, more respectable trades. Carl Laemmle, a clothing merchant born in Germany, started Universal. Adolph Zukor, a furrier born in Hungary, built Paramount. Samuel Goldwyn, born Schmuel Gelbfisz in Warsaw, Poland, had sold gloves. Louis B. Mayer, born in the Russian Empire, ran Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. William Fox, born in Hungary, founded the studio that became 20th Century Fox. The four Warner brothers, three of them born in Poland, built Warner Bros. Some used the new medium with a purpose. Harry and Jack Warner pushed their studio to warn against Nazism in the 1930s, when that was unpopular in the United States. Laemmle, in his last years, signed affidavits for more than 300 German Jews trying to leave Nazi Germany.
In Egypt, Togo Mizrahi, an Alexandrian Jew, was one of the founders of the Arabic-language film industry. He opened a studio in Alexandria in 1929 and directed about thirty Egyptian features in the 1930s and 1940s, working with the era's biggest stars, including the singer Umm Kulthum and the Jewish-Egyptian actress Layla Murad. His comedies often put Jewish and Muslim characters on screen as neighbors and friends.
In Iraq, the first feature film produced in the country, ‘Aliya wa ‘Isam (1948), was written by the Jewish-Iraqi writer Anwar Sha’ul (1904–1984). (The Jews of Iraq trace back more than 2,500 years. Their fuller story is told in The Jews of Iraq, A Connected People, and The Departure from MENA Chapters.)
And the thread runs to today. Storytellers like Billy Wilder, who fled Germany when the Nazis rose and lost family in the camps, and later Sidney Lumet and Steven Spielberg shaped how audiences saw the world. In 1994, after making Schindler's List, Spielberg founded what is now the USC Shoah Foundation. Its Visual History Archive now holds more than 60,000 video testimonies, most of them from Holocaust survivors and witnesses.
Sources: Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, “Hollywoodland: Jewish Founders and the Making of a Movie Capital” (2024); Deborah Starr, Togo Mizrahi and the Making of Egyptian Cinema (Univ. of California Press, 2020); World Jewish Congress, “The Patriot Who Wrote Iraq’s First Film” (worldjewishcongress.org); USC Shoah Foundation, Visual History Archive (sfi.usc.edu/collections); Neal Gabler, An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood (1988). The fuller story is now told in The Founders of Hollywood, in the Jewish Contributions Unit.
Continuity, geography, and the documentary record.
The Story of the Jews
9–12Historian Simon Schama presents a sweeping survey of Jewish history across the world and across the centuries, from ancient origins through the diaspora, persecution, emigration, and modern life. Wide in scope and accessible in tone, it works as an overview companion to many Chapters across the platform. Series page at PBS →
Dead Sea Scroll Detectives
7–12An archaeology-and-science documentary on the Dead Sea Scrolls, the roughly 2,000-year-old manuscripts found in caves near the Dead Sea from 1947 on, the oldest surviving copies of many ancient Hebrew texts. The film follows scientists using new imaging to read damaged scrolls, and forensic experts exposing recently surfaced fragments as modern forgeries. A strong pairing for the Sacred Texts Chapter and for the platform's lesson on provenance, how scholars tell a genuine ancient source from a fake.
Standards · NYS Global History 9.3 · C3 D2.His.16 (evaluating sources & authenticity)
Cairo Genizah Videos
10–12Short videos from Cambridge University Library’s Taylor-Schechter Genizah Research Unit, including a virtual tour of the Cairo Genizah Collection. The Genizah was a synagogue storeroom in Cairo whose discarded papers document the medieval Mediterranean Jewish world. Pairs with the Diaspora and Maimonides Chapters.
Standards · NYS Global History 9.3 · C3 D2.His.16 (primary sources)
From Cairo to the Cloud: The World of the Cairo Geniza
9–12The storeroom of the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Cairo held, across all the collections it was dispersed into, around 400,000 fragments: letters, contracts, shopping lists, and schoolchildren’s writing practice from the medieval Jewish world of the Mediterranean. The film tells how the papers left the synagogue at the end of the 1800s for libraries in Cambridge and beyond, and how digital projects are now putting them online. Pairs with the Geniza section of the Diaspora Chapter and with the Cambridge Genizah videos above. Educational licenses through GOOD DOCS, the distributor the film’s site points to.
