The Jewish Community Library has over 1,000 videos which give expression to Jewish history, life and culture. Of particular interest to our users is the Jewish Heritage Video Collection which is listed and described below.

You are welcome to borrow these videos from the Jewish Community Library of Los Angeles. Contact the JCL by telephone at 323.761.8648 or Email to make arrangements to borrow a video from this collection. Borrowing period is one week. Please return videos on time. Overdue fines on videos: 1$/day/video.

A WALL IN JERUSALEM
91 min. EL-A 1970

For centuries the only part of the Temple that escaped destruction by the Romans, the Western Wall in Jerusalem symbolized the desire of Jews to return to Zion. But not until the late 1800s did the call for a Jewish homeland make it conceivable that significant numbers might do so. Through fascinating historical footage, A Wall in Jerusalem tells the story of the first nineteenth-century pioneers and subsequent settlers in Palestine. Working to cultivate long-fallow fields and tame malarial swamps, they had to deal with Ottoman control, Arab animosity, British rule, and worldwide political disapproval until the founding of Israel in 1948. The film shows the forming of kibbutzim and the gathering of Jews from Europe, Yemen, and Iraq, as well as the political history from the first years of statehood to the end of the Six Day War in 1964 and the reclaiming of the wall.

THE WANNSEE CONFERENCE
87 min. JH-A 1984

On January 20, 1942, at a house in Wannsee, a Berlin suburb, a meeting was held with 14 key representatives of the Nazi party, SS, and government bureaucracy. The meeting- led by Reinhardt Heydrich, the head of the German secret police- lasted 90 minutes and had one item on the agenda: the implementation of "The Final Solution to the Jewish Question" in Europe. This dramatization of the Wannsee Conference uses actual notes from that meeting, along with letters written by Herman Goring and Adolf Eichmann. While the Nazi officials enjoy a buffet lunch, brandy, and cigarettes, they discuss in a clinical, business like manner the methods, stages, and logistics by which they hope to exterminate 11 million Jews from all parts of Europe.

THE WARSAW GHETTO UPRISING
22 min. EL-A 1993

In the autumn and winter of 1941-42, word of mass exterminations in the East made its way back to the Warsaw Ghetto. The situation in the ghetto was dire: every day hundreds died of hunger, disease, and malnutrition. But with the realization that the Nazis were implementing their "Final Solution," some young people in the ghetto organized a resistance. Their campain "to defend Jewish lives and honor and to revenge Jewish deaths" gathered force as their situation grew more desperate, culminating in a battle in which they fought the German army with molotov cocktails and stolen guns. Their struggle remains a stirring episode of courage and humanity against a backdrop of horror. Using archival footage and memoirs, Waraw Ghetto Uprising recounts the events that led to the formation of the ghetto, the impassioned resistance, and the final conflageration.

THE WAY WE WERE
118 min. JH-A 1973

Katie Morosky and Hubbell Gardner couldn't be more different. She's a political activist, a working-class Jew who attends college while holding several jobs; he's a wealthy gentile, born to privilege who wins several varsity letters for college sports. A pair of near-opposites, they powerfully attract each other when they meet again eight years after graduation. Katie and Hubbell marry, but theirs is no easy relationship. The differences that drew them together also strain their marriage, overriding their affection. Katie cannot stop trying to perfect the world, and Hubbell cannot bear her attempts to fix everything around her, including him. Set against the background of World War II and the McCarthy era, The Way We Were is an unforgettable portrait of a deep love that can't last.

WEAPONS OF THE SPIRIT (CLASSROOM VERSION)
35 min. JH-A 1989

Throughout Occupied Europe, people were forced to make a critical moral decision: how to react to Nazi actions against the Jews. Most stood by apathetically. But in France, where collaborators delivered 75,000 Jews, including 100,000 children, to the Nazi death trains, the people of the small village of Le Chambon-Sur-Lignon quietly sheltered at least 5,000 Jews over four years. It was the goal of filmmaker Pierre Sauvage, who was born in the village in 1943, to understand how this "conspiracy of goodness" came about. In interviews with the aging rescuers and rescued, and with historical footage, Sauvage explores the Chambonais' seemingly effortless decision to spiritually oppose Nazism. He looks at the power of their Huguenot memories of persecution, their solid faith, the quality of leadership, and emphasis on individual conscience. Appended to the film is a Bill Moyers interview with Sauvage.

