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, the Anti-Defamation League, and ANU Museum of the Jewish People, among others. Some are free; some are institutional rentals; 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 barely older than a century, and from its first decades Jews helped invent it — not in one place, but in several at once, often because the new medium had no gatekeepers yet to keep them out.
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 what is now Belarus, ran Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. William Fox, born in Hungary, founded the studio that became 20th Century Fox. The four Warner brothers, the eldest born in Poland, built Warner Bros. What they made was not propaganda for any cause — it was a mass art form for everyone. Some used it with purpose: Harry and Jack Warner pushed their studio to warn against Nazism in the 1930s, when that was unpopular in the United States, and Laemmle, in his last years, signed affidavits that helped hundreds of Jews flee 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, Jewish entrepreneurs were among the pioneers of cinema in Baghdad. The first public screening in the country came in 1909; the Baghdad Cinema Company was founded by four Iraqi Jews in 1934; and the Sudai brothers' company funded the first feature shot in Iraq, in 1948, written by the Jewish-Iraqi writer Anwar Sha'ul. (The Jews of Iraq trace back more than 2,600 years; their fuller story lives in the Communities of the Middle East & North Africa and MENA Departure Topics.)
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, recording more than 50,000 video testimonies from Holocaust survivors and witnesses, in 32 languages across 56 countries, before those voices were gone. People who once built the dream factory used the same tools to make sure the record could never be denied — which is the thread this whole page follows.
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); Mazin Latif, "Iraqi Jews were leading promoters of cinema," Al-Gardenia; USC Shoah Foundation; Neal Gabler, An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood (1988). A fuller version of this story is planned for 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 Topics 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 Topic 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)
A Journey Through Jewish History (ANU Museum)
9–12The flagship video resource at ANU, the largest Jewish museum in the world. A survey of Jewish historical experience across geography and time, in shorter modules that fit individual class periods.
Standards · NYS Global History 9.2–9.3 · C3 D2.His.1 (change & continuity)
Genizah Project Video Resources
10–12Cambridge University Library's video introductions to the Cairo Genizah collection — the documentary basis for the medieval Mediterranean Jewish world. Pairs with the Diaspora and Maimonides Topics.
Standards · NYS Global History 9.3 · C3 D2.His.16 (primary sources)
The Hidden Child (USHMM short)
7–12USHMM's short documentary on how Jewish religious and cultural life was preserved under persecution. A useful frame for the Sacred Texts Topic and the broader continuity theme.
Standards · NYS Global History 10.5 · Common Core RH.9-10.2
Place, people, and the journeys between them.
The Jewish Americans
9–12The PBS series on 350 years of Jewish life in the United States, from the first 23 Jews who landed at New Amsterdam (now New York) in 1654, fleeing the Inquisition, through immigration, assimilation, and the tug-of-war between being American and being Jewish. Broadcast in three two-hour parts; individual episodes fit a class unit. The direct pairing for the American Jewry Topic.
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, raised in France, discovers that his family's village of Tinghir in southern Morocco once had a 2,000-year-old Jewish quarter — the mellah — and traces its vanished community to its descendants in Israel. He moves between the old quarter and Israel, meeting Moroccan Jews who still hold tight to their Berber language and identity. A portrait of long Jewish-Muslim coexistence and its unraveling, told with unusual tenderness. Pairs with the MENA Departure Topic.
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 — about 80,000 people in the first half of the twentieth century — from a cosmopolitan golden age in Cairo and Alexandria to the exodus after the 1956 Suez Crisis. Built from archival footage and interviews; notable as a film made by an Egyptian Muslim director, briefly blocked by Egyptian security before its release. A note for teachers: it carries the director's own framing about tolerance and identity — useful as a point-of-view source. Pairs with the MENA Departure Topic.
Standards · NYS Global History 10.10 · Common Core RH.11-12.6 (point of view)
Available on VOD through Art Mattan Films.
Jews of Iran
10–12An Iranian-Dutch filmmaker returns to Iran to document the Persian Jewish community — one of the oldest in the world, present for over 2,500 years — living today as a small minority of about 25,000 under the Islamic Republic. The first film to cover the subject from inside Iran. It records both everyday Jewish-Iranian life and the official discrimination the community faces, without flattening either. Pairs with the Diaspora Topic and the broader MENA story.
Standards · NYS Global History 10.10 · C3 D2.His.4 (perspective) · Common Core RH.9-10.2
Remember Baghdad
9–12The Iraqi Jewish story across the twentieth century, told by five families through their own home movies, photographs, and archive footage. In 1917 a third of Baghdad, Iraq, was Jewish — descendants of the scholars who wrote the Babylonian Talmud. The film follows the community through a golden age of picnics on the Tigris and Jews in parliament, the 1941 Farhud pogrom, and the exodus of about 120,000 to Israel in 1950–51 — and ends with one man returning to Baghdad to plant, as he puts it, a seed of hope. The direct pairing for the MENA Departure Topic. Has streamed on Netflix; check current availability.