Standards · NYS Global History 9.3 · C3 D2.His.16 (primary sources)
Place, people, and the journeys between them.
The Jewish Americans
9–12The PBS series on 350 years of Jewish life in the United States. It begins with the 23 Jews who landed at New Amsterdam (now New York) in 1654, fleeing the Inquisition. It follows immigration, assimilation, and the pull between being American and being Jewish. Broadcast in three two-hour parts, and individual episodes fit a class unit. The direct pairing for the American Jewry Chapter.
Standards · NYS US History 11.1–11.10 · C3 D2.His.1 (continuity & change)
Tinghir-Jerusalem: Echoes from the Mellah
9–12A Berber Muslim filmmaker born in Tinghir, in southern Morocco, and raised in France, searches for the town’s vanished Jewish community. Its old Jewish quarter was the mellah. He travels to Israel to meet emigrants from Tinghir and their descendants, some of whom still speak Berber. The film presents its own view of why Morocco’s Jews left, a point of view to weigh against the record in the Departure from MENA Chapter.
Standards · NYS Global History 10.10 · C3 D2.His.4 (multiple perspectives)
Jews of Egypt
10–12An Egyptian director's film on the Egyptian Jewish community (some 75,000 to 80,000 people in 1948) from a cosmopolitan golden age in Cairo and Alexandria to the expulsions after the 1956 Suez Crisis. Built from archival footage and interviews. Its 2013 Egyptian release was briefly blocked by the security services before the censor cleared it. It carries the director’s own framing about tolerance and identity, which makes it useful as a point-of-view source. Pairs with the Departure from MENA Chapter.
Standards · NYS Global History 10.10 · Common Core RH.11-12.6 (point of view)
Check educational distributors and current streaming listings.
Jews of Iran
10–12A Muslim filmmaker documents the Persian Jewish community, one of the oldest in the world, present for over 2,500 years and by then a small minority under the Islamic Republic. Filmed in Tehran, Isfahan, and Shiraz, it records everyday Jewish-Iranian life. In Shiraz it also records the 1999 case of thirteen Jews of the city who were arrested as spies for Israel and the United States and tried in secret. Amnesty International said the trial fell far short of fair-trial standards. Pairs with the Diaspora Chapter and the broader MENA story.
Standards · NYS Global History 10.10 · C3 D2.His.4 (perspective) · Common Core RH.9-10.2
Ruth Diskin Films (distributor) → · Amnesty International on the Shiraz trial, 2000 →
Remember Baghdad
9–12The Iraqi Jewish story across the twentieth century, told through the home movies, photographs, and memories of Iraqi Jews and archive news footage. In 1917 about a third of Baghdad, Iraq, was Jewish. The film follows the community through the 1941 Farhud, a two-day attack on Baghdad’s Jews, and the departure of roughly 120,000 to 130,000, mostly to Israel, in 1950–1952. It ends with one man returning to Baghdad. The direct pairing for the Departure from MENA Chapter. On demand and DVD through the film’s site.
Standards · NYS Global History 10.10 · NYS US History 11.10 · C3 D2.His.16 (home-movie & photo sources)
The Last Jews of Baghdad
9–12A historical and personal account of the persecution and departure of Iraq's Jews between 1940 and 2003, among the first documentaries to record this community's struggle, from a presence of 2,500 years down to the handful who remained. Survivor testimony anchors the film. Pairs with the Departure from MENA and the Holocaust in the Middle East and North Africa Chapters. Available through UK Jewish Film and educational distributors.
Standards · NYS Global History 10.10 · C3 D2.His.14 (causation) · Common Core RH.9-10.2
What We Left Behind
6–12A short film on the December 2013 burial in New York of Torah and Book of Esther scroll fragments. They were recovered with the Iraqi Jewish Archive from a flooded Baghdad basement and judged beyond repair by rabbinical authorities. Pairs with The Jews of Iraq Chapter.
