HOLOCAUST AND THE MOVING IMAGERepresentations in Film and Television since 1933

edited by Toby Haggith & foanna Newman

First published in Great Britain in 2005 bWallflower Press6a Middleton Place, Langham Street, London WIW 7TEwww.wallfl owerpress. co. uk

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CONTENTS

AcknowledgementsNotes on ContributorsPreface David CesaraniIntroduction Toby Haggith 6loanna Newman

SECTION I . FILM AS WITNESS

t Film and the Making of the Imperial War Museum's Holocaust ExhibitionSuzanne Bardgett

z Preparing the Video Displays for the Imperial War Museum's HolocaustExhibitionAnnie Dodds

r Filming the Liberation of Bergen-BelsenToby Haggith

4 Separate Intentions: The Allied Screening of Concentration CampDocumentaries in Defeated Germany in 1945-46: Death Mills and,Memory of the CampsKay Gladstone

s A Witness to Atrocity: Film as Evidence in International War CrimesTribunalsHelen Lennon

SECTION 2 . FILM AS PROPAGANDA

6 Veit Harlan's /r.rd SrÌssSusan Tegel

7 Fritz Hipplert The Eternal lewTerry Charman

a Film Documents of TheresienstadtLutz Becker

9 Terezín: The Town Hitler Gave to the fewsZ denka F antlo v a - Ehrlich

10 The Ministry of Information and Anti-Fascist Short Films of theSecond World WarMatthew Lee

ll Fighting the Government With its Own Propaganda: The Struggle forRacial Equality in the USA Durins the Second World War

ullxluiI

t02

young people. The Holocaust should not become a fossilised historical catastrophe tobe learned about and then put aside. Questions of moralit¡ questions about humanbehaviour, about how states control their citizens and the value that is put on differenthuman lives - these are all matters of pressing contemporary and universal relevance.If a contemplation of the horrors of the Holocaust can help a new generation considerthese issues in relation to themselves and the society they are helping to build, then theExhibition will be of lasting value.

Film production team

Producer: Annie DoddsDirector: fames BarkerEditor: Cathy HoulihanAssistant: Tom CollinsonCameraman: )im HowlettSound recordist: Peter Eason

Notes

I2

fanos Varga, Hungarian film uchivist. Péter Forgács, Hungarian film historian.The Hartmann films are catalogued in the IWM collection under accession no, MGH 6432.

Filming the liberation of Bergen-Belsen

Toby Haggith

on the evening of l5 April 1945 members of the British Army's Film and Photographicunit (AFPU) accompanying other elements of the ll'h Armoured Division entered thecamp of Bergen-Belsen. The scenes frlmed by the horrified and incredulous camera-men are some of the most disturbing of all those recorded at concentlation camps andsites of atrocities encountered by Allied and Soviet cameramen in the closing monthsof the war: scores of'paper-thin naked corpses strewn across the camp floor or piledin grotesque heaps oftwisted limbs;t close-ups ofdecaying and bruised faces; survivorsdressed in rags tottering dazed and bewildered around the camp or reaching out tograsp the hand of a British soldier; corPses slung over the backs of the camp guards,nodding and bouncing like life-sized rag dolls, which are carried from trucks thentossed, without ceremony, into huge pits; a bulldozer pushing a heap of naked corpsesacross the camp floor. Even to those who one might exPect to be used to the horrorsof war, the images of Belsen were unprecedented. Ronald Tritton, who was Director ofPublic Relations at the War Office, recorded in his war diary, 'The Belsen pictures camein this evening - 103 of them. They are so awful that words cannot describe them. I wasalmost physically sickened, and felt shaky and very upset.'2

Used sparingly at the time to prove the existence of the camps, these images havesince become so widely used in frlm and television Programmes, that they are nowfamiliar icons, coming to symbolise not just the Holocaust but the evils of the Nazi re-gime as a whole.3 Apart from its power to shock and disturb, the footage shot at Belsenconstitutes a special place within the body of film shot of camp liberations and of thewar in general. Firstl¡ no other camP was frlmed so comprehensively and over such along period. The film is not just a record of the liberation but also a full account of theefforts of the British army to stabilise the conditions in the camp as they found them,to save lives and return the survivors to health. Secondl¡ the footage shot at Belsen wasthe first to be admitted as evidence to a ì4¡ar crimes trial, when it was screened at thecourtroom in Lüneburg during the trial ofthe Belsen guards, between l7 Septemberand 17 November 1945.

