Best movies like Shoes

Filmmaker Alain Resnais documents the atrocities behind the walls of Hitler's concentration camps.

This bright domestic drama captures a moment in time when, for a large number of idealistic and grateful French men and women, the promise of Russian communism was bright, and everything Russian was a source of joy and amazement. In the story, Irene was rescued from Auschwitz by soldiers from the U.S.S.R., and since that time she has enthusiatically considered Russia to be the source of hope in the world. Her more pragmatic husband has, by 1958, grown somewhat weary of her enthusiasm, which has led her to decorate their apartment with anything Russian she can get her hands on. Matters come to a head when she is befriended by three members of the Red Army Choir during their tour of Paris.

Using previously unreleased archival material in addition to contemporary interviews, this academy award-winning documentary tells the story of the Frank family and presents the first fully-rounded portrait of their brash and free-spirited daughter Anne, perhaps the world's most famous victim of the Holocaust. Written by Dawn M. Barclift

Auschwitz is a hard-hitting war film which shows life as it really was at the death camp.

It is 1940. The first transport of prisoners arrives at the newly created concentration camp Auschwitz. One of them is Tadeusz “Teddy” Pietrzykowski, pre-war boxing champion of Warsaw. The camp officers force him to fight in the ring for his and other prisoners’ lives. However, his every win strengthens the hope that Nazis are not invincible. Auschwitz officers notice the growing resistance. The confrontation with the authorities of the camp becomes inevitable.

The true story of Charlotte Salomon, a young German-Jewish painter who comes of age in Berlin on the eve of the Second World War. Fiercely imaginative and deeply gifted, she dreams of becoming an artist. Her first love applauds her talent, which emboldens her resolve. When anti-Semitic policies inspire violent mobs, she escapes to the safety of the South of France. There she begins to paint again, and finds new love. But her work is interrupted, this time by a family tragedy that reveals an even darker secret. Believing that only an extraordinary act will save her, she embarks on the monumental adventure of painting her life story.

A Nazi doctor—along with the Sonderkomando, Jews who are forced to work in the crematoria of Auschwitz against their fellow Jews—find themselves in a moral grey zone.

The commandant of Auschwitz, Rudolf Höss, and his wife Hedwig, strive to build a dream life for their family in a house and garden next to the camp.

As World War II rages on, Villi and Colette are captured and sent to Auschwitz concentration camp. Imprisoned within separate compounds, the lovers must risk their lives to be together again.

A disfigured concentration-camp survivor, unrecognizable after facial reconstruction surgery, searches ravaged postwar Berlin for the husband who might have betrayed her to the Nazis.

Poland, during World War II. Martha Weiss, a Jewish woman, arrives at the Auschwitz extermination camp with her family. She is assigned the role of interpreter, but her loved ones are much less fortunate.

A German woman on a ship returning to Europe notices a face of another woman which brings recollections from the past. She tells her husband that she had been an overseer in Auschwitz during the war, but she has actually saved a woman's life.

Harry Haft is a boxer who fought fellow prisoners in the concentration camps to survive. Haunted by the memories and his guilt, he attempts to use high-profile fights against boxing legends like Rocky Marciano as a way to find his first love again.

The true story of a former Greek Olympic boxer taken prisoner during World War II and sent to Auschwitz. There he was permitted to survive so long as he fought for the amusement of his captors. His father and brother were also held as insurance that he would continue to fight.

Five Jewish Hungarians, now U.S. citizens, tell their stories: before March, 1944, when Nazis began to exterminate Hungarian Jews, months in concentration camps, and visiting childhood homes more than 50 years later. An historian, a Sonderkommando, a doctor who experimented on Auschwitz prisoners, and US soldiers who were part of the liberation in April, 1945.

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)

In postwar Germany, a displaced Czech boy, separated from his family during wartime, is befriended by an American GI while the boy's mother desperately searches for him.

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.

In the Jewish tradition of arguing with God, Jewish prisoners in Auschwitz decide to put God on Trial.

Acclaimed writer and historian Deborah E. Lipstadt must battle for historical truth to prove the Holocaust actually occurred when David Irving, a renowned denier, sues her for libel.

The film "Pilecki" is a fictionalized documentary depicting the story of Witold Pilecki, from his youth through action during World War II, up to the imprisonment and death in May 1948.

Victor Perez was a Jewish boxer who became world flyweight champion in 1931 and 1932, but was transported to Auschwitz concentration camp when Paris fell to the Nazi s in 1943. While there he was forced into slave labour and made to participate in violent boxing matches for the amusement of the Nazi guards. Surviving Auschwitz tells Victors astonishing, harrowing, brutal and incredibly moving true story.

The true story of German-Czech businessman Oskar Schindler (1908-74) as told by some of the Jews — more than a thousand people — whose lives he saved from extermination during World War II.

The only two survivors of the Treblinka concentration camp recount the horrors they experienced and tell how their lives were after escaping during a revolt in 1943.

Kitty, a Jewish survivor from the Holocaust, is taken back to Auschwitz, where she revives her imprisonment and life under the 3rd Reich

Documentary compiling the testimonies of the last remaining Holocaust survivors living in Britain, all of whom were children at the time, and following them over the course of a year as they embark upon personal and profound journeys.

This is the true story of Freddy and Walter – two young Slovak Jews, who were deported to Auschwitz in 1942. On 10 April 1944, after meticulous planning, they manage to escape. While the inmates they had left behind courageously stand their ground against the Nazi officers, the two men are driven on by the hope that their evidence could save lives.

Nazi occupied Poland, during the World War II. Hans, a former brilliant student, has become an SS officer stationed at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. When he is commissioned by his superior officer to build an efficient gas chamber, Hans, facing the harsh reality, begins to realize the magnitude of the atrocious acts of which he is being accomplice.

This is a tale of how the angel of life was confronted by the angel of death. Set in Auschwitz Birkenau, 1944.

An anthology film about the common topic of the Holocaust and honouring the memory of the victims. What caused the mass extermination of people on a national basis? Where do origins of interethnic intolerance, anti-Semitism, nationalist propaganda come from? Today these issues are still topical. Nationally motivated conflicts still fare up between people; national hostility is still kindled. There are voices that deny the reality of the Holocaust as a historical fact. We cannot allow a repetition of the monstrous tragedy and should never forget about it!

At the end of WW2, a compassionate Dutch policeman helps smuggle a Jewish woman into British Palestine.

Myriam, a survivor of the concentration camp at Auschwitz, is a filmmaker and journalist who has spent many years living abroad. She takes part in a memorial event at the town hall in Paris commemorating the liberation of the camp, where she wins a flight to Cracow. At first she refuses to accept the prize, then decides to go.

Sven arrives in nowadays Auschwitz to do his civil service at the memorial. He encounters unfriendliness, especially by Stanislaw Krzeminski, the 85 year old KZ-survivor, and Krzysztof Lanuszewski, brother of his early love affair Ania. Even his boss Herold, the places manager, does little to help Sven familiarize. But when problems accumulate Sven realises that he already has become involved.

While Hans Jurgen Höss enjoyed a happy childhood in the family villa at Auschwitz, Jewish prisoner Anita Lasker-Wallfisch was trying to survive the notorious concentration camp. At the heart of this film is the historic and inspiring moment – eight decades later – when the two come face-to-face. This is the first time the descendant of a major war criminal meets a survivor in such a private and intimate setting, Anita’s London living room. Together with their children, Kai Höss and Maya Lasker-Wallfisch, the four protagonists explore their very different hereditary burdens.