All language subtitles for MKVtoolsSubExport.951269.srt

(Narrator) in the spring of 1945,
the Ministry of Information in London

was instructed to make a film
for Allied Command,

documenting the Nazi atrocities being
discovered as Europe was liberated.

Producer Sidney Bernstein recruited
a brilliant team to work on the production,

including the editors Stewart McAllister
and Peter Tanner,

and writers Colin Wills
and Richard Crossman.

The film was crafted from footage
taken by British, American

and Soviet military cameramen.

Shocked and angered,

they used their cameras
to condemn the perpetrators,

filming the victims of atrocities
in close detail

and producing a comprehensive record
of the suffering of survivors.

The footage was first screened in London
at the Ministry of Information

and was seen as damning proof
of the criminality of the Nazi regime.

When completed, the film
was to be shown in German cinemas

and to German Prisoners of War.

Its purpose was to counter
any lingering support for the Nazis

and to make people aware
of their shared responsibility

for the crimes
committed in their name.

Sidney Bernstein hoped to create
a lasting and irrefutable record,

to challenge any attempts
to deny what had taken place.

But events in Germany moved
more quickly than the filmmaking process.

The Allied government policy evolved
from retribution to reconstruction.

Armed resistance to the occupation
was limited,

and many Germans and POWs
had been taken to sites of atrocity,

or seen photographs
and short films of the horrors.

Consequently, the film had missed
its moment and was shelved.

In 1952, the unfinished film
was deposited

at the Imperial War Museum.

It had no titles, only brief sequences
of synchronous sound,

and the last reel
had not been assembled.

But there was a script
for the commentary

and a list of shots for each reel.

Using the shooting script
and the editor's notes,

lWM's team has set about meticulously
restoring and completing the film

to the filmmaker's specifications.

This has involved cleaning
and grading each frame of the film,

recording the commentary
using the original script from 1945,

and assembling the sixth and final reel
for the first time.

This film is an important
historical document,

and it has been restored,
not revised or updated.

Authenticity is integral to this process.

It is the obligation of
curators and archivists

to preserve the artefacts
and documents entrusted to them

without making alterations which would
change their original meaning or form.

As a result, some of the facts
are incorrect

and aspects of the commentary
now sit uneasily with our understanding

of the concentration camps.

This film is not about the Holocaust
or the persecution of any single group.

Jews are only cited as one among
many peoples, religions and nationalities

who were victims of the Nazi terror.

Despite these inaccuracies,

inevitable for a documentary
made so soon

after the atrocities were discovered,

this is a considered, sophisticated
and non-sensational film.

Viewers are warned that the film
is very uncomfortable to watch.

That was its intention,

and there is no attempt to shy away
from the subject matter.

The camera stares
at the most appalling scenes,

made even more immediate
by the restoration.

(Narrator) In March 1933,

17,264,296 Germans
voted for the National Socialist Party.

20,680,000 others
cast their vote for Democrats,

Communists, Christian Socialists,
People's Party, etc. etc.

Lack of unity among these parties
opposing the Nazis proved fatal.

The National Socialist Party
was in power.

They made many claims
and many promises.

'The German people rejoice

'in the knowledge
that chaos and cowardice

'have been replaced
by a calm, steadfast leader.'

(Narrator) The German people had
embarked on that long, incredible journey

that led seemingly out of chaos
to unprecedented triumph.

Promise after promise
had been fulfilled.

Austria and Czechoslovakia 1938,

Poland 1939,

Norway, Denmark and France
in quick succession.

A place in the sun at last.

True, they had lost their Trade Unions
and a lot of books had been burned,

but it seemed a good sort of bargain,

and one got to like
being told what to do,

having one's views prescribed,

especially if it meant a vista bright

with the promise of grandeur
and conquest.

In the spring of 1945, the Allies,
advancing into the heart of Germany,

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.

It came from a concentration camp,

a waste ringed with barbed wire

and overlooked by watchtowers.

Coming in from the flowering countryside,
in spite of the frightful smell,

things didn't seem so bad at first.

Children smiled through the barbed wire

and women laughed
and waved their hands.

But Belsen camp was vast
and inside was a different story.

