Forgács compiled The Danube Exodus from original amateur 8mm
footage taken by Nándor Andrásovits (1894-1958), a riverboat captain who documented his voyages along the Danube as he transported Eastern European Jewish refugees to safety in Palestine in 1939, and then Bessarabian Germans who had fled back to the Reich from the Soviet invasion of Bessarabia to resettlement on land confiscated in occupied Poland in 1940. The film is set to the ethereal soundscape of composer Tibor Szemzö, while the juxtaposition of each of the two voyages complicates the reactions a spectator might have to each voyage separately.

The Maelstrom follows the Peerebooms, a Jewish Dutch family, through the 1930s and into the 1940s via the home movies of one of the sons, Max. With the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands, the film shifts to compare the fortunes of the Peerebooms to those of the (Austrian) family of Reich Commissioner for The Netherlands Arthur Seyss-Inquart. Information is conveyed through subtitles; instead of voice-over, the soundtrack consists of period sound, usually from radio broadcasts, and a brooding, disturbing jazz score by Tibor Szemzö. The Maelstrom shows a Jewish family living at first unknowingly in the shadow of the Holocaust, and then trying to cope with their predicament while still unaware of what it will ultimately mean.