12 Haunting Holocaust Movies on Netflix

holocaust movies on netflix

Holocaust movies on Netflix are said to be real tear-jerkers, so streamers are warned of such films if they are not strong mentally and emotionally.

This holocaust events happened during world war ll, where Jews were not just murdered in battle but also as war casualties as they were executed in millions by the Nazis, which their leader Hitler ordered.

So, if you’re a fan of the Holocaust, Jews, Nazis, World War II, or anything related, here are the recommended Holocaust movies on Netflix.

1. Schindler’s List (1993)

  • Director: Steven Spielberg
  • Cast: Liam Neesom, Ralph Fiennes, Ben Kingsley, Caroline Goodall, Jonathan Sagall, Embeth Davidtz, and Malgorzata Gebel
  • IMDb Rating:9/10
  • Running Time:3hr 15min

One of the most iconic Holocaust movies on Netflix that is undoubtedly the first film on this list. The Schindler’s Ark novel by Thomas Keneally served as the inspiration for this film.

When Oskar Schindler decides to convert his factory into a haven for Jews during the brutal German Nazi regime, he transforms from an arrogant and greedy business person into an unlikely humanitarian.

However, It is a testament to the good in all of us because Oskar Schindler’s true story prevented roughly 1100 Jews from being killed at the Auschwitz concentration camp.

2. The Photographer of Mauthausen (2018)

  • Director: Mar Targarona
  • Cast: Mario Casas, Richard van Weyden, Alain Hernández, Adrià Salazar, Eduard Buch, Stefan Weinert, and Nikola Stojanovic
  • IMDb Rating:6.7/10
  • Running Time:1hr 50min

During the Spanish Civil War, Francesc Boix, a Catalan photojournalist and communist combatant, fought on the republican side.

During the Second World War, Boix was caught and transported to the Mauthausen detention camp after being forced into exile.

Although, he is given a job in the photo lab there. While the Nazis are unaware, he devotes his time to taking photos of innumerable scenes that vividly depict the daily atrocities of a despicable system.

Boix puts his own life in danger while executing his plan: the evasion of numerous negatives that will reveal to the world the horrific atrocities committed by the Nazis inside the camp.

He does this with the assistance of a few other Spanish prisoners who will lead the Spanish clandestine resistance.

Boix was the sole Spaniard present at the Nuremberg trials in 1946. He and his fellow prisoners saved several significant photographs in determining the sentences for some high-ranking Nazi officers. This film is one of the holocaust movies on Netflix.

3. Boy in the Striped Pajamas (2008)

  • Director: Mark Herman
  • Cast: Asa Butterfield, David Thewlis, Rupert Friend, Zac Mattoon O’Brien, Domonkos Németh, Henry Kingsmill, and Vera Farmiga
  • IMDb Rating:7.7/10
  • Running Time:1hr 34min

This film is the most heartbreaking Holocaust movies on Netflix. It narrates the bond between Bruno, a boy from a Nazi family, and Shmuel, a Jewish child. The terrible conclusion is mind-blowing.

Bruno, an eight-year-old kid raised in a loving home in early 1940s Berlin, witnesses the complete upheaval of his world. He also witnesses his father, a high-ranking Nazi official, being given a promotion and taking on a significant role as the commander of an odd-looking farm.

Now, a high and unbreakable wall surrounds their new home; armed to the teeth, soldiers guard the perimeter. Also, their home has a perilous electric wire that deters intruders; strangely, all the farmers wear the same patterned attire.

On the opposite side of the fence, though, Shmuel has a Jewish youngster with a shaved head who is about the same age as Bruno.

They both believe and have a ton of tales to tell, like Bruno, that the uniforms that everyone is wearing are pajamas. This film is one of the holocaust movies on Netflix.

4. Operation Finale (2018)

  • Director: Chris Weitz
  • Cast: Oscar Isaac, Ben Kingsley, Mélanie Laurent, Lior Raz, Nick Kroll, Ohad Knoller, and Michael Knoller
  • IMDb Rating:6.6/10
  • Running Time:2hr 2min

Mission Finale, a top-secret operation by a group of Israeli spies to find Nazi officer Adolf Eichmann in Argentina, is set fifteen years after the conclusion of World War II.

Even though many of his fellow officers faced war crimes charges after the Second World War, Eichmann was able to flee and evade capture.

The movie shows how an Israeli team travels to Argentina after learning of Eichmann’s whereabouts there. They spend days investigating his home and routine before settling on a barely successful abduction plan.

