NBC’s two-part 2001 dramatisation compresses the 1940-43 ordeal of the Warsaw Ghetto into 180 network minutes, centring on Donald Sutherland’s anguished Adam Czerniaków, the Judenrat chairman who chose cyanide over signing deportation orders, and Hank Azaria’s Mordechaj Anielewicz, the 24-year-old who turned youth-group bunkers into the first urban armed revolt against the SS. Shot in Bratislava and Luxembourg with a budget of $22 million, the production builds to the April-May 1943 uprising, staged with reconstructed sewer tunnels and period armour borrowed from Polish military museums. Maurice Jarre’s final television score threads klezmer motifs through martial percussion, while Jon Avnet’s teleplay lifts passages from Czerniaków’s real diaries, spoken in voice-over between scenes. Broadcast opposite the World Series, the miniseries drew 17 million viewers on night one and won the Emmy for sound mixing, though historians criticised the casting of David Schwimmer and Leelee Sobieski as resistance fighters whose families had not lived in Poland for two generations. The DVD release trims six minutes of German-language dialogue that NBC executives deemed too gruelling for advertisers.
Production Details
NBC / 1 Season / 2 Episodes / 2001
Showrunner(s): Bill Haber
Writer(s): Jon Avnet, Paul Brickman
Producer(s): Raffaella De Laurentiis, Jon Avnet
Cinematography: Denis Lenoir
Music: Maurice Jarre
Main Cast
Leelee Sobieski as Tosia Altmann
Hank Azaria as Mordechaj Anielewicz
David Schwimmer as Icchak 'Antek' Cukierman
Jon Voight as SS-Brigadeführer Jürgen Stroop
Donald Sutherland as Adam Czerniaków
Stephen Moyer as Kazik Rotem
Sadie Frost as Ziviah Lubetkin
Radha Mitchell as Mira Fruchner
Mili Avital as Devorah Baron
Konstanze Breitebner as Ruthie Altmann
Veronica De Laurentiis as Nurse
Eric Lively as Arie Wilner
