User Reviews

There is humanity and bravery enough to go around in these seven stories. Bravery because people risked invaluable things for the sake of others, and humanity because some of them gave things to others even under conditions so hopeless that there was nothing left to risk.

It's impossible not to be moved by narratives involving the Nazi program of genocide, perhaps the most horrifying event of the last century. And it's for this reason that it's important for the subject to be treated with care and delicacy. A tragedy of such monumental proportions can't be cheapened by easy sentiment or falsified by myth. There were, for instance, not six million people murdered in the camps. Nobody will ever know the exact figure but it is closer to fourteen million. In addition to Jews the victims included Gypsies, homosexuals, communists, political undesirables, the mentally retarded and the otherwise "unfit." Much of the footage is unfamiliar and, with one exception, the seven people described were quite ordinary until they were called upon to be otherwise.

The narration (by Ben Kingsley, who has a great voice) is perhaps a bit heavy, but perhaps not. Anyone old enough to remember these events don't need the information to be laid on too thick. Still the details of what went on in countries we hear little about -- Hungary, for instance, or Lithuania -- add to the store of what we all should know. In addition, I'm beginning to wonder, judging from some of the things I've heard from younger people, if these events have now become so much history, about as meaningful to them as Guy Fawke's Day. (I certainly hope not.) At any rate, the film deserves to be long. The informants, who've seen these things at first hand, will not be with us much longer.