Paper Walls Documentary Analysis

Most people know something about the Holocaust. Whether it was something they learned in school, heard someone talk about, or watched on tv or in a movie. You probably know about the concentration camps and how evil the Nazi’s where during this period of war time. You have heard numbers such as six million jews killed and the years 1942 and 1943, the time where the majority of jews captured were killed. What the general public is less informed about though, is the events surrounding the killings and the true nature of the people involved. The the film medium many people have tried to convey the information they know or learned about the Holocaust. I think what people really need to learn about the Holocaust is the events surrounding the killings,

This documentary also used a lot of talking heads. These speakers often stated facts about the United States’ actions during this time and why certain decisions were made. Like why the United States did not save 935 jews in 1939 whose visas were denied in Cuba. One of the major speakers throughout the movie was David Wyman. Wyman was a professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and has a Ph.D. in History from Harvard. He is most often used in the film out of the talking heads because he is considered an expert on immigration policy during the Nazi years. He has wrote two important books on the matter of abandoning the jews titled Paper Walls: America and the Refugee Crisis, 1938-1941 and The Abandonment of the Jews: America and the Holocaust, 1941-1945. Having an expert detailing facts about the decisions made by the United States during the Holocaust really amps up the credibility factor of the film. This makes the points being made be more persuasive. Even if the film did not tell me much about Wyman or the other talking heads, researching about them after the fact really tells the viewer why they were chosen for this film. This is significant because it adds to the overall importance of the film since what these people know and are saying is crucial to understanding the the persecution of the jews during and before the death