They had not eaten for six days,

and every soldier's stock of food
was called into use.

Water too had been cut off

and so the water cart was
the most important thing to arrive.

Most of the people
seemed to be listless,

beyond hope and astonishment.

Hunger had probably
affected them that way.

We discovered that among this stench
of disease and decay

was something
a bit worse than hunger.

Moving vaguely
on rickety skeleton legs,

they were too ill to eat.

How grateful they were
for a kindly word or gesture!

What misery, to live amongst
such unmentionable filth

with scarcely the strength
to pick the lice

which inevitably swarmed over them.

They seemed accustomed
to the smell and the horror.

They had seen all there was to see.

This man had died by violence.

Huts were almost impossible
to go near-

they were full of
tangled masses of people

who had died slowly and painfully
of starvation and disease,

writhing in agony,

helpless in puddles of excrement.

It was difficult to imagine
these orchards now,

those rich fields where the stolid cattle
cropped the juicy grass,

for here, a few minutes away
inside the barbed wire,

was nothing but filth and death.

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.

Here is a pit where the inmates,
in order to earn food,

had to drag the bodies
of their comrades,

but they were too weak to keep up
with the rate at which they were dying,

so the pit remains only half-filled.

The SS Guards
in charge of the camp

were captured
and lined up for examination.

Their papers were gone through
to confirm their status,

their authority.

Each with his death's head badge.

Each justified by German law.

They were unashamed, well-fed,
well-dressed and cheerful.

There were women
also on guard in Belsen.

Volunteers who came
of their own free will,

to do their bit.

Not sickly pale with hollow faces,
and hungry eyes,

but well-fed and well-kept
with a strutting arrogance.

The commandant of the camp,
Josef Kramer,

was removed for trial as a war criminal
by an Allied Military Court.

There was an urgent need

to get rid of as many bodies as possible
as quickly as possible,

so all the S.S. were set to work.

500 Hungarian troops
captured with the S.S.

were started
on a grave-digging operation.

The 8.8. 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 faces of the bystanders
showed just a little of the hate

that Germany has inspired.

And some of the anguish, too.

Meanwhile, back at the camp,

those who were still living
were being attended to.

Supplies of hot soup were prepared,

and those who could eat unaided
were fed as quickly as possible.

There had been no water supply
for six days.

The Germans pleaded it had been cut.

We laid on water in a few hours
and before 12 hours had passed

had sufficient to enable them to wash.

Soap was provided,
the first they had seen for months,

and an orgy of washing ensued.

A mobile bath unit was set up
and provided hot water for baths.

Inmates thought
there was a snag at first -

expected to be beaten
for going near it probably,

but when they learned
that the dream was true -

hot water!

And these are the people
the Nazis said delighted in being dirty.

But the job of clearing up Belsen
was a big one.

After seven dreadful days,
the funerals still go on.

There seems to be no end.

The S.S. men are not so spick
and span now.

Seven days of being shouted
and cursed at

and handling corpses by the hundred
are beginning to tell.

'Wait! You'll pay for the lost years
of our youth.

'Just wait.'

(Narrator) The Bi/'rgerme/lslers
and Civil Officials of the neighbourhood

were brought to witness
the scenes that had been caused

as part of the Nazi scheme of things.

This was not what they expected.

It had been happening for years,

but they shrugged their shoulders
and beat their brows

and tried to say it had been
none of their business.

But they were mostly silent.

'My name is Dr Fritz Klein.
I'm a medical doctor.

'I've been in concentration camps
for one and a half years.

'I was born on 24th November 1888.

'I'm 58 years old.

'A German from Romania.

'I'm speaking today,
24th April 1945.'

(Narrator) They were given an address
by a British officer

through a loudspeaker van.

'You, the fathers and brothers
of German youth,

'see before your eyes
a few of the sons and daughters

'who bear a small part of the
direct responsibility for these crimes.

'A small part,

'but heavier than
the human soul can bear.

'But who bears the real responsibility?

'You! You, who have allowed
your Fuhrer

'to carry out his insane plans.

'You, who rejoiced
in his degenerate triumphs.

'You, who had heard of these camps,

'and so had a vague idea of
what was happening in these camps.

