Films play special role in remembering Holocaust
JERUSALEM (AP) — Israel's Yad Vashem Holocaust museum has kicked off its annual remembrance ceremonies with a special screening of the Oscar-winning film "Son of Saul," acknowledging the unique role movies play in maintaining the memory of the Holocaust.
The Hungarian film, which tells the story of a Jewish Nazi death camp inmate who obsessively seeks a proper burial for a boy he believes to be his son, also mirrors Yad Vashem's central theme this year — the struggle to maintain the human spirit amid inhumanity.
Solemn events are held, melancholic music and interviews with survivors fill the airwaves, and TV stations show documentaries about the genocide.
The most famous are Academy Award winners such as Schindler's List, ''The Pianist, ''Life is Beautiful, ''The Counterfeiters and Sophie's Choice — films that have arguably molded much of the public perception of the Holocaust, in which the German Nazis and their collaborators wiped out a third of world Jewry.
The movie has earned praise for its use of long tracking shots to follow the film's protagonist as he navigates the horrors of the Auschwitz death camp and struggles to find meaning amid the desperation, mayhem and brutality.