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Night and Fog, 1956
This documentary, filmed ten years after the end of WW2, recounts the creation of the concentration camps and the suffering of those unfortunate enough to end up in them.
Despite the mostly sedate tone of the narrator, this film is like a howl against the cruelties that people can inflict on each other.
Watching this film, I felt the way that I often do when confronted with cruelty on this scale and scope---it is almost beyond comprehension, and it's like looking into a nightmarish abyss. My grandfather was present at the liberation of one of the concentration camps (I want to say Buchenwald), and my mother said that he was never the same after what he saw there.
There is almost nothing that I can say about this film. It is heartbreaking in the sense of the the entire scale of it but also down to little details, like footage of a man carrying a nude, emaciated corpse slung over his shoulder. The outraged question at the end of the film--"Who is responsible?" feels like an indictment that reaches far beyond the Nazi leadership.
Night and Fog, 1956
This documentary, filmed ten years after the end of WW2, recounts the creation of the concentration camps and the suffering of those unfortunate enough to end up in them.
Despite the mostly sedate tone of the narrator, this film is like a howl against the cruelties that people can inflict on each other.
Watching this film, I felt the way that I often do when confronted with cruelty on this scale and scope---it is almost beyond comprehension, and it's like looking into a nightmarish abyss. My grandfather was present at the liberation of one of the concentration camps (I want to say Buchenwald), and my mother said that he was never the same after what he saw there.
There is almost nothing that I can say about this film. It is heartbreaking in the sense of the the entire scale of it but also down to little details, like footage of a man carrying a nude, emaciated corpse slung over his shoulder. The outraged question at the end of the film--"Who is responsible?" feels like an indictment that reaches far beyond the Nazi leadership.