Uprising (2001)

Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

In 1939, after the invasion of Poland, Reinhard Heydrich chief of Gestapo began to place all Polish Jews in ghettos, where they could slowly die of hunger and disease. The campaign was to be administered by the Waffen-SS the party's military formations that fought as integral units in the armed forces. The Warsaw ghetto was the largest of these segregated areas established by the Nazis in Poland. In 1940 Heydrich, using the excuse that the spread of typhus had to be contained, set up a special section 11 miles in circumference enclosed by a brick wall 10 feet high . The cost was paid by the Judenrat (whose leader named Adam Czerniakow is perfectly played by Donald Sutherland) , the Jewish Council of twenty-four-members, which was in charge of Jewish affairs inside the ghetto . The daily struggle against hunger and disease is aggravated by the German demands for "deportations to the east" that many begin to suspect are camouflaged mass murders . Later on , there takes place the upheaval by a handful of fighters .This is an emotionally tale and very decent drama about a group of Jews from uprising until terrible ending in the Warsaw ghetto . Jon Avnet correctly directs a spellbinding portrait about the holocaust with intense drama , action and spectacular as well as sad scenes . A splendid all-star-cast gives magnificent acting in real-life characters such as Leelee Sobieski as Tosia Altman , David Schwimmer as Yitzhak Zuckerman , Stephen Moyer as Kazik Rotem, Sadie Frost as Zivia Lubetkin , Radha Mitchell as Mira Fruchner , Mili Avital as Deworah Baron and special mention to Hanz Azaria who is excellent in a complicate and suffering role . An of course , we can not forget the great John Voight as Major-General Jurgen Stroop who carried out the brutal repression . Emotive as well as sensitive musical score by the classical Maurice Jarre . Impressive and adequate production by the Spanish Benjamin Fernandez who previously had designed ¨The others¨ and ¨Daylight¨ . Evocative and atmospheric cinematography by cameraman Denis Lenoir . Adding more details over largely described on the movie regarding 'the Warsaw ghetto uprising', the events happened on the following manner : From 300 to 400 died daily in the Warsaw trap. More than 43.000 starved to death during the first year. Children crazed by hunger crawled through the sewers to the non-Jewish sectors of the city to smuggle in a bit of food. People were no longer moved by the sight of men and women falling dead on the streets. The Nazi authorities began intensified measure on July 22, 1942. As a memorial to Heydrich, Heirich Himmler ordered all Jews except those already in concentration camps to be deported .The ghetto and all labor camps would then be destroyed. Mass deportations to the gas chambers of Treblinka began. In two months 300.000 Jews were eliminated. The Judenrat was ordered to deliver 6.000 Jews daily for deportation. Each day thousands were driven by guards through the gates.Young Zionists, pioneers training to go to Palestine, mobilized first to be followed by members of the Polish workers party . On July 28, 1942, the Jewish Combat organization consisting about 1.000 men and boys was formed. All resolved to kill as many of their tormentors as they could before they died.The Jews fighting from rooftops, cellars, and attics,Poles outside the ghetto now began to send in more revolvers, grenades, and dynamite. In 1943 the guerrillas divided into twenty-two groups built an intricate network underground cellars and tunnels ,linked with command posts . In April 19,1943 German troops moved in on the ghetto to send all who were left to Treblinka in a final action. First came the armed trucks, tanks, and armored cars. The ghetto fighters poured a hail of bullets, grenades and bombs, the fighting went on for twenty-eight days. The guerrillas fought to the last . Many committed suicide at the moment before capture. The Germans dragged survivors from the cellars and rubble. Fewer than 100 escaped, the last 60000 Jews had been exterminated or killed in the explosions and fires.Polish sources reported that the fighters had killed 300 Germans and wounded 1000. From Warsaw Jewish resistance moved to swamps and forests .

....David Schwimer's stating the uprising was longer than the Polish army's resistance to their initial invasion in 1939. If 28 days is the benchmark for the Jewish uprising the Polish resistance went from 1st September through 2nd October 1939 - there was solid combat still in place on the Hel Peninsula.Polish resistance would have exceeded 2nd October had the Russians not invaded prior to that on the 17th September. The Germans were very concerned of the Polish army retreating into the Pripet Marshes for a 'last stand' - Red army units eliminated that possibility.Let me say bluntly it is true there was little cooperation between the gentile Poles and Jewish Poles but there was also, unlike in the Netherlands, France etc., the added penalty of immediate execution if a Pole were found assisting Jews. I am well aware of the exploitation of Jews by Poles as well as the bigotry thrown at the Jews by Poles - even the post-war pogrom in Kielce in 1946. No denial of such. Then again the Red Army's NKVD were disproportionately made up of Jews that came in 1939 - this doesn't mitigate bigotry more a sad commentary on a very very sad time with truly horrific consequences to both Jewish Poles at the hands of the Nazis and gentile Poles at the hands of both the Nazis and Communists.Lastly most photos I have seen on Jurgen Stroop has him wearing that hat/cap used by most officers in the Afrika Korps - the one slightly resembling a baseball cap not the one Voight is shown wearing in the film playing Stroop.

I saw this film in Australia with a relative who survived the Ghetto uprising. He said that, in spite of some inconsistencies, it was as accurate as film could portray it. While it is true that there was more than one resistance faction, and sometimes they were at odds, the essence of the event is portrayed well. The Polish Resistance's attitude was mixed, but my relative, who was a courier in and out of the Ghetto said that many individual Poles risked their lives to hide him. The woman who escaped with the baby at the end of the film is also related to me. Her husband, who was killed in the first days of the uprising, was a major planner and organizer. Of course, it affected me greatly since my mother originally came from Warsaw and I lost many relatives.

I'm not going to deliberate, or point out the historical inaccuracies of this film; other posters have already done this. I will instead say how utterly disgusted I was by the portrayal of the Pole during this film. Being of Polish Jewish decent, and having a grandfather who lived through the Warsaw uprising, and having heard first hand of what occurred here, I can only say that this film does a great disservice to the men and women who fought with next to nothing to keep the Germans at bay for over a month. If anything, it should also be pointed out that in all likelihood the uprising would have been a success if the governments of Britain and the United States had come through on their promises, however that information, like so much other vital information about the uprising and the AK is excluded from this film.