The Last Days (1998)

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The Last Days is a documentary, directed by James Moll and produced by June Beallor and Kenneth Lipper in 1998. Steven Spielberg was one of the executive producers, in his role as founder of the Shoah Foundation. The film tells the stories of five Hungarian Jews during the Shoah. It focuses on the horrors of life in the Nazi concentration camps, but also stresses the optimism and desire to survive of the survivors.

The film won an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature.

Shoah survivors Bill Basch, Irene Zisblatt, Rene Firestone, Alice Lok Cahana, Tom Lantos, Dario Gabbai, and Randolph Braham are featured in the film.

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, also comment. Most telling are details: Renée packing her bathing suit, Irene swallowing the diamonds her mother gave her to buy bread, Alice's memorial for her sister Klara, Bill escaping police by jumping into a line of Jews going to Buchenwald, and Tom told by a US soldier to have "all the damn bananas and oranges you can eat."