Mathi Schenk's Last Journey to Poland (2002)

(0) based on 0 votes
In the summer of 2001, 75-year-old Mathi Schenk made his last trip to Poland, following in the footsteps of his own past. He lives in the eastern cantons of Belgium, which were forcibly united with the German Reich after the invasion of German troops in May 1940. Those who did not volunteer for the Wehrmacht were – like Mathi Schenk – sent to war as forced soldiers for Germany. When the Warsaw Uprising broke out in August 1944, the 18-year-old arrived in the Polish capital and was assigned to the notorious SS Dirlewanger Brigade. During the 63 days of bitter fighting, which cost the lives of more than 200,000 Poles, he witnessed unimaginable atrocities against the people of Warsaw. While fleeing the Red Army, Polish farmers found the young soldier wounded in a ditch. Despite his German uniform, they hid him from the Russians in their village.
Directors
Release Date
Mar 22, 2002
Runtime
01h 20m
Genre
Available in streaming on

In the summer of 2001, 75-year-old Mathi Schenk made his last trip to Poland, following in the footsteps of his own past. He lives in the eastern cantons of Belgium, which were forcibly united with the German Reich after the invasion of German troops in May 1940. Those who did not volunteer for the Wehrmacht were – like Mathi Schenk – sent to war as forced soldiers for Germany. When the Warsaw Uprising broke out in August 1944, the 18-year-old arrived in the Polish capital and was assigned to the notorious SS Dirlewanger Brigade. During the 63 days of bitter fighting, which cost the lives of more than 200,000 Poles, he witnessed unimaginable atrocities against the people of Warsaw. While fleeing the Red Army, Polish farmers found the young soldier wounded in a ditch. Despite his German uniform, they hid him from the Russians in their village.

Movies like Mathi Schenk's Last Journey to Poland

Francisco Boix: A Photographer in Hell

In 1939, just finished the Spanish Civil War, Spanish republican photographer Francesc Boix escapes from Spain; but is captured by the Nazis in 1940 and imprisoned in the Mauthausen concentration camp, in Austria, a year later. There, he works as a prisoner in the SS Photographic Service, hiding, between 1943 and 1945, around 20,000 negatives that later will be presented as evidence during several trials conducted against Nazi war criminals after World War II.
Search similar movies
5.0
Francisco+Boix%3A+A+Photographer+in+Hell
Francisco Boix: A Photographer in Hell

2000

Search similar movies
2 or 3 Things I Know About Him

What would your family reminiscences about dad sound like if he had been an early supporter of Hitler’s, a leader of the notorious SA and the Third Reich’s minister in charge of Slovakia, including its Final Solution? Executed as a war criminal in 1947, Hanns Ludin left behind a grieving widow and six young children, the youngest of whom became a filmmaker. It's a fascinating, maddening, sometimes even humorous look at what the director calls "a typical German story." (Film Forum)
Search similar movies
6.6
2+or+3+Things+I+Know+About+Him
2 or 3 Things I Know About Him

2005

Search similar movies
FASCISM(s): A Film in Six Parts

Six sequences about Fascism and its segments throughout history.
Search similar movies
FASCISM%28s%29%3A+A+Film+in+Six+Parts
FASCISM(s): A Film in Six Parts

2025

Search similar movies
Poland 1939: When German Soldiers Became War Criminals

September 1st, 1939. Nazi Germany invades Poland. The campaign is fast, cruel and ruthless. In these circumstances, how is it that ordinary German soldiers suddenly became vicious killers, terrorizing the local population? Did everyone turn into something worse than wild animals? The true story of the first World War II offensive that marks in the history of infamy the beginning of a carnage and a historical tragedy.
Search similar movies
8.0
Poland+1939%3A+When+German+Soldiers+Became+War+Criminals
Poland 1939: When German Soldiers Became War Criminals

2019

Search similar movies
Elie Wiesel Goes Home

A documentary chronicling the adolescent years of Elie Wiesel and the history of his sufferings. Eliezer was fifteen when Fascism brutally altered his life forever. Fifty years later, he returns to Sighetu Marmatiei, the town where he was born, to walk the painful road of remembrance - but is it possible to speak of the unspeakable? Or does Auschwitz lie beyond the capacity of any human language - the place where words and stories run out?
Search similar movies
Elie+Wiesel+Goes+Home
Elie Wiesel Goes Home

1997

Search similar movies
The Paper Brigade

Lithuania, 1941, during World War II. Hundreds of thousands of texts on Jewish culture, stolen by the Germans, are gathered in Vilnius to be classified, either to be stored or to be destroyed. A group of Jewish scholars and writers, commissioned by the invaders to carry out the sorting operations, but reluctant to collaborate and determined to save their legacy, hide many books in the ghetto where they are confined. This is the epic story of the Paper Brigade.
Search similar movies
6.0
The+Paper+Brigade
The Paper Brigade

