All language subtitles for Night Will Fall [2014] DVDRip

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'With World War Two in
Europe drawing to a close,

'the three allied armies,
British, Soviet and American,

'began their move towards Berlin.

'Among their ranks were soldiers
newly trained as cameramen.

'In April 1945, an advancing
British unit halted

'by the River Aller,
northern Germany.

'As events unfolded, they were
recorded by the army camera crews. '

I think it was about 12th April.

Apparently two German officers
approached our front line

with a white flag asking
to speak to our General,

and they were ushered through,
blindfolded actually,

and taken to our Corps Headquarters
where I happened to be.

And they had a message
from their General.

The message was that
we were approaching

or probably going to approach
a large civilian prison camp

where typhus had broken out.

And their General wanted
to send a message

to say that he didn't think it was a good
idea if we fought through that camp

because those inmates with
typhus would get loose

and would get amongst
the civilian population

and the German army
and the British army.

They pulled us out up a track,

and we had to hoist
a white flag of truce.

This is...

Out of nowhere
this has happened.

We were sent under the flag of truce
miles behind enemy lines.

The Germans, in fairness to them,
on the roads, they all got off the roads,

and they were all armed on the side
of the roads as we were driving through.

The more I think about it now,
I'm amazed that none of us opened fire.

But in fairness to the Germans,
not one of them fired

and not one of us fired either.

'The British camera crews
continued to film.

'Their footage was to become part
of an extraordinary documentary

'produced for the allies
by Sidney Bernstein

'with a team that included
the director Alfred Hitchcock.

'This film, called "German Concentration
Camps Factual Survey",

'has been described
as a forgotten masterpiece

'of British documentary cinema.

'Yet it was abandoned unfinished
until now, 70 years later. '

'In the spring of 1945, the allies,

'advancing into the heart on Germany,
came to Bergen-Belsen.

'Neat and tidy orchards...

'... well-stocked farms
lined the wayside.

'And the British soldier did not fail
to admire the place and its inhabitants.

'At least until he began
to feel a smell. '

Then dawn came up.

And then we could see
where the stench was coming from.

I think one of the first things we did

was to line up
all the SS men and women

and took them,
made them prisoners of war, basically.

The SS were still there.

Josef Kramer was still there,
the Camp Commandant.

I looked at the tower
and the tower was empty.

And there was always
a German there with a shotgun

or with whatever he had.

And I started screaming, "The Germans
are gone! I don't see any Germans!"

And some girls ran with me

and we made it to the gate.

I was behind a barbed-wire fence

to witness the first British troop
entering the camp.

We had a loudspeaker van
with us.

We went into the camp
to see what we could see,

and of course what we could see
was a complete utter shock

and I'll never forget it.

Through a loudspeaker
in different languages, they said,

"Be calm! Be calm! Be calm!
Stay where you are.

"Be calm. Help is on the way.

"We're the British soldiers.
Help is on the way. "

And people went just crazy.

It was an unbelievable moment.

Suddenly you hear English spoken,

and we should remain calm,
don't leave the camp, help is on the way.

You know, that sort of thing.

It's very difficult to describe.

It was, you know...

You spent years
preparing yourself to die,

and suddenly you're still here,
you know.

I was 19 when the liberation came,

and it was very difficult
to actually take on board.

We thought we were dreaming

and every British soldier
looked like a god to us.

Yes, well, it wasn't
what we expected, to still be alive,

but there we were.

We didn't know
what we were going to go into.

We were sent...

...and then we drove.

Excuse me.

Sorry about this.

It's too painful.

'Dead prisoners
hurled out and stacked in twisted heaps.

'Dead women
like marble statues in the mire.

'This was what these inmates
had to live among and die among.

'The dead which lay there
were not numbered in hundreds,

'but in thousands.

'Not one or two thousands,
but 30,000. '

We drove in and saw a sight
that shook us.

There's nothing, even the sights of war
had ever, ever, ever shown us before.

It was pain to look at it.
Pain that this could happen to people.

There were hundreds and hundreds
of dead bodies sort of piled up.

There was a stench of death
everywhere. There was...

pits containing bodies of people
as large as lawn tennis courts,

containing babies, girls, youths,
men, women, old, young.

