Concentration Camps

Restored official British documentary film on the Nazi concentration camps, based on footage shot by the Allied forces in 1945.

On 29 September 1945, the incomplete rough-cut of a disturbing yet compelling documentary revealing the horrors of the Nazi concentration camps was viewed at the Ministry of Information in London. For five months, Sidney Bernstein had led a small team - which included Stewart McAllister, Richard Crossman and Alfred Hitchcock - to complete the film from hours of footage.

Dachau Concentration Camp, was situated 12 miles northwest of Munich in Bavaria. Built in the early days of the Nazi regime it was one of three camps set up in 1933 to form the basis for a concentration camp system, initially filled with communist and Jewish inmates Dachau's doors were soon opened to many other "undesirables" that the Nazis wanted to eradicate.

Restored official British documentary film on the Nazi concentration camps, based on footage shot by the Allied forces in 1945.

The speed of the Soviet advance gave the Germans no time to destroy or conceal evidence of atrocities committed at the concentration and extermination camp Majdanek. Majdanek was unique in the fact that it was the only camp still operational at the time of its liberation on July 23, 1944. With footage shot by the Russian forces, which has never been seen before in the west, this stark documentary graphically portrays the terrible tragedy of the two million innocent victims exterminated and the frightful efficiencey of this Nazi death factory.

This chilling, vitally important documentary was produced to mark the 40th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz Concentration Camp. The film contains unedited, previously unavailable film footage of Auschwitz shot by the Soviet military forces between January 27 and February 28, 1945 and includes an interview with Alexander Voronsov, the cameraman who shot the footage.

After being established in the Summer of 1937, Buchenwald soon developed into one of the largest concentration camps in Germany, in its eight years of existence,approximately 250,000 inmates from 35 countries were imprisoned here, More than 50,000 of them died during the camps reign of terror. They were systematically culled.The inmates were submitted to the life of slaves, working for the S.S. and the Third Reich.