2018

Search similar movies
Stanisław Lem: Autor Solaris

An account of the life and work of the Polish writer Stanisław Lem (1921-2006), a key figure in science fiction literature involved in mysteries and paradoxes that need to be enlightened.
Search similar movies
7.2
Stanis%C5%82aw+Lem%3A+Autor+Solaris
Stanisław Lem: Autor Solaris

2016

Search similar movies
Requiem for Auschwitz - the film

13 years ago, director Bob Entrop made the film A piece of blue in the sky, the first film in the Netherlands that depicted the murder of almost 1 million Sinti and Roma during the Second World War. There is a taboo on what happened during the war, you don't talk about it with anyone and certainly not in front of a camera. Requiem for Auschwitz is a sequel, with the most valuable moments from the first film, supplemented with the grandchildren and the creation and performance of the 'Requiem for Auschwitz' by Sinti composer Roger Moreno Rathgeb by the Sinti and Roma Philharmonic from Frankfurt and a Jewish choir in the Berliner Dom in Berlin, during Holocaust Memorial Day. During his visit to Auschwitz in 2020 with four musicians from the Dutch Accompaniment Orchestra, Roger shows them the places that inspired him.
Search similar movies
Requiem+for+Auschwitz+-+the+film
Requiem for Auschwitz - the film

2022

Search similar movies
Simon Schama: The Road to Auschwitz

In the most personal and unflinching film of his career, historian Simon Schama confronts the enormity of the Holocaust and the catastrophe experienced by its victims. In a journey that ends with his first visit to Auschwitz, Simon travels across the Continent to explore how the Holocaust was far more than a Nazi obsession that played out in gas chambers, but a European-wide crime of complicity. From bullets in the Lithuanian lands of his ancestors to bureaucracy in the Netherlands, he reveals how deep-rooted prejudice was weaponised to turn people against their Jewish neighbours. As a moving interview with a survivor reveals, the story of how ‘evil comes step by step’ remains powerfully relevant today.
Search similar movies
4.6
Simon+Schama%3A+The+Road+to+Auschwitz
Simon Schama: The Road to Auschwitz

2025

Search similar movies
How the Holocaust Began

Historian James Bulgin reveals the origins of the Holocaust in the German invasion of the Soviet Union, exploring the mass murder, collaboration and experimentation that led to the Final Solution.
Search similar movies
6.3
How+the+Holocaust+Began
How the Holocaust Began

2023

Search similar movies
Misa's Fugue

The true story of one boy's journey as a victim of Nazi oppression. While exposed to some of the most horrific events of the Holocaust, Misa was able to endure the atrocities of genocide through his love of art and music.
Search similar movies
9.0
Misa%27s+Fugue
Misa's Fugue

2012

Search similar movies
Paper Clips

Whitwell, TN is a small, rural community of less than two thousand people nestled in the mountains of Tennessee. Its citizens are almost exclusively white and Christian. In 1998, the children of Whitwell Middle School took on an inspiring project, launched out of their principal's desire to help her students open their eyes to diversity in the world and the horrors and enormity of the holocaust.
Search similar movies
6.9
Paper+Clips
Paper Clips

2004

Search similar movies
Hôtel Terminus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie

Marcel Ophuls' riveting film details the heinous legacy of the Gestapo head dubbed "The Butcher of Lyon." Responsible for over 4,000 deaths in occupied France during World War II, Barbie would escape—with U.S. help—to South America in 1951, where he lived until a global manhunt led to his 1983 arrest and subsequent trial.
Search similar movies
7.0
H%C3%B4tel+Terminus%3A+The+Life+and+Times+of+Klaus+Barbie
Hôtel Terminus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie

1988

Search similar movies
Shoah

Director Claude Lanzmann spent 11 years on this sprawling documentary about the Holocaust, conducting his own interviews and refusing to use a single frame of archival footage. Dividing Holocaust witnesses into three categories – survivors, bystanders, and perpetrators – Lanzmann presents testimonies from survivors of the Chelmno concentration camp, an Auschwitz escapee, and witnesses of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, as well as a chilling report of gas chambers from an SS officer at Treblinka.
Search similar movies
8.2
Shoah
Hitler & Stalin: Portrait of Hostility

A double portrait of two dictators who were thousands of miles apart but were constantly fixated on each other.
Search similar movies
7.3
Hitler+%26+Stalin%3A+Portrait+of+Hostility
Hitler & Stalin: Portrait of Hostility

2009

Search similar movies
Hitler's Teen Killers

They grew up under the Nazi regime. They pledged to give their lives for Hitler. They were fanatics who would not be stopped. They were the 20,000 teenagers who made up the 12th SS Panzer Division. Unleashed in France to halt the Allied invasion, they would sow terror and destruction in their wake. Historical colorized archives and a handful of survivors tell us this story.
Search similar movies
7.3
Hitler%27s+Teen+Killers
Hitler's Teen Killers