'You, who did not rise spontaneously

'to defend the German name,

'regardless of the personal consequences.

'You stand condemned
by what you are about to see here.

'You will have to atone
by toil and sweat

'for the deeds
of your sons and daughters,

'for having reared your children
to be capable of doing these things,

'and for what you have failed
to prevent.

'Whatever you suffer...'

(Narrator) One might ask
why all the inmates surviving

were not removed out of the camp
altogether to a large town for example,

where there would be feeding
and housing facilities.

The answer is simply the dread word -

typhus.

A mobile Bacteriological Unit
and all medical aid possible

together with 90 medical students
from London hospitals

were rushed to the spot
to deal with it.

Lack of soap and water
brought lice to the inmates,

and lice carry typhus.

To get rid of typhus,
one must first get rid of lice,

so contaminated patients
were removed from their huts

and put through a 'laundry' process.

D.D.T. was dusted over them,

and they were washed clean,
wrapped in blankets

and removed in clean ambulances
by teams working in relays

in a miracle of relief work.

Two miles away from the camp

was found a large S.S. Panzer
training school and hospital

well-stocked with medical supplies.

Strange that these should
not have been used by the Germans

for the inmates.

Scores still died every day.

They were too far gone, many of them,
to digest any food,

and there was a desperate shortage
of nursing staff.

Still, one could be thankful

that they were not simply being left
to rot away with neglect

among a purulent mass of corpses.

There were children, too,
in Belsen camp,

though what crime they had committed
was difficult to imagine.

Most of them had been saved
by the women inmates

who gave up what little food
they could get to the children.

Meals for these children had
always been few and far between,

so they ate what food we gave them
with infinite care -

nothing could be more dreadful now

than to lose a piece of potato
or a drop of soup.

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.

There was something symbolic
about new clothes.

New clothes meant renewed hope.

They donned them with pride.

Now he can look forward to growing up
to useful manhood.

There were more than 200 children
under 12 years old

found still alive in Belsen camp.

To these children, clean dry clothes
and kind words from a stranger

were strange, undreamed of,
mysterious things.

Some had been born
behind the barbed wire -

in what circumstances,
one dare not try to imagine.

Where are their parents?

Here perhaps?

Or here?

Or down here in this pit?

'Today is the 24th April, 1945.

'My name is Gunner lllingworth
and I live at Cheshire.

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

'The things in this camp
are beyond describing.

'When you actually see them for yourself,
you know what you are fighting for here.

'Pictures in the papers
cannot describe it at all.

'The things they have committed, well,

'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.'

'I am the Reverend T.J. Stretch.

'Attached as Padre to the formation
controlling this camp.

'My home is at Fishguard.

'My parish is at Holy Trinity Church,
Aberystwyth.

'I've been here eight days,

'and never in my life have I seen
such damnable ghastliness.

'This morning we buried
over 5,000 bodies.

'We don't know who they are.

'Behind me you can see a pit,
which will contain another 5,000.

'There are two others like it
in preparation.

'All these deaths have been caused
by systematic starvation

'and typhus and disease,

'which have been spread

'because of the treatment meted out
to these poor people

'by their S.S. guards
and their S.S. chief.'

(Narrator) We shall never know who they
were or from what homes they were torn.

Whether they were Catholics,
Lutherans, or Jews.

We only know they were born,

they suffered and died in agony
in Belsen camp.

And so they lie,
Jews, Lutherans and Catholics -

indistinguishable, cheek to cheek,
in a common grave.

The living have been taken
to a cleaner place.

The typhus infected huts are set afire.

The barbed wire goes down.

The striped livery goes with it.

Soon the fire will die,
the smoke and ashes will drift away,

and grass will cover the place.

Do not imagine
this was the only black spot

that was uncovered in Germany.

There were over 300 others.

No German can say
he did not know about them.

The whole world
had heard of Dachau,

for it was publicised by the Nazis
as a model camp

even since its inception
way back in 1933.

On 28th February of that year,
the Presidential Emergency Decree

suspended the basic civil rights
of the German people

for an indeterminate period

and so eliminated legal safeguards
against arbitrary imprisonment.

