A scene from “When Night Falls”
Today (Wednesday, Jan. 27) is International Holocaust Remembrance Day and the 71st anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Nazi concentration camp. Today also marks the premiere of When Night Falls, a new documentary featuring video footage taken by a British film during the liberation of Auschwitz and other concentration camps. Watch a trailer for the film below.
The British Army sent the film crews along to document the atrocities of the camps, to be used — with the help of director Alfred Hitchcockm in a documentary called German Concentration Camps Factual Survey. To “prove that this had actually happened, to be a lesson to all mankind, as well,” says Sidney Bernstein, chief of the film section at the Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force.
But, as The Jewish Standard explains, “as the war came to a close, the governments that had once supported exposing German crimes had a new interest in reconciliation and plans for the film were scrapped.”
Today, more than 70 years later — as the leading GOP contender for the presidency calls for all Muslims to be banned from this country and for a wall to be built along our border, as so-called leaders in the political and religious arenas bleat loudly against providing refuge to men and women and children fleeing genocide in their homelands; as pastors build their flocks by preaching hatred — the message of this new documentary rings loudly in our ears.
Watch for When Night Falls. Find out when it will be screening somewhere near you. Go see it. And take someone with you — someone you feel needs to see these images, hear these stories. Someone who needs the lesson Bernstein said the footage was intended to convey.
We can never forget, because if we do, night will fall again. And we are already seeing it happen.
Suppressed Footage From Auschwitz Finally ReleasedWhen Auschwitz and other camps were liberated, the British army sent along a film unit. With the help of supervising director Alfred Hitchcock, the shocking footage was meant for a documentary called German Concentration Camps Factual Survey. However, as the war came to a close, the governments that had once supported exposing German crimes had a new interest in reconciliation and plans for the film were scrapped. 70 years later, a new documentary, Night Will Fall, tells the story of how the footage came to be, and what happened to it. Night Will Fall premieres today. Source: World Jewish Congress
Posted by The Jewish Standard on Monday, January 26, 2015
