Partisans of Vilna | 
| Director: Joshua Waletzky
Actors: Roberta Wallach, Abba Kovner
Studio: New Video Group
Category: DVD
List Price: $29.95
Buy New: $15.08
You Save: $14.87 (50%)
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Rating:  5 reviews
Sales Rank: 36881
Format: Black & White, Color, Dolby, Dvd, Ntsc
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Subtitled)
Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Region: 1
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Number Of Discs: 2
Running Time: 130 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.1 x 5.4 x 0.6
MPN: NVGD9614D
ISBN: 0767064720
UPC: 767685961438
EAN: 9780767064729
ASIN: B0007GP6YW
Theatrical Release Date: September 12, 1986
Release Date: April 26, 2005
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
This skillfully blends songs newsreels & archival footage with interviews of over 40 holocaust survivors to paint an eye-opening portrait of the courageous jewish resistance in vilna the capital of lithuania. Studio: New Video Group Release Date: 04/26/2005 Run time: 130 minutes Rating: Nr
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| Customer Reviews:
The battle for Vilna May 7, 2005
James Ferguson (Vilnius, Lithuania)
38 out of 38 found this review helpful
This is the most thorough film of the resistance movement in Vilna, made in 1986 but only now getting widespread release on DVD. The documentary is told in retrospect by the survivors of the holocaust in Vilna, which resulted in the killing of over 90% of the Jews in what was regarded as the Jerusalem of Lithuania. For centuries Vilna had been a safe haven for Jews, a center of religious scholarship and a vibrant Yiddish community. As one survivor noted, Vilna isn't Vilna without its Jewish culture.
The film deals with the very troubling aspect of the Jewish police, or Judenrat, which was used by the Germans to keep the ghetto in line. Jacob Gens essentially served as the constable of the Jewish community during the German occupation, turning over members of the resistance with the false hope that this would spare the community at large. This led to horrible divisions within the crumbling Jewish community, which were painfully retold by the survivors.
The partisans took to the woods outside Vilna, joining up with Russian, Lithuanian and Polish partisan forces, and mounting a very effective resistance to German occupation until the Soviet tanks rolled in late in 1943. It was a tragic victory for the Jewish partisans, caught up in the wave of euphoria surrounding the defeat of the Germans, but having to bear witness to the destruction of the once proud Jewish quarter in Vilna.
Excellent documentary on tragically unknown subject October 16, 2006
Brendan M. Howard (Kansas, USA)
16 out of 16 found this review helpful
The well-known Warsaw Ghetto uprising was going to be producer Aviva Kempner's focus when she went to Israel to interview survivors, but a recommendation by a museum director turned her attention to a lesser-known partisan movement. In the Jewish-quarter-turned-ghetto of Vilna, the partisans -- mostly Socialist, Communist and Zionist youths -- unified and slowly came to the realization that the Nazis meant to exterminate the 20,000 Jews left.
Partisans of Vilna tells the story of these courageous men and women, many of whom fought and fought for years only to be rewarded with the fact at the end of the war that 20,000 Jews had dwindled to 3,000. They had no national army to back them and were even faced with antisemitism from their Russian, Polish and Lithuanian partisan tallies in the cold Eastern European forests. Their hardest conflict, however, came against the local Jewish police, who tried to appease the Nazis by letting them take small numbers of Jews to the death camps in order to save the majority. That was a hopeless idea, but the film demonstrates that a hope that time would save the Jews was not ridiculous and eventually made sure more of Vilna's Jews chose not to join the armed insurgents.
DVD Extras: Accompanying this 20th-anniversary edition are plenty of educational bonuses. An audio CD of Yiddish songs from the film, mostly inspired or written by the fighting partisans themselves, is accompanied by a 10-page Yiddish and English songbook with voluminous notes. Also here is a 29-page study guide, with historical background, questions for discussion, a timeline and a stellar bibliography that will be perfect for those whose curiosity is sparked. Commentaries include a filmmaking-focused one from director, co-writer and narrator Joseph Waltezsky, and another by producer and co-writer Aviva Kempner, who gives greater historical context and reveals tidbits of information about the people and places that didn't make it to the film.
Lost history July 6, 2005
Roger W. Macdonald-evoy (Cheyenne, WY United States)
17 out of 20 found this review helpful
There is not nearly as much of this kind of material as there could be available. I feel this dvd did a good job of showing that the Jwish community in Vilna put up a heroic resistance even with the local community and he Soviet Union putting roadblocks in their way. To many people can only look to Sobibar or Warsaw when this shows how wide spread the desire was to fight back.
The educational materials, the CD of partisian songs with translations make this an outstanding resource for teachers as well.
 "Polish city of Vilna"???! January 25, 2009
Carlos Roso (Mozambique)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I will order this DVD, following the reviews herewith, which tell the exceptional quality and historical interest of the material. However, I write this comment now, a anteriori, just to express my surprise on the editor's qualification of "Polish city of Vilna". What?! Polish??? Or Lithuanian? From when until when was Vilnius a Polish town, and from when to when was it Russian, and since when is it Lithuanian? What about "the Teutonic order city of Klaipeda"? or "Sumerian city of Cairo"? or "Mexican city of Houston and Albuquerque"? For the Polish people, that is the same to say "the German city of Wroclaw", bear in mind that this one would be more accurate (since Breslau was bohemian/german for the last 800 years before the world's biggest ethnic cleansing, in 1946, when 99,8% of the population was expelled and replaced by resettlers).
My point is: when an editor review insert such a nonsense, it destroys the credibility of the whole work that he advertises. This is the kind of thing that pushes me away from fake "history" books. In this case, the readers' reviews avoided it. Thanks to them four.
Not heros. They wanted to choose their own manner of death. May 30, 2007
Paul Schwartzberg (Berlin, Germany)
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
Audiovisual material is nearly necessary to get a realistic take on the extermination of yiddish jewery. Waletzky's material does very well in this regard.
More importantly Waletzky's commentary is on this DVD and as far as commentaries go, it added significantly to the deapth of the film.
One reviewer writes "Jewish community in Vilna put up a heroic resistance". They didn't. And this is an unrecognized aspect of the tragedy. A partial reason for this is because the jewish leadership were the first to be liquidated.
I'd suggest listen closely to Waletzky and mostly the witnesses. The witnesses express their frustrations, their own understanding of their hopeless situation.
That which set them apart from the overwhelming majority, decisive for their fate, was that they consciously decided to choose where or how to die. Paradoxically, this psychological stance, dramatically increased their chance of surviving the genocide. Many nevertheless did not.
Fighting back became a viable option towards the end of the occupation, when most of Lithuania's Jewery were already exterminated.
The resistance had no effect on the genocide. Their actions were uncoordinated and often hindered by Jews in the Ghetto who thought they would possibly live out the occupation, and their extermination that came with it, or often hindered by other partisan groups. There was not even one raid set against Ponar or similiar locations.
But view the film and learn "why".
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