WORK SETS YOU FREE

Here were 32,000 men
of every European nationality,

including 5,660 Germans.

From the outside,
one might at a casual glance

have seen nothing remarkable
or horrifying,

but Dachau was crammed
with three or four times

the number it was designed for.

Here, as at Belsen,
men knew hunger,

men became weak,
men fell sick,

until they died where they lay
on the floor.

In Hut 30 alone,
there is recorded, for example,

72 deaths within 24 hours.

Every day, the dead
were taken from the huts.

Here, as at Belsen, there were many
who were too weak to be saved,

too sick to eat.

Typhus was taking its toll
and truckloads of wretchedness

had to be somehow dealt with
in the already overflowing hospitals.

Dachau had its own brothel for the use
of guards and favoured prisoners.

As the women died, they were replaced
by a fresh contingent

from the women's camp at RavensbrUck.

This was not used as a bath house,
but as a death chamber.

Batches of prisoners
were marched in here to die.

When the chamber was full,
the doors were shut and sealed.

A man at the controls
let in the poison gas,

and another batch of helpless victims

screamed their lives out
beyond the grill.

The gas chamber was conveniently
placed next to the mortuary,

and next to that was the Crematorium.

CLEANLINESS IS A DUTY HERE

THEREFORE DO NOT FORGET
TO WASH YOUR HANDS

These great ovens
were constructed exclusively

for the burning
of large numbers of corpses.

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 S.S. officials,

which reclaimed
and repaired the garments

with the use of unpaid prison labour,

and then re-sold them
to the camp clothing depot

for the use of new prisoners.

DANGER! GAS!
HAZARDOUS! DO NOT OPEN!

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.

In Buchenwald,
there were about 80,000

of whom 34,000 were employed
outside the camp in an armaments factory.

TO EACH HIS OWN

During the first week of April,

25,000 were removed by the Germans
to other camps

because of the approach
of the Allied forces.

When the camp was liberated
on April 13th,

20,000 inmates remained.

African Negroes,
Albanians, Austrians,

Belgians, Brazilians, Bulgarians,
Canadians, Chinese,

Croats, Czechs, Danes,
Egyptians, Estonians,

French, Germans, British,
Greeks, Dutch, Italians,

Yugoslavs, Latvians, Letts,
Luxembourgers,

Norwegians, Mexicans, Poles,

Romanians, Spaniards,
Swiss, Americans and Russians.

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.

There was no efficient
distribution of food.

One prisoner collected the rations
for ten or fifteen men.

Hunger and hopelessness
turned some of them into beasts.

Sometimes a prisoner
carrying rations back to the hut

was waylaid and robbed
by other prisoners.

Sometimes he ate the best part
of the food himself.

Sometimes he sold it.

Corruption was fostered,
for it gave another excuse for killing.

All this seemed so remote
from humanity,

so far beyond the behaviour of man.

British Members of Parliament
came and saw,

and were sick at heart.

It had to be seen to be believed.

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.

If a prisoner had
a curiously tattooed skin,

it was taken from him.

We can only hope he was dead
when it was done.

The skin was tanned
and made into lampshades, etc.

These shrunken heads
belonged to two Polish prisoners

who had 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.

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 S.S. 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?

ENTERING THE CREMATORIUM
IS PROHIBITED WITHOUT EXCEPTION!

Prisoners at Dachau and Buchenwald
dreaded being sent here.

To them, this place
did not mean recuperation,

only starvation,

tuberculosis through
slavery in an underground factory,

and finally left to cough one's life out

unaided and crowded in the filth
and stench of a hut unfit for dogs,

but for some reason called a hospital.

The daily collection of corpses
was disposed of through this chimney.

First used in 1938,

this camp was the centre
of a group of subsidiary camps.

40,000 people had died here
since the beginning of the year.

Here, the gas chamber
held 200 at a time

and the crematorium dealt
with 300 per day - every day.

In the north of Germany,
it was the same story.

The few who remained alive
were staggering on the verge of death.

They were the survivors.

And these were the rest-

hurriedly murdered lest they be set free
to live a normal life.

The authorities in the camps
took special measures

to make sure that a man would
neither live normally nor die normally.