Some documentary makers have used the footage of camp liberations and Germanatrocities as little more than illustrative wallpaper, rarely distinguishing between thedifferent camps and sites featured in the archive film. There has been particular concernthat the promiscuous use ofthe Belsen footage has distorted popular understanding ofthe Holocaust itself. Firstl¡ although the film has come to symbolise the most extremebehaviour of the Germans towards the fews, the scenes at Belsen, however appalling,do not represent the Holocaust. The corpses and spectrally-thin people that were frlmed

HOLOCAUST AND TItE MOVING IMAGP FILM AS WITNESS

A camp inmâte grasps the hand of Lieutenant Martin Wilson, AFpU. M.H2436 (@ IWM)

at Belsen were a consequence ofthe neglect and cruelty ofthe concentration camp sys-tem, not the policy of 'the Final Solutioni Fo¡ Belsen was not an extermination camp;Auschwitz-Birkenau, chelmno, sobibo¡ and Treblinka were and people died there be_cause they were murdered within hours of arriving, not through àir."r. or starvation.secondly, it is not clear to the viewer that the majority of the dead and survivors foundat Belsen were |ewish, a problem compounded by the fact that in press reports, news-reels and official films produced for the public, there was a tendency to universalise thesuffering and down-play the high number of Jews in the camp.a The anonymous natureof the corpses seen in the Belsen footage has even led Holocaust deniers to claim thatthese were in fact the victims of Allied bombing.s

A more insidious outcome of the screening of the Belsen footage is that it tends todemean and dehumanise Holocaust survivors in the mind of the viewer.r The repeatedimages of piles of corpses and helpless survivors creates a perception of the fews aspassive victims and reinforces a common perception that they did not resist their fate.There is also a danger that the viewer becomes hardened and even brutalised by-theendless views of naked, emaciated corpses, the anonymity of the bodies distancing usfrom what the Holocaust meant in human terms.T Inevitably, the cameramen have beenblamed for contributing to these distortions, by concentrating on images of the deadand losing sight ofthe individual in the urge to prove to the viewer the grotesque scaleof the suffering.s There is also an implied criticism that they acted callorisly when film-ing the helpless inmates, transgressing taboos about the portrayal ofthe áead and thehuman body that showed little respect for their subjects. For these reasons, many havequalms about the screening of the Belsen footage, some arguing that it so distorts our

understanding of the Holocaust that it should never be shown.e Although these con-cerns are valid and such a conclusion understandable, they stem from an acquaintancewith only a small number of rolls shot in the camp, and a misunderstanding of the workof the AFPU cameramen.

B er gen - B eI s en concentr ati on c amp

In March 1943 Heinrich Himmler (Chief of the SS) ordered that part of the POW campat Bergen-Belsen be turned into a special camp for prominent European Jews, or thoseof neutral states, who could be held and used as exchange for Germans imprisonedabroad. Initially conditions in the camp were relatively good, but they deteriorated rap-idly from March 1944 when it was designated as a 'recove¡y' or 'recuperation campfor prisoners from other camps who were too ill to work. Numbers swelled further as

new inmates, often already extremely sick and weak, were moved to Belsen from campsin the path of the advancing soviet, British and American armies. As a consequenceof this new influx of prisoners and under the increasingly chaotic and uninterestedsupervision of the camp administration, the inmates' situation had descended to an

unimaginable level; by the spring of 1945 food supplies dwindled and the campì waterand sanitation services collapsed under the strain. In this environment the diseases oftyphus, dysentery and tuberculosis thrived. It has been estimated that by April 1945

more than 60,000 people were enduring these appalling conditions.r0In the spring of I 945 Bergen-Belsen lay in the path of the advancing British Second

