War and Remembrance : : January 27, 1942 - May 6, 1942 Volume II

Locations
Call Number: DVD TV War V.2
On Shelf At: Downtown Library

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown 1st Floor 1-week checkout	DVD TV War V.2	1-week checkout	On Shelf
Downtown 1st Floor 1-week checkout	DVD TV War V.2	1-week checkout	On Shelf

Originally released as a television series in 1988.
Based on the novel by Herman Wouk.
Robert Mitchum, Jane Seymour, Sir John Gielgud, Hart Bochner, Victoria Tennant, Polly Bergen, David Dukes, Michael Woods, Sharon Stone.
One week after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, sweeping the United States into World War II, the Henry family is forever changed by the war in the Pacific, and the horror of the Holocaust. Features spectacular reenactments of the event at Midway, Yalta, Guadalcanal and El Alamein.
DVD, 2.0 Dolby digital, Region 1 encoding, full screen.
Contents: War and rememberance.

COMMUNITY REVIEWS

War and Remembrance submitted by mlindner on January 23, 2024, 1:45pm Aaron and Natalie take refuge on a delapidated cargo ship crammed with Jews desperate to get to Palestine. Natalie is much in the company of Avram Rabinovitz, a Jew who works in Europe to get Jews to safety in Palestine. Sami Frey's portrayal of Avram maintains the delicate balance between his sexual attraction for Natalie and his deep concern for Natalie and her son's fate. Only at the series's end does Avram reunite with Natalie and watches from a distance when Byron brings to Natalie their son who was separated from his mother in Theresienstadt.

Natalie Jastow and her uncle Aaron Jastrow avoid being caught in a trap by the Nazis until she and Aaron are punished with deportation to Theresienstadt, the "model ghetto," but in reality a transit camp for condemned Jews and Romani destined for deportation to Auschwitz. Much of the Jastrows' failure to escape from Nazi-controlled Italy and France involves technical and political problems with Aaron's status as an American citizen that are never resolved. Byron Henry, Natalie's American gentile husband, keeps trying to save Natalie and their son. Until the end of the series, he and his family know nothing about the fate of Natalie.

In Theresienstadt, Natalie is threatened by the Gestapo if she continues to work in a puppet show that critiques Hitler. She finds a way to protect her son. Aaron returns to his long-abandoned Judaism and the night before their deportation recites the story of Job and his unquestioning acceptance of God's will, another poignant scene in this slowly unfolding tragedy.

The Henry's have three adult children and proudly follow their sons' military careers. Nevertheless, Rhoda is a frustrated navy wife who calls Pug a sphinx because he never tells her anything about his unusual roles in Naval intelligence. She is attracted to Palmer Kirby, who also works in another top secret military project, because he admires her and says that she is a wonderful woman. Pug Henry's luke-warm romance with Pamela Tudsbury, played by Victoria Tennant, seems one-sided and in rewatching the series, less compelling than Rhoda's relationship with Palmer Kirby. She and Palmer never marry, and Rhoda finds new man who is insecure, a womanizer, and false to Rhoda.
Initially, the whole series's authenticity is enhanced when Hitler and his military commanders speak German and Mussolini speaks Italian (with subtitles). Moreover, Pug Henry speaks Russian with Stalin, Italian with Mussolini, and German with Goering.
In the middle of the series, however, the German actors abruptly switch to English in one conversation and the multilingual flavor of War and Remembrance is lost.
One exception is when Natalie has learned to speak Yiddish and sings to her young son Louis a Yiddish lullaby.