Neither should he sleep normally.

He was surrounded by barbed wire,

and he had to sleep on barbed wire.

Here was carnage and desolation.

Prisoners had been dragged
from the sacks of straw

in the hovels called hospitals,

shot and hastily disposed of
by the first means to hand.

There must have been
some feeling of guilt

or presumably there would not have been
an attempt to destroy the evidence.

In the outskirts of Leipzig,

an effort was made to prevent
300 forced workers in a factory

from being set free
by advancing Allied troops.

300 were locked
in a mess hut and burned.

This is where it stood.

Some of the desperate,
screaming prisoners broke out.

Flame throwers and machine guns
were waiting to receive them.

This was a woman.

Some almost reached the barbed wire.

Some got there and stayed there,
for it was electrified.

This was a Polish engineer.

American troops advancing
did not know that in this barn

the Germans had locked
1,800 prisoners

and set burning straw alight
to suffocate them.

In the morning, before retreating,

they had poured petrol on the bodies
in an attempt to burn what remained.

It still smouldered
when the American troops arrived.

This man was shot because
he gasped for air, trying to escape

while the rest of him
burned in the barn.

The most up-to-date institution
was better equipped for killing.

Transports of prisoners
from all over occupied Europe

were sent for extermination
in one of the special Vem/chlungs/ager.

Here, four million peopled were murdered.

As many men, women and children
as you could pack into a great city.

Old women were regarded
as a danger to the state.

Women torn from their homes,

perhaps for the misdeeds
of a distant relative

and packed cheek to cheek
like cattle for the slaughter.

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.

This camp was scientifically planned
with a view to mass murder.

Vast extensions were still being built-

arrangements of gas chambers,
mortuaries and incinerators.

The normal extermination rate
was 10,000 to 12,000 per day.

An attempt had been made
to destroy the installations,

but Russian troops were able
to uncover most of it.

Five crematoria with a capacity
of 279,000 per month.

Germans had watched them die,
they had wanted to watch them die,

for they constructed special peepholes
in the doorways of the gas chambers

where they could observe
the effects of the poison gas Zyklon.

Here are some of the containers,

the mask worn by the operator

and the poisons used for injections.

Not only at Auschwitz was extermination
carried out on a large scale.

Entire populations of villages
were moved suddenly overnight

believing themselves
to being evacuated

and finding themselves
behind barbed wire in the morning.

CAMP GROUNDS! STOP! SHOTS
WILL BE FIRED WITHOUT WARNING!

2,800,000 people
were gassed to death here.

Invariably the gas chamber was labelled
'Bath and Disinfection'.

Here one took one's last breath

and disappeared in oily smoke
up the crematorium chimney

The firm that built this
was not ashamed to sign its work.

Again the ovens, again the bones.

These bones were sold
to the Strem Company

for the manufacture of fertiliser.

How many hundreds of thousands
of people are contained

in these heaps of human bones?

You see where they went,
to the cabbage fields.

No doubt some Germans today
can taste what they have eaten

fertilised by their comrades.

This had been going on for a long time
before we came.

Here were found 820,000 pairs
of boots and shoes.

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.

Tooth brushes. 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 dead have been buried.

It remains for us to care for these,
the living.

TO THE AIR-RAID PROTECTION
EMERGENCY ROOM

It remains for us to hope that Germans
may help to mend what they have broken,

and cleanse what they have befouled.

Thousands of German people
were made to see for themselves.

To bury the dead.

To file past the victims.

This was the end of the journey
they had so confidently begun in 1933.

Twelve years?

No.

In terms of barbarity and brutality,

they had travelled backwards
for twelve thousand years.

Unless the world learns
the lesson these pictures teach,

night will fall.

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

My first reaction,
I think, was very similar

to what most people's first reaction
would be to the film,

which is that I was very upset by it,
I was very shocked by it.

The story is incredibly emotional
and devastating,

but for me, I kind of protected myself
from that, really,

by just looking at what they did
as filmmakers.

I think it is very difficult
to stay watching

the whole 75 minutes of the film
all of the way through,

I think you almost have to
give yourself a break

and just close your eyes -
it is unremitting.

It really changes your view of life
completely when you see it.

