The Boy in the Striped Pajamas
The striped pajamas that 8-year-old Bruno, son of a Nazi concentration camp commandant, observes the people in the neighboring “farm” wearing are, of course, camp uniforms. Bruno secretly befriends Shmuel, a prisoner his own age. Adapted from John Boyne’s novel, British writer-director Mark Herman shows the clash of innocence and evil with heart-stopping suspense. Some details, however—Shmuel’s chubby appearance and his ability to take time out for conversations—require serious suspension of disbelief. Miramax Films (www.boyinthestripedpajamas.com).
—Renata Polt

Lost Islands
Director-writer Reshef Levy’s audience-pleasing coming-of-age story of twins in love with the same girl is both uproarious and sobering, with themes of betrayal and tragedy complicating the warp and woof of family life in Israel. Set in the 1980s, American music (i.e., “Aquarius”) and television shows (Love Boat) serve as a backdrop to a story with characters you come to care about. United King Films. —Zelda Shluker

Defiance
When their parents are murdered by the Nazis, the three Bielski brothers take to the dense Belarus forests, form a fighting partisan unit and set up a self-sustaining community that shelters more than a thousand Jewish refugees. In strong performances, Daniel Craig plays the idealistic Tuvia, who clashes with the more violent Zus (Liev Schreiber), while Asael (Jamie Bell) is caught in the middle. Director Edward Zwick builds on the true story by filling the screen with heroes, shootouts and romances; the film’s weakness lies in its flat, anachronistic dialogue. Paramount Vantage (www.defiancemovie.com). —T.T.

Forgiveness
Two successful American women, one Catholic and the other Jewish, track down what happened to their respective mothers, once childhood friends in Poland, during the Holocaust. Polish director Mariusz Kotowski has created a rare feature film dominated by strong, independent women. Bright Shining City Productions (www.bright shiningcity.com). —T.T.

Valkyrie
Loaded with star power, exploding ammunition and high tension, this historical thriller dramatizes the July 1944 attempt by high-ranking German army officers to assassinate Hitler, establish a new government, close the concentration camps and seek peace with the allies. Tom Cruise is forceful as chief conspirator Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg, backed by a fine cast of British actors. United Artists and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (https://valkyrie.unitedartists.com).—T.T.

The Reader
A German schoolboy receives his sexual initiation from an older woman, only to learn later that she had been an SS guard at Auschwitz. In a deeper sense, the film, based on Bernhard Schlink’s international best seller of the same name, explores the complex relationship between Germany’s wartime and first postwar generations. A superb cast including Kate Winslet and Ralph Fiennes helps create a work that confronts the viewer with moral, intellectual and emotional challenges. The Weinstein Company (www.thereader-movie.com). —T.T.

The Case for Israel: Democracy¹s Outpost
Based on Alan Dershowitz¹s best seller of the same name, this documentary offers an appreciation of what Israel is up against and its fortitude against the odds. Here the superstar lawyer talks with Ehud Barak, Shimon Peres, Benjamin Netanyahu, Michael Oren, Phyllis Chesler and Dennis Ross while film clips‹the bloody aftermath of a bus bombing, the liberation of a concentration camp, children in Sderot diving for safety from Qassam rockets‹bring the talking heads¹ observations to life. Doc Emet Productionswww.thecaseforisrael.com —Deborah Fineblum Raub

Good
A mild-mannered German literature professor (Viggo Mortensen) is taken up by the newly empowered Nazi regime after writing a novel touching on compassionate euthanasia. Hungry for recognition and the perks of party loyalty, he gradually rises in the ranks of the SS and hesitates too long to save his best friend, a Jewish psychiatrist (Jason Isaacs). The selling-your-soul-to-the-devil plot has its moments, but both acting and dialogue are too stilted to arouse much interest in the Faustian bargain. THINKFilmwww.thinkfilmcompany.com —Tom Tugend

Web Sighting

The recent spate of World War II and Holocaust-themed films is a perfect opening for educators looking to delve into these difficult subjects. And the San Francisco-based Jewish Partisans Education Foundation, www.jpef.org, has taken the lead with a curriculum for older teens that uses Defiance, about the famed Jewish Bielski brothers, as a jumping off point into the history of Jewish partisans. Study guides delve both into the morality of the partisans’ actions—stealing, taking revenge—as well as the history of these great Jewish heroes of anti-German resistance. Also of interest is a section on Jewish women partisans, from Sara Fortis, who traveled from village to village in Greece recruiting women to fight, to Vitka Kempner, who was part of the brigade known as the Avengers. —Leah Finkelshteyn

