The World Will Tremble (film)

The World Will Tremble is a 2025 historical drama film written and directed by Lior Geller, and starring Oliver Jackson-Cohen and Jeremy Neumark Jones. It tells the true story of an attempt to escape the Chełmno extermination camp during World War II by Michael Podchlebnik and Szlama Ber Winer.

Polish Jews and Sonderkommando workers Solomon Wiener and Michael Podchlebnik plot an escape from their Nazi captors in Occupied Poland. After being forced to dig in a trench in the Polish wilderness, Solomon, Michael, and fellow Jew Wolf Kaminski, are marched to Chełmno run by the Kommandant, Sturmbannführer Herbert Lange, who tells the newcomers of false promises about working in Leipzig. Solomon, Michael, and Wolf are forced to gather the belongings and clothes of fellow Jewish arrivals who are stripped and forced into a gas van, where most are asphyxiated. The truck is brought back to the trench the men originally dug where the bodies are dragged out, watching as Lenz, the Polizeimeister, shot any survivors, while the work crew are forced to move the bodies into the trenches, which were being used as mass graves. During this, Michael discovered his wife, Klara, was among the victims in the truck. Broken, Michael begged Lenz to kill him, but Lenz refused and forced the diggers back to work, where they spread quicklime onto the bodies.

After leaving the bodies, due to the transport trucks constantly breaking down, the Sonderkommandos are forced to march back to Chełmno when Nazi sympathizers brought a Jewish escapee before them, in which Lenz killed the escapee and paid the men off. After returning to Chełmno, Solomon, Michael, Wolf, and some of their fellow prisoners plot their escape. They were then lined up in front of Lange to conduct an exercise, during which, a fellow Jew, Monik, dropped a knife. As punishment, Lenz slit Monik's throat, but not before Monik spat at Lange. To further humiliate them, Lange forced the prisoners to dance along with a female prisoner, while the guards were firing shots towards their feet, unfortunately accidentally killing the female, much to Lange's dismay. The prisoners are then forced to stand in line and hold glass bottles over their heads for the Nazis to have target practice, during which Wolf was shot in the neck and bled to death, but not before slipping a smuggled pencil to Solomon and urging him to get to Grębów. After being taken back to their bunks, Solomon urges Michael to escape, pointing out that despite their families being gone, they needed to spread the word about the Nazi's crimes. Some of the prisoners feared repercussions from their Nazi captors, but Solomon urged them to keep the faith and even wrote down a list of names of their fellow Jews who were murdered along with their hometowns.

The transport truck arrived and Lenz ordered the prisoners onto the truck. Two fellow prisoners, Goldman and Felix, distracted Lenz and his men long enough for Solomon and Michael to cut through the trucks canopy and flee through the forest in which Lenz and his soldiers launched a relentless pursuit with gunfire. Solomon and Michael shook off their pursuers by swimming across the river, however, Michael received a gunshot exit wound to his leg. Solomon and Michael continued through the forest while steering clear of roads and evading Nazi patrols. The duo stumbled upon a farm where the lady of the house provide them with Railway Uniforms while the duo stole a Nazi officers motorcycle. Down the road, they came across a Wehrmacht platoon and, fooling the soldiers with the Railway Workers disguises, were forced to help them get a transport truck out of the mud, while their field medic treated Michael's leg.

Solomon and Michael finally reached the Grębów ghetto while evading the police and the Judenrat during curfew, where they met Rabbi Schulman and warned them about the Nazi's crimes and their death camps. Schulman was hesitant to believe Solomon but came to terms with his warning. Schulman began writing on a parchment of the horrific details that Solomon witnessed. As Solomon began telling the Rabbi of his experience, he broke in tears and Schulman promised him that the message will spread out, citing "The World Will Tremble".

