This black and white documentary about the Holocaust features eyewitness accounts as well as shots of previously unpublished photographs, in addition to the usual archival footage. It has as its main focus the events taking place in Germany on or around November 9 and 10, 1938 (Kristalnacht). That was when the government's genocidal anti-Semitic policies went into full swing. Encouraged by figures in the government, sympathetic thugs and off-duty soldiers and police torched or stoned the storefronts of every identifiable Jewish-oriented or Jewish-owned business they could reach. The name given to that huge collective crime, Kristalnacht, literally means "Glass-Night," and refers to the shattered glass that filled the streets at that time. Kristalnacht serves to mark the commencement of the most active phase of the Holocaust. Before that time, many Jews living in Germany had worked to persuade themselves (against the evidence) that it might be possible to survive the Hitler regime. After Kristalnacht, almost no one living in Germany could sustain such delusions. The director of this documentary, Erwin Leiser, is himself a survivor of that time. One chilling highlight of this film is an interview with an old woman who wasn't opposed to her government's anti-Semitic policies when she was a girl, and is still not particularly disturbed by what happened during the War. ~ Clarke Fountain, Rovi