Max Uri describes three SS men beating his uncle and taking the keys to his store. Sophie Hirn recalls eight men smashing the glass and mirrors in her family’s apartment as she and her grandmother watched. These and 13 other eyewitness accounts of Kristallnacht, the November 1938 state-sanctioned riots against German Jews, are part of a 70th-anniversary commemoration of the pogrom from Centropa, www.centropa.org, the oral history project. The memorial includes essays, photographs and links to other sites. —Leah F. Finkelshteyn

Recordings

Aliya, Aliya
The title of this CD by the Menashe Neshama ensemble represents the group’s love and longing for Zion. Of the 15 songs recorded in India by members of the Bnei Menashe community, 4 are Hebrew poetry, psalms and liturgy (including “Im Eshkahekh Yerushalayim” and “Shokhen Ad”) and are sung in melodic pop-rock style. The rest are original compositions sung in Thadou-Kuki, an Indian dialect. In “Zion Ngaina,” composer and singer Obed Touthang sings: “The love I have for Zion/ is endless and incomparable.” The emotions are sincere, the rhythm buoyant. Shavei Israel (www.shavei.org). —Susan Adler

Essen

Paul Shapiro has remixed music that was part of the crossover between Yiddish culture and swing and bop as sung by Sophie Tucker and Cab Calloway. The title song describes a Catskill hotel menu and will send you into conniptions. A song that parodies overwrought chazonus, “Tsouris” sounds like a vaudeville routine. The combination of sax, clarinet, piano, bass and drums mixes up the hip with the Yid. Featuring the Rib and Brisket Revue band. Tzadik (www.tzadik.com). —S.A.

Exhibit

Holocaust Portfolio
Martin Mendelsberg captures the Holocaust through a stunning kabbalistic lens. Fifty framed digital prints combine personal and historic photographs with Hebrew texts. Each Hebrew letter, juxtaposed with haunting images, demonstrates profound meaning. Daled portrays the destroyed doors of synagogues. Some prints, such as Lost Girls, feature the artist’s perished relatives along with the Shema prayer. Through February 1st at the Florida Holocaust Museum, St. Petersburg (www.flhm2.org), and available to view online (www.holocaust­portfolio.org). —Sara Trappler Spielman

Audio book

Edges
Tovah Feldshuh powerfully narrates on four CDs Leora Skolkin-Smith’s book, a satisfying 1960s coming-of-age-in-Israel tale that evokes the sights, smells and tastes of Jerusalem—and the feelings of 14-year-old Lianna, unhappily uprooted from her Long Island home after her father dies. While Lianna’s mother revels in memories of her early days as a pioneer in the Jewish state, her daughter has her own adventures in the city where the boundaries between enemies are clearly drawn. Midsummer Sound Company (www.midsummersoundcompany.com). —Z.S.

DVD

Waves of Freedom
In the two years before Israel became a state, some 250 American and Canadian volunteers manned 100 barely seaworthy ships and ran the British blockade to bring 30,000 refugees to Palestine. The film, directed by Albert Rosenthal, uses dramatic amateur footage taken at the time and interviews with the volunteer seamen as well as with British marines who boarded the ships (www.gefenpublishing.com). —T.T.

Theater

Mountain Jews
Absurdist playwright and director Tuvia Tenenbom has built a career on pushing the envelope, and his newest work, in which Jewish newlyweds attempt to consummate their marriage on a mountaintop in the Holy Land, is no exception. Testing his audience’s tolerance for rape humor, broad ethnic stereotypes and frequent barrages of explosive sound effects, this production requires more endurance than most audience members are willing to invest in a night at the theater. Open run at Triad Theatre, Off Broadway (www.jewishtheater.org). —Tom Blunt

Dammerung
Peretz Hirshbein¹s 1906 Yiddish drama casts an otherworldly pall over the audience, performed in English for the first time ever by a keenly empathetic, multigenerational ensemble. Chronicling one family¹s battle against the forces of evil and apathy, Hirshbein¹s script is more of a ritual evocation than a narrative, and director Marc Geller has infused his production with apocalyptic angst, providing a chorus of droning, chanting spirits who preside over all this from the shadows. Through January 25 at the Lion Theatre, New York www.newworldsproject.org/upcoming-events.htm. —Tom Blunt