The Epilogue states that Solomon's testimony was the first eyewitness account of the Nazi's mass murder of Jews and on June 26, 1942, the message was broadcast from BBC Radio in London after the Jewish Underground smuggled it there, marking it as the first news report on the Holocaust. The Nazis upgraded from gas vans to gas chambers which were utilized in Auschwitz and Treblinka. Out of 220,000 Jews sent to Chełmno, only four survived. Rabbi Schulman never abandoned his community and 3 weeks after meeting with Solomon and Michael, he was taken to Chełmno along with his fellow Jews and immediately gassed. In April of 1942, Solomon Wiener, while searching for any surviving family members, was captured and taken to Belzec where he was gassed, but not before sending out one last message about the gassings there. Michael Podchlebnik parted ways from Solomon after Grębów, in which he bunkered in a Polish farm till the war ended and immigrated to Israel where he remarried and had two sons. In 1962, he faced Chełmno's guards one last time at their trials in West Germany. A video of Michael's testimony from 1979 was released where he gave an account on his horrific experience when he found his wife and children in the trenches.

A group of prisoners attempt to escape Chełmno extermination camp during World War II, the first known Nazi camp of that nature, with the plan to tell the world of the systematic atrocities carried out.^[2]

• Oliver Jackson-Cohen as Solomon Wiener, a Polish Jew from Izbica working in the Chełmno Sonderkommando who plotted an escape from his Nazi Captors
• Jeremy Neumark Jones as Michael Podchlebnik, a Polish Jew from Kolo working in the Chełmno Sonderkommando who plotted an escape from his Nazi Captors after losing his family
• Charlie MacGechan as Wolf Kaminski, a Polish Jew in the Chełmno Sonderkommando and one of the plotters of the escape
• Michael Epp as Lenz, a sadistic Nazi Polizeimester at Chełmno
• David Kross as Sturmbannführer Herbert Lange, the Kommandant of Chełmno
• Michael Fox as Monik, a Polish Jew in the Chełmno Sonderkommando and one of the plotters of the escape
• Danny Scheinmann as Goldman, the eldest Polish Jew in the Chełmno Sonderkommando
• Adi Kvetner as Felix, a Polish Jew in the Chełmno Sonderkommando
• Anton Lesser as Rabbi Schulman, the Rabbi of Grębów
• Tim Bergmann as Burmeister
• Oliver Möller as Mobius
• George Lenz as Gustav
• Leonard Proxauf as Oskar, a Nazi transport officer for Chełmno
• Gilles Ben David as Aaron, an elder Rabbi brought to Chełmno, whom Solomon knew
• Ulrich Brandhoff as Wehrmacht Officer Stangl, the Commanding officer of a Wehrmacht platoon whom Solomon and Michael stumbled across
• Uri Roodner as Abramson, an elderly Jew of the Grębów Ghetto
• Gergana Pletnyova as a Polish woman

Writer and director Lior Geller spent ten years researching the Chełmno extermination camp and was assisted by historian Dr. Na’ama Shik from Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial centre. The film is produced by Lorton Entertainment, UFO Films, Black Sheep Films, and Radiancy Pictures. Ben Silverman of Propagate Content, Arthur Landon and Ed Barratt of Lorton Entertainment, Phillip J. Roth of UFO, Yair Ilan of Radiancy Pictures, Erez Koskas of Cedar House Studio and Saar Yogev and Naomi Levari of Black Sheep Films are producers.^[3]

The cast is led by Oliver Jackson-Cohen and Jeremy Neumark Jones and also includes Charlie MacGechan, Anton Lesser, David Kross, Michael Fox, Michael Epp, Danny Scheinmann, Tim Bergmann and George Lenz.^[4][5][6]

The film had its world premiere at the Miami Jewish Film Festival in Miami, Florida on January 16, 2025.^[1][7] It was released in the United States by Vertical on March 14, 2025.^[8]

On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 92% of 12 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 7.4/10.^[9]

Film critic Keith Garlington said of the film, "Deftly handled with accuracy and urgency, Geller's film is both a powerful testimony and a harrowing indictment that doesn't gaze directly upon the horror but it doesn't hide from it either. The results are astonishing... With The World Will Tremble, Lior Geller joins the talented chorus of cinematic voices who responsibly ensure the Holocaust is remembered for the evil that it was and for the generational pain it has inflicted."^[10]

• The World Will Tremble at IMDb