Army and specifically the I l,h Armoured Division. on l2 April the local German armycommander Oberst Harries contacted the British army and negotiated handing overcontrol ofthe camp to prevent typhus spreading to the surrounding area. He describedthe camp as one that contained 'political prisoners'. As a result of these negotiations a

neutral zone of 48km, was set up around the camp, open only to units involved withmedical relief. The morning after reconnoitring the camp, Sergeants Haywood, Lawrie,Lewis and Oakes, under the command of Lieutenant Martin Wilson, began to film andphotograph in the camp. The cine-cameramen Lewis and Lawrie stayed until 26 April,compiling most of the moving images taken at Belsen during the crucial phase whenthe British army struggled to stabilise the horrendous situation in the camp.rr As a unitthe AFPU continued to cover activity at the camp up until 9 June 1945, including theceremonial burning of the camp huts from Igto 2l May.t'z

AFPU policy of recruiting from the ranks meant that the cameramen who u¡ent intoBelsen were tough and battle-hardened, but this had not prepared them for the moundsof naked corpses, the scale of dead and suffering. Moreove¡, the kind of dead bodiesthey had previously encountered, men in uniform, were an expected consequence ofbattle. As the photographer Sergeant Oakes recalled,'we couldn't understand it. We hadseen corpses, we had seen our own casualties, but these bloodless bodies ... they wereso young some of them as well, men and women.'r3

In common with British civilians, the soldiers and military cameramen who enteredBelsen had been sceptical ofprevious press reports ofGerman atrocities and the con-centration camp system.t{ Dick Williams, who was with the Royal Army Serivce Corpsand one ofthe frrst to enter the camp, confided to a friend,'I never believed all the fan-tastic stories weve heard, read about, and the atrocities committed by the SS men and

HOLOCAUST AND THE MOVING IMAGB FILM AS WITNESS

AFPU cameramen Sergeant Harry oakes (left) and Sergeant wiiliam Lawrie (right). BU 8368 (@ IwM)

women' but after being here four days, bo¡ some experience'.rs For Sergeant Lewis, whowas fewish, the discovery of Belsen was a tremendous shock: .The tãrrible discoverycame to me' a sort ofrevelation, a flash oflightning because it penetrated these terriblescenes, to make me think. All the stories Id heard about the persecution of people frommy mother and father, here they were true.'r6

Before April 1945, the Allied armies' direct contact with the German camp systemhad showed that the regime included torture and mistreatment but the evidence didnot suggest mass murder.rT once the British army moved into Germany, howevet morecamps were discovered and now they often contained inmates who could provide testi_mony to their treatment. The discovery on 12 April of stalag xIB at celle, a town onlyl3 miles from Belsen, provided a foretaste of what theyweie to encounter later. Herethe shocked cameramen recorded scenes of a dead inmate and various other brutalisedand emaciated prisoners of the camp.r' But as Sergeant Lawrie recalled, although thiswas terrible, 'as we found later, this was actually a sunday school picnic as to what wasreally happening once we got further up the road'.re one should stress that the Britisharmy was totally ignorant as to what was really happening in Belsen. Indeed the cam-eramen were fairly blasé about the prospect of going into the camp and accepted theGerman description of it as containing political and criminal prisoners. For the Britishthe most interesting aspect ofBelsen was the unique opportunit¡ created by the neu-tral zone, to observe and film the wehrmachú and ss close-up

"ná fuily armá, in their'natural habitati

The cameramen were professionally as well as psychologically unprepared for thescenes they found at celle and Belsen. AFpu training was designed to equip men witha sound basic knowledge for battle photography' not to teach them how to cover civil-

ian situations.2o Surprisingly there were no official guidelines on frlming military deadlet alone the kind of scenes found in concentration camps. Instead AFPU cameramenimposed their own strict but straightforward set of guidelines about what they wouldcover - enemy dead were frlmed; badly wounded or dead Allied servicemen were not.This self-censorship was also extended to the corpses ofcivilians or those who were indistress. These guidelines arose out of a strong sense of comradeship with the men whoserved alongside the cameramen, as well as certain scruples about the portrayal of thedead. This was also a practical response to the sensibilities of British newsreel editors,who had produced a sanitised account ofthe war; initially newsreel company heads hadbeen reluctant to use any frlm ofthe concentration camps.2l

