daniel-mannouch
There have been several documentaries covering the concentration camps, not to mention countless papers, eye witness accounts and all the paraphernalia one would desire when researching this subject. This is good. It should be known how primitive a species we still are, and that our greatest conceptions and inventions, even now, all must pay heed to the savage instincts of the survival and reproduction of our genes. That with the appropriate logic and suitable conditions, we can turn back the clock, 50 years, 80 years, 900 years, 10,000 years, enough to fit the need. As we edge closer and closer towards being able to say the German Nazi atrocities occurred over a century ago, more important now than ever is the restoration of this documentary. German Concentration Camps Factual Survey, restored and completed by the Imperial War Museum in 2014 is a jarring experience. Being filmed and cut mere months after the camps were liberated, the banality of evil feels all too potent here. Whilst being coated with decades of distance, outdated stats and the emphasis in the narration of profiling all citizens of a fascist state irrefutably as collaborators, which is still a solemn text despite this, the spontaneity, the fact that these were the first images of the Belsen and Auschwitz camps ever recorded, gives the film, dare I say, a melancholic tone. A sense of innocence, or more so ignorance, being lost. It had been a few decades since a man-made genocide of such a scale had been committed and the first in a few centuries that such specific discrimination had been used. For the first time, barbarism had thrived in the age of the moving picture, and unfortunately, there was more to come. This documentary, scanned and restored, commands attention and doesn't let go. Sights such as beds wrapped in barbed wire and unburied corpses left to rot in the sun don't go away easily. What was most distressing for me though was the lack of passion in the prisoners. We get mere glimpses of relief, anger, sorrow, but for the most part, examining their faces, we get solid proof that the mind can die years before the body. I do recommend this film. It does not patronise you with a music track, it does not sensationalise with wartime rhetoric despite edging at times so closely to being a propaganda film. It's an important historical document of the first reactions towards the Nazi concentration camps. It's as sophisticated and sincere an account we have from the time. This alone would make it essential viewing. But it is also coupled with strong moral fibre, a pro- humanitarian message and a universality unfounded amongst contemporary and even most modern examinations of these war crimes. All of which make German Concentration Camps Factual Study, a masterpiece of documentary cinema.
rogues-25519
70 years on and not a day goes past that I do not give a thought for the horror and sheer misery the individuals ripped from their lives and thrown into the hell that was the concentration camps. How did this happen? The images shown in this documentary should be shown to every child in every school across the globe. This way something like this might never happen again. Sadly I feel that this is nothing short of a pipe dream as we humans have a tenancy to forget history to attempt to make new history which inevitably makes the past look like child's play. For all humans sake inhumane treatment of our fellow man should never be this barbaric ever again. My thoughts are that the quote that by gods grace we will learn is nothing more than lip service as a species domination is all some want and strive for. Those of us who strive for peace and fairness for all need to always aware for the next maniacal leader capable of such horror and end their reign before it gets started.
De_Sam
I came into the film, knowing what to expect, primarily because I have read Primo Levi's novel 'Se questo è un uomo' (1947), in essence a work with the same spirit as this documentary; trying to be lasting proof of the atrocities.Being mentally prepared beforehand did not make this any easier to watch, it only made it bearable to sit through in its entirety. It is in this realistic style of filming that the film derives its effectiveness and fulfills its goal; it did not invoke any anger (save for the SS-officers handling the bodies of the victims in a most desensitised and inhumane way possible), only realisation of the scope and the way it happened.There is no propaganda, no sensationalism, but also no abstention or negligence. The facts spoken off in the documentary may not be accurate, they do not represent the primary point; the extent of the inhumanity brought forth of the abstraction and rationality of the Nazi-regime. When humans reduce others to mere objects, this is what they are capable of doing, and this we better not forget.
surpreendido
This is the most disturbing film I never finished watching. The endless sequences of starved dead humans being dragged into huge piles of dead human mess is all the more horrifying when your brain knows from the start this is not Hollywood drama but the real deal.Also, the way things are described, the terms used, and the portrayal of the German people are made in a way that gave me a new perspective on the whole nature of the Allied/Nazi rhetoric modern works can't dare to try without raising eyebrows all around. It's harsh language, directed at people they saw as monsters for years.I think this is a precious piece of film. Hard to describe, for reasons anyone who dares watch it will find obvious.