WHO SHALL LIVE AND WHO SHALL DIE?
90 min. JH-A 1982

Why was the American response to the extermination of European Jewry so inadequate? Could an aggressive approach by American-Jewish leaders have changed the fate of millions? Was President Roosovelt hamstrung by an isolationist Congress and anti-Semitic public opinion, or would different tactics have persuaded him to make Jewish rescue a war aim earlier? Did the State Department obstruct such attempts? These troubling questions still plague many Jews and historians. Who Shall Live and Who Shall Die? takes a hard look at the U.S. failure to open its doors to Jewish refugees and the Jewish role in that failure. The film includes interviews with those active in and out of government in the 1940s- Peter Bergson, Nahum Goldmann, and John Pehle of the War Refugee Board, among others- whose views range from scathing indictments to rationals for what most agree was "too little, too late."

WITNESSES TO THE HOLOCAUST
90 min. SH-A 1987

Fifteen years after World War II, Lieutenant-Colonel Adolf Eichmann, chief of the SS Bureau of Jewish Affairs, was abducted by Israeli agents near his residence in Argentina and taken to Israel. From April to December 1961, the world watched as Eichmann stood trial for his role in administering the systematic annihilation of European Jewry. Eichmann was found guilty and sentenced to death for crimes against the Jewish people, crimes against humanity, and war crimes. Narrated by actor Joel Grey, Witness to the Holocaust was compiled from portions of the court proceedings that still exist on videotape (two-thirds of the tapes have been lost). Eyewitness testimony and documentary evidence provide a comprehensive examination of the Nazi attempt to carry out the "Final Solution".

A WOMAN CALLED GOLDA
192 min. JH-A 1982

Golda Meir is best remembered as the tough but grandmotherly fourth Prime Minister of Israel- the role that culminated her lifetime service to the State. A Woman Called Golda, a drama starring Ingrid Bergman, tells what came before, chronicling a life that parallels Israel's early years. In a vist to the Milwaukee school where she was valedictorian, a retired Golda recalls how, as a child during the pogroms of Russia, she clutched at the idea of a Jewish homeland in Israel. She held onto this dream even after her family found safety and opportunity in the United States. Golda moved to Palestine to pursue life as a kibbutznik, but became caught up in the whirlwind of politics and war that forged the State. A Woman Called Golda portrays a courageous feminist who accomplished as much through irrepressible charm as keen intelligence.

THE WOODEN GUN
91 min. SH-A 1979

In the years following the War of Independence, tensions ran high in Israel. The newborn nation was preoccupied with securing its borders from hostile neighbors while defining its relationship with other nations of the world. This film, made in 1979, looks back at the early years of the state from the perspective of a very different time. Set in Tel Aviv in 1950, it depicts the war games of two rival groups of children who interpret the values of heroism and toughness they have been taught by anxious adults. Their encounter with a troubled Holocaust survivor reveals a vast gap between native-born Israelis and those who experienced the war in Europe. The Wooden Gun poses the question: can a country justify violence while simultaneously seeking peace?

YENTL
134 min. EL-A 1983

The role of women in Judaism is an issue that has become the focus of considerable attention in recent years, but it has always been a source of frustration for some. Yentl, directed by and starring Barbra Streisand, tells the story of a determined and resourceful Jewish girl who wants to study the Torah. However, in the traditional society in which she lives, in Eastern Europe at the turn of the century, girls are forbidden Torah study. So Yentl masquerades as a boy, and gains entrance to a Yeshiva, where she learns much about her religion and herself. Based on a story by Isaac Bashevis Singer, this movie explores the limits that religion can place on people, and questions the wisdom of exclusion and seperation by showing how a person can find fullfillment and love by ignoring the constraints of social convention.

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