Thus before examining how the cameramen frlmed in the camp, it is necessary tobriefly explain why tbey covered these scenes at all. Although members of the AFPUwere encouraged and hoped to produce footage that could be suitable for public expo-sure via the newsreels, the primary role of the unit was to compile a historical record ofBritaint armed forces. Regardlesb of the attitudes of the newsreels, if the AFPU decidedsomething was important, they would cover it. The fact that so many diverse units ofthe Army became involved with Belsen and that the camp was under Army jurisdic-tion for so long was justification enough for the Unit.22 Moreover, a precedent for thiskind of filming had already been set by the advancing Red Army and scenes of Germanatrocities had been appearing in Russian newsreels from early in 1943; this material

¡fOLOCAUST AND THE MOVING IMAGE

A dead German officer filmed at Arnhem, probably by Sergeant'|ocli Walker, l4 September 1944. SergemtMike Lewis was with Walker at this stage of the battle and frlmed linking scenes in this lme. FLM 3727 (@ IWM)

FTLM AS WTTNBSS

had evengrasped tSoviets frcivilians,'news sense' in the trainees.2a

, despite the great emotional and psychological strain theyYears later William Lawrie recalled simpl¡ 'This had to beWyand, who was asked to frlm some sound interviews at the

camp, 'willingly accepted' the job, 'as we feel it is the duty of everybody to see it, as it isthe most revolting proof of what we are frghting for'.27

frlming every day and Sergeant Oakes busied himself with the camera equipment as a

distraction. The lens b"thti;;J;t'" ""n"' and operated as a Protective barrier for

"tkä^;i;;l;g ott "yt

from the horror'3' Preoccupation with

" atgtttïf i"tdåing in the men's attitudes; soon they were even

"t th"e; J;' ;'*g;"t";t'ht'b arrow witness ed an incident when

e bulldol graves' anj Lawrie shouted out

'Look out Mike here comes itllen Wilklnson MP' who was

among a party of VIPs vrsi ie himself astutely observed' 'if

you had become too lnvolv gone mad along with the rest of

the people"s' -^ D^l^^- çLo i¡lpq rhât ânv ofthe scenes could"'- ði.",ry o,,aer the ext¡eme.'"i9n'-"ï1i:,']:::::ï*î:iîiîi::*ïil ,n" n,.-

have been faked or re-staged for the camera ts PreP'

turesque liberation "f thtt;;;;;'"tio" t"-p'"t bosenza near Naples' where the in-

mates had twice .e-enacte;;;;;;rt of tlheir liberation for Sergeant Hopkinsons

camera.r2 As Lawrie ,.."it"¿, .Some of them were too far gone to move' There was

certainly no way *. .o"iä";;; urr..¿ ,t.- to rehearse a piece for usl33 But perhaps

more importantr¡ raK"g ä' ;:-;t*d "t"t' fo' the camera was contrary to the ethos

ofthe AFPU and during thei e instructed to note down in

their dope sheets if scene' t cameramen claim that the

unit at Belsen did not have as to what or how to film in

the camp' Apart from alloc neral directions' Lieutenant

Wilson left decisions about eramens initiative' As there

are few clues to the camerat lope sheets' and they cannot

recall many details, this a-.î,riptio' is based largely on -y p..tott"l assessment of view-

ing the reels of film' cern, and one found repeated in all the-liberation footage,

In their dope sheets the cameramen fre-

the visual record they were compiling: 'It

is impossibre to. ;:'i'"".'.î:i:i1*li:,,tå'.ï"rial evidence of -ii"u"¿,

at least to begin with,

ìffiil'ffii: -'o"u'vi"g

the horrors thev

werewitnessing.Unlikeothercampswhereinstrumentsoftortureandgaschamberswere round,,, * ,a,"n".ä'.,,ä;;:; ;;ïil:,::ïäif:.,1å,'.'.ïiïì"å:t,'åi:1i.o,

heaps of bodies on the ground or in pits; inmates

es ofsurvivors, their facei drawn and pinched from

hunger. As well as panning and shooting in long- and mid-shot to give a sense of the

great numbers that had soÉ"r"d' the cameramen frlmed many details in forensic close-

