The Last Days

In this first Spielberg/Shoah Foundation feature documentary, the testimony of its five US-domiciled witnesses traces the history of the Final Solution as it affected Hungarian Jews in the last stages of the war. According to historian Randolph Braham, Hitler and the Nazis cared more about accelerating the extermination of Jews - at whatever cost in manpower, trains or fuel - than winning the war. Moll and his collaborators have laboured hard to be true both in describing the horrors of the survivors' experiences and in providing a positive educative message about the indomitability of the human spirit/soul. Ironically, the very slickness of the film and the attention grabbing 'sensitivity' of Hans Zimmer's score at times become intrusive. Essential viewing, none the less.