The kidnapping, however, notifies his guards, and the Israelis soon find themselves engaged in a dangerous game of hide-and-seek with police officers and Nazi officials trying to escape. This film is one of the decent holocaust movies on Netflix.

5. The Resistance Banker (2018)

  • Director: Joram Lürsen
  • Cast: Jacob Derwig, Barry Atsma, Pierre Bokma, Fockeline Ouwerkerk, Raymond Thiry, Matteo van der, and Jaap Spijkers
  • IMDb Rating:6.7/10
  • Running Time:2hr 3min

Despite the hesitation of his brother-partner Gijs and many of his coworkers, Amsterdam’s family banker cheerfully agrees to assist the resistance during the Nazi occupation.

They helped by providing them with fictitious credits for which the Dutch government in exile provided a post-war guarantee.

He substantially exceeds the guaranteed amount as the war progresses and establishes cooperation among resistance groups.

Still, the Germans and their allies organize a massive campaign to locate and shut down the “hidden bank.” As Allied armies drew near, a far larger quantity was required to finance a significant railway strike, but there was a network disturbance.

However, Walraven has devised a risky scheme to steal money from the national bank using an intricate web of fake repayment, but the S.S. is hot on their trail. This is one of the holocaust movies on Netflix.

6. Downfall (2004)

  • Director: Oliver Hirschbiegel
  • Cast: Bruno Ganz, Alexandra Maria Lara, Ulrich Mathdes, Juliane Köhler, Heino Ferch, Corinna Harfouch, and Christian Berkel
  • IMDb Rating:8.2/10
  • Running Time:2hr 36min

German, Italian, and Austrian actors star in this movie set in 1945 and depict Nazism and the final ten days of Adolf Hitler’s dictatorship.

This is one of the holocaust movies on Netflix that combines several documentaries and contains historical events and situations.

With the Soviet Armies pressing in from the west and south in April 1945, Germany was on the verge of defeat. Adolf Hitler declared that Germany would still win in Berlin, the capital of the Third Reich, and instructed his generals and advisors to fight to the death.

Although, In the final days of the Reich, senior German officials started to turn against their beloved Fuhrer to save their own lives. Others, like Joseph Goebbels, decided to die with Hitler.

Afterward, Hitler becomes a psychotic shell of a man who alternates between optimism and suicidal depression.

When the end finally arrives, and Hitler is dead by his hand, he becomes a neurotic shell of a guy who alternates between moments of hope and suicidal depression.

The remaining of Hitler’s forces must figure out how to end the Battle of Berlin bloodshed and lay down their guns in surrender when the end eventually arrives, and Hitler lies dead by his hand.

7. Night Will Fall (2014)

  • Director: André Singer
  • Cast: Helena Bonham Carter, Jasper Britton, Leonard Berney, George Leonard, Josef Kramer, Mike Lewis, and Bill Lawrie
  • IMDb Rating:8.0/10
  • Running Time:1hr 15min

April 1945. Groups of newly trained military cameramen in Germany captured the horrible scenes behind the newly freed Nazi concentration camps as World War II ended and the Allies poured into Berlin.

Besides, the 1945 documentary for the British government, “German Concentration Camps Factual Survey,” was made by Sidney Bernstein with Alfred Hitchcock’s assistance. British records buried this movie for almost seven decades.

The movie was never in front of an audience due to political considerations or changing government priorities. However, the British Imperial War Museum’s team of historians and film experts, who painstakingly restored the original footage, was supposed to finish it.

The 2014 documentary, which also includes footage from Soviet camera operators, describes the atrocities in the concentration and labor camps of Bergen-Belsen, Auschwitz, Majdanek, Dachau, and Buchenwald.

Besides, It weaves interviews with survivors and liberators, short documentary films, and raw footage from the original movie. The camera sweeps on the German SS officers without flinching.

It lingers on the emaciated, doll-like corpses of men and women dumped into pits during the mass grave digging operations.

However, the movie depicts a world of nightmares, revealing the unavoidable reality of these camps. To serve as a witness to the Nazi crimes and a crucial lesson for all of humanity, it also emphasizes the process of healing the completely dehumanized survivors.

This is one of the holocaust movies on Netflix that combines conversations with survivors and documentaries about Nazi concentration camps.

8. The Imitation Game (2014)

  • Director: Morten Tyldum,
  • Cast: Benedict Cumberbatch, Keira Knightley, Mattew Goode, Allen Leech, Rory Kinnear, Matthew Beard, and Charles Dance
  • IMDb Rating:8/10
  • Running Time: 1hr 54min

One drive is considered weird in the outside world. Society penalizes those who don’t fit in. Creativity transforms nothing into something by using their intellect to solve complex puzzles or compose music.