And how deep, we didn't know.

These half-dead people
walking about,

glazed eyes...

...and absolutely... dead.

There was hopelessness,

despair, the appalling smell,

the whole atmosphere of depression.

Like the end had come.

The bodies, you lost contact.
Reality went.

They were dummies,
they were dolls, they were...

I don't whether you...

We ourselves withdrew

into another space, time, existence,

but you could never associate
what you were seeing with your own life,

if you know what I mean.

This was something completely separate.
It was another world.

I don't think if we...

If you had become too involved,
I think you'd probably have gone mad.

We were there for about two weeks
filming all these sights,

which no film which I have seen since

really conveys
the feeling of despair and horror

that can be done to people
who are Europeans of another faith,

for no other reason.

And I thought as time went by
it might leave me.

I wanted to forget.

But it never does leave you.

'I find it hard to describe
the horrible things

'that I've seen and heard.

'But here, unadorned, are the facts.

'I passed through the barrier and found
myself in the world of a nightmare.

'Dead bodies, some of them in decay,

'lay strewn about the road
and along the rutted tracks.

'On each side of the road
were brown wooden huts.

'There were faces at the windows.

'The bony emaciated faces of starving
women too weak to come outside,

'propping themselves against the glass
to see the daylight before the die.

'And they were dying,
every hour and every minute. '

It was so horrific
that the BBC initially waited

before they broadcasted it
because they had doubts

whether my father had accurately
described what he'd seen,

and they checked and then put it out.

It's the moment when he describes

people no longer behave
like human beings,

that you realise what he's saying,
what the implied message of this is.

This isn't just Germany.
This isn't just the people in those camps.

This could be any of you anywhere,

if civilisation breaks down in this way.

'The day after the report,
Churchill declared,

"No words can express the horror

"which is felt by His Majesty's
government and their principal allies

"at the proofs of these frightful crimes
now daily coming into view. "

'The success of cinema in the 1930s had
underlined the power of the moving image.

'Keen to exploit
its potential role in war,

'Britain and America set up
a joint film department.

'Its brief was to produce
short propaganda films,

'initially to support the war effort,

'and later to assist the task
of dealing with a defeated Germany

'once the war was won.

'In Britain, this unit was headed by
leading film producer, Sidney Bernstein.

'The day following Churchill's statement,
Bernstein set out for Bergen-Belsen.

'By the time he arrived, the army film
cameramen had been at work for a week. '

The film shot at Bergen-Belsen
by the British cameramen

reveal every level of humanity...

...to a much greater extent
than any other of the film evidence.

It feels as if the whole
human story is there.

They used the camera
in a very specific way.

There was a... It began to directed
to collect evidence, to gather evidence.

So one of the difficulties
about filming an atrocity

is that in order to reveal that a person
has been murdered or brutalised,

what you have to do is you have to reveal
that by getting close to the person

because you have to show the wounds,

have to give some indication
of how they've been killed.

Now, that went against the tradition
previously of combat cameramen

where they'd shied away
from representing or recording

scenes of people
who'd been killed or brutalised.

'For Bernstein, the visit
to Bergen-Belsen was galvanising.

'On his return to London, he began
planning a full-length documentary.

'Its purpose was clear from guidelines
he issued to the allied cameramen. '

My instructions were
to film everything,

which would prove one day
that this had actually happened.

It'd be a lesson to all mankind as well.

To the Germans for whom the whole film
we were putting together was designed.

To show to the German people.

Because most of them on our way down,
and on the troops' way down,

had denied they knew anything
about the camps.

This would be the evidence,
which we could show them.

First of all,
I wanted them to record

that all the local bigwigs and people,

the Municipal Burgomaster and the like,

who lived within a reasonable range,

saw what was being done

in burying these tragic figures.

Some of the Germans
we brought in to be filmed,

when the bodies
were being buried in the pit,

just couldn't look any more.

I wanted to prove that they had seen it,
so there was evidence,

because I guess rightly that
most people would deny that it happened.

'Bernstein also used footage
of German SS officers

'helping with the worst
of the tasks in the camp. '

'There was an urgent need

'to get rid of as many bodies as quickly
as possible, so the SS were set to work.

