Night Will Fall Page #2

of you anywhere

if civilization breaks

down in this way."

The day after

the report, Churchill declared,

"No words can express

the horror which is felt

"by His Majesty's government

and their principal allies

"at the proof of these

frightful crimes

now daily coming into view."

The success of cinema

in the 1930s

had underlined the power

of the moving image.

Keen to exploit its

potential role in war,

Britain and America set up

a joint film department.

Its brief was to produce

short propaganda films,

initially to support

the war effort

and later to assist

the task of dealing

with a defeated Germany

once the war was won.

In Britain, this unit was headed

by leading film producer,

Sidney Bernstein.

The day following

Churchill's statement,

Bernstein set out

for Bergen-Belsen.

By the time he arrived,

the army film cameramen

had been at work for a week.

The film shot

at Bergen-Belsen

by the British cameramen

reveal every level of humanity

to a much greater extent

than any other

of the film evidence.

It feels as if

the whole human story is there.

They used the camera

in a very specific way.

It was there was a...

it began to directed

to collect evidence,

to gather evidence.

So one of the difficulties

about filming an atrocity

or a... is that in order to

reveal that a person has

been murdered or brutalized,

what you have to do is

you have to reveal that

by getting close to the person

because you have to show

the wounds, have to give

some indication

of how they've been killed.

Now that went against

the tradition previously

of combat cameramen,

where they'd shied away

from representing or

recording scenes of people

who'd been killed or brutalized.

For Bernstein,

the visit to Bergen-Belsen

was galvanizing.

On his return to London,

he began planning

a full-length documentary.

Its purpose was clear

from guidelines he issued

to the Allied cameramen.

My instructions were

to film everything

which would prove

one day that this

had actually happened.

It'd be a lesson to all mankind,

as well as to the Germans

for whom the film that we were

putting together was

designed, to show

to the German people

because most of them

on our way down

and on the troops' way down

had denied they knew

anything about the camps.

This would be the evidence

which we could show them.

First of all, I

wanted them to record that

all the local bigwigs

and people,

the municipal burgomaster

and like,

who lived within

a reasonable range

saw what was being done,

burying these tragic figures.

Some of the Germans we

brought in to be filmed

when the bodies were being

buried in the pit

just couldn't look anymore.

I wanted to prove

that they had seen it

so there was evidence

because I guessed rightly that

most people would deny

that it happened.

Bernstein also used footage

of German SS officers

helping with the worst

of the tasks in the camp.

There was

an urgent need to get rid

of as many bodies as possible

as quickly as possible,

so all the SS were set to work.

500 Hungarian troops

captured with the SS

were started

on a grave digging operation.

Here. Here.

No. Here. Here.

The SS

themselves were made to do

the unpleasant job they had

forced the inmates to do.

This, after all, was

nothing to these men.

They, the Master Race, had

been taught to be hard.

They could kill in cold blood,

and it seemed

to the British soldier

fit and proper that

the killers should bury

the nameless,

hopeless creatures

they had starved to death.

The army film units

had no sound equipment.

It wasn't until news teams

arrived that Bernstein

was able to access

some sound recordings.

Today's the 24th of April 1945.

My name is Gunner Illingworth,

and I live in Cheshire.

I'm at present in Belsen camp

doing guard duty

over the SS men.

The things in this camp

are beyond describing.

When you actually see

them for yourself,

you know what you're

fighting for here.

Pictures in the paper

cannot describe it at all.

The things they have

committed, well,

nobody'd think they

were human at all.

We actually know now

what has been going on

in these camps,

and I know personally

what I'm fighting for.

Once Bernstein's documentary

proposal had been approved

by both British

and American governments,

he hired perhaps the best known

film editor in London...

Stewart McAllister.

Together, they began to

assemble the army film footage

now arriving in the edit rooms.

The deadline for completion

of the film was set

at just 3 months.

The news from Bergen-Belsen

was not entirely a surprise

to the British government.

Soviet intelligence

had reported uncovering

concentration camps in Poland

as early as July 1944,

but as the Soviets had a record

of falsifying atrocity reports,

the Allies ignored

the information.

Now in the light

of Bergen-Belsen,

the British reconsidered,

and Bernstein broadened

the scope of his film

to include footage

from the Soviet camps.

The Soviets discovered

few living inmates at Majdanek.

In the face

of the advancing troops,

the Germans had begun emptying

the camps in Poland,

sending prisoners

westwards to camps,

including Bergen-Belsen.

The evidence filmed

in Poland became part

of Bernstein's documentary.

Prisoners paid

their own fares to Majdanek.

They thought they were

going to new homes,

and so they brought

their most precious

portable possessions.

They say dead men's boots

bring bad luck.

What of dead children's toys?

Their mothers carried

scissors perhaps.

The scissors are here.

The mothers, no,

but here in this room

is part of them.

Nothing material

could be wasted.

These packages

contain human hair,

carefully sorted and weighed.

Nothing was wasted.

Even the teeth were taken

out of their mouths,

byproducts of the system.

Toothbrushes,

nail brushes...

shoe brushes...

shaving brushes.

If one man in 10

wears spectacles,

how many does

this heap represent?

All these things belonged

to men and women

and children like ourselves,

quite ordinary people

from all parts of the world.

The Soviet forces carried

on through the Polish winter

to liberate another,

larger camp...

Auschwitz.

I stood there maybe 30 minutes.

It was snowing heavily,

I couldn't see,

and at a distance,

I saw lots of people,

and they were all

wrapping themselves

in white camouflage raincoats.

They were smiling

from ear to ear,

and they didn't look like

the Nazis, which was

the most important part.

We ran out to them.

They gave us

chocolate, cookies, and hugs,

and this was my first

taste of freedom.

We didn't have

the strength even, you know,

to... to... to dance or what,

so we just feebly,

very feebly started singing,

and we were so happy,

we were so happy that

these angels came

from the heavens to liberate us.

Unlike Bergen-Belsen,

which was a prison camp,

Auschwitz was a slave labor camp

and a mass extermination center.

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