Standards · NYS Global History 10.10
Forget Baghdad
11–12A more advanced film: a reflection on the stereotypes of “the Jew” and “the Arab” across a century of cinema. It is told through four Iraqi-Jewish former communists, among them the Israeli novelist Sami Michael, and the scholar Ella Shohat. It asks how identity is shaped and mislabeled, a strong point-of-view exercise rather than a survey of events. It is a film about ideas and representation, best suited to independent viewing or a seminar discussion.
Standards · NYS Global History 10.10 · Common Core RH.11-12.6 (point of view)
The Long Way Home
10–12The story of Jewish displaced persons between 1945 and 1948, from liberation to the founding of the State of Israel, the displaced-persons camps, the refugee politics, and the road to statehood. Pairs with the Modern Israel Chapter.
Standards · NYS Global History 10.10 · NYS US History 11.10
Refusenik
10–12The documentary on the Soviet Jewry movement, the refuseniks, the worldwide advocacy network, the Jackson-Vanik Amendment, and the mass emigration. The direct pairing for the Soviet Jewry Chapter. Institutional rental through educational distribution.
Standards · NYS Global History 10.10 · NYS US History 11.10 · C3 D2.His.14
Produced by the Foundation for Documentary Projects. Check educational distributors and current streaming listings.
The Forgotten Refugees
9–12A documentary on the departure of Jews from the Arab countries and Iran in the twentieth century. From the Arab countries alone, roughly 850,000 people left or were forced out between 1945 and 1972. Refugees who fled Egypt, Libya, Iraq, and Yemen tell their stories, with archival footage of the airlifts from Yemen and Iraq. Pairs directly with the Departure from MENA Chapter.
Standards · NYS Global History 10.10 · C3 D2.His.14 (causation)
Sephardic Studies Digital Collection
9–12One of the largest open-access online collections of Ladino books and Sephardic artifacts, from the University of Washington. Ladino is the Judeo-Spanish language of the Sephardic Jews. The program also offers recorded lectures and an online exhibit on Sephardic music in Seattle.
Standards · NYS Global History 9.3 · C3 D2.His.1
The Last Marranos
9–12In the mountain town of Belmonte, Portugal, families descended from Jews forced to convert in 1497 kept Jewish prayers and customs in secret, mixed with the Catholic practice they showed in public. The film records the community as it came into the open and reacquainted itself with mainstream Judaism. Pairs with The family secret section of The Jews of Spain and the Sephardic World Chapter.
Standards · NYS Global History 9.5 · C3 D2.His.1 (continuity & change)
Cities of Light: The Rise and Fall of Islamic Spain
9–12A docudrama of Muslim Spain, with re-enactments and filmed art and architecture. It shows Jewish physicians, officials, and poets at its courts. It presents Muslim Spain as a shared society “destroyed by greed, fear and intolerance.” Weigh that framing against the Córdoba and Granada section of The Jews of Spain and the Sephardic World Chapter, where the Granada massacre of 1066 and the Almohad decrees stand beside the court careers.
Standards · NYS Global History 9.5 · C3 D2.His.4 (multiple perspectives)
Jews of the Spanish Homeland
7–12Close-ups of the leading Balkan Sephardi rabbis of 1929, and rare footage of the Jewish schools, neighborhoods, synagogues, and cemeteries of Salonika, Constantinople, Yugoslavia, and Romania. The National Center for Jewish Film found the reel in Barcelona, on a visit marking the five hundredth anniversary of the 1492 expulsion, and restored it with new English intertitles. Pairs with the Around 1900 section of The Jews of Spain and the Sephardic World Chapter.
Standards · NYS Global History 9.7 · C3 D2.His.16 (film as primary source)
Island of Roses: The Jews of Rhodes in Los Angeles
9–12Jews from the island of Rhodes, the Rhodeslis, built a community in Los Angeles. The film shows how the immigrants passed their food, songs, rituals, and Ladino to their American-born children and grandchildren. Pairs with the Ladino section of The Jews of Spain and the Sephardic World Chapter and with the American Jewry Chapter.