'500 Hungarian troops captured
with the SS were started

on a grave-digging operation.

'The SS themselves were made
to do the unpleasant job

'they had forced the inmates to do.

'This, after all,
was nothing to these men.

'They, the master race,
had been taught to be hard.

'They could kill in cold blood,

'and it seemed
to the British soldier fit and proper

'that the killers should bury
the nameless, hopeless creatures

'they had starved to death. "

'The army film units
had no sound equipment.

'It wasn't until news teams arrived

'that Bernstein was able
to access some sound recordings. '

Today is 24th April 1945.

My name is Gunner lllingworth
and I live in Cheshire.

I'm at present in Belsen camp
doing guard duty over the SS men.

The things in this camp
are beyond describing.

When you actually see them
for yourselves,

you know
what you're fighting for here.

Pictures in the paper
cannot describe it at all.

The things they have committed,

nobody would think
they were human at all.

We actually know now what
has been going on in these camps.

And I know personally
what I am fighting for.

'Once Bernstein's
documentary proposal

'had been approved by both
British and American governments,

'he hired perhaps the best-known
film editor in London, Stewart McAllister.

'Together, they began to assemble
the army film footage

'now arriving in the edit rooms.

'The deadline for completion of the film
was set at just three months.

'The news from Bergen-Belsen

'was not entirely a surprise
to the British government.

'Soviet intelligence had reported
uncovering concentration camps

'in Poland as early as July 1944.

'But as the Soviets had a record
of falsifying atrocity reports,

'the allies ignored the information.

'Now, in the light of Bergen-Belsen,
the British reconsidered

'and Bernstein broadened
the scope of his film

'to include footage
from the Soviet camps. '

After the end of the war I worked
as a cameraman on the front.

At that time I was a very
young man without experience,

without military training.

And suddenly I had the
soldier loops of a captain,

a pistol at my side...

An Imo film camera in my hand
and one goal in my head.

To do my best to record

the actions of
our Red Army.

We walked, and walked...

We were so tired, we were collapsing.

Then our officers told us:

"There is a camp ahead - Majdanek,
where they burnt people. "

We burst into the camp.

And...

...killed the guards.

We shot them on the spot...

We kept on moving

because it was a large camp.

There were green
barracks on one side.

And there were painted warehouses
on the other.

On the right were people.

On the left were warehouses.

What was in those warehouses?

We opened one warehouse.
Women's hair.

We opened the second warehouse.
Children's shoes.

The third warehouse,
something else.

Zyklon gas in barrels.
And ashes, ashes...

They stored people's ashes the way
they stored women's hair.

The crematoriums
were still smoking,

people were still burned.
It looked very scary.

God forbid witnessing that.

Those...

who survived did not
resemble human beings.

Skeletons, scary, exhausted...

They knew they would be burned next.

'The Soviets discovered
few living inmates at Majdanek.

'In the face of the advancing troops,

'the Germans had begun
emptying the camps in Poland,

'sending prisoners westwards
to camps including Bergen-Belsen.

'The evidence filmed in Poland
became part of Bernstein's documentary. '

'Prisoners paid their own
fares to Majdanek.

'They thought
they were going to new homes

'and so they brought their most
precious portable possessions.

'They say dead men's boots
bring bad luck.

'What of dead children's toys? '

'Their mothers carried scissors perhaps.

'The scissors are here.
The mothers, no.

'But here in this room is part of them.

'Nothing material could be wasted.

'These packages contain human hair,
carefully sorted and weighed.

'Nothing was wasted.

'Even the teeth were taken
out of their mouths,

'by-products of the system.

'Toothbrushes. Nail brushes.

'Shoe brushes.

'Shaving brushes.

'If one man in ten wears spectacles,
how many does this heap represent?

'All these things belonged
to men and women and children,

'like ourselves, quite ordinary people,
from all parts of the world. '

'The Soviet forces
carried on through the Polish winter

'to liberate another larger camp,
Auschwitz. '

I stood there maybe 30 minutes.

It was snowing heavily. I couldn't see.

And at a distance I saw lots of people

and they were all wrapped
in white camouflage raincoats.

They were smiling from ear to ear.

And they didn't look like the Nazis,

which was the most important part.