And I think it's all right to allow people
the freedom to leave

if they can't tolerate those images.

Nobody should feel that they have to be
subjected to this.

And I think it's important that people
do get in touch with their feelings

and their natural human responses
to these images.

And dealing with that emotion,
I would certainly suggest that...

that you're speaking to friends,
and colleagues and family.

And that you're trying to put it into

some sort of historical narrative
and understanding,

so that you don't just see
this film in isolation.

It may have a numbing effect,

but, in a way, by the repetition
of these horrid images,

people just must realise
that actually it was like that,

and you can't escape from it,
and you shouldn't escape from it.

My name is Peter Lantos

and my connection with Bergen-Belsen

is that actually I was an inmate there.

I was prisoner 8,242.

Originally, Belsen was planned for,
I think, 6,000 people.

In the end,
there were ten times more,

and during the last few days,
there was no food,

there was no water,

and epidemics started
on a very large scale,

particularly typhus, but also dysentery,
TB and starvation.

As a child of five, I mean, the most
momentous events or impressions

were those of physical hardship.

The hunger, the extreme cold,

standing for counting for hours
in the wind

in December, January, February,

the lice,

the lack of food,

and later on,
the increasing number of corpses

of whom, or of which,
my father became unfortunately one.

Belsen was the first camp
that was liberated by the British

where the prisoners
were still inside the camp,

and therefore the dimension
that was found was so unimaginable,

that yes, the decision was taken
this needs to be documented.

It needs to be documented
in order to use this as evidence

that these crimes
have actually happened.

I think that the original filmmakers

were really trying to make
almost a forensic case.

They had arrived on the scene
and discovered these horrors,

and I think they really wanted to make
almost a criminal lawyer's case,

some absolutely
incontrovertible evidence.

I think my father's purest intention
in making this film

was to create evidence for all mankind.

And he stated that himself,

and it's actually written in the script.

Bernstein wanted to make a film

that could not be dismissed
as atrocity propaganda,

as Allied propaganda,

that would show Germans
what the Third Reich had done

to Jews and the other peoples
of conquered Europe

in their name.

It was a very brave and legitimate attempt

to produce something that would stand
as a testament to the events

and also as a sort of guard
against future denials.

The project grew and grew,

and as it grew, the political context
in which it was being made changed.

And already in the summer of 1945,

not only were the cinemas not yet open,

so it would have been difficult
to show the films anyway,

but the local military commanders
were noticing

that the German population
was getting tired of being told repeatedly,

"This is your fault,
you are guilty of this."

It was no longer required

because the anticipated
terrorist guerrilla movement

by people still loyal to the Nazis
never transpired,

and more to the point,

the people who were running
the British zone of Germany,

which is after all the most
devastated part of Germany,

the British Allied Government
on the ground

need the Germans to help them
rebuild Germany,

and you can't keep beating the Germans
around the head with their guilt,

if you want to bring them on side.

So, I think the film missed its moment,

I don't think there was a conspiracy
to stop the film,

I think the decision was made
to make a shorter film available

that they could get out more quickly.

Well, the extraordinary thing
about the silencing of this film

was that it also silenced my father
for 40 years,

and he said that it was
the greatest regret of his life

that he had not finished that film.

LWM's aim in finishing this film

and putting the reels together
as they were originally intended

was to bring together
this piece of historical evidence

so that we could present it
to a wider audience,

but also so that in a sense
that the project itself

could be completed,
it could be finished.

If you want to keep the spirit
of a historical document,

you have to follow the narrative
that this historical document had,

and luckily this was still available.

There was a script for the sixth reel,

so all you had to do, it sounds very easy,
but of course it wasn't,

all you had to do was to fulfil

what the original filmmakers
had intended.

We decided to go back
to the original rushes,

go back to the original negatives
and the masters,

scan them digitally,
and then build the whole film up again.

So we remade the film.

The only creative liberties
we've taken, in fact,

have been to add a few sound effects,

but we've resisted the temptation
to embellish it in any way.

We didn't add colour.

We didn't add any other elements

that wouldn't have been available
to a filmmaker working in 1945.