: up: arms tattooed *ith';;;;;"mbers; portraits of dead faces' mouths gaping open'

Despite th. .toqotåtl of film to convey what could not be described in words'

¡ he scenes in the camps were so terrible that they would not, '¡ç rL'¡rlu ' ," and would be denied by the

Ë ' it was decided to film sound

E e camP's doctor Fritz Klein' SSE' :harge, wereE ontingent now ln c

Sergeant Mike læwis filming a mass burial. Former guards can be seen unloadiog and carrying the corpses ofthe inmates. FL];M 1232 (o IWM)

IIOLOCAUST AND THB MOVINC TMAGß

FILM AS WITNESS

A torroborating' interview with SS-Oberlieutenant Franz Hosle¡ 23 April 1945. FLM 3730 (@ IWM)

duly filmed all delivered with the backdrop of a mass grave or other camp scene. TheAFPU practice of taking long- and wide-shots to establish a scene followed by mid-shots and close-ups of the same subject helped to deflect possible accusations that thescenes filmed at Belsen were faked. But the cameramen also took special precautionaryshots, such as panning up from a mid-shot of a dead child to a general view of the campand views of the camp from the observation towers.

Rolls from the frrst couple of weeks of filming are dominated by coverage of theburials, and include some of the most disturbing scenes of naked corpses being car-ried by the SS or being pushed in great heaps by the blade of a bulldozer. To haveself-censored such scenes might have been regarded as an attempt to minimise thehorrors, even to conceal the scale of the crime of the camps. They must also be seen incontext, as filming members of the SS, in uniform, collecting and burying the dead waspart of the strategy of corroborating the film evidence. Secondly, these were more thanburial scenes, they were also a recording of the punishment meted out on the guardsby the British and on behalf of the inmates, who had before liberation been compelledto carry out this ghastly task. Thus the cameramen constantly cut from scenes of theburials to the faces of the inmates who looked on, watching their former oppressors,their moods switching between angry jubilation and subdued anguish. In a remarkablypowerful gesture of identity with the inmates' feelings, the cameramen also filmed theburials from the position ofthe onlookers, framing sequences ofthe bulldozer pushingcorpses, with the shoulders, heads and faces ofthe traumatised ex-prisoners.

In line with the primary function of the AFPU, there is much coverage of the Army'sefforts to bring food and succour to the camp's inmates and of course, lengthy cover-age of all aspects of the medical operation. Not surprisingl¡ the soldiers and AFPUcameramen took a special interest in the young women at the camp, and the¡e are anumber of sequences of women chatting with British soldiers, sleeping and washing.The cameramen tried to frame the frlm so that the story could be told visually and beself-explanatory. A common framing devise was to frlm the inmates through the latticeof the camp's barbed wire fence. They also tried to portray aspects of the camp whichcould not be conveyed through film; for example, to give an impression of the terriblesmell, they frlmed the bulldozer driver grimacing and spitting and he and the onlookersholding handkerchiefs to their faces.

The cameramen were profoundly affected by the situation at Belsen and this canbe discerned in the rolls they shot. The anger they felt towards the camp system, theguards and commandant spills into the shots. The camera is often very close to the faces

of the guards - as if we could spit or strike a blow through the lens. The camera looksin incomprehension at the guards' impassive faces, searching for an explanation, andcontrasts the arrogant, stout, well-fed guards with the hopeless, emaciated prisoners.The contrast between the conditions inside the camp and the bucolic scenes just outsidewas also recorded, with Selgeant Lewis filming cows in a lush meadow and a housewifesitting with her children on a sunny lawn.3s The hostility felt by the rest of the Britishcontingent to the guards is also expressed in the film, with shots of the SS invariablyframed by rifle butts, Sten gun barrels and bayonets.