We ran up to them.

They gave us chocolate,
cookies and hugs.

And this was my first taste of freedom.

They didn't have the strength
even to dance or whatever,

so they just feebly,

very feebly started singing.

And we were so happy,
we were so happy

that these angels came
from the heavens to liberate us.

'Unlike Bergen-Belsen,
which was a prison camp,

'Auschwitz was a slave-labour camp
and a mass extermination centre.

'Within its gas chambers, more than
a million men, women and children died.

'Their fate was usually determined
within minutes of their arrival. '

The cattle car doors slid open.

Thousands of people
poured out from the cattle car.

My father and two older sisters
disappeared in the crowd.

Never ever did I see them again.

As we were holding on to Mother,
a Nazi was running,

yelling in German, "Twins! Twins!"

A woman came up and she took
the little suitcase from my mother

and she said,

"Listen, are these two...
are these two twins? "

My mother said, "Yes. "

So she said,
"Why don't you say they're twins?

"It's a good thing
to have twins here in this place. "

The next time the Nazi came,
my mother said, "Here are my twins. "

They took us to Mengele
and Mengele looked at us.

The Nazi said,
"Here. I've found twins for you. "

'Eva and Vera
were among the few survivors

'of Josef Mengele's

'infamously cruel medical experiments.

'1,500 of his other victims
died at his hands.

'The Soviet army camera units
did not arrive

'until a few days after
the first troops. "

We had received orders
to film the liberation of the camp.

But we had no concrete instructions
as to how we should do this,

because we had no idea
what we would find there.

I don't think that
even our military commanders

guessed at the scale
of the crime committed

in this the largest
of the concentration camps.

The memory of it
has stayed with me all my life.

It was more shocking and horrible
than anything else I filmed during the war.

The Russians decided
to make a film

about the liberation of Auschwitz.

They dressed us in
clothes with stripes

over the clothes we had.

And they told us to walk
between the fences.

And they filmed us
between the fences.

They tried to show everything
after the event.

There came a...
there came a crew, a film crew...

...to film... to film the... the inmates.

Especially the twins.

A soldier, a Russian soldier,
was beckoning me.

He said, "Come, come, come.
Film, film, film. "

So they filmed us marching
between those two rows of barbed wire

and because Miriam and I
had the striped prison uniforms,

we ended up at the front.

'These children are twins.

'When identical twins
were born to non-German parents,

'they were confiscated and handed
over to an experimental station.

'German doctors injected them
with diseases and attempted cures.

'Success in the cure
was not important,

'as these children
were written off, unknown.

'They had no names,
only numbers tattooed on their arms. "

Only now do I understand the importance
of the Russian images.

That's almost the only documentation.

The Russians film the camp.
It may have been a month later.

But they managed
to bring the world

everything we experienced.

'Across Germany, many more
concentration camps were coming to light.

'The allies recorded the evidence on film.

'More material
for Bernstein's documentary.

'300 kilometres southeast
of Bergen-Belsen, at Buchenwald,

'the Americans entered a camp
described as a prison and labour camp.

I found out the Buchenwald camp
was being liberated,

so the captain that I was working with,
we upped and got a jeep

and we drove over to Buchenwald
death camp and I started filming there.

It was shocking, yes, it was,

because the bodies
of the prisoners were stacked up.

They were dead
and they were piled up.

'55,000 of them
died because of this place.

'Here, Schoker,
the Camp Commandant said,

"I want at least 600 Jewish deaths
reported in the camp office every day. "

'Thugs were appointed
as overseers or block leaders.

'People were tattooed across the belly
with slave numbers

'and forced to work on starvation diet.

'People were coldly
and systematically tortured. "

We received a report

that strange groups of people
had been seen on a road.

They seemed to be wearing
some kind of a pyjama

and they all looked like they were dying.

The ones who were seen on the road
were those who were still alive.

Those who couldn't walk
were lying dead on the ground.

Everybody has seen the barracks.
I don't want to go into the details.

It's a little difficult for me to do that.

But you couldn't tell
if they were dead or alive.

You'd step over a body

and it would suddenly wave at you
or raise a hand.

Total chaos.

Dysentery, typhoid.

All kinds of diseases in the camp.

