Rajakatu Varsovassa

The film presents the experience of the insanity of the late 1930's in Poland through the eyes of a child. It was produced in 1948, while the wounds were still fresh, and before much of the atrocities of which we are now aware became widely known.

As it is told through a child's eyes, it makes a good introduction to the Holocaust for sophisticated children. I say "sophisticated" because it is black and white, and it is foreign language with subtitles. It doesn't include any nightmare-inducing scenes that subsequent Holocaust films do, but does successfully present the bind which Eastern European families, both Jewish and Gentile, were gripped by, and the impact of fascism on this boy's life.

The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising scenes are especially inspiring - not a high-budget special effects sequence but you are really gripped by it.

I saw it when I was nine or ten and saw it again recently, and feel that it holds up very well.