Movies Similar to Hell on Earth

Maria Theresa’s Dark Side(2024)

Shortly before Christmas 1744, Vienna, the center of power in the Habsburg Empire, is the scene of a disastrous drama with repercussions for the whole of Europe. Against the spirit of enlightenment and tolerance, the very young Maria Theresa orders the expulsion of the allegedly disloyal Jews from Prague.

Peter Eisenman: Building Germany's Holocaust Memorial(2009)

This documentary explores the creation of the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin as designed by architect Peter Eisenman. Reaction of the German public to the completed memorial is also shown.

Inside a Nazi Mind: The Kindly Ones by Jonathan Littell(2023)

An analysis of The Kindly Ones, Jonathan Littell's controversial novel, published in 2006, which dissects the ruthless mechanisms of the Shoah from the detached point of view of Maximilian Aue, a high-ranking Nazi officer.

My Good Fortune in Auschwitz(2012)

A film about friendship in difficult times, Auschwitz.

1944: Should We Bomb Auschwitz?(2019)

In 1944, two prisoners miraculously escaped from Auschwitz. They told the world of the horror of the Holocaust and raised one of the greatest moral questions of the 20th century.

Más allá de la alambrada: la memoria del horror(2005)

Łódź Ghetto(1989)

The Polish city of Łódź was under Nazi occupation for nearly the entirety of WWII. The segregation of the Jewish population into the ghetto, and the subsequent horrors are vividly chronicled via newsreels and photographs. The narration is taken almost entirely from journals and diaries of those who lived–and died–through the course of the occupation, with the number of different narrators diminishing as the film progresses, symbolic of the death of each narrator.

Elie Wiesel Goes Home(1997)

A documentary chronicling the adolescent years of Elie Wiesel and the history of his sufferings. Eliezer was fifteen when Fascism brutally altered his life forever. Fifty years later, he returns to Sighetu Marmatiei, the town where he was born, to walk the painful road of remembrance - but is it possible to speak of the unspeakable? Or does Auschwitz lie beyond the capacity of any human language - the place where words and stories run out?

Wall of Silence(1994)

In the small town of Rechnitz a terrible crime against humanity was performed during the holocaust. Until now, no-one dares to talk about it.

Dead Gay Men and Living Lesbians(2008)

As a result of the Holocaust and later, AIDS, the male homosexual community has sustained bitter losses and, according to Praunheim, lesbian women have now placed themselves at the head of the so-called queer movement. The female protagonists in the film represent two different generations; they also incorporate the past and present status of homosexuals in society.

Besa: The Promise(2012)

A documentary exploring how Albanians, including many Muslims, helped and sheltered Jewish refugees during WWII at their own risk, and trying to help the son of an Albanian baker that housed a Jewish family for a year return some Hebrew books that the family had to leave behind.

Goering's Catalogue: A Collection of Art and Blood(2021)

For more than a decade, Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering, Adolf Hitler's right-hand man during the infamous Third Reich, assembled a collection of thousands of works of art that were meticulously catalogued.

2 or 3 Things I Know About Him(2005)

What would your family reminiscences about dad sound like if he had been an early supporter of Hitler’s, a leader of the notorious SA and the Third Reich’s minister in charge of Slovakia, including its Final Solution? Executed as a war criminal in 1947, Hanns Ludin left behind a grieving widow and six young children, the youngest of whom became a filmmaker. It's a fascinating, maddening, sometimes even humorous look at what the director calls "a typical German story." (Film Forum)

Let's Keep It(2018)

Let's keep it is a cinema documentary (99') about the still problematic attitude of the Republic of Austria towards the restitution of "aryanized" real estate which - for whatever reason - became the property of Austria after 1945. The film is also the director's bow to the victims of the darkest chapter of Austria's recent history. A chapter that seems to have been extended to a certain extent when it comes to restitution of looted property to the descendants of Holocaust victims.

Stanisław Lem: Autor Solaris(2016)

An account of the life and work of the Polish writer Stanisław Lem (1921-2006), a key figure in science fiction literature involved in mysteries and paradoxes that need to be enlightened.

Andor(2022)

Andor Stern is the only Brazilian survivor of the Holocaust. In this documentary, he goes back in his memories to relive the deportation to Auschwitz at age 16, and the daily conquest of a free life.

"KZ Buchenwald. Aushalten. Wir eilen euch zur Hilfe"(1995)

Former inmates and American soldiers remember the cruel conditions in Buchenwald concentration camp.

To Auschwitz and Back: The Joe Engel Story(2017)

This is a story of faith, renewal and redemption. Joe Engel, with an unwavering will to live, overcame unimaginable horrors to become a treasured citizen, community leader, teacher and philanthropist.

St. Louis(2019)

Hamburg, Germany, 1939. Getting a passage aboard the passenger liner St. Louis seems to be the last hope of salvation for more than nine hundred German Jews who, desperate to escape the atrocious persecution to which they are subjected by the Nazi regime, intend to emigrate to Cuba.

"Erscheinungsform Mensch": Adolf Eichmann(1981)

Documentary brings the time of the Holocaust to life and provides insight into the mind of the organizer of this crime: Adolf Eichmann. The documentary contrasts Eichmann's statements and memories - documented in the original soundtrack - directly with those of Holocaust survivors. The picture of the person and the crime is rounded off by the many contemporary witnesses who were involved either in Eichmann's arrest or the subsequent trial - such as the doctors and psychologists who looked after him, the guards and police officers through to the interrogator, the public prosecutor and the judge at the trial.