The World Will Tremble (2025)

The unspeakable horrors of the Holocaust never cease to leave audiences aghast and speechless, particularly when it comes to wondering how something like this ever could have been allowed to happen in the supposedly “civilized” world of 20th Century Europe. However, those of us alive today often fail to consider that news didn’t travel quite as fast or as widely in those days as it does currently. So, when it came to news about the Nazi death camps that claimed the lives of six million Jews in cold, calculated fashion, word of the carnage didn’t make its way onto the world stage until after it had been unfolding for some time. And, were it not for courageous whistleblowing efforts of two escaped prisoners from the Germans’ first extermination facility in Chelmo, Poland, it may have taken even longer for the accounts to surface. Writer-director Lior Geller’s fact-based release tells the story of two runaway gravediggers, Solomon Wiener (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) and Michael Podchlebnik (Jeremy Newmark Jones), who fled the camp and made their way to the Jewish ghetto in Grabow, Poland, where they made contact with a rabi (Anton Lesser) who had connections to the Polish resistance movement. Solomon gave a full account of what was happening at Chelmo, the first reported testimony about Nazi atrocities against the Jewish community. This report was subsequently smuggled to London by members of the Jewish Underground, who presented it to the BBC for public broadcast in June 1942. And, at last, the world was aware of the butchery that was transpiring. From this, one would assume that this never-before-told story would make for a compelling film. However, when compared to other offerings about the Holocaust, this release, regrettably, comes up somewhat short. Perhaps the biggest issue here is the disproportionate emphasis that the narrative places on the already-well-known depraved and sadistic practices of the Nazis, events that account for nearly the entire opening half of the picture. As necessary as the depiction of these shocking and infuriating developments may be in setting the stage for what’s to come, the amount of footage devoted to this part of the story tends to belabor the point. In fact, it’s so prevalent that it nearly overshadows the heroic and more compelling account of the prisoners’ harrowing escape, their tearful, gut-wrenching recounting about life and death at the so-called “work camp,” and their exposure of the many lies that the Germans brazenly propounded about the nature of the facility. What’s more, the picture could also use some shoring up in some of its technical areas, such as sound quality, lighting, editing, and a somewhat puzzling and uneven mixture of dialogue in German and English. To the film’s credit, the fine performances of the three principals and its moving, emotive score help to make up for these shortcomings in a picture that gets progressively better the further one gets into it. And, to be sure, “The World Will Tremble” is by no means a bad film, but a number of other previous releases provide more effective accounts and treatments of this atrocity, such as “Sophie’s Choice” (1982), “Schindler’s List” (1993), “Remember” (2016), “The Zone of Interest” (2023) and “Lee” (2024), as well as the TV miniseries "Holocaust" (1978). Stories about this period in history are truly important and deserve commensurate treatment; it’s nevertheless disappointing that this one didn’t quite receive the handling it merits.

History is replete with the terrible cost too many make to reveal the truth about mankind's darker natures and in times of conflict we are reminded that the first casualty is usually the truth.

In writer and director Lior Geller's **THE WORLD WILL TREMBLE**, we are reminded about a lesser-known event that helped the world awaken to the true horrors of the Nazi regime's depths of depravity.

How this information was disseminated is the basis of the film, with a small and committed group of Polish Jewish prisoners facing diminishing options for their continued survival. Held captive at Poland's first Deathcamp (specifically in Chelmno, Poland), the prisoners plot a daring escape to help expose the truth about the so-called 'work camps' the Jews were being sent to.

With heartbreaking scenes and exhibitions of unimaginable cruelty, Solomon Wiener (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) and Michael Podchlebnik (Jeremy Neumark-Jones) -- finally make their move whilst hunted by Nazis. (I would be remiss if I didn't pause here to highlight Jackson-Cohen and Neumark-Jones' acting work as both heartbreaking and inspiring).

This is a harrowing, true story that sadly speaks to us today in a world that is increasingly more skeptical of facts and frequently co-opted by ideological tribalism. In an age of collective cognitive dissonance and textbook examples of The Dunning-Kruger Effect -- **THE WORLD WILL TREMBLE** is fighting to tell the truth at a time where compassion and empathy is lacking in our discourse.

As images and relics from America's own dark history of the cruelty of slavery are being whitewashed and removed from National Park sites, I am sorry to admit that we need more reminders today than ever before of what depredations mankind is willing to inflict on one another.

It does seem strange nowadays when we can witness the glacial collapse in Nepal as if it were at the bottom of our garden, that back in 1942 the Nazis were free to establish the Chelmo labour camp in Poland and set about slaughtering thousands of people - and nobody knew a thing. Moreover, as we watch the duplicitously smiling face of "Lange" (David Kross) as he instructs his soldiers to welcome his recently displaced "guests" and get them ready for their welcome invogorating showers it's hard not to cringe in disgust. Fortunately for Solomon Wiener (Oliver Jackson-Cohen) and Michael Podchlebnik (Jeremy Neumark Jones) they are young and fit enough to be of use to their new masters - digging the graves of those victims recently offloaded from the back of a carbon monoxide-filled van. When Podchlebnik has to bury one of his own children, the pair decide that it is time that the world knew - but how? Escape from a fortified camp in the middle of the forest, malnourished and surrounded by armed guards and hungry hounds isn't going to be easy, but they take their time and develop a plan to make their way back to what's left of the Warsaw ghetto where they hope to convince the influential Rabbi Schulman (Anton Lesser) to spread the word amongst his resistance allies and to alert the BBC. This is certainly a slow burn with an appreciable paucity of dialogue, but the photography of the activities inside this murder factory do much more of the film's talking for it - and it does it well. We can almost smell the semi-starved dogs patrolling the boundaries and the semi-starved people within all determined to stay alive and perhaps, when needs must, betray any careless moves on the part of these two men and their close knit band of allies - all for a piece of stale bread. What's also made quite clear is that getting the message out is actually the end in itself. What happens to these men thereafter is history but we and they expect that their deaths are probably only a matter of time - it's other deaths that they hope to avert. There is a solid cameraderie from OJC and Jones as their adventures stack up and there is an uncomfortably accruing sense of peril delivered by auteur Lior Geller as we see a nation devasted by the results war, hatred and persecution. For me, it's actually the first half hour that hit home most profoundly, but as it takes it's time it immerses us in a grim story of courage in the face of calculated inhumanity.