March 9, 1998 -- "The Long Way Home," directed by Mark Jonathan Harris and produced by Rabbi Marvin Hier and Richard Trank, is one of the five films nominated for an Oscar as Best Feature Documentary. Premiering at the 1997 Sundance Film Festival, the film is a moving history lesson about the appalling treatment of the Jews after their 1945 liberation from the Nazi concentration camps.

It is also the story of Israel's creation as a nation. Although the film ends with smiling, optimistic faces, the two-hour feature is grim, heart wrenching, and disturbing. Sometimes, documentaries are just difficult to watch. This film is worth the emotional stress.

We all thought the horrible pictures of the death camps ended with the defeat of Germany. It didn't. The viewer becomes stunned not by more reminders of the Nazi camps, but by the continued suffering of these homeless, wandering, tragic people. Beginning with the distraught looks on G.I. faces and the shocking pictures of the survivors, the film expertly and intimately weaves memories, letters, diaries, and oral histories with Morgan Freeman's matter of fact, but compassionate narration. The film uses voice over interpretive readings by Edward Asner, Martin Landau and others, along with a sensitive musical score and well preserved archival footage. If you enjoy the Ken Burns production style for historical documentaries, you will enjoy Harris's fluid approach. This political history traces both the misery and courage of the survivors as they fight brutal living conditions, political tradeoffs, and military confrontations during the post war period of 1945 to 1948.

The documentary is a visual reminder of Alain Resnais's 1955 "Night and Fog," in which he also used fluid narration and a combination of color and black and white footage. "Long Way Home" opens with colorful scenes of Dachau, Germany, including a vivid image of yellow sunflowers, which refocuses, showing barbed wire. A wide shot of a serene looking concentration camp follows. Like Resnais's eulogy that we should never forget, "Long Way Home" reminds us to be human and caring with victims of war, particularly refugees. The homes of the liberated Jews are either destroyed or confiscated. Their relatives are missing or dead. They are housed in "displaced person camps," where they are ashamed to look at their liberators. Barbed wire and U.S. soldiers guard outside these new, but disgusting camps. Is it better to be a " conquered German soldier than a liberated Jew?" They "retreat into silence," hanging on to the dream of returning to Palestine. In the meantime the British limit their emigration to 1500 per month. Needing oil to rebuild Europe, the British also cave into political pressure, preserving their relationship with the Arabs. The world has other priorities. The cold war begins and there is the need to assist West Germany. Except for President Harry Truman, the U.S. State Department is reluctant to intervene. The camp survivors become pawns in a larger struggle.

But the displaced Jews fight back. Jewish resistance groups are formed. They trek through and over snow covered mountain ranges, cross the Mediterranean in overcrowded boats, many barely seaworthy. More than sixty ships try to get past the British. Only six boats land successfully, undetected by the British.

Through the efforts of American volunteers and other U.S.leaders such as Clark Clifford, an adviser to President Truman, and the leadership of Abba Eban, a United Nations resolution is formulated and passed on November 29, 1947. Israel is created. There is jubilation. The British leave. There will be battles with the various Arab nations, but the Jewish faces are smiling. Despite all the misery, suffering, demoralization, and "so much pain," they have hope and a new home. The final words are heard, "we're going on."

As a political history, the film's message is remarkably simple. Don't feel guilty by the sobering and horrible images. Feel compassion and act on it. That message applies to many places in our world today.

This film will only be shown once in Laramie, on Sunday, Sept. 20 at 1 p.m. during the Gladys Crane Mountain Plains Film Festival at the UW Fine Arts Center. Tickets for five festival films (excluding "Smoke Signals") cost $25 for adults, $15 for students. For more information, click on the film festival link above, or use the festival link on the Laramie Moviola home page. The video version of this film is available for purchase at The Museum of Tolerance Bookstore for $49.95.

Mike McElreath can be reached via e-mail as MikeM@uwyo.edu