Putrid... the smell of the camps.

The crematoria were still going.

The dead bodies piled up like cordwood
in front of the crematorium.

It's hard to imagine
for a normal human mind.

I had peered into hell in this.

It's not something you quickly forget...

...and it's a little hard
for me to describe.

'Some of the American crews
were beginning to use colour film.

'Although as it was sent
for processing to America,

'it wasn't included in Bernstein's film. "

When colour came out,
it was the start of 1945 in January.

We were the first unit
to start using colour film.

Up to that point it was black and white.
And it was 35mm.

But when colour came out
it was a 16mm movie, see,

that was sent to the processors

and then they would enlarge it
for showing in theatres.

Newsreel theatres were showing
this stuff in the States.

We covered the people that
were living in a town called Weimar

and they were paraded through this camp
to show the death scenes

and the bodies stacked up

and the ovens
where the prisoners were put in.

So I covered a lot of that
with Captain Carter

and we shot a lot of coverage.

'German citizens
were brought in from Weimar.

'They had to see too,

'to see what they had been fighting for
and we had been fighting against.

'They came cheerfully like sightseers
to a chamber of horrors.

'For here indeed
were some real horrors.

'These shrunken heads
belonged to two Polish prisoners

'who'd escaped and been recaptured.

'Some of the visitors did not care for the
sight and were assisted by ex-prisoners.

'They had been aware of the camp

'and had been willing to make use
of the cheap labour it provided.

'As long as they were
beyond smelling range of it. "

'The Supreme Commander
in Europe, General Eisenhower,

'came to the camps to see for himself,
telling accompanying reporters,

"We are told that the American soldier
does not know what he is fighting for.

"Now at least he will know
what he is fighting against. "

'Eisenhower arranged for journalists,

'senators, congressmen
and a British parliamentary delegation

'to visit the camp
and publicise their findings at home.

'Towards the end of April, the Americans,
moving close to the city of Munich,

'entered and filmed another camp.

'The footage was sent to London

'where it was viewed
in a processing laboratory. "

One morning,
sitting there waiting for rushes,

we got a dope sheet,
which had the name of the cameramen,

how much film had been shot.

We looked and there was an enormous
amount of film, much more than usual.

And at the top of the dope sheet

was a name which was
totally unfamiliar to all of us.

It was spelt D-A-C-H-A-U.

And we didn't know
what the hell that was.

Whether it was initials or anything.

But we soon found out because once
they started screening this material...

...it was like looking into...

the most appalling hell possible.

And especially in negative...

...where the blacks were white
and the whites were black.

There was a grotesqueness
to it anyway,

but to see it in negative was shattering.

And there was four hours
of this without break.

None of us wanted to break.

And to see these piles of bodies,

these rooms stacked with bodies...

And there was what looked like
a giant barbecue

made out of railway sleepers...

...which an attempt had been made
to burn the bodies,

obviously before the Americans arrived,

to try and lessen the...
lessen the atrocities.

But... none of us,
none of us could talk

and I think each one of us was hoping

that we were not going to be the ones
who were going to cut it.

When it was over, we sat absolutely still

and... nobody smoked,
nobody could talk.

We had no idea what had been
going on in these camps.

'Richard Crossman,
German expert and writer,

'was a member of the Psychological
Warfare Division in London

'and was sent to report
on the situation in Dachau.

'His experience there was later to inform
his final script for Bernstein's film. '

'In the last three months
official records show

'that 10,615 people
were disposed of here.

'Their clothes were turned over

'to the Deutsche Textil
und Bekleidungswerke GmbH,

'a private corporation whose
stockholders were SS officials,

'which reclaimed
and repaired the garments

'with the use of unpaid prison labour,

'and then resold them
to the camp clothing depot

'for the use of new prisoners.

'The prisoners arrived often
in railway trucks,

'but there had been no hurry
to unload this one.

'They went away leaving the prisoners
to die of hunger and cold and typhus.

'We found them like this,
frozen stiff in the snow,

'alongside a public road.

'By some miracle,
17 men were still alive.

'All the rest, about 3,000,
were dead.

'Germans knew about Dachau,
but did not care. "

'By the beginning of May,

'the scope of Bernstein's documentary
had expanded.

