Roman Polanski has produced the first movie about the Third Reich which is not sentimental. His hero who tries to escape the Warsaw-ghetto is not a hero. He doesn't try to fight the Nazis and the Nazis are not yelling "Sieg Heil" or "Heil Hitler" a single time all-through 148 gruesome minutes.
Instead of letting heroes and villains play their roles, Polanski gives us a realistic, disturbing potrait of life and death in Poland under the German occupation. A masterpiece.