Standards · NYS US History 11.5 · C3 D2.His.1 (continuity & change)
POLIN Museum online
9–12Online resources and video from the POLIN Museum, whose core exhibition covers 1,000 years of Polish Jewish history, the long European Jewish history before the Holocaust.
Standards · NYS Global History 9.3–10.5 · C3 D2.His.1
Centropa Jewish Witness archive
8–12Interviews with more than 1,200 elderly Jews in 15 countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the Balkans, recorded between 2000 and 2009 and joined to their digitized family photographs. Centropa later built short multimedia films from them. Free, with teacher resources.
Standards · NYS Global History 10.5 · Common Core RH.9-10.2
Golda
10–12Helen Mirren as Golda Meir during the three weeks of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, when the Kyiv-born, Milwaukee-raised Prime Minister led Israel through the war. A dramatization, not a documentary: pair it with the record in the Modern State of Israel Chapter, and note that the film compresses events and invents scenes as historical drama does. Directed by the Israeli Oscar winner Guy Nattiv.
Standards · NYS Global History 10.7 · C3 D2.His.4 (fiction vs. record)
Available through standard distributors and streaming services.
Labors of Love: The Life and Legacy of Henrietta Szold
8–12On February 24, 1912, thirty-eight women met at New York’s Temple Emanu-El, elected Henrietta Szold their president, and chose nursing as their work. The group became Hadassah, which sent its first two nurses to Jerusalem in 1913 and grew into the largest Jewish women’s organization in America. The film follows Szold from the night school she helped Baltimore’s immigrants start to Jerusalem, where she died in 1945 in the hospital Hadassah had built. It covers her part in Youth Aliyah, which brought thousands of Jewish children out of Germany and Nazi-occupied Europe in the 1930s. Pairs with the women who built Jewish institutions in the American Jewry Chapter. Community and festival screenings are booked through the film’s site.
Standards · NYS US History 11.5 · C3 D2.His.3 (individuals in history)
The history of anti-Jewish hatred.
The Longest Hatred
10–12A three-part documentary on the long history of antisemitism, written with the historian Robert Wistrich: its religious roots, the medieval expulsions, the racial turn of the nineteenth century, and the modern period. Pairs with the Adversus Judaeos, Blood Libel, Ghetto System, and Protocols Chapters.
Standards · NYS Global History 10.5 · C3 D2.His.1 (continuity over time)
Copies are held by many university libraries. USHMM library record →
Secret Files of the Inquisition
9–12A four-part series built from the Inquisition’s own case files, with re-enacted interrogations. Episode 2, “The Tears of Spain,” follows the Spanish Inquisition from its founding under Ferdinand and Isabella. The Spain section of the Expulsions Chapter carries the record it dramatizes: the papal bull of 1478, the conversos (Jews who had converted under pressure, and their descendants) whom the tribunals pursued, and the expulsion decree of 1492. The conversos section of The Jews of Spain and the Sephardic World Chapter follows the people the tribunals tried. The re-enactments are hard viewing, so preview the episode first.
Standards · NYS Global History 9.6 · C3 D2.His.14 (causation)
Children of the Inquisition
7–12The families forced to convert or flee during the Inquisitions, told through descendants in Spain, Portugal, Brazil, Mexico, Texas, and New York who trace that past today. Its subject is the identity the descendants recover, which makes it a gentle entry point. Pairs with The family secret section of The Jews of Spain and the Sephardic World Chapter, and with the Conversion or exile section of the Expulsions Chapter. Free to stream on PBS.org and the PBS App.
Standards · NYS Global History 9.6 · C3 D2.His.1 (continuity & change)
Antisemitism Today (ADL Online)
9–12The Anti-Defamation League’s resources on contemporary antisemitism, including videos, explainers, and its annual incident audits. Pairs with the Contemporary Antisemitism Chapter.
Standards · NYS Global History 10.10 · C3 D2.Civ.14.9-12 (contemporary civic action)
The film record.
