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© 2026 The Couch Critic
Browse 32 movies from Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah
To tell the story of Joseph Kessel is to tell the story of the entire 20th century. He lived a thousand lives in one: reporter, novelist, exile, resistance fighter, screenwriter, adventurer, gambler, poet, alcoholic, cabaret lover, seducer, and inveterate globetrotter. Through archival footage and Kessel's colorful language, this film traces the journey of a man who turned reporting into an epic and reality into the stuff of novels.
Nov 2025
Oct 2023
Although it was in full operation for less than one-year, Belzec was a very efficiently run Concentration Camp were over 600,000 Jews were slaughtered. As the Russian army was drawing closer and closer to the camp, the Nazi dismantled Belzec and eradicated virtually all the evidence that the camp ever existed. This documentary tells the story of Belzec and reminds the world "never forget".
Nov 2005
Surviving against all odds. In 1940, Benjamin Orenstein, just a teenager, was sent to his first concentration camp in Poland. It was the beginning of a journey that would mark him for life. After years of silence, he now bears witness to one of the darkest chapters in history.
Jan 2025
In 1945, two young American soldiers, brothers Budd and Stuart Schulberg, are commissioned to collect filmed and recorded evidence of the horrors committed by the infamous Third Reich in order to prove Nazi war crimes during the Nuremberg trials (1945-46). The story of the making of Nuremberg: Its Lesson for Today, a paramount historic documentary, released in 1948.
Jan 2023
Mar 2026
Paris 1943. Hitler set up the systematic looting of works of art in France. Rose Valland, infiltrated as intendant at the Jeu de Paume museum, which has become the sorting station for works leaving for Germany, will take all the risks to oppose this spoliation enterprise.
May 2015
Jan 2026
Art Spiegelman's graphic novel Maus (1980-91) was the first comic to address the Shoah in mainstream culture and is still considered a landmark in art history.
Mar 2024
In 1994, film producer Patrick Sobelman recorded the testimony of his grandmother Golda Maria Tondovska, a Polish Jewish survivor of the Shoah.
Feb 2022
French documentary that explores how the third generation deals with the memory of the Holocaust. It follows grandchildren of survivors—Camille, Frankie, Théo, and Mathis—as they inherit family secrets and the responsibility of bearing witness to this trauma
There were 23 young women, aged 18 to 20, doing their mandatory military service in a very special unit responsible for video surveillance of the Gaza Strip. In Israel, these young women are nicknamed the eyes of the state. Before October 7, they saw everything, understood everything. They sounded the alarm, but no one listened. They were both the Cassandras of the Hamas assault and its first victims. Today, the surviving watchwomen from the Gaza border and the parents of those who were killed have given themselves a mission. Together, they are demanding justice and truth and shedding light on the flaws in a security system that Israeli society believed to be guaranteed.
Oct 2025
The destruction of the traditional legal system is probably one of the lesser-known yet essential goals of the Nazi state. The aim was to establish the supremacy of the "people's community" over the individual by subjugating the judicial system. The documentary looks at the careers of four people who were actively involved or became victims.
Aug 2023
In 1942, more than 8,000 Jews were arrested on 16 and 17 July and sent to the Vélodrome d'Hiver sports center in the 15th district, a stone's throw from the Eiffel Tower, before being deported. The expression "Vel d'Hiv round-up" has become part of our collective memory, to the point of becoming the main memorial reference point for France during the dark years. Based on research carried out in unpublished or rarely explored archives, this film retraces the history of this roundup as experienced by hunted Jews and police trackers, from its planning in the Vichy offices to its hour-by-hour unfolding in the streets of Paris.
Jul 2022
Paris, 1942. In the middle of the Occupation, Victor Gence, an unscrupulous merchant, buys, at vastly low prices, artworks belonging to Jewish collectors. Informed by a concierge, he manages to enter the apartment of Mr. Klein who apparently has a fabulous collection.
Oct 2018
Jun 2025
The convoluted and moving story of Russian writer Vassili Grossman (1905-64) and his novel Life and Fate (1980), a literary masterpiece, a monumental and epic account of life under Stalin's regime of terror, a defiant cry that the KGB tried to suffocate.
Jan 2018
“I return to Poland 25 years after directing a film about the traces of a destroyed Jewish world. This time, I am accompanied by Jen, my French-Israeli companion of Sephardic origin. Upon the ruins of the past, we look for signs like pieces of a puzzle that built our history, our memory, our emotions.” (Julien Donada)
Dec 2023