German Concentration Camps Factual Survey

In 1945, British forces approach Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Producer Sidney Bernstein working for the Ministry of Information, leads a film crew to document the German atrocities. The project is called German Concentration Camps Factual Survey. He would recruit his friend Alfred Hitchcock to help create the film, but it gets suspended in the murky cold-war politics after the fighting. The footage was used in Death Mills (1945) and Memory of the Camps (1984). Eventually, the Imperial War Museum decided to expand on the 1984 version to complete the original plan for the movie.

This is an important project. It's important to keep revisiting it over the years. More than this film alone, it's more important to maintain and preserve the endless hours of unused footage. This is the video evidence of the actual truth. From the first rumors of the camps, the deniers were out ready to dispute them. Without the original film stock, they would have a lot more ammunition. As long as the physical evidence exists, the deniers are relegated to the fringe.

In April/May 1945 Allied camera teams filmed footage of the German concentration camps, including of the corpses of dead detainees and of the malnourished, ill-treated survivors. The main aim was to produce a documentary of Nazi atrocities to show to the German people in order to weaken any pro-Nazi sentiment that might remain. A secondary aim was as evidence that the atrocities occurred. This film was never made and the footage was archived. In 2014 the footage and narration from the original script were used to create a documentary on the German concentration camps, as seen from the perspective of liberating Allied soldiers. This is that film.

An incredibly confronting film, highly effective in its graphic depiction of the utter brutality and large-scale murderousness of the concentration camps. It's quite shocking to see hundreds of dead bodies being manhandled into mass graves and the state of the corpses indicating the level of starvation and mistreatment the victims suffered. Quite emotional too, as you think that at one stage they were a living human being, only for someone to abuse them to death.

I'm not very squeamish but it was difficult for me to watch at times.

There is a repetitiveness to these scenes but that is effective in conveying the scale of the genocide and brutality. The scale is also demonstrated through showing the distribution of all the camps in Europe and then going to some of the larger ones. The means vary by each camp and these differences are examined too. There's also mention of some of the lesser-known atrocities that the Nazis committed.

The version I watched had a short intro before the film itself, a "making of" detailing the history of the footage and why it was shot. It also had an outro which was very interesting and explained some of the features of the film, especially its narration, which may have seemed odd to modern audiences. There is also an interview with a survivor of one of the camps, putting a modern face to the tragedy.

An astonishing, vitally necessary documentary.

70 years on and not a day goes past that I do not give a thought for the horror and sheer misery the individuals ripped from their lives and thrown into the hell that was the concentration camps. How did this happen? The images shown in this documentary should be shown to every child in every school across the globe. This way something like this might never happen again. Sadly I feel that this is nothing short of a pipe dream as we humans have a tenancy to forget history to attempt to make new history which inevitably makes the past look like child's play. For all humans sake inhumane treatment of our fellow man should never be this barbaric ever again. My thoughts are that the quote that by gods grace we will learn is nothing more than lip service as a species domination is all some want and strive for. Those of us who strive for peace and fairness for all need to always aware for the next maniacal leader capable of such horror and end their reign before it gets started.

It was difficult to watch. Over the decades, I think most of us have seen snippets of many of the scenes. However this is an important compilation of much longer and fuller scenes, as well as many we have not seen.

It is most important that it is a filmed proof of the German Concentration Camps scope of brutality and inhumanity. More of the public should learn about this film and watch it.

I hope we can be better people because of this film, but I fear that as time goes on, the impact of these atrocities fade. It's important to remind ourselves how not to be.