"The Last Days" is an exceptional film where five Hungarian Holocaust survivors tell their stories of their lives under the Nazis. Unlike other documentaries, these Jews did not experience any of this persecution until their country was annexed by the Germans in 1944. Their stories begin in 1944 and they recount the horrors of the Nazi concentration camps. Additionally, corroborating accounts from American soldiers and a German doctor working at Auschwitz were included as well as lots of archival photos and film. In many ways, this film is like going to a Holocaust center and listening to accounts of the survivors.

Despite this film being very well made and quite moving, it's a case of preaching to the choir. In other words, those who are not insane or stupid and acknowledge that the Germans slaughtered millions will watch this film and appreciate it. Others probably won't watch it or else they'll dismiss the film as propaganda or an exaggeration or a conspiracy. Frankly, there isn't much you can do with this group. In the future, after successive generations have come and gone, this film will prove invaluable as a record of the Nazi horrors. But, since it only consists of five subjects, the film is naturally incomplete. Other films, such as "Shoah" and "Night and Fog" help to provide a more thorough story and are all worth seeing--but are also very draining. These are all exceptional films--just be sure you have some Kleenex handy as you watch.

What can I say that hasn't been said by others who have come across this essential document of the survivors of the holocaust? It goes beyond any kind of rating; watching the people on screen tell their stories, and re-connect with their haunted roots, is about as captivating as it can get, genuinely so, enough to not want to look away. The stories from the five survivors is just enough to make it a crucial piece of history, of something that will survive past their years as their own talked-of memories of what they saw, the people they saw murdered including their families, of being stripped of humanity and more deeply for their souls. The actual footage of almost ten years ago of inside camps of Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen is equally powerful to see.

But it's another that other interviews are included with the likes of an ex-Auschwitz Nazi doctor who didn't go along with his other sadistic colleagues; the American soldiers who were appalled to discover what they thought contained German prisoners of war to be thousands of Jews; the one US Congressman (at the time) to survive the holocaust. The history of this period of the early to mid 40's has become abstracted in the view of society, something so enormous it's even more staggering that similar practices go on in other countries today. The notes of what Hitler did is given notice in the film, but the facts are more as a back-drop for what the Last Days focus is. By director James Moll going in for these women's stories, of what they lost and tried to regain, is just as important to see in its own light as Schindler's List as a dramatization of the facts. It's not too much a wonder it got the best documentary prize at the Oscars. Executive produced by Steven Spielberg (speaking of 'Schindler') and the Shoa foundation.

If we dont know our history both positive & negative we will never be able to understand what true sacrifices generations before us have made...im not jewish nor am i a religious man..some of the visual images in "The Last Days" were ones I myself will never be able to forget so imagine what the "survivors" had to deal with watching it EVERY night when they laid their heads down on their pillows expecting to be able to get a good comfortable nights sleep...Hitler was a human not a monster..we all need to remember that evil/good is within every single one of us & its up to us not to ever let 1 human get that powerful again to where he has his own people escorting previous friends to their last breaths...it's unimaginable that we the human race can be so damn manipulated to believe the best solution is the erasing of the entire population...we must be better...woke up at 630am on a sunday n watching this piece of history hurts but i couldnt allow myself to turn it off. Sometimes our pain is necessary to be able to truely feel the opposite which is happiness.