Holocaust (miniseries)

Holocaust (full title: Holocaust: The Story of the Family Weiss; 1978) is an American television miniseries which aired on NBC over five nights, from April 16 to 20, 1978. It dramatizes the Holocaust from the perspective of the Weiss family, fictional Berlin Jews Dr. Josef Weiss (Fritz Weaver), his wife Berta (Rosemary Harris), and their three children—Karl (James Woods), an artist married to Inga (Meryl Streep), a Christian woman; Rudi (Joseph Bottoms); and teenage Anna (Blanche Baker). It also follows Erik Dorf (Michael Moriarty), a fictional "Aryan" lawyer who becomes a Nazi out of economic necessity, rising within the SS and gradually becoming a war criminal. Holocaust highlights numerous events which occurred both up to and during World War II, such as Kristallnacht, the construction of Jewish ghettos, the Nazi T4 Euthanasia Program, and, later, the construction of death camps and the use of gas chambers. The miniseries won several awards and received positive reviews, but was also criticized. In The New York Times, Holocaust survivor and political activist Elie Wiesel wrote that it was "Untrue, offensive, cheap: As a TV production, the film is an insult to those who perished and to those who survived." However, the series played a major role in public debates on the Holocaust in West Germany after its showing in 1979, and its impact has been described as "enormous". The series has been widely credited with bringing the term "Holocaust" into popular usage to describe the extermination of the European Jews.