Night Will Fall Page #5

and the same situation occurred

to other concentration camps

and slave labor

all over the British

part of Germany

and the American part

of Germany, too.

So all of a sudden, we had

another big problem

on our hands... how to handle

this humanitarian

disaster situation.

I was born in Bergen-Belsen

in the displaced persons' camp.

Both my parents were

liberated at Belsen.

My mother put together

a team to work

alongside the British

medical personnel

to try and save as many

as possible

of the thousands

of critically ill survivors.

At the same time,

my father emerged

as the leader, the political

leader of the survivors.

Most of them did not

want to go back

to their country of origin

but wanted to go, settle

in Palestine or elsewhere,

the United States,

Canada, and the like.

And apparently

the American answer was

definitely no.

"We're not taking

any ex-prisoners in.

We've got problems of our own."

Britain said, "No. There's

no way we're going to take

hundreds of thousands of... of these

homeless, stateless people in."

So that was the situation.

And so now of course

I am in heaven.

I am free.

I am in Germany, but I am free.

I can go anywhere I want to,

and I'm thinking to myself,

"Do I go back to Poland?"

It was so bad in Poland,

so bad for Jews.

"Do I want to go back to Poland,

but where do I go?"

And I hear about

at the time about Palestine,

about Israel, and I said,

"Those are my hopes."

During May, June,

and July, many Jewish survivors,

ignoring the views

of the British government,

went to Palestine,

where they found themselves

either turned back

or interned in camps.

The situation

of the survivors was

a complicating element

in a rapidly changing

post-war political climate.

Look.

The so-called Hitchcock film,

or the Bernstein film,

was made with the best

of intentions

and at a given point became

a political inconvenience.

It would have evoked

strong sympathy

on the part

of the average person

seeing the film of doing

something to help these people,

and certainly film that

was put together

with the genius of a Hitchcock

would undermine

their own political position.

At this time, the Brits

had enough problem

with the Jews already,

and, uh... and given that,

you show to the people

this movie,

maybe people will say,

"Why the British don't

"let these people

that suffered so much

let them have their land?"

Britain's wartime coalition

was confronting other,

more major problems.

A defeated

and destroyed Germany,

divided among the Allies,

had now become

the responsibility

of the victors.

As the nation most heavily

involved in the task

of reconstruction,

Britain was anxious

not to further alienate

the German people,

whose help would be vital.

Furthermore, with hints

of what would become known

as the Cold War

already appearing,

Germany was now seen as

a potential future ally

against the Soviet Union.

The evidence on the ground

in occupied Germany,

both in the American

and British sectors,

was indicating that

the Germans had already been

so bombarded with the message

of their guilt

that there's no need

for a film like this

any longer at this time.

America, however, was

still keen to show

a shorter film in Germany,

and had grown impatient

with Bernstein's slow progress.

There were secret talks with

Hollywood director Billy Wilder,

himself an Austrian refugee

from the Nazis,

with a view to taking

the film away from London.

In late June, a senior American

in the Psychological

Warfare Division

wrote a confidential memo

to his superior in Washington

suggesting the Bernstein that

team "should be relieved

"of all further responsibility

for the picture.

"It is our belief

that Mr. Bernstein

"would be relieved to have

the picture taken off his hands,

"and now that Billy Wilder

is with us,

"we are prepared to take

over the job.

"He would be appointed

producer and also

supervising director

for the film."

The involvement of the Americans

seems to have come

to an end of June '45

when they had really

become exasperated

that the British

were getting nowhere.

So they withdrew,

and subsequently,

they carried on making

a much shorter film

directed by Billy Wilder,

which was eventually released

in their own sector.

The film was called

"Death Mills."

The subject matter was similar,

but the treatment

of these two films

was entirely different.

The British film,

Bernstein's film, was

an artistically shaped film

with a much profounder message

that humanity must take note

of what had happened.

The American film was

a much more hectoring,

a short film which simply

accused the Germans

of having committed

these crimes.

At Belsen,

we caught the camp commander

Josef Kramer,

the Beast of Belsen.

Men or women, they

were the Nazi elite,

Himmler's own.

Amazons turned Nazi killers

were merciless

in the use of the whip,

practiced in torture and murder,

deadlier than the male.

When Allied armies approached,

the Nazis often tried to rush

their prisoners elsewhere.

Thousands were suffocated

in overcrowded freight cars.

Many of the dead and the dying

were flung into the water.

If the allies moved too rapidly,

the Nazis attempted

to kill their prisoners

so that no witnesses of their

crimes were left behind.

In Majdanek, in Ohrdruf,

in many other camps,

thousands were murdered

just before liberation.

Ignoring the politics

swirling around them,

Bernstein's team carried on

throughout July.

At the end of the month,

Hitchcock returned to Hollywood.

On August 4, a memo arrived

from the British Foreign Office

saying, "Policy at the moment

"in Germany is entirely

in the direction

"of encouraging, stimulating,

"and interesting the Germans

"out of their apathy,

"and there are people

around the Commander-in-Chief

who will say, No atrocity film".

By September,

the edit had been shut down.

The unfinished film,

together with shot lists,

cameramen's notes,

reels of footage,

and a copy of Crossman's

completed script

was labeled and filed away.

Bernstein moved on,

crossing the Atlantic

to begin a feature film

partnership

with Alfred Hitchcock.

Bernstein's last recorded note

on the film was a letter

from Hollywood to

Peter Tanner, the editor,

saying, "One day,

you will realize

it has been worthwhile."

Bernstein's

documentary was shelved,

but the reels of film

that he'd used still had

a public role to play.

In the autumn of 1945,

the trials of Nazi

war criminals began,

and the prosecutors

found that they had

a new and powerful source

of evidence.

The first trial was

that of Commandant Kramer

and his staff

at Bergen-Belsen.

Kramer was convicted

of war crimes

and sentenced to death.

Anita, who had survived both

Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen

and who appeared in the British

liberation footage,

was one of those

called upon to testify.

Well, I was

asked to be a witness there,

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