Engineering Evil: Inside the Holocaust

Engineering Evil: Inside the Holocaust (DVD) (*)

$27.99

Language Selections:
English ( Dolby Digital 5.1 )
Portuguese ( Subtitles )
Spanish ( Dolby Digital Stereo )

Product Origin/Format:
Spain ( PAL/Region 2 )

Running Time:
84 min

Aspect Ratio:
Widescreen (1.78:1)

Special Features:
Interactive Menu
Scene Access

Movie filmed in 2011 and produced in:
United States ( USA, Canada )

Directed By:
Erik Nelson

Written By:
Erik Nelson

Actors:
Erik Nelson

Synopsis:

Engineering Evil, a gripping portrait of the Holocaust from the early days of persecution of the Jewish people in Nazi Germany through the implementation of massive concentration camps. Throughout this program, viewers learn about artifacts, photographs and oral histories that provide detailed evidence of the processes and plans the Nazis developed to extinguish the lives of millions of Jews throughout Europe. Rather than take a sweeping perspective on the Holocaust, this program focuses on more intimate and everyday stories of political transformation, violence and loss under the Nazi regime. Engineering Evil gives viewers specific and personal insights into the lives of those who perished and into the actions and plans of those who enacted the Holocaust. Viewers travel through the archives of Eastern Europe, to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., and to restoration labs in Israel to see how
artifacts serve as powerful links to those who lost their lives. Curators and historians help explain how the Nazis were able to accomplish such horrific crimes against humanity over the course of just a few years. Students can explore and discuss the methods historians use to preserve the memory of the communities destroyed during this horrendous chapter in world history.

Engineering Evil, a History Channel special is devoted to the details of how the Nazis carried out the Holocaust, so you expect to learn about things like crematorium design, and you do. But another kind of engineering - call it human engineering - is also revealed here. The Nazi plan required a populace that was, at best, willing to look the other way and, at worst, a participant. The program documents how the Nazis began creating that reality even before their military expansion started, removing Jews from jobs in education, medicine and other fields and demonizing them in all sorts of propaganda. That included as infamous a board game as has ever been produced: the supposedly family-friendly Jews Out, from 1936. The winner was the person who accumulated the most Jews for deportation. The program aggressively challenges the 'just following orders' defense and the notion that 'ordinary' Germans were not at fault in the Holocaust. 'After the Jews were sent off, people moved into their homes, took over their businesses,' says Michael Berenbaum of American Jewish University. 'So on some level the local populations understood these people were not coming back.' The program also conveys that the effort to exterminate Jews was an evolving phenomenon that required people - not all of them Nazis - to design and build the infrastructure of trains, gas chambers and ovens to do the deed. The Nazis and their enablers tackled the Holocaust with a problem-solving ethos not unlike what we associate with the Manhattan Project or the lunar landing. 'There are those who believe that the Holocaust was born whole,' Dr. Berenbaum says. 'I'm not of that school. I see an awful lot of improvisation. I see an awful lot of experimentation.' The program is larded with a soundtrack that would be better suited to a cheesy horror movie - yes, the Holocaust was a horror, but it hardly needs this kind of tacky underscoring. It gets its points across, though, and leaves you stunned once again at the collective insanity of it all.

A portrait of the evolution of the Holocaust - from the early days of persecution in Nazi Germany to the final days of wanton annihilation. This special travels through the archives of Eastern Europe, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D. C., and the restoration labs of Yad Vashem in Israel tell the story of persecution, theft and murder through artifacts, rarely seen photographs and motion picture footage. Experts from across the globe illuminate what it took to systematcially implement the destruction of millions of people.

This product was added to our catalog on Saturday 19 October, 2013.

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