Frontline: Memory of the Camps

05.09.2005

FRONTLINE: Memory of the Camps [Watch Online]

From PBS WEBSITE: Sixty years ago, in the spring of 1945, Allied forces liberating Europe found evidence of atrocities which have tortured the world's conscience ever since. As the troops entered the German concentration camps, they made a systematic film record of what they saw. Work began in the summer of 1945 on the documentary, but the film was left unfinished. FRONTLINE found it stored in a vault of London's Imperial War Museum and, in 1985, broadcast it for the first time using the title the Imperial War Museum gave it, "Memory of the Camps."

FRONTLINE took the film, added the script and asked the late British actor, Trevor Howard, to record it. The aim was to present the film unedited, as close as possible to what the producers intended in 1945.

"Memory of the Camps" includes scenes from Dachau, Buchenwald, Belsen and other Nazi concentration camps whose names are not as well known. Some of the horrors documented took place literally moments before the Allied troops arrived, as the Germans hurried to cover the evidence of what they had done.

Twenty years after its first broadcast on FRONTLINE, "Memory of the Camps" remains one of the most definitive and unforgettable records of the 20th century's darkest hour.

Fascism

Nick Lewis's blog

Comments

Thu, 2005-06-16 01:49 — Mrstuff (not verified)

Questions re memroy of the camps

The footage was extremely disturbing, disgusting and inexcusable. At the same time, in the name of honesty I must admit to having a few questions: 1. The documentary refers - anmd claims as fact - that the Germans took Jews (and I guess others') skin and made soap and lampshades out of the skin. As I understand, this was later proven to be legend (although people were still falsely convicted of this greoss act in Nuremberg). 2. Again, they refer to gas chambers in Dachau and Buchenwald. Yet, as far as I understand, it was later proven that these claims were wartiume propaganda and that in relaity the only known functioning gas chambers were at Auschwitz. While the program shows disgusting brutality and crimes against humanity, I think I think one must also recognizde that the program is a one-sided account by the winners of this war and the need for propaganda certainly was a factor. The program shows both how trully terrible the crimes were and at the same time the one-sided propaganda that we were all fed to make already terrible crimes seem even worse. I must confess that studying the matter of the holocaust has not at all made me a holocaust denier. But I do believe that some of the so-called holocaust deniers have made some strong points to the effect that even the unimaginable german crimes were nonetheless "sexed up" by my own US government and those of the other allies. Don't get me wrong. The Nazis were scum and my Grandfather destroyed the rest of his life fighting them.

Tue, 2005-05-10 20:40 — Katharine (not verified)

PBS "Memory of the Camps"

I agree; this was extremely powerful. So was a documentary shown on PBS on Saturday on a man named Sugihara, who risked his life and the wrath of the government of Japan to save Jews during the war. He has now died but many of the people he helped bring to safety live on and spoke during the hour.