Judith Trachtenberg

Jakob the Liar

September 1999 •English

In 1944 Poland, a Jewish shop keeper named Jakob is summoned to ghetto headquarters after being caught out after curfew. While waiting for the German Kommondant, Jakob overhears a German radio broadcast about Russian troop movements. Returned to the ghetto, the shopkeeper shares his information with a friend and then rumors fly that there is a secret radio within the ghetto.

To Be or Not to Be

March 1942 •English

During the Nazi occupation of Poland, an acting troupe becomes embroiled in a Polish soldier's efforts to track down a German spy.

The Jazz Singer

October 1927 •English

A young Jewish man is torn between tradition and individuality when his old-fashioned family objects to his career as a jazz singer. This is the first full length feature film to use synchronized sound, and is the original film musical.

The Island on Bird Street

April 1997 •English

Alex is an 11-year old boy who, during WWII, hides in the Jewish ghetto from Nazis after all his relatives have been sent to the concentration camp. The movie portrays the ghetto through his eyes.

Uprising

November 2001 •English

In the Warsaw ghetto in 1943, Jews rise against the Nazis.

The Girl with the Instagram

May 2019 •Hebrew

Nagyvárad, Hungary, 1944. From February to June, Eva Heyman, a 13-year-old Jewish girl, wrote a diary describing the harsh conditions of her life under Nazi occupation. How would she have told her story if she had used Instagram?

The Merchant of Venice

December 2004 •English

Venice, 1596. Bassanio begs his friend Antonio, a prosperous merchant, to lend him a large sum of money so that he can woo Portia, a very wealthy heiress; but Antonio has invested his fortune abroad, so they turn to Shylock, a Jewish moneylender, and ask him for a loan.

La terre promise

January 1925 •French

In a small east-european ghetto, the Jewish family is celebrating Easter. The fraternal dissonance between the Sigoulim brothers pretty accurately mirrors the strife between the two powers, one surrounding Samuel, a devoted rabbi, and the other around Moïse, a talented money lender. Moïse becomes the king of petrol and ships to London with his niece Lia. Conflict continues and leads to the violent strike by oilworkers...

The Fixer

December 1968 •English

Set in tsarist Russia around the turn of the century and based on a true story of a Russian Jewish peasant Yakov Bog who was wrongly imprisoned for a most unlikely crime - the “ritual murder” of a Gentile child in Kiev. We witness the unrelenting detail of the peasant handyman's life in prison and see him gain in dignity as the efforts to humiliate him and make him confess fail.

I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians

September 2018 •Romanian

"I do not care if we go down in history as barbarians." These words, spoken in the Council of Ministers of the summer of 1941, started the ethnic cleansing on the Eastern Front. The film attempts to comment on this statement.

The Painted Bird

September 2019 •Czech

A young boy wanders Eastern Europe during World War II.

Insurgées ! Les résistantes du ghetto de Varsovie

June 2023 •French

Distant Journey

June 1949 •Czech

Prague, during World War II. Hana Kaufmann, a Jewish ophthalmologist, marries Dr. Antonín Bureš, a Christian man. When her family is sent to the Theresienstadt concentration camp, their romance turns into a struggle for survival.

House of Life: A Jewish Cemetary in Prague

January 2008 •English

A deep dive documentary into the history of the Old Jewish Cemetery of Prague.

The Great Dictator

October 1940 •English

Dictator Adenoid Hynkel tries to expand his empire while a poor Jewish barber tries to avoid persecution from Hynkel's regime.

The Golem: How He Came Into the World

October 1920 •German

In 16th-century Prague, a rabbi creates the Golem - a giant creature made of clay. Using sorcery, he brings the creature to life in order to protect the Jews of Prague from persecution.

“May Your Memory Be Love“ - The Story of Ovadia Baruch

December 2008 •English

In March 1943, twenty-year-old Ovadia Baruch was deported together with his family from Greece to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Upon arrival, his extended family was sent to the gas chambers. Ovadia struggled to survive until his liberation from the Mauthausen concentration camp in May 1945. While in Auschwitz, Ovadia met Aliza Tzarfati, a young Jewish woman from his hometown, and the two developed a loving relationship despite inhuman conditions. This film depicts their remarkable, touching story of love and survival in Auschwitz, a miraculous meeting after the Holocaust and the home they built together in Israel. This film is part of the "Witnesses and Education" project, a joint production of the International School for Holocaust Studies and the Multimedia Center of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In this series, survivors recount their life stores - before, during and after the Holocaust. Each title is filmed on location, where the events originally transpired.

Shielding the Flame

April 2023 •Polish

Lodz Ghetto

October 1988 •English

The Polish city of Lodz was under Nazi occupation for nearly the entire duration of WWII. The segregation of the Jewish population into the ghetto, and the subsequent horrors of the occupation are vividly chronicled through newsreels and photographs. The narration is taken almost entirely from journals and diaries of those who lived--and died--through the course of the occupation, with the number of different narrators diminishing over the course of the film, symbolic of the death of each narrator.

The Plumber

November 2020 •English

As curfew approaches, an everyday heroine risks it all in a smuggling operation from Nazi-occupied Poland.