'He wanted a director and his thoughts
turned to his friend Alfred Hitchcock,

'already a major Hollywood name. '

Alfred Hitchcock was an eminent director

and I thought he, a brilliant man...

...would have some ideas
of how we could tie it all together.

And he had.

'Hitchcock was fully committed
in America and not immediately available,

'but he agreed to join the film later
as its supervising director.

'It was to be
his only known documentary work. '

I left America to go to England

to do some war work.

I had felt that I needed

at least to make some contribution.

There wasn't any question
of military service.

I was overage
and overweight at that time.

But nevertheless I felt the urge.

And my friend Bernstein,

who was the head
of the film section

of the British Ministry
of Information, and a...

he arranged for
me to go over.

'Before Hitchcock could
join the Bernstein team,

'the allies declared victory in Europe.

'It was the end of the war,

'but the challenges of dealing
with the peace were just beginning.

'In the concentration camps
a huge relief effort was continuing

'among the many thousands
of stranded inmates.

'In Bergen-Belsen,
army cameramen were still filming

'and sending their material
back to London.

I had a big temperature,
a fever,

because I got typhus
and I was thinking, "I'm dying. "

I was thinking, "I've died,"

because there was music coming

and I think it was the Scottish pipes.

I think in front of the Brits

there went a Scottish brigade
with pipes

and there was a music
I'd never heard.

I didn't see them because I couldn't
go up to the window, but I heard them.

And I was thinking about how I'd heard
so many things about angels

and how they sing and make music,

and I was thinking, "I'm in heaven. "

It was amazing how quickly
those poor people

who were reduced
to almost animal status,

how they came back
to being human again.

And some of the girls, women,
who really were in a terrible state

quite soon started
to dress themselves up a bit

and clean themselves up a bit,
get their hair done a bit

and get back to being
normal humans again.

It happened amazingly quickly.

Within two or three weeks,
I suppose,

these people began
to become human again.

They had been completely dehumanised.
There's no question about that.

'As they logged their shots,

'the army cameramen made notes
on what were known as dope sheets.

'One of them commented,

"It is interesting to note that as soon
as the first primitive necessities

"of food and rest and warmth
had been met,

"the patients, particularly the women,
were immediately crying out for clothes.

"Clothes became a medical necessity,

"a powerful tonic against
the dangerous apathy of the very weak. "

'Uniquely, Bernstein's film
documented the healing process. '

'Clothes was another urgent problem,

'so an outfitting department was set up

'and clothes gathered from shops
in the surrounding towns

'were soon being tried on and
gossiped over, as women love to do. "

'In late-June 1945,
Hitchcock, released from Hollywood,

'at last arrived in London
to start work with Bernstein.

'The Americans had been slow
in sending their footage,

'but despite this
the film was taking shape.

'Hitchcock's visit was short,
but intense.

'After seeing the footage, he returned
to the London hotel Claridge's.

'There, he made a series of proposals
for the completion of the film. '

And I can remember him strolling up
and down in his suite at Claridge's

and saying,
"How can we make that convincing? "

We tried to make shots
as long as possible, used panning shots,

so that there was
no possibility of trickery.

And going from respected dignitaries
or high churchmen

straight to the bodies and corpses,

so that it couldn't be suggested
that we were faking the film.

'Hitchcock was struck by the contrast

'between the normal lives
of Germans living near the camps

'and the nightmare within.

'He suggested using maps
to highlight how close they were. "

Alfred Hitchcock,
one of his contributions to the film

is that he had a particular
conceptualisation of those maps.

He also thought
they were very important.

He said not only should they show

the sites of atrocity
or the concentration camps

were close to population centres,

they should do so on a map
that was very simple

and it should be like a school atlas.

We wanted to know
whether the Germans

surrounding the concentration camp
knew about it.

So Hitch did this drawing, circles,
one mile from the camp,

two miles from the camp, ten miles
from the camp, 20 miles from the camp.

His idea was to show the area
surrounding each camp

and show how people had led
a normal life outside.

'Ebensee is
a holiday resort in the mountains.

'The air is clean and pure.

'It cures sickness

'and there is a sweetness
about the place.

'A gentle peace.

