# Holocaust (1978)

> A fictional German Jewish family and an ambitious lawyer drawn into the Nazi regime are swept through the Holocaust across 1930s Berlin and wartime Europe.

Canonical page: https://ember.film/tv/14520

## Facts

- Seasons: 1
- Episodes: 4
- Episode runtime: 90 min
- Status: Ended
- Genres: drama, history, war
- Created by: Gerald Green
- Network: NBC
- Cast: Tom Bell, Joseph Bottoms, Tovah Feldshuh, Rosemary Harris, Tony Haygarth, Michael Moriarty, Deborah Norton, George Rose
- TMDB rating: 8.0/10
- IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0077025/

## Ember's analysis

- Pacing: measured
- Intensity: strong
- Complexity: accessible
- Violence: moderate
- Tone: somber, harrowing, mournful, tense, sincere

## What critics say

Viewers broadly regard the miniseries as a powerful, emotionally harrowing dramatization of the Holocaust that brought the subject to a mass American audience.

## Synopsis

Holocaust (1978) is an American television miniseries created by Gerald Green and broadcast on NBC. Told across four ninety-minute episodes, it follows the Jewish painter Karl Weiss (Joseph Bottoms as Rudi Weiss, Meryl Streep as Inga Helms Weiss, the Christian woman he marries) and the Weiss family as they are swept into the escalating persecution of Nazi Germany. Running alongside them is the ambitious lawyer Erik Dorf (Michael Moriarty), whose career climbs into the machinery of the regime, and the sinister Reinhard Heydrich shapes his path. The engine of the story is the slow tightening of the net: marriage, careers, and family ties are steadily eroded by laws, ghettos, and deportations. Each episode feels like a chapter in a grim chronicle, moving from prewar Berlin into the Warsaw ghetto and the horrors of Auschwitz-Birkenau. The tone is mournful, sober, and harrowing, with a hope-against-despair thread running through the tragedy. Set in 1930s and 1940s Europe during World War II, it is a prestige historical drama for viewers drawn to the Holocaust, the Shoah, and stories in the vein of Schindler's List and Band of Brothers. It is a single season of four episodes, with a finale that settles its story in devastation rather than hope.

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