Avant-garde composer and movie producer Cecelia Margules accepted the challenge: to bring the Holocaust to the young generation in a fast-moving, 6-minute YouTube clip “Rainbow in the Night” – released this month.

Ditching the traditional approach of presenting gruesome holocaust scenes, Margules uses artistic expression as her means to reach the YouTube generation. Her film contrasts the freedom and joy of Jewish life  today against the feelings of confinement, degradation and fear under Hitler.

Not a word is stated in the 6-minute video.

Rather, to the backdrop of the song “Rainbow in the Night,” which she composed for the video, Margules takes her viewers from a jubilant Sabbath night family dinner scene to a sudden flashback of the same family packing its bags as they are evicted from their home in the Krakow Ghetto. Scenes of harassment of Jews on the streets and imprisoned young men and women unfold along with the touching music and lyrics.

The film opens at a private event in a survivor’s home where a 1939 oil painting of a synagogue being ravaged by the Nazis is on display. It culminates with a sensation of hope for the future, as faces of hundreds of modern Jewish children race across the screen.

Cecelia and Rubin Margules, both children of holocaust survivors, financed the video. No efforts were spared to reproduce an authentic feel of the times, with on-scene shots from the Krakow Ghetto and the Majdanek concentration camp in Poland.

To see a rainbow at night is impossible, and the movie Rainbow In The Night, true to its title, portrays the indomitable human spirit that enabled the Jewish people to survive against impossible odds, and rebuild the generations that were destroyed by the Nazis with a rekindled pride, dignity and freedom.

The movie was directed by Daniel Finkelman, who has worked with Margules on other video productions.

The song track Rainbow in the Night can be downloaded for a nominal fee here: http://www.mostlymusic.com/rainbow-in-the-night.html