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 more than 160,000 Iraqi Jews between 1940 and 2003 — among the first documentaries to record this community's struggle, from a presence of 2,600 years down to the handful who remained. Survivor testimony anchors the film. Pairs with the MENA Departure and the Holocaust in MENA Topics. 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
Forget Baghdad
11–12A more advanced film for the curious older student: a reflection on the stereotypes of "the Jew" and "the Arab" across a century of cinema, told through four Iraqi-Jewish former communists, among them the bestselling Israeli author 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. A note for teachers: this 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)
Available through international and educational distributors.
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 Topic.
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 Topic. Institutional rental through educational distribution.
Standards · NYS Global History 10.10 · NYS US History 11.10 · C3 D2.His.14
Available via institutional distributors and the National Conference on Soviet Jewry.
The Forgotten Refugees
9–12A documentary on the post-1948 departure of about 850,000 Jews from the Middle East and North Africa. The standard classroom film on the MENA departure; pairs directly with the MENA Departure Topic. Through JIMENA and Israel-21c.
Standards · NYS Global History 10.10 · C3 D2.His.14 (causation)
Sephardic Music & Cultural Heritage Videos
9–12An archive of video documentation of Sephardic cultural and historical material — oral histories, musical performances, and academic lectures. Free for classroom use.
Standards · NYS Global History 9.3 · C3 D2.His.1
POLIN Museum video archive
9–12The POLIN Museum's video archive, covering 1,000 years of Polish Jewish history, in shorter modules that fit a class period — the deep European Jewish history before the Holocaust.
Standards · NYS Global History 9.3–10.5 · C3 D2.His.1
Centropa Jewish Witness archive
8–12About 1,200 video and multimedia biographical narratives of twentieth-century Central, Eastern, and Soviet European Jews — a deep Soviet, Hungarian, and Eastern European collection. Free, classroom-tested, with teacher resources.
Standards · NYS Global History 10.5 · Common Core RH.9-10.2
The history of anti-Jewish hatred.
Antisemitism: A Sickness of the Soul
10–12A documentary survey of the history of antisemitism from the ancient world through the late twentieth century. Pairs with the Adversus Judaeos, Blood Libel, Ghetto System, and Protocols Topics.
Standards · NYS Global History 10.5 · C3 D2.His.14 (causation)
Available through PBS institutional archive and educational distributors.
The Longest Hatred
10–12The standard documentary on the long history of antisemitism — the religious roots, the medieval expulsions, the racial turn of the nineteenth century, and the modern period. A reference film for the whole Unit 3 arc.
Standards · NYS Global History 10.5 · C3 D2.His.1 (continuity over time)
Available through PBS institutional archive.
Antisemitism Today (ADL Online)
9–12The ADL's video resources on contemporary antisemitism, including the IHRA Working Definition, the AJC Translate Hate glossary, and current monitoring frameworks. Pairs with the Contemporary Antisemitism Topic.
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; winner of eight Emmys and a Peabody. Its real importance is what it did: when West German television aired it in 1979, an estimated audience of millions watched, and the national reckoning that followed is tied to the German parliament's decision to remove the statute of limitations on Nazi murders — the legal change covered in the Postwar Trials Topic. A note for teachers: historians praise its impact but criticize the melodrama; it is long, intense, and unrated, so preview and select episodes. Best taught as much for its effect as for its story.
Standards · NYS Global History 10.5, 10.10 · C3 D2.His.4 (drama as historical source & its impact)
Available on DVD through CBS / Paramount Home Entertainment.
Who Will Write Our History
9–12The story of Oyneg Shabes — the secret band of journalists, scholars, and community leaders who, days after the Nazis sealed 450,000 Jews into the Warsaw Ghetto in Poland in 1940, set out to record the truth of what was happening to them. They buried about 30,000 pages in milk cans and metal boxes; searchers dug the archive out of the rubble after the war. Based on historian Samuel Kassow's book. The clearest film case for why a documentary record exists at all. Free on ad-supported platforms; 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 students: ten-year-old Elliott asks his ninety-year-old great-grandfather Jack, an Auschwitz survivor, about the number tattooed on his arm, and 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. A note for teachers: reviewers point out it simplifies the wider history for a young audience — 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 flagship classroom film — the rise of the Nazi regime, the development of anti-Jewish policy from 1933, and the path to mass murder. The standard introductory documentary for tenth-grade Holocaust instruction.
Standards · NYS Global History 10.5 · Common Core RH.9-10.7
Shoah
11–12Lanzmann's ten-year work, 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 Topics. Through the Criterion Channel.