Holocaust: The Story of the Family Weiss
10–12The landmark 1978 television miniseries, written by Gerald Green, that followed one fictional Berlin Jewish family, the Weisses, through the decade from 1935 to 1945, alongside the rise of a young SS lawyer. With Meryl Streep, James Woods, and Michael Moriarty. It won eight Emmys and a Peabody. When West German television aired it in January 1979, millions watched. Historians often link the national debate that followed to the Bundestag’s decision that year to end the statute of limitations on murder, the legal change covered in the Postwar Trials Chapter. Historians praise its impact but criticize its melodrama. It is long, intense, and unrated, so preview and select episodes.
Standards · NYS Global History 10.5, 10.10 · C3 D2.His.4 (drama as historical source & its impact)
Not streaming as of January 2025, according to the Peabody Awards. DVD copies are held by many libraries.
Who Will Write Our History
9–12The story of Oyneg Shabes, the secret archive of the Warsaw Ghetto, organized by the historian Emanuel Ringelblum after the Nazis sealed the ghetto in November 1940. Journalists, scholars, and community leaders collected thousands of pages recording what was happening to them. They buried the archive in ten metal boxes and in milk cans. The boxes were dug out of the rubble in 1946 and one milk can in 1950. Based on historian Samuel Kassow’s book. Educational licensing through GOOD DOCS.
Standards · NYS Global History 10.5 · C3 D2.His.16 (sourcing) · Common Core RH.11-12.9
The Number on Great-Grandpa's Arm
5–9A short, gentle entry point for younger viewers. Ten-year-old Elliott asks his ninety-year-old great-grandfather Jack, an Auschwitz survivor, about the number tattooed on his arm. Jack tells the story of his childhood in Poland, the loss of his family, and his new life in America. Hand-painted animation woven with archival footage. Reviewers note that it simplifies the wider history for a young audience, so pair it with fuller context. The Museum of Jewish Heritage offers lesson plans built around it.
Standards · NYS Global History 10.5 · Common Core RH.6-8.2 (testimony / central ideas)
The Path to Nazi Genocide
9–12USHMM’s introductory film on the rise of the Nazi regime, the development of anti-Jewish policy from 1933, and the path to mass murder.
Standards · NYS Global History 10.5 · Common Core SL.9-10.2
Regina
9–12Regina Jonas of Berlin was ordained in 1935, the first woman known to have been ordained a rabbi. One photograph of her survives, and the film builds her story around it, with archival footage of the Berlin she served. She was murdered at Auschwitz in 1944. Pairs with The Years Before the Killing and with the women who built Jewish institutions in the American Jewry Chapter. Classroom licensing through Kino Lorber Edu.
Standards · NYS Global History 10.5 · C3 D2.His.3 (individuals in history)
The Conference (Die Wannseekonferenz)
11–12On the morning of January 20, 1942, leading officials of the Nazi regime met at Reinhard Heydrich’s invitation in a villa on the Wannsee in Berlin. The one item on the agenda was the organization of the murder of Europe’s Jews. The film follows the surviving minutes and was made for the eightieth anniversary of the meeting, with its outdoor scenes filmed in the villa’s garden. No violence is shown. Read the minutes first (the memorial posts the German original and an English translation, listed on the Field Trips page), then watch how the film handles each item. HBO’s Conspiracy (Frank Pierson, 2001, 96 min, rated R, with Kenneth Branagh) dramatizes the same meeting in English. Pairs with the Wannsee section of the Einsatzgruppen Chapter. Check current streaming listings.
Standards · NYS Global History 10.5 · Common Core RH.11-12.9 (comparing a primary source with a secondary account)
Shoah
11–12Lanzmann’s film, more than a decade in the making, built from the testimony of survivors, perpetrators, and bystanders, using no archival footage of the events. Selected portions suit the upper grades. Pairs with the Camp System and Resistance Chapters. The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum holds more than 220 hours of Lanzmann’s outtakes, most of them free to view online.
Standards · NYS Global History 10.5 · Common Core RH.11-12.6 (point of view)
Check educational distributors and current streaming listings.
