THE WORLD WILL TREMBLE IS ABOUT A REVELATION THAT WORKED
In 1984, the film The Killing Fields informed filmviewers of a tragedy as millions of Cambodian lives were at risk during the Khmer Rouge takeover a decade earlier (1975-1979). Where was a similar graphic display of what the Nazis did to Jews during World War II? The World Will Tremble, directed by Lior Geller, provides the answer, albeit 83 years later, based on a thorough investigation.
The film, almost entirely in black and white, begins in January 1942 at the first Nazi death camp, located in Chelmno, Poland. Filmviewers see Jewish prisoners dig a big hole into which bodies from the killing vans are to be placed—with the same prisoners assigned to remove dead bodies from the vans and then dump them into the massive grave. As explained later by a German general, the use of firing squads ended when a German soldier died because he fell asleep in a garage with the motor running. Nazis then packed Jews into large moving vans, closed the rear door, and fed the exhaust from the van’s gas tank into the van. (Later, Nazis used large crematoria.)
At one point, a Jewish gravedigger sees his wife among those to be buried and begs to be shot so that he can join her, though his request is denied because the Nazi in charge believes that he is strong enough to continue his assignment. Perhaps that incident is the last straw, though many other forms of mistreatment are featured, but two Jewish prisoners decide that night to plan an escape in order to tell the world, Solomon Weiner (played by Oliver Jackson-Cohen) and Michael Podchlebnik (Jeremy Neumark Jones). Thanks to a prisoner who begs soldiers on a van for a cigarette, the latter is used to burn an escape route from the truck carrying the Jewish men the following morning. Solomon and Michael then run through the woods, dive into and swim along a raging stream, and ultimately get onto land near a home where the woman of the house helps them to wear official railroad jackets and then use her husband’s motorcycle to ride to a village where a rabbi (Anton Lesser) hears and records the story, which is then transmitted to London through a resistance route and broadcast on BBC in April 1942—the very first revelation about the ongoing Holocaust.
Solomon dies before the end of the war, but Michael appears as a witness at a trial in Germany after the war, confronting those who had imprisoned him.
The Political Film Society has nominated The World Will Tremble as best film exposé, and best film on human rights for 2025. MH