2020

Search similar movies
The Hitler Home Movies

Secluded deep in the Bavarian Alps, Hitler, his family, and closest allies hid away- issuing orders for armies across Europe while they relaxed, dined, and enjoyed an otherworldly peace.
Search similar movies
The+Hitler+Home+Movies
The Hitler Home Movies

2023

Search similar movies
Warsaw: A City Divided

The history of the Warsaw Ghetto (1940-43) as seen from both sides of the wall, its legacy and its memory: new light on a tragic era of division, destruction and mass murder thanks to the testimony of survivors and the discovery of a ten-minute film shot by Polish amateur filmmaker Alfons Ziółkowski in 1941.
Search similar movies
6.8
Warsaw%3A+A+City+Divided
Warsaw: A City Divided

2019

Search similar movies
Der vergessene Spion - Verkürzte ein Verrat den Zweiten Weltkrieg?

An American of Swedish origin and oil trader, Eric Erickson allegedly maintained business relations with the Nazi regime for the sole purpose of passing information to his country's secret services and working towards the defeat of the Third Reich. But what reality lies behind the heroic myth he himself created?
Search similar movies
Der+vergessene+Spion+-+Verk%C3%BCrzte+ein+Verrat+den+Zweiten+Weltkrieg%3F
Der vergessene Spion - Verkürzte ein Verrat den Zweiten Weltkrieg?

2025

Search similar movies
The Eichmann Trial

In 1961, history was on trial... in a trial that made history. Just 15 years after the end of WWII, the Holocaust had been largely forgotten. That changed with the capture of Adolf Eichmann, a former Nazi officer hiding in Argentina. Through rarely-seen archival footage, The Eichmann Trial documents one of the most shocking trials ever recorded, and the birth of Holocaust awareness and education.
Search similar movies
The+Eichmann+Trial
The Eichmann Trial

2025

Search similar movies
Golda Maria

In 1994, film producer Patrick Sobelman recorded the testimony of his grandmother Golda Maria Tondovska, a Polish Jewish survivor of the Shoah.
Search similar movies
5.7
Golda+Maria
Golda Maria

2022

Search similar movies
Hitler's Games, Berlin 1936

Summer 1936 - The Berlin Olympics, organized by the Nazi regime on the eve of World War II, acted as a grand showcase for a Germany that was athletic, peaceful and rejuvenated. The violence and hate that until then had reigned in the streets of Berlin suddenly vanished. Adolf Hitler became the triumphant host of European countries he would soon try to invade or face in a deadly global conflict.
Search similar movies
6.8
Hitler%27s+Games%2C+Berlin+1936
Hitler's Games, Berlin 1936

2016

Search similar movies
Hitlers Angriff aus dem All - Das Geheimnis der V2

The Nazis knew it was their last chance. The British knew it was the deadliest threat they'd ever face. And the Americans knew it could fall into the wrong hands. The V2 rocket quickly became Hitler's greatest deadly weapon and beacon of hope to turn the course of World War II in his favor. Watch Nazi Germany's desperate attempt at victory as the Allies race to stop them and see how the V2 miraculously went from deadly weapon to amazing feat of space technology.
Search similar movies
Hitlers+Angriff+aus+dem+All+-+Das+Geheimnis+der+V2
Hitlers Angriff aus dem All - Das Geheimnis der V2

2016

Search similar movies
Riefenstahl

Explores Leni Riefenstahl's artistic legacy and her complex ties to the Nazi regime, juxtaposing her self-portrayal with evidence suggesting awareness of the regime's atrocities.
Search similar movies
7.3
Riefenstahl
Riefenstahl

2024

Search similar movies
Osteuropa zwischen Hitler und Stalin - Das große Sterben

Between 1930 and 1945, Eastern Europe experienced mass violence on an unprecedented scale. Hitler and Stalin exploited the vast region for their respective expansionist plans. It is estimated that around 14 million civilians were murdered—primarily Jews, Poles, Balts, Belarusians, and Ukrainians.
Search similar movies
Osteuropa+zwischen+Hitler+und+Stalin++-+Das+gro%C3%9Fe+Sterben
Osteuropa zwischen Hitler und Stalin - Das große Sterben

2025

Search similar movies
Paragraph 175

During the Nazi regime, there was widespread persecution of homosexual men, which started in 1871 with the Paragraph 175 of the German Penal Code. Thousands were murdered in concentration camps. This powerful and disturbing documentary, narrated by Rupert Everett, presents for the first time the largely untold testimonies of some of those who survived.
Search similar movies
6.5
Paragraph+175
Paragraph 175

2000

Search similar movies
Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport

In the nine months prior to World War II, 10.000 innocent children left behind their families, their homes, their childhood, and took the journey... to Britain to escape the Nazi Holocaust.
Search similar movies
7.4
Into+the+Arms+of+Strangers%3A+Stories+of+the+Kindertransport
Into the Arms of Strangers: Stories of the Kindertransport

2000

Search similar movies