Night and Fog (Nuit et brouillard)
11–12The early postwar documentary on the Nazi camp system, filmed ten years after the liberation of the camps. Contains graphic archival footage, so preview it in full first. A reference for what the camps looked like to the liberators.
Standards · NYS Global History 10.5 · Common Core RH.11-12.9
Available through the Criterion Channel and educational distributors.
La Rafle (The Round Up)
10–12On July 16 and 17, 1942, French police arrested about 13,000 Jews in Paris. The families among them, more than 8,000 people including more than 4,000 children, were held for days at the Vélodrome d’Hiver, an indoor cycling stadium, before deportation. The film follows real people through those days, among them eleven-year-old Joseph Weismann, who escaped, and the Red Cross nurse Annette Monod. A dramatization: pair it with the record in the Across Europe section of the Camp System Chapter and the Mémorial de la Shoah’s Vel d’Hiv pages, and preview it in full. The arrests, the stadium, and the camps that followed are shown at length.
Standards · NYS Global History 10.5 · C3 D2.His.4 (perspective)
Defiance
11–12The feature on the Bielski partisans in the Naliboki Forest, based on Nechama Tec's Defiance: The Bielski Partisans (Oxford, 1993): good classroom material on Jewish armed resistance. Rated R for violence and language, so preview it first. Pairs with the Resistance Chapter. Standard educational rental.
Standards · NYS Global History 10.5 · C3 D2.His.4 (perspective)
Available through standard distributors.
Partisans of Vilna
10–12Forty former fighters tell how the Jewish underground formed inside the Vilna ghetto, where the United Partisan Organization (FPO) was founded on January 21, 1942, and how its survivors fought on from the Rudniki Forest. Among them is Abba Kovner, whose 1942 manifesto called on Jews not to be “led like sheep to the slaughter.” Newsreels, archival footage from 1939 to 1944, and the partisans’ own Yiddish songs run through it. Watch it beside the Bielski story in Defiance, listed above. Pairs with the Resistance Chapter and with Vilna, YIVO’s home, in Poland and Lithuania. Produced by Aviva Kempner. Institutional screenings through the National Center for Jewish Film.
Standards · NYS Global History 10.5 · C3 D2.His.16 (eyewitness sourcing)
The Holocaust by Bullets (Yahad-In Unum)
10–12The video archive of Father Patrick Desbois and Yahad-In Unum, documenting the mass shootings of Jews and Roma in Eastern Europe through more than 7,000 eyewitness interviews gathered since 2004. Pairs directly with the Einsatzgruppen Chapter.
Standards · NYS Global History 10.5 · C3 D2.His.16 (eyewitness sourcing)
Babi Yar. Context
11–12Built from archival film, much of it shot by German soldiers during the occupation. It follows Kyiv from the German arrival in September 1941 to the shooting of at least 33,771 Jews at the Babyn Yar ravine on September 29 and 30, and on to the events that followed. The footage shows the killings and their aftermath, so this is a film for grades 11 and 12, previewed in full and shown in selected passages. It won the Special Jury Prize of the L’Oeil d’Or, the documentary award at Cannes, in 2021. Pairs with the Einsatzgruppen Chapter and the wartime section of the Soviet Jewry Chapter. Shown in theaters, festivals, and museums.
Standards · NYS Global History 10.5 · Common Core RH.11-12.7 (visual evidence)
The Longest Journey: The Jews of Rhodes
9–12Italy had ruled Rhodes since 1912, and its Juderia, the Jewish quarter of the old city, was home to a Sephardic community. In late July 1944 the Germans deported the Jews of Rhodes and Kos to Auschwitz. About 1,800 people were deported, and fewer than 200 survived. Three of the survivors, Stella Levi, Sami Modiano, and Albert Israel, return to the island and tell what the community was before. Pairs with the Greece section of The Camp System Chapter.
Standards · NYS Global History 10.5 · C3 D2.His.16 (testimony as evidence)
Trezoros: The Lost Jews of Kastoria
9–12Kastoria, a lakeside town in northwestern Greece, had a Jewish community that lived beside its Christian neighbors for centuries, until March 1944, when 763 of its Jews were arrested and deported to Auschwitz. The film sets never-before-seen pre-war film of the town beside the testimony of survivors. Pairs with the Greece section of The Camp System Chapter. Free to stream on PBS.org until April 2028.
