Disc Reviews

The German Concentration Camps Factual Survey Blu-ray Review

• 11th Apr 2017

As the Allies advanced through Europe in the last days of the war, with the Soviet Union advancing from the East through Poland and Germany and the British, American and Commonwealth forces from the West, the Allies were uncovering the horrors of the concentration camps and the systematic murder of millions with the Jews suffering the most under their Nazi overseers. The concentration camp system was collapsing with prisoners dying in their hundreds of thousands from starvation, neglect, guns, death marches and disease. On the 11th April 1945 British and Canadian forces came upon a camp in the picturesque town of Belsen (Auschwitz had been liberated by the Soviets on 27th January that year) but were horrified at what they found. Survivors enthusiastically greeted them but they also found thousands of corpses laid to waste and many others dying of starvation and disease. Many of these prisoners had been transferred to Bergen-Belsen before the liberation from Auschwitz-Birkenau. The film, German Concentration Camps Factual Survey opens with the discovery of Bergen-Belsen.

As the liberators entered the camp a film crew arrived with them. They had been sent by the Ministry of Information for a documentary that was to be produced by Sidney Bernstein, himself a British Jew who would go on to be the founder of Granada Television. This film was a documentary originally conceived to show to Germans and the world the horrors that had been carried out by the Nazis to stem any tide of denial and to highlight the complicity of ordinary Germans. In the meantime other camps were to be liberated in the coming weeks that are also covered in the film such as Dachau, Buchenwald and elsewhere in Germany and Poland where similar horrors were found (in all 10 camps and 4 sites of atrocity). On liberation, the liberators would bring local residents and officials to see the horrors of what was carried out in their name. Footage of these scenes were shown in German cinemas and photographs were displayed openly in towns and cities across the country. As a documentary German Concentration Camps Factual Survey took time to put together, complete and edit. It was to be released in 1946 by which time the world had moved onto the next stage. In 1946 the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials had already highlighted the horrors of the camps and used much of the footage here, but many of the documented facts given in the film had changed as a greater understanding of the history of the concentration, Death and labour camps unfolded. The film made little of the additional horrors meted out to the Jewish population of Europe in what became known as the Holocaust. In addition the world was also entering into the Cold War with the West in an uneasy alliance with communist Eastern Europe under the influence of the Soviet Union. As a result the film remained unfinished and was abandoned by Bernstein in September 1945. It was left in a rough and unfinished state for many years until it was shown again in 1984. The version on the BFI disc was shown at the Berlin Film Festival in 2015. However, it was withheld in the UK for two years due to concerns about its inaccuracies (it quotes 4 million victims in Auschwitz Birkenau, when in fact the figure is now set at 1.1 million) and concerns about not highlighting the Jewish suffering as well as fears of Zionism.

Previously, the documentary on the making of the German Concentration Camps Factual Survey, Night Will Fall was released by BFI in 2014. This film was narrated by Alfred Hitchcock and also produced by Sidney Bernstein, but on Night Will Fall there is arguably an over emphasis on the role of Hitchcock rather than a focus on the subject matter itself. It is not entirely clear the extent of Hitchcock’s involvement, but was most likely in an advisory capacity and influenced how the film should be put together. Seeing German Concentration Camps Factual Survey in its entirety is very shocking. I worked for a couple of years at the Memorial Site at Dachau and I have to admit that the subject of the Holocaust and the Nazi rise to power became and remains an obsession. No matter how much I was exposed to imagery of the horrors of the camp you do not become inured to the horrors in the film, made all the more visceral now the film has been cleaned up. In Dachau there is colour footage of an abandoned train of corpses on 8mm that was uncovered at the camp during the liberation. This footage was shot by Hollywood director George Stevens. Colour, even more than black and white looks all the more shocking in that is something more tangible to the modern viewer. Yet, although Bernstein’s film was entirely in black and white these images are still incredibly shocking. While the film has been released by BFI it was the Imperial War Museum who have put the film together and restored. The IWM were faced with some challenging questions: whether to keep the film in black and white, not to embellish it with any dubbed sound and (of course) to use a modern narrator to speak the script as this had never been recorded. The other big challenge was the wild historical inaccuracies that exist throughout the film: the numbers killed at Auschwitz-Birkenau and Lublin Majdanak were wildly exaggurated here (going at the time by Soviet supplied numbers) and the process of the gas chambers at Dachau. We now know that although there were gas chambers in Dachau, they were never used for reasons unknown. Never the less this is a richly ambitious project that faced those challenges and is aptly book-ended by an introduction at the beginning and a short piece by the team at IWM London, historians and an even a survivor from Belsen who reflect on the film at the end. They all admit that the film is shocking and would have and could be seen as sensationalist compared to say more recent studies such as Claude Lanzmann’s brilliant epic 8 hour plus Shoah (1985) documentary in which there is no historical footage and relies entirely on testimonials and footage of the camps today. In this film there are no survivor testimonials with only the British liberators heard speaking. In addition another element that could be levelled at the film is that there is very little mention of the extraordinary suffering of the Jews within this system but are spoken of as “the citizens of the countries whence they came”.

With recent news of the horrors in Syria, the terrible crimes commited by Islamic State, oppression against minority groups in Russia and elsewhere as well as even the shock at some of Donald J. Trump rhetoric in the United States films like this, despite being historical and dated seem ever more relevant in a troubled world. Extras on the disc include a wonderful Q & A with the IWM team and historians involved in the project and interestingly some contemporary survivor testimonials made at Dachau within a week of the camp’s liberation. Also included there is a comprehensive 80 page book that follows the concept of the film, its inception, the making and ultimately the controversial aspects of the film as to why it was not shown and its flaws. This is an important film and is far from easy viewing but is both rewarding and an important document.

Chris Hick