'In this place, the Luftwaffe
or SS Panzer officer on leave

'relaxes, eats well,
breathes deeply, finds romance.

'Everything is charming
and picturesque.

'But the concentration camp
had become an integral part

'of the German economic system.

'So it was here too.

'Able to see the mountains,

'but what use are mountains
without food?'

'Even as Hitchcock
and Bernstein worked,

'events in post-war Europe were
developing in unexpected directions.

'In many of the camps, thousands
of survivors remained, marooned. '

Now we were faced with,
in Belsen anyway,

over 20,000 who refused to go.

And the same situation

occurred in other concentration
camps and slave labour

all over the British part
of Germany

and the American part of Germany too.

So all of a sudden we had
another big problem on our hands -

how to handle
this humanitarian disaster situation.

I was born in Bergen-Belsen
in the displaced persons' camp.

Both my parents
were liberated at Belsen.

My mother put together a team

to work alongside
the British medical personnel

to try and save as many as possible

of the thousands
of critically ill survivors.

At the same time, my father emerged

as the leader,
the political leader of the survivors.

Most of them did not want
to go back to their country of origin,

but wanted to go,
settle in Palestine or elsewhere -

the United States, Canada and the like.

And apparently
the American answer was, "Definitely no.

"We're not taking any ex-prisoners in.
We've got problems of our own. "

Britain said, "There's no way we're
going to take hundreds of thousands

"of these homeless,
stateless people in. "

So that was the situation.

And so now of course
I am in heaven.

I am free.

I am in Germany, but I am free.

I can go anywhere I want to.

And I'm thinking to myself,

"Do I go back to Poland?"

It was so bad in Poland,
so bad for Jews.

"Do I want to go back to Poland?
But where do I go?"

And I heard about at this time

about Palestine, about Israel,

and I said, "Those are my hopes. "

'During May, June and July,

'many Jewish survivors, ignoring
the views of the British government,

'went to Palestine,

'where they found themselves either
turned back or interned in camps.

'The situation of the survivors
was a complicating element

'in a rapidly changing
post-war political climate. '

Look, the so-called Hitchcock film

or the Bernstein film,

was made with the best of intentions.

And at a given point
became a political inconvenience.

It would have evoked strong sympathy

on the part of the average person
seeing the film,

of doing something
to help these people

and certainly film that was put together
with the genius of a Hitchcock

would undermine
their own political position.

At this time, the Brits had enough
problems with the Jews already.

And...

given that,
if you show people this movie,

maybe people would say,
"Why did the British not let these people,

"who suffered so much,
have their land? "

'Britain's wartime coalition

'was confronting other,
more major problems.

'A defeated and destroyed Germany,
divided among the allies,

'had now become
the responsibility of the victors.

'As the nation most heavily involved
in the task of reconstruction,

'Britain was anxious not to further
alienate the German people,

'whose help would be vital.

'Furthermore,

'with hints of what would become
known as the Cold War appearing,

'Germany was now seen
as a potential future ally

'against the Soviet Union. '

The evidence on the ground
in occupied Germany,

both in the American
and British sectors,

was indicating that the Germans

had already been so bombarded
with the message of their guilt...

...that there's no need for a film
like this any longer at this time.

'America, however, was still
keen to show a shorter film in Germany

'and had grown impatient
with Bernstein's slow progress.

'There were secret talks
with Hollywood director Billy Wilder,

'himself an Austrian refugee
from the Nazis,

'with a view to taking the film
away from London.

'In late June, a senior American
in the Psychological Warfare Division,

'wrote a confidential memo
to his superior in Washington,

'suggesting that the Bernstein team

"should be relieved of all further
responsibility for the picture.

"It is our belief that Mr Bernstein

"would be relieved to have
the picture taken off his hands.

"And now that Billy Wilder is with us,
we are prepared to take over the job.

"He would be appointed producer and
also supervising director for the film. "

The involvement of the Americans

seems to have come to an end
at the end of June '45

when they'd really become exasperated
that the British were getting nowhere.

So they withdrew,

and subsequently they carried on
making a much shorter film

directed by Billy Wilder,

which was eventually released
in their own sector.

The film was called "Death Mills".

