Memory of the Camps
In 1945, camera crews went with the American and British armies in the nazis death camps and filmed the horror they found there. A group of directors among whom was Alfred Hichcock developed a script to present these horrors and be sure that people remember. Forty-eight years later it came out from the cave of the Imperial War Museum and was edited as forecast.
Sidney Bernstein
Director
Casts & Crew
Trevor Howard
Narrator
Alfred Hitchcock
Self (archive footage)
Sidney Bernstein
Self (archived footage)
Also Directed by Sidney Bernstein
On the 29th September 1945, the incomplete rough cut of a brilliant documentary about concentration camps was viewed at the MOI 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 shocking footage. Unfortunately, this ambitious Allied project to create a feature-length visual report that would damn the Nazi regime and shame the German people into acceptance of Allied occupation had missed its moment. Even in its incomplete form (available since 1984) the film was immensely powerful, generating an awed hush among audiences. But now, complete to six reels, this faithfully restored and definitive version produced by IWM, is being compared with Alain Resnais’ Night and Fog (1955).
