Holocaust
Written by	Gerald Green
Directed by	Marvin J. Chomsky
Starring	Tom Bell Joseph Bottoms Tovah Feldshuh Marius Goring Rosemary Harris Tony Haygarth Ian Holm Lee Montague Michael Moriarty Deborah Norton George Rose Robert Stephens Meryl Streep Sam Wanamaker David Warner Fritz Weaver James Woods
Music by	Morton Gould
Country of origin	United States
Production
Producer	Robert Berger
Running time	475 min.
Original release
Network	NBC
Release	April 16, 1978 – April 19, 1978

Holocaust is an television miniseries broadcast in four parts in 1978 on the NBC television network. Although the miniseries won several awards and received critical acclaim, it was criticized by some including noted Holocaust author and survivor Elie Wiesel who called it "untrue, offensive (and) cheap."^[1]

It tells the story of the Holocaust from the perspective of the Weiss family of German Jews, and from the point of view of a German family where the husband is a rising SS member, who gradually becomes a merciless, bloodthirsty war criminal. Holocaust highlighted numerous important events which occurred up to and during World War II, such as Kristallnacht, the creation of Jewish ghettos and later, the use of gas chambers. The series ultimately attempted to portray the atrocity of this genocide to viewers.

Holocaust was broadcast in four parts from April 16 to April 19. It was extremely popular, earning a 49% market share. It was also popular in Europe and had a major impact when it was broadcast in West Germany in January 1979.

The nine-and-a-half hour program starred Fritz Weaver, Rosemary Harris,Meryl Streep, James Woods and Michael Moriarty, as well as a large supporting cast. It was directed by Marvin J. Chomsky, a veteran of countless television specials including ABC's highly successful miniseries Roots, which first aired a year earlier, in 1977. The teleplay was written by novelist-producer Gerald Green, who later adapted the script into a novel.

Holocaust won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Limited Series. It also won Emmys for stars Streep, Moriarty and Blanche Baker. Chomsky and Green also won Emmys. Morton Gould's music was nominated, but did not win. Gould's music score was also nominated for a Grammy Award for Best Album of Original Score for a Movie or Television Program. Co-stars David Warner, Sam Wanamaker, Tovah Feldshuh, Fritz Weaver and Rosemary Harris were all nominated for Emmys, and they too, did not win. However, Harris won a Golden Globe Award (for Best TV Actress - Drama) for her performance, as did Moriarty (for Best TV Actor - Drama). In the Emmy race, it beat out the highly popular, critically acclaimed, and well-remembered BBC miniseries I, Claudius, a chronicle of the Roman Empire starring Derek Jacobi in the role that made him internationally famous. I Claudius received few nominations, [1] although it is far more celebrated today than Holocaust.

Holocaust was produced by Robert "Buzz" Berger, and was filmed on location in Austria and West Berlin.

The miniseries created controversy for supposedly trivializing the Holocaust. The television format meant the realism of the situation was muted, while the fact that NBC made a great deal of money from advertising, led to accusations that the tragedy was being commercialized. Its creators defended it by arguing that it was an important factor in developing and maintaining awareness of the Holocaust. The satirist and television critic Clive James however, commended the production. Writing in The Observer (reprinted in his collection The Crystal Bucket), he said : "The German Jews were the most assimilated in Europe. They were vital to Germany's culture - which, indeed, has never recovered from their extinction. They couldn't see they were hated in direct proportion to their learning, vitality and success. The aridity of the Nazi mind was the biggest poser the authors had to face. In creating Erik Dorf they went some way towards overcoming it. Played with spellbinding creepiness by Michael Moriarty, Erik spoke his murderous euphemisms in a voice as juiceless as Hitler's prose or Speer's architecture. Hitler's dream of the racially pure future was of an abstract landscape tended by chain-gangs of shadows and criss-crossed with highways bearing truckloads of Aryans endlessly speeding to somewhere undefined. Dorf sounded just like that: his dead mackerel eyes were dully alight with a limitless vision of banality. Meryl Streep as Inga Helms Weiss, gave an astounding performance. " ^[2]

A German Jewish family, the Weisses, consists of Dr. Josef Weiss, the father; Berta Weiss, the mother and talented pianist; Karl Weiss, an artist who is married to a Christian woman named Inga Helms-Weiss (Meryl Streep); Rudi Weiss, an independent, rebellious soccer player; and Anna Weiss, the youngest daughter.

Throughout the series, each member of the Weiss family experiences hardships and are ultimately led to a terrible fate, with the exception of Rudi. Dr. Josef Weiss is eventually sent to Auschwitz along with his wife for attempting to save Jews from the Warsaw ghetto's liquidation process. Both Mr. and Mrs. Weiss are sent to the gas chamber and killed with Zyklon B. Anna Weiss, in an unresponsive state following a rape by German soldiers, is sent to a "sanitarium" and killed by carbon monoxide poisoning. Karl Weiss, after being transferred through many concentration camps, dies in Auschwitz the day it is liberated under unknown circumstances (possibly starvation or physical trauma from previous torture.) Rudi Weiss, having run away from Berlin early on and fought with Jewish partisans for years, survives the war despite almost being killed by the SS. However, his Czech wife who also fought with him, Helena Slomova (Tovah Feldshuh) does not survive the SS raid.

Karl's wife Inga eventually sacrifices her freedom to join Karl in Theresienstadt where Karl was commissioned as an artist. Desperately trying throughout most of the series to reach Karl in various camps (Buchenwald being his first tour,) Inga can only get letters through to him if she performs sexual favors for an SS sergeant. Threatening to keep her husband in back-breaking work if she does not perform the sexual acts, she is in essence, raped. When arriving at Theresienstadt to reunite with Karl, the two make love and Inga becomes pregnant. After a fellow artist sold Karl's paintings of horrific concentration camp scenes, the Gestapo gets a hold of them and tortures all the artists. When Karl would not tell the Nazis anything about the other paintings, he is sent to Auschwitz and dies.

It is not known where Inga and her child will end up, nor is it known where Rudi will go next, despite being offered a job to smuggle orphaned Jewish children into the then-state of Palestine. The series ends with Rudi playing soccer with Greek children in the liberated Theresienstadt.

Erik Dorf (Michael Moriarty), a lawyer from Berlin, is another major character in the series. Dorf joins the SS after he can't find a job elsewhere. Originally a decent man, Dorf becomes a mechanical killer in charge of major gassing operations at Nazi extermination camps. After the war ends, he is captured by the United States Army, and told that he will go on trial for war crimes. He decides to follow the example of many other Nazi officials and commits suicide by cyanide poisoning.

The Holocaust TV miniseries was released as a Region 1 DVD by Paramount on May 27, 2008.

• List of Holocaust films

• Holocaust at IMDb
• Holocaust at The Museum of Broadcast Communications website