A tross'in the foreground of a scene frlmed by Sergeant Mike Lewis, in which Father Morrison (left) mdFather Kadziok (right) bless a mass grave. FLM 3719 (@ IWM)

FILM ,{S WITNBSS 41

The corpse ofan inmate being dragged to a mass grave. Detail offeet filmed by Sergeant Mike Lewis, 24 Aprilrg4s.FLM3720 (@ IWM)

When asked about shot composition, Harry Oakes talked of selecting angles thatwould deepen the horror and Mike Lewis recalled incorporating a sPade that lookedlike a cross near a grave to give the image extra symbolic power.3e There are also otherallegorical references in the framing, notably naked male bodies splayed, martyr-like,on the ground. In striving to produce images of great power that could communicatethe crime of Belsen, the cameramen were also thinking as professional cameramen.Oakes has been honest enough to admit that photographing the camP was a great op-portunit¡ 'We felt in many ways it was a hell of a scoop, to be there at the time, whenyou think of the newsreel value of such a thing, and media value. . .'40

Unlike the constrained conditions of the battlefield, the camp was a relatively safeenvironment in which to work and the cameramen made the most of the opportunityto explore the photographic potential ofthis subject. As filming Progresses, one noticesthe cameramen becoming increasingly experimental and imaginative, notably in a se-ries of disturbing sequences taken while riding on the bulldozer and some beautifullyframed studies of the women washing their bodies and clothes in the Mobile Bath,Unit.This experimentation was also driven by a desire to find new methods of imParting thehorrors of the camp because, as the cameramen recalled, however hard they tried toshoot, in reality things were much worse. For example, both Lawrie and Lewis frlmedthe zig-zag tracks in the soil at the side of a pit, made by the feet of the corpses hangingfrom the shoulders ofthe SS; a shot that is chilling in its sensuous power.

Because the majority of documentaries about the Holocaust concentrate on themost distressing and horrifrc scenes at Belsen, people's knowledge of the camp isskewed towards the weeks before the British had stabilised the situation. In fact a high

percentage ofthe rolls shot at Belsen cover the scenes in and around the German armybarracks, recording the efforts ofthe medical teams to save lives and return people tohealth. Not surprisingl¡ the cameramen were relieved to get away from the camp and

?o on to softer thingslat As they had been so personally affected by the condition of theinmates they were delighted by signs of the return of normal life, captioning scenes inthe dope sheets of 'fraternisation', children playing or women picking out new clothesat'Harrods', with affection and humour: 'Inte¡ior of the stable, the blouse and jumperdepartment. Mrs H. Tanner, of Stoke Rector¡ Grantham, Lincs, helps an undecidedcustomer to make up her mind over the important problem of whether green is morebecoming than speckled brown.'42

A particularly powerful and basic symbol of the return of people's sense of human-ity was the urge to wash. Lewis remarked in the dope sheet of the film shot on 16 April,'The degradation of men and women for years and in spite of this, they still have a

spark of decency which asserts itself to wash and clean their bodies and clothes.'ar Tothe casual viewer, the many scenes of naked strangers washing (or even worse beingwashed in the hospital barracks) can seem voyeuristic and rudely intrusive. This maybe so and the cameramen explained that in many cases the condition of the inmatesmeant they were free to film as they liked. However, the reverently-framed sequencesand touchingly respectful accompanying comments in the dope sheets suggest that forthe cameramen such scenes were in fact a celebration of life and humanity.

Generally AFPU dope sheets are fairly impersonal accounts detailing the scenescovered on the rolls of films. But occasionally a cameraman was so struck by a particu-lar action or episode he had covered that the writing in his dope sheets moved beyond

HOLOCAUST AND THE MOVING IMAGE

Former prisoners selecting clothes in 'Harrodsl Scene filmed by Sergeant Hewitt. FLM^ 3722 (@ IWM)

FILM AS WITNESS

Study of women showering ir the Mobile Bath Unit. Filmed by Sergeant William Lawrie, 22 April 1945. FLM3724 (@ lwM)

the impersonal shot listing into the frrst person, giving voice to his own impressionsand opinions. The dope sheets accompanying the rolls shot at Belsen are an especiallypowerful and rare example of this diary form. Here the cameramen recorded not onlythe shock they experienced on entering the camp, but their attempt to understand whathad happened there. Perhaps they saw their own written accounts and observationson the illegal and immoral camp system as a witness statement to stand alongside thefiIm.4

