In 1943, a German soldier, Heinz Joest, decides to spend his birthday in the Warsaw Ghetto taking photographs of the inhabitants, although it is forbidden to do so. Jack Kuper, a filmmaker who survived the Holocaust himself, has woven a masterful documentary from the horrific images, adding Yiddish music and writings found in diaries of ghetto residents. In spite of their miserable lives, the starving residents manage to find some humor and a sense of community in their wretched existence. In their schools and places of worship, the Jewish spirit endures in the face of impossible odds.

~ Alice Day, All Movie Guide