However, If he is successful in his pursuit, the general public may converge on the term “genius” to describe him.

But take note: this implies that they cannot possibly comprehend the accomplishment or seek to match the mind that created it.

On the one hand, the same crowds that gleefully embrace his presents will push him into a pit of snakes. This holocaust movie on Netflix is Alan Mathison Turing’s cautionary tale, the puzzle master and inventor of the modern computer.

9. Defiance (2008)

  • Director: Edward Zwick
  • Cast: Daniel Craig, Jamie Bell, Liev Schreiber, Alexa Davalos Allan Corduner, Mark Feuerstein, and Allan Corduner
  • IMDb Rating:7.1/10
  • Running Time:2hr 17min

The Jewish Bielski brothers, living in Belorussia in 1941, managed to flee the German atrocity in the area where their parents died at the hands of the Germans. Other fugitive Jews soon join them as they hide in the woods.

The oldest brother, Tuvia Bielski, takes charge of the survivors and devises a camp with duties for everyone in the group. However, Zus Bielski wants to fight the Germans and disagrees with Tuvia’s instructions.

Although, Zus joins the Russian opposition because he doesn’t think Jews fight. While Zus discovers anti-Semitism among the Russian partisans, Tuvia welcomes any survivor to his camp, where he and his two younger brothers battle for food and supplies. Defiance is one of the holocaust movies on Netflix.

10. Alone in Berlin (2016)

  • Director: Vincent Perez
  • Cast: Emma Thompson, Brendan Gleeson, Daniel Brühl, Mikael Persbrandt, Louis Hoffmann, Katharina Schüttler, and Joshua Grothe
  • IMDb Rating:6.3/10
  • Running Time:1hr 43min

Alone in Berlin is certainly not just like another regular Holocaust movies on Netflix. During the French campaign, he died in battle. His parents, Otto and Anna, are saddened by the loss, and the jubilant euphoria over Germany’s victory does not lessen their grief.

Though, Otto can no longer remain silent after concluding that Führer Adolf Hitler and his Nazi government are to blame for this catastrophe and many others. As a result, Otto starts to write handwritten cards criticizing the regime’s atrocities and lies.

Afterward, he then covertly distributes the lies throughout Berlin with the assistance of a disillusioned Anna. It was tasked Police Detective Escherich with finding the leafleter as the subversive evidence mounts over the years.

He is under pressure from his impatient S.S. superior to arrest him for this “treason,” regardless of actual guilt.

Otto and Anna are committed to sharing the truth despite the challenges, even as their opponents wait for them to make a critical error that could spell their doom as the stakes grow and Nazi Germany’s day of reckoning draws near.

11. My Führer (2007)

  • Director: Dani Levy
  • Cast: Helge Schneider, Ulrich Mühe, Sylvester Groth, Stefan Kurt, Adriana Altaras, Lambert Hamel, and Ulrich Noethen
  • IMDb Rating:5.5/10
  • Running Time:1hr 29min

It’s always interesting to see a comedy about one of history’s most deadly figures, and My Führer has a few funny moments about Adolf Hitler that help it stand out as a good movie.

The story happened in 1945 when Hitler could not win the war. Hitler even drafted a speech that would motivate the people of Germany.

In such a circumstance, Goebbels, one of the senior Nazi Party figures, frees a Jew from a concentration camp to assist Hitler in crafting his speech.

Even in its funniest moments, the movie always stays loyal to history, and dialogue references are no exception.

12. The Forgotten Battle (2020)

  • Director: Matthijs van Heijningen Jr.
  • Cast: Jamie Flatter, Susan Radder, Gijs Blom, Jan Bijvoet, Tom Felton, Coen Bril, and Theo Barklem-Biggs
  • IMDb Rating:7.1/10
  • Running Time:2hr 4min

1944 September, the Germans still commanded the Scheldt coastline; supplies could not reach Antwerp or the Allied forces even though the Allies had taken the port city. The German defense depends heavily on Walcheren Island.

However, Operation Market Garden started to enter Germany from Arnhem, Holland, immediately. A few British soldiers are left trapped beyond enemy lines after an aircraft from this mission is forced to crash land on Walcheren.

Meanwhile, three Germans are unintentionally killed by a Dutch youngster, starting a sad series of events. A Dutch soldier serving on the German staff is beginning to wonder where his allegiances lie. This film is definitely on the list of holocaust movies on Netflix.

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