I admire the integrity of the team
at the Imperial War Museum

who've decided,
as I understand it,

to stay as closely as they could
to exactly what we imagine

my father and his team
would have wanted the film to say then.

While it's important that,
as a museum,

that we don't tamper
with historical evidence,

of course that does present itself with...

does present problems
for a modern audience.

So, some of the details about numbers,
about camps and locations,

also the fact that the film doesn't
specifically mention Jewish victims.

I think that my father,

in his role at the end of the war
and in filmmaking,

was walking a very fine line

as a Jew working on film,
on propaganda,

being faced with
this particular subject matter,

and trying to figure out the best way
to tell this story for German audiences

in a way that would get their attention

without playing into what he imagined
was innate anti-Semitism there.

So, Richard Crossman
and Sidney Bernstein knew

that back home in Britain, there was not
a great deal of sympathy for the Jews.

People were not overflowing
with affection for the Jews.

There was anti-Semitism at home.

They feared that if they stressed
Jewish suffering in Bergen-Belsen,

stressed that the Jews had been

the specific, particular victims
of the Third Reich,

no one would pay attention,

because they would say,
"Well, they had it coming to them.

"They're Jews after all."

I think that those who wrote the script,
Colin Wills, Dick Crossman,

would have been wanting to represent
the concentration camp system

as something that was affecting
many races and religions.

So it was better to...

place Jewish suffering in the context
of more wide-scale suffering

to refer to the Jews not as Jews,

but as citizens of the countries
from which they came,

as French, as Poles, as Hungarians.

But of course the Jews
were particularly targeted

as we now know very well
and understand very well.

So, yes, there is this
strange feeling about it,

but I think we should take
Sidney Bernstein at face value

that the human suffering
in a general sense

was what actually motivated him
to make this film.

I think the question of
the treatment of the dead,

particularly the way
they are handled by the SS guards,

is a very difficult one,

and it is part of the film that I myself
have a lot of difficulty watching.

I think that there are
several layers to this.

I think that the immediate question of

trying to clear the camp of
the enormous number of dead bodies

was just a major problem
for the British in Belsen

and that they reacted
in any way they could.

I think there was also a very strong feeling
that the SS should be punished.

Their callousness,
their hardness, their brutality

is so emblematic of the way
they carried those bodies,

I think it's another
way of damning the SS.

The shower scene where the women...

are allowed to wash under hot water
for the first time in who knows how long,

to me that's not prurient in any way,

although I think some people
might think it was.

I think it's these women
reclaiming their rights.

And the cameraman said,

after ten days of filming
these scenes of horror,

it was so good
to move on to softer things

and to celebrate the return

of these people's sense of humanity,
dignity and community.

I think Bernstein's film

is essential as a historical document

because it shows us
what a British filmmaker

with considerable
resources at his disposal

could find out, could know,

in the late spring,
the summer of 1945.

It is as if you are seeing
what they saw in the cutting rooms,

it is as if, almost,
as if you are there behind the camera

with those guys
who took those amazing images.

I think what this film uniquely does

is give an audience,
a contemporary audience,

a sense of the vastness
of the subject matter and of the atrocity.

It gives actually the magnitude
of what happened.

The actual figures can be disputed,

but there is no question
that the film reflects

the end stages of the Final Solution.

Many people speak about
learning lessons from the Holocaust,

but of course genocides still happen,

so, again, as a piece of evidence
of genocide in the twentieth century

it's incredibly important and relevant.

It is also a call to all of us,

to actually speak up and speak out

when we see this happening again

and this today, in all honesty,
is more important than ever.

That, for me,
is the biggest value of this film.

The film obviously tells us

that human beings are capable of
enormous inhumanity to each other,

but it also tells us

that human beings are capable
of enormous powers of survival.

I think we have a responsibility
to those who died

to refresh our memories

and to increase understanding
of what actually happened.

I always thought that
if I survived Belsen,

I'm going to survive,
whatever happens, everything else.

So, in a way it was to some extent
a source of strength for future life.

I often say that what we've done
is to polish up a prayer.

Bernstein, Crossman
and Colin Wills

wrote a prayer for humanity

and I think that's what we've done,
or I hope that's what we've done.

We've polished up their prayer.