Due to the practical difficulties of frlming in the camp and the enormity and inten-sity of the horror at Belsen, the cameramen began to realise that there was much thatcould not be conveyed on film, as Lawrie apologetically remarked: 'The atmosphereabout the whole camp makes the job extremely difficult - it is hoped that some of thisatmosphere has got into the pictures.'{s For this reason, the dope sheets became a placewhere they supplemented the images on the films with descriptions of the heat, tliedeathly silence and, perhaps most terrible of all, the smell.

In response to those who have criticised the 'liberation films' for ignoring or Over-looking the lews, the dope sheets reveal that the cameramen were quick to realise thatJews were in the majority at Belsen - nor did they attempt to conceal this fact. Lawrieremarked on this when recording his first day's filming: 'The inmates who were calledby the Germans "political prisoners" were of all religions and countries, mostly fewswhose only crime lay in the fact that they were fews.'¿6

Some historians have argued that many of the liberators (and even some survivors),finding themselves bereft of descriptive powers in the face of the scenes at Belsen, re-so¡ted to analog¡ comparing the internees to animals or the conditions as like hell.47 It

is true that the cameramen occasionally resorted to dehumanising slang when describ-ing the survivors as 'zombies' or 'rag dolls' and alongside a partial viewing of the campfootage, typically offered by television documentaries on the Holocaust or some aspectofthe Thi¡d Reich, one would conclude that the AFPU coverage ofBelsen amounted toa dehumanising, diminishing and even de-fudaised account. However, as will be foundby a less partial viewing of the more than forty rolls shot at the camp, this is a verysuperfrcial account of their work. Not only did the cameramen have a strong grasp ofwhat had happened at Bergen-Belsen, but beneath a self-protective husk they showedgreat sensitivity to the people they were filming. Although they abandoned the usualguidelines for the portrayal of the dead and indeed the human bod¡ this was not doneout of callousness towards the camp inmates, but in order to convey the brutality ofthe camp system and so as to compile a dossier of evidence to indict a regime that theydespised. closer analysis of the framing and point of view adopted by the cameramento film the burials and other scenes (combined with their notes in the dope sheets),makes it clear where their sympathies lay. with great prescience, the cameramen evenseemed to have grasped that the humanity and individuality of the people they werefilming could not be expressed to the viewer and as a result they frequently wrote downaccounts of conversations they had with the inmates and named their subjects when-ever possible.as Mo¡eover these traumatic reels, filmed in the frrst couple of weeks afterliberation, must be viewed with the less sensational work covering the months of reha-bilitation at the camp. For along with the coverage of the British (and German) medicalteams treating the sick and helping the survivors to convalesce, are numerous sceneswhich admiringly document and pay tribute to the independent efforts of the formerprisoners, to restore their sense of dignity and humanity, and rebuild their communi-ties. viewing and screening these lesser known reels of 'recovery' at the camp may helpto challenge the widely held and stereotypical impression of the inmates as helpless andanonymous victims.

Finally this study draws attention to a neglected group of cameramen and film-makers, whose work has implications for our understanding of the Holocaust docu-mentaries released in the years following the war. Previousl¡ the 'liberation footagehas been regarded as undirected raw coverage, oflittle meaning until edited into a filmby a known director. Now we can appreciate this archival footage as a highly mediatedvisual record ofthe camps, which has in turn constrained and influenced the work ofthose directors who have chosen to incorporate it in their films about the Holocaust.

Notes

I Lieutenant Colonel Hugh Stewart ofthe.AFPU recalled seeing'mounds and mounds ofpaper-thin deadbodiesl From a recorded interyiew with Lt. Stewart held in the IWM Sound Alchives, accessio n to. 4579106, reel 4.

2 Ronald Tritton, 'War Diary', l9 April 1945, held in the IWM Docs, 76. Tritton joined the War Office infanuary 1940 where he was appointed Head ofPR2. He set up the Army Film Unit, later the AFPU, and asDirector ofPublic Relations was responsible for the output ofthe Unit md for 'placing it'for good armyrelations.

