NOTHING LEFT TO LOSE HEROISM AGAINST TYRANNY, CIRCA 1943, PORTRAYED IN NBC MINISERIES.

Byline: Valerie Kuklenski Staff Writer

Over the past 55 years, so many have wondered why European Jews - knowing they were facing death - didn't rise up and strike out against the Nazis?

Director Jon Avnet bristles at the perception that the Holocaust victims were a passive lot, noting that their livelihoods, their religious practices, their property and their freedom were taken from them bit by bit, until many thousands succumbed to disease and starvation far from the death camps that claimed even more victims.

``What do you do when you have no weapons?'' he said. ``What do you do when you have 187 calories a day to survive on? They were losing 6,000 to 10,000 people a month from disease.''

Despite such grave hardships - or because of them - a handful of resilient, resolved Polish Jews confined to the Warsaw Ghetto did take on the Germans, capturing their guns and ammunition and turning them on the stunned soldiers. Their true story is told in the two-part NBC miniseries ``Uprising,'' premiering Sunday.

The film begins in September 1939, when the Polish army surrenders to Germany after a battle lasting less than one month. Adolf Hitler's rhetoric disturbs some young idealistic teachers, among them Mordechai Anielewicz (Hank Azaria). Mordechai attempts to find a safe route for his students through the Polish countryside to Palestine, but he is captured at the German border.

He escapes, returns to Warsaw and stirs up the passions of his friends, rousing them to be founding members of the Jewish Fighting Organization. He seeks support of the Warsaw Ghetto Jewish Council, but its chief, Adam Czerniakow (Donald Sutherland), declines assistance, certain that armed resistance would only cost more Jewish lives.

By July 1942, Mordechai and his supporters - including Tosia (Leelee Sobieski), Yitzhak (David Schwimmer), Mira (Rhada Mitchell), Marek (John Ales) and Kazik (Stephen Moyer) - are more desperate than ever as they witness the deportation of some 300,000 Jews to the Treblinka concentration camp. Working with mostly smuggled weapons, they train for battle, and finally fire their first shots at German soldiers on Jan. 18, 1943.

The Nazis wake up to the fact that, in the overcrowded, disease-ridden Jewish ghetto, there is an organized, armed resistance. In April, they mount a massive military strike they believe will end this disruption.

There is a tinge of humor to that scene, which Avnet said comes from the Germans' arrogance.

``They actually walked into the ghetto, marched in singing, put their tank in the middle of the street and had it blown up,'' said Avnet, who co- wrote the script with Paul Brickman. The Germans' abandoned weapons and ammunition became part of the JFO arsenal.

Again and again the Germans return, only to be blasted into retreat by the ragtag bunch armed with pilfered guns and homemade gasoline bombs.

Jon Voight, who last wore a Nazi uniform as the young telegram messenger, Rolf, in ``The Sound of Music'' on Broadway, plays Gen. Jurgen Stroop, who is dispatched by Heinrich Himmler to put down the uprising before it sparks other revolts around Europe. Cary Elwes is Nazi propaganda filmmaker Fritz Hippler, whose most famous work, ``The Eternal Jew,'' is shown in part in the miniseries.

Hippler filmed one of the German assaults on the ghetto. His footage of soldiers dumping bodies into mass graves still exists, but, of course, there is little official German documentation from the time of the ghetto uprising. And there was only a handful of survivors to tell of it.

Avnet learned about it from reading Leon Uris' fictional treatment of the events, ``Mila 18.'' He spent years doing his own research on the Warsaw Ghetto, and he found historic facts and real people so compelling that he decided to tell their story rather than adapting Uris'. Avnet said he was surprised that no one had done it sooner.

Living the project 24/7

Sobieski said the actors read everything available and watched documentaries to learn whatever they could about the struggle.

``We were dreaming, eating, sleeping, talking the project 24 hours on seven, because we all wanted to do it justice,'' she said. ``You definitely feel that if you don't do it justice, something very bad will happen to you.''

The immersion into their roles included fasting for two days, at Avnet's request, to understand how hunger can weaken the body and the spirit, and how extraordinary these resistance fighters were in those circumstances.

``You know what happens when you fast for two days?'' Avnet said. ``You get hungry, you get angry, you get a little tired, you think about food. You want to go out and work hard? You want to go out and fight? You want to go climb walls?''

Sobieski described the 73-day shoot in Slovakia as ``kind of rigorous.''

``There's lots of smoke in the bunker. You get a very, very small space and fill it with 200 people, and half of them have Vaseline all over their bodies (to look like sweat),'' she said. ``And they can't sit down and the floor is completely covered in dust and they just can't move. And the heat's rising and the fake smoke is filling up and you blow your nose and black will come out.''

``Uprising'' has the look of a studio feature, in part because Avnet is more accustomed to that medium, with ``Risky Business,'' ``Fried Green Tomatoes,'' ``George of the Jungle'' and ``Up Close and Personal'' among his credits. The miniseries' DVD is coming out unusually fast, hitting stores Dec. 18, and Avnet said Warner Bros. is considering an unprecedented domestic theatrical release.

There were 128 speaking roles, about 25,000 extras and a set the size of three football fields, including old Warsaw, with a barbed-wire barricade establishing the border between the Jewish and Aryan sectors, and the ghetto as a pile of smoldering rubble from dynamite and cannon fire.

Convincing re-creation

The attention to detail was so precise that when Simha ``Kazik'' Rotem, one of the survivors and a consultant on the project, visited the set, he pointed to an apartment window and said, ``I lived there.''

It's one of a flurry of World War II stories adapted for television in the last year, including ``Anne Frank,'' ``Haven'' and the upcoming ``In Love & War'' on CBS. Avnet said that era appeals to writers because of its clear good-vs.-evil form, which makes it easy for viewers to root for the protagonists. ``Uprising'' has even more relevance in the wake of the recent terrorist attacks.

``There's no question about it - this is the story about the guys who were in Flight 93,'' Voight said, referring to the passengers who apparently rushed their hijackers and crashed their plane in a remote area, sparing an intended target in Washington. ``It's the same set of questions: What do you do? You're going to get killed anyway.''

In his separate interview, Avnet drew the same comparison. ``We all know that these (passengers) were heroes,'' he said. ``They gave their lives. They knew it; it was a choice.

``And that's what motivated me to do this. These people knew they were probably going to die, but they wanted to choose how they would die, and they wanted to live with honor, which is as important as dying with honor.''

``UPRISING''

What: Miniseries about Jews who fought Nazis in the Warsaw Ghetto.

The stars: Hank Azaria, Leelee Sobieski, Jon Voight, David Schwimmer, Cary Elwes.

Where: NBC.

When: 9 to 11 p.m. Sunday and Monday.

CAPTION(S):

4 photos

Photo:

(1 -- cover -- color) Fighting back

Miniseries tries to get at the truth of th Warsaw Ghetto `Uprising'

(2) Hank Azaria and Rhada Mitchell fight the good fight in a scene from the NBC miniseries ``Uprising.''

(3) Donald Sutherland, left, is chief of the Warsaw Ghetto Jewish Council and David Schwimmer is a resistance fighter in the two-part miniseries, beginning Sunday.

(4) Stephen Moyer portrays resistance fighter Kazik in ``Uprising,'' Sunday and Monday on NBC.