Standards · NYS Global History 10.5 · C3 D2.His.16 (film and testimony as evidence)
Yad Vashem Video Toolbox
7–12Yad Vashem's video collection, organized by topic and grade band, survivor testimony, animated short films for younger viewers, and teacher-led pedagogical material.
Standards · NYS Global History 10.5 · Never Again Education Act
USHMM · “Jewish Resistance”
9–12An authoritative overview of Jewish resistance during the Holocaust, carrying short archival film and survivor-testimony clips. Strong for teacher preparation and projection. Pairs with the Resistance Chapter.
Standards · NYS Global History 10.5 · Common Core SL.9-10.2
USC Shoah Foundation · IWitness
7–12Survivor video testimony, including partisans and rescuers, with built-in, standards-aligned classroom activities. Pairs with the Camp System and Resistance Chapters.
Standards · NYS Global History 10.5 · C3 D2.His.16 (eyewitness sourcing)
The National WWII Museum · “The Liberation of Auschwitz”
9–12A sourced classroom article on what the liberators found and how the world learned of it. Pairs with the Camp System Chapter.
Standards · NYS Global History 10.5 · Common Core RH.11-12.9
Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial · online panorama
9–12A guided virtual walk through the preserved site for classrooms that cannot travel. Pairs with the Camp System Chapter.
Standards · NYS Global History 10.5 · Common Core SL.9-10.2
Lives and ideas on film.
Einstein’s Big Idea
9–12NOVA’s two-hour docudrama on Einstein’s 1905 breakthroughs and E=mc², and on the earlier scientists whose work fed into the equation. Narrated by John Lithgow and based on David Bodanis’s book E=mc². Pairs with the Einstein Chapter, which covers his life as a refugee and his civic work.
Standards · NYS US History 11.9 · C3 D2.His.3 (individuals in history)
The postwar reckoning on film.
Paper Clips
5–9A middle school in Whitwell, Tennessee (a small, almost entirely Christian town with no Jewish residents) tries to grasp the scale of six million murdered Jews by collecting six million paper clips, one for each. The clips pour in from around the world, survivors come to visit, and the project ends in a memorial railcar in the schoolyard. A film about how a community chooses to remember. Common Sense Media calls it “the best introduction to the Holocaust for tweens.”
Standards · NYS Global History 10.5 · C3 D2.His.4 (memory & commemoration) · Never Again Education Act
Available through standard educational distributors.
Nuremberg: Its Lesson for Today
10–12The documentary on the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, made for the U.S. War Department in 1948 from the trial’s own footage. It was shown in Germany in 1948 and 1949 but never released in the United States. Sandra Schulberg and Josh Waletzky restored it, and the restoration premiered in The Hague on November 13, 2009. Pairs with the Postwar Trials Chapter.
Standards · NYS Global History 10.5, 10.10 · Common Core RH.11-12.9
Bridge of Spies
10–12Spielberg's Cold War thriller, with Tom Hanks, on the 1962 prisoner exchange of U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers for Soviet agent Rudolf Abel, negotiated by lawyer James Donovan and completed on the Glienicke Bridge near Berlin. The film is about the 1962 swap, not Soviet Jewry. The same bridge is where the refusenik Natan Sharansky crossed to freedom in 1986, the moment tied to the Soviet Jewry Chapter. Rated PG-13 for some violence and brief strong language, so preview it first.
Standards · NYS Global History 10.6 · C3 D2.His.4 (fiction vs. record)
Available through standard distributors and streaming services.
The Eichmann Trial film record
10–12The video record of the 1961 Eichmann trial in Jerusalem, “one of the first trials widely televised,” in the words of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Through the Israel State Archives and Yad Vashem. Selected portions suit classroom use. Preview them in full first.