The subject matter was similar,

but the treatment of these two films
was entirely different.

The British film, Bernstein's film,

was an artistically shaped film

with a much profounder message

that humanity must take note
of what had happened.

The American film was
a much more hectoring short film,

which simply accused the Germans
of having committed these crimes.

'At Belsen we caught
the Camp Commander Josef Kramer,

'the Beast of Belsen.

'Men or women,

'they were the Nazi elite,
Himmler's own.

'Amazons turned Nazi killers

'were merciless in the use of the whip,
practised in torture and murder.

'Deadlier than the male.

'When allied armies approached,

'the Nazis often tried
to rush their prisoners elsewhere.

'Thousands were suffocated
in overcrowded freight cars.

'Many of the dead and the dying
were flung into the water.

'If the allies moved too rapidly, the
Nazis attempted to kill their prisoners,

'so that no witnesses of their crimes
were left behind.

'In Majdanek, in Ohrdruf,
in many other camps,

'thousands were murdered
just before liberation. "

'Ignoring the politics
swirling around them,

'Bernstein's team
carried on throughout July.

'At the end of the month
Hitchcock returned to Hollywood.

'On August 4th, a memo arrived
from the British Foreign Office saying...

..."Policy at the moment in Germany
is entirely in the direction

"of encouraging, stimulating

"and interesting the Germans
out of their apathy,

"and there are people around
the Commander-in-Chief who will say,

"No atrocity film. "

'By September,
the edit had been shut down.

'The unfinished film, together
with shot lists, cameramen's notes,

'reels of footage and a copy
of Crossman's completed script,

'was labelled and filed away.

'Bernstein moved on,
crossing the Atlantic,

'to begin a feature-film partnership
with Alfred Hitchcock.

'Bernstein's last recorded note
on the film

'was a letter from Hollywood
to Peter Tanner, the editor, saying,

"One day you will realise
it has been worthwhile. "

'Bernstein's documentary
was shelved.

'But the reels of film that he'd used
still had a public role to play.

'In the autumn of 1945, the trials
of Nazi war criminals began

'and the prosecutors found that they had
a new and powerful source of evidence.

'The first trial was that
of Commandant Kramer

'and his staff at Bergen-Belsen.

'Kramer was convicted of war crimes
and sentenced to death.

'Anita, who had survived both
Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen,

'and who appeared
in the British liberation footage,

'was one of those called upon
to testify. '

I was asked to be a witness
there and I said, "Yes, of course. "

It was like a theatre performance
and we said,

"There are people defending
these people? Are they crazy?

"You see the crime...
You see the crime. "

'Later, in November,
the International Military Tribunal or IMT

'began in Nuremberg.

'Here, too, film footage
was part of the evidence. '

It certainly bolstered
the prosecution.

At the IMT, I think there's no question
that people paid attention to the films

and it informed people
in the courtroom

and confronted the defendants

with a mass of demonstrable
evidence of their activities

over many years.

We are now ready to hear
the presentation by the prosecution.

This was the tragic fulfilment

of a programme
of intolerance and arrogance.

Vengeance is not our goal.

Nor do we seek merely
a just retribution.

We ask this court to affirm
by international penal action

man's right to live
in peace and dignity,

regardless of his race or creed.

I was appointed
a chief prosecutor

in what was surely the biggest
murder trial in human history.

And it was my first case
and I was 27 years old.

...will show that the slaughter
committed by these defendants...

...was dictated, not by military
necessity, but by that supreme...

'Even though Bernstein's
1945 film had been quietly dropped,

'this was not the end of its story.

'70 years later, an Imperial
War Museum team completed the film

'using the original shot sheets,
script and rushes

'to meticulously reconstruct Bernstein
and Hitchcock's intended final section. '

We knew that it was
a powerful piece of cinema

and also had been made

by some of the best film technicians
and writers of the era.

What we wanted to do was ultimately
produce and complete the work

of these original filmmakers.

'This was the end of the journey

'they had so confidently
begun in 1933.

'12 years?
No.

'In terms of barbarity and brutality,

'they had travelled backwards
for 12,000 years.

'Unless the world learns the lesson
these pictures teach,

'night will fall.

'But by God's grace,
we who live will learn. "

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