The Cabaret of Death

Jewish artists fight for survival using the only weapons available to them - humour, music and theatre - in concentration camps and ghettos across Europe in an epic fight for their lives, their souls and their very dignity.

In a series of staged episodes, true reconstructions of facts, this documentary shows how music and sketches became weapons in the battle for life as Jews fought against Nazi repression and monstrosity. The subtleties of humour and mockery functioned as a hidden code, comprehensible to victims and illegible to guards and executioners.

Featuring testimonies from the last living participants and witnesses, as well as commentary by contemporary artists and writers, this documentary travels from the Warsaw ghetto, to the camps in Kurowice, Jaktorow, Buchenwald, Theresienstadt, Auschwitz and Ravensbruck.