Movie · 1998 · Documentary, History · 1h 27m · PG-13 · English
Curator score: 9.0/10 (12.8K ratings)
Everything you're about to see is true.
Overview
Five Jewish Hungarians, now US 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.
Ratings
Curator score: 9.0/10
IMDb: 7.9/10
Letterboxd: 4.05/5
Rotten Tomatoes: 96%
Metacritic: 85
TMDB: 7.4/10
Director
James Moll
Production
Ken Lipper/June Beallor Production, Shoah Foundation, Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation
Cast
Bill Basch, Martin Basch, Randolph Braham, Alice Lok Cahana, Renee Firestone, Irene Zisblatt, Tom Lantos, Michael Cahana, Warren Dunn, Bernard Firestone, Dario Gabbai, Katsugo Miho, Hans Münch, Paul Parks, Robin Zisblatt, Karl Bodenschatz, Arno Breker, Hans Frank, Joseph Goebbels, Hermann Göring
Where to watch
Netflix, Netflix Standard with Ads
Curator Review
Verdict
A devastating, essential Holocaust documentary built around survivor testimony, historical context, and stark archival evidence. It is emotionally punishing but deeply valuable for viewers who want firsthand memory rather than dramatization.
Best for
viewers interested in Holocaust history and survivor testimony
audiences who appreciate archival documentary craft
people seeking serious, educational historical films
fans of emotionally rigorous nonfiction cinema
Skip if
you want an easy or uplifting watch
you are sensitive to graphic historical atrocity footage
you prefer fast-paced or stylistically playful documentaries
you are looking for a broad World War II overview rather than a focused survivor account
Overview
The Last Days is one of those documentaries that justifies its existence by preserving testimony before it disappears. Centering five Hungarian Jewish survivors, it narrows the Holocaust to lived memory: the sudden rupture of 1944, the machinery of deportation, the camps, and the long shadow that followed them home. That focus gives the film both intimacy and historical force.
Worth noting
What makes it especially affecting is the way it combines survivor recollection with archival material that refuses to let the stories drift into abstraction. The result is not simply informative; it is confrontational in the best sense, insisting on the reality of what happened and the specificity of who suffered. The Hungarian perspective also adds an important dimension to Holocaust cinema, which is often dominated by other national narratives.
Bottom line
This is not an easy recommendation, but it is an important one. The film’s power comes from restraint, clarity, and the dignity of its witnesses, making it valuable both as historical record and as an act of remembrance.
Top Letterboxd reviews
Piper (4★) · 176 likes
Haunting. No matter how much you learn about the Holocaust, there is always something from these firsthand stories that shocks you.
Rafael "Mister Movie" Jovine (4★) · 84 likes
The documentary, produced by Steven Spielberg and the SHOAH foundation, reports the stories of a group of Hungarian Holocaust survivors who recount their lives prior to Nazi invasion and their capture, much like other people in other nations that were conquered by the Nazis during World War II.
In spite of the fact that many of these events were well known, many of their novelty lay in where they came from. We've heard about Germany, France and even Poland -… more
Jake Alda Coffey (4★) · 67 likes
I’m fascinated with documentaries like this cuz it always preserves these people’s experiences for lifetimes ahead. So their stories never die.
bel rodrigues (4.5★) · 58 likes
vai ano, vem ano e qualquer documentário sobre o holocausto segue sendo difícil demais de assistir.
kuristeenuh (5★) · 43 likes
The inhumanity you hear through their stories is beyond words.
2008 · Action, Drama, History · 2h 17m · R · Curator 3.7/10 (211.4K ratings) · Where to watch: fuboTV, Paramount Plus Premium, Paramount Plus Essential
A resistance story about Jewish survival and collective endurance under Nazi occupation.