Standards · NYS Global History 10.5 · Common Core RH.11-12.6 (point of view)
Available through educational distributors and the Criterion Channel.
Night and Fog (Nuit et brouillard)
11–12The early postwar documentary on the Nazi camp system, made for the French government on the tenth anniversary of liberation. Contains graphic archival footage; teacher preview essential. 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.
Defiance
9–12The 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. Pairs with the Resistance Topic. Standard educational rental.
Standards · NYS Global History 10.5 · C3 D2.His.4 (perspective)
Available through standard distributors.
The Holocaust by Bullets (Yahad-In Unum)
10–12The video archive of Father Patrick Desbois and Yahad-In Unum, documenting the killings on Soviet territory through about 8,000 eyewitness interviews gathered since 2004. Pairs directly with the Einsatzgruppen Topic.
Standards · NYS Global History 10.5 · C3 D2.His.16 (eyewitness sourcing)
Yad Vashem Video Toolbox
7–12Yad Vashem's video collection, organized by topic and grade band — survivor testimony, animated short films for younger students, 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 Topic.
Standards · NYS Global History 10.5 · Common Core RH.9-10.7
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 Topics.
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 Topic.
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 Topic.
Standards · NYS Global History 10.5 · Common Core RH.9-10.7
Lives and ideas on film.
Einstein: The Man and the Myth
9–12PBS NOVA's treatment of Einstein. Pairs with the Einstein Topic, covering both the science and the wider civic life — the refugee experience, Zionism, civil rights, the 1939 Roosevelt letter, the 1955 Russell-Einstein Manifesto.
Standards · NYS US History 11.9 · C3 D2.His.3 (individuals in history)
Rashi: The Father of Hebrew Commentary
9–12Short documentary material on Rashi, the eleventh-century French Jewish commentator, available through Jewish educational distributors. Pairs with the Rashi Topic.
Standards · NYS Global History 9.3 · C3 D2.His.3
Available through Jewish-education distributors.
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 Topic. Through the Criterion Channel.
Standards · NYS Global History 10.10 · Common Core RH.11-12.6 (point of view)
Available through the Criterion Channel.
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, and about education itself — the heart of this Unit and of the Never Again Education Act. Common Sense Media calls it the best introduction to the Holocaust for younger students.
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 by the U.S. War Department in 1948 from the actual trial footage, shelved for decades, then restored and released in 2010 by Sandra Schulberg. The IMT told in its own footage. Pairs with the Postwar Trials Topic.
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. A note for teachers: 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 Topic. Rated PG-13 for some violence and brief strong language; preview advised.
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 — among the first major trials to be filmed in full. Through the Israel State Archives and Yad Vashem. Selected portions suit classroom use; teacher preview essential.
Standards · NYS Global History 10.5, 10.10 · Common Core RH.11-12.6
The Last Days
10–12The documentary on five Hungarian Holocaust survivors and the Nazi conduct of the 1944 Hungarian deportations to Auschwitz, produced by the USC Shoah Foundation. A reference film for the Hungarian dimension of the Holocaust.
Standards · NYS Global History 10.5 · Common Core RH.9-10.2
Available through the USC Shoah Foundation.
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 papal visit to a synagogue since antiquity. Brief footage that suits the Nostra Aetate Topic and the broader Unit 6 material.
Standards · NYS Global History 10.10 · C3 D2.His.14
Available through Vatican Media and Catholic news services.
Where to find more, by institution.
USC Shoah Foundation · Visual History Archive
9–12About 56,000 video testimonies of survivors and witnesses of the Holocaust and other genocides, gathered from 1994 (founded by Steven Spielberg after Schindler's List) and much expanded since. The major video archive of the Holocaust testimony record. Free access through partner libraries; subscription through USC.
Spielberg Jewish Film Archive
9–12The video archive at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem — a deep collection of historical film on Jewish life from the late nineteenth century to the present. 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 Topic.
Centropa Jewish Witness
8–12About 1,200 biographical narratives of twentieth-century Central, Eastern, and Soviet European Jews, in a multimedia format that joins family photographs to audio narrative. Free, classroom-tested, with teacher resources.
The Wiener Holocaust Library Online Resources
10–12The world's oldest Holocaust archive, founded in 1933 in Amsterdam by Alfred Wiener and moved to London in 1939. Its video and audio holdings include early witness statements, postwar trial recordings, and the documentary record.
This Films & Video page is curated and growing. The platform welcomes recommendations for classroom-ready resources. Where film involves contested historical material, the platform applies the same equal-treatment editorial standard set out in the Editorial Standards.
Found a resource we should add or remove? Write to editor@makorproject.org. Makor is the Hebrew word for source.
Last updated: June 2026.