The Rape of Europa
Jewish Stories • 1h 56m
Directed by Richard Berge, Nicole Newnham & Bonni Cohen • Documentary • With Joan Allen • 2006 • 117 minutes
The Rape of Europa tells the epic story of the systematic theft, deliberate destruction and miraculous survival of Europe’s art treasures during the Third Reich and World War II.
In a journey through seven countries, the film takes the audience into the violent whirlwind of fanaticism, greed, and warfare that threatened to wipe out the artistic heritage of Europe. For twelve long years, the Nazis looted and destroyed art on a scale unprecedented in history. But heroic young art historians and curators from America and across Europe fought back with an extraordinary campaign to rescue and return the millions of lost, hidden and stolen treasures. The Rape of Europa begins and ends with the story of artist Gustav Klimt’s famed Gold Portrait, stolen from Viennese Jews in 1938 and now the most expensive painting ever sold.
Today, more than sixty years later, the legacy of this tragic history continues to play out as families of looted collectors recover major works of art, conservators repair battle damage, and nations fight over the fate of ill-gotten spoils of war. Joan Allen narrates this breathtaking chronicle about the battle over the very survival of centuries of western culture.
Up Next in Jewish Stories
-
There Are Jews Here
Directed by Brad Lichtenstein, Morgan Johnson • Documentary • 2016 • 89 minutes
THERE ARE JEWS HERE takes you on a journey to places where most never imagined Jews existed, following the untold stories of four once thriving American Jewish communities that can now barely hold a minyan. Most Amer...
-
Summer of Dolphins
Directed by Shahar Segal • Documentary • 2007 • 82 minutes
Three dolphins that have been excluded by their pod in the coral reef are set free by their trainer. Maya, who had raised them from birth, realizes that if Lemon, Shandy and Pashosh stay in the pod, they will die.
Did you know that a do...
-
M
Directed by Yolande Zauberman • Documentary • With Menachem Lang • 2018 • 105 minutes
Menahem Lang, an actor with an extraordinary singing voice, returns to Bnei Brak, the city in Israel where he grew up and a center of ultra-orthodox Judaism. Now in his 30s, Lang left the city at 20, following ...
