In Thy Blood, Live

Candles, tears of crying women, memories: that is how the film In Thy Blood Live begins. David Perlov's camera travels over photographs, focuses on faces that are no more, as in a gesture of parting. The history of the Holocaust is revealed in this film in a condensed, intensive way: first the memorials for the victims throughout Israel, and only then the beginning of it all - the rise of the Nazi regime, the Ghetto with its hunger and death, but with its music and theatre too, the uprising, the death camps; and it ends with the trial of Adolf Eichmann, one of the chief architects of the genocide. The music of Oedoen Partos, blending Jewish, Israeli and European motives, helps portray in sounds that lost world which now belongs to memory alone

Directed by David Perlov, In Thy Blood, Live leans on a strong ensemble — Misha Asherov — to carry a story that balances spectacle with character.

The film landed with audiences for its craft and performances, and remains one of the most talked-about documentary titles of 1961.