Standards · NYS Global History 10.5, 10.10 · Common Core RH.11-12.6
Hannah Arendt
11–12The feature on Hannah Arendt, centered on the Eichmann trial period and the storm around the book that came out of it, with a full portrait of her intellectual life and the Heidegger relationship. Pairs with the Hannah Arendt Chapter.
Standards · NYS Global History 10.10 · Common Core RH.11-12.6 (point of view)
Released in the United States by Zeitgeist Films.
The Last Days
10–12The documentary on five Hungarian Holocaust survivors and the Nazi conduct of the 1944 Hungarian deportations to Auschwitz, one of the USC Shoah Foundation’s documentary films, with Steven Spielberg as executive producer. A reference film for the Hungarian dimension of the Holocaust.
Standards · NYS Global History 10.5 · Common Core RH.9-10.2
Remastered and available on Netflix and Blu-ray, according to the USC Shoah Foundation. sfi.usc.edu →
Pope John Paul II Visits the Synagogue of Rome
9–12The video record of John Paul II's visit to the Great Synagogue of Rome on April 13, 1986, the first known visit by a pope to a synagogue. Brief footage that suits the Nostra Aetate Chapter and the broader Unit 6 material.
Standards · NYS Global History 10.10 · C3 D2.His.14
Available through Vatican Media and Catholic news services.
We Will Dance Again
11–12The documentary record of the October 7, 2023 attack on the Nova music festival, built from survivors’ testimony and from footage of the day, much of it filmed by the attackers themselves. It won the News & Documentary Emmy for Outstanding Current Affairs Documentary in 2025. Mature content throughout: this is a film for upper grades only, and full teacher preview and preparation are essential. It pairs with the October 7 section of The Terror Record and the aftermath record in Contemporary Antisemitism.
Standards · NYS Global History 10.10 · Common Core RH.11-12.7
Available on Paramount+ in the United States and BBC iPlayer in the United Kingdom.
After October 7: A Personal Journey to Kfar Aza
10–12Kfar Aza, a kibbutz in southern Israel near the Gaza border, was one of the communities attacked on October 7, 2023. This film stays with the survivors afterward, through grief, displacement, and the work of rebuilding, told in residents’ own words alongside news footage. As with any film on this subject, preview it before showing. It pairs with the October 7 section of The Terror Record and the aftermath record in Contemporary Antisemitism.
Standards · NYS Global History 10.10 · Common Core RH.9-10.9 · RH.11-12.7
PBS stations streamed it to members through September 2026. Check current PBS listings.
Where to find more, by institution.
USC Shoah Foundation · Visual History Archive
9–12More than 60,000 video testimonies of survivors and witnesses of the Holocaust and other genocides, gathered since 1994, when Steven Spielberg founded the archive after Schindler’s List. Recorded in 45 languages across 69 countries. Access through partner libraries and access sites worldwide.
Spielberg Jewish Film Archive
9–12The film archive at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, with sections on Jewish communities, the Holocaust and World War II, the pre-state years, and the State of Israel. More than 600 of its films are free to watch in its online virtual cinema. A good complement to the USC Shoah Foundation's testimony focus.
Yad Vashem Video Library
7–12Yad Vashem's video archive, survivor testimony, perpetrator testimony, contemporary witness footage, and the broader video record. Free for classroom use, with teacher resources for each major collection.
USHMM Online Archive
7–12The museum's video collection, survivor testimony, documentary films, and USHMM-produced educational material. Free, classroom-tested, with teacher guidance.
National Library of Israel · Video Collections
9–12The video archive at the National Library of Israel, historical film, music, and cultural material, including pre-1948 Mandate-period footage and the post-1948 national record.
The Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation
7–12Video and curricular material on the Jewish partisan record, short films, lesson plans, and survivor testimony. Pairs with the Resistance Chapter.
The Wiener Holocaust Library Online Resources
10–12One of the oldest Holocaust archives, founded in 1933 in Amsterdam by Alfred Wiener and moved to London in 1939. Its collections include eyewitness accounts gathered after the war and documents from the Nazi era.
The site welcomes recommendations for classroom-ready resources.
Found a resource we should add or remove? Write to editor@teachjewishhistory.org.
Last updated: November 2026.