German Concentration Camps Factual Survey

“A time capsule as much as a direct historical document, showing not only what the Allied Forces found when they first arrived at the Nazi concentration camps but also how the British government of the time thought it was appropriate to communicate about the Nazi atrocities.” -Hollywood Reporter

In 1944 and ’45, Allied cameramen documented the horrors discovered as Europe was liberated from the Nazis. So powerful and damning was the footage, that Allied propagandists quickly determined that it should be turned into a film to screen in Germany after the fall of the Third Reich, shown to German prisoners of war wherever they were held.

As the Producer of the film at Britain’s Ministry of Information, Sidney Bernstein assembled a small but distinguished and expert team in 1945 to work on the project. The team included Alfred Hitchcock and Australian writer Colin Wills.

Progress was slow and the ambitious work was shelved, unfinished, in the autumn of 1945.  Nearly seven decades on, this milestone in documentary cinema has been completed, the picture restored and the narration recorded as it was written in 1945. It can now finally be viewed in its intended form.

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Introduction by Dr. Toby Haggith, Senior Curator at the Imperial War Museum

Followed by a Q & A and panel on both nights

Tue Aug 19th panelists: Dr Toby Haggith, Emeritus Professor Konrad Kwiet & Professor Danielle Celermajer

Wed Aug 20th panelists: Dr Toby Haggith, Emeritus Professor Konrad Kwiet & Helen Lewis

The film contains disturbing graphic images