3 The most disturbing close-ups, scenes of the burials and of the bulldozer pushing corpses into mass

)45

graves, were not used in the 'Belsen issues' of the Gaumont Br¡tish N¿vs and British Movietone News'

released in the week beginning 30 Apriì 1945.

J. Reilly (1998) Selsen: The Liberation oÍ a Concentratíon Camp.Lond.on:Routledge, 77. See also T. Kush-

ner (1994) The Holocøust and the Liberal lmagination: A Social and Cultural History. Oxford: Blackwell,

213i 216.

TNA INF l/636 'F3030 Investigation ofWa¡ Atrocities. Factual Film Report of German Concentration

Camps'. At the end of the waç Americans reported to the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary

Force (SHAEF) that'both Nazi and anti-Nazi POWs'were disassociating themselves'âlmost unanimous-

ly from any responsibility for the atrocities depicted. Furthermore they say thât many of the pictures

remind them of photographs of the German victims of Allied air raids, which they have seen constantly

in the German press and in the Wochenschau' [Third Reich newsreel] (Davidson Taylor, Chief of Film'

Theatre and Music conrrol section ofsHAEF to Sidney Bernstein, 25 May L945). Although Taylor does

not specifically cite the Belsen footage here, images from this camp were included in all the newsreels

and propaganda compilations ofGerman atrocities shown to Germans at the end ofthe war. The sugges-

tion that AIlied propagandists may have misattributed images of the German victims of Allied air raids

has become part ofthe'evidence' marshalled by those who claim that the Holocaust is a fabrication. For

example, in The Six MíIlion Reconsídered, the authors attempt to debunk the significance of a photo of

corpses in a mass grave at Bergen-Belsen. Within the lengthy caption to the image, the author explains:

'The joker in this stacked deck, however, is the peculiar fact that photographs ofdead German citizens

- such as the hundreds of thousands killed in the barbaric raid on Dresden - have been slyly'recycled"

by our prolific myth-mongers as those of murdered Jews. Something like this may be the case with the

photo above. Although it may not be clear in the reproduction here, it is a fact that ât least one body in

this widely published picture, reputedly from Belsen, is wearing a German uniform blouse, with Wehr-

macht shoulder patch (see arrow, lower Ieft quarter)l See The Six Million Reconsidered: Is the 'Nazi Holo-

caust'Story a Zioníst Propaganda Ploy?, Committee for Truth in History. Southam: Historical Review

Press, 1979, 71. A simitar claim is made in R. Harwood (1978) Nuremberg and Other War Crimes Trials:

A New Look. Southam: Historical Review Press, 61. Significantly in these Holocaust denial tracts, Allied

cinematography is not mentioned, suggesting that the military cameramen were successful in adopting

techniques that would make the evidence ofthe scenes hard to refute.

f. Reill¡ D. cesarani, T. Kushne¡ C. Richmond (eds) (1997) Belsen in History and Memory. London:

Frank Cass, 15.

One indication of this process is that, sadly, a common follow up request by researchers examining the

Belsen footage at the Museum, is for something'worsel

Reilly ef ø1. 1997 13:187 . Another criticism made by fo Reilly in an essay in Belsen in History and Memory

entitled'Cleaner, Cuer and Occasional Dance Partner? Writing Women Back into the Liberation of Ber-

gen-Belsen', was that the cmeramen failed to record the enormous contribution made by women carers

to the medical treatment and rehabilitâtion ofthe inmates'

For this reason atrocity images do not appear in uy ofthe classroom resources produced by the Imp-erial

War Museum's Education Department. Paul Salmons, Holocaust Education Co-ordinator at the IWMexplains this policy in his essay 'Moral dilemmas: histor¡ teaching md the Holocaust', which can be

downloaded from the museum's website, ffi.iwm.org.uk. This article also appears in 'Teaching His-

lory', The Historical Assoc¡ation, 104, September 2001 ' 34-40.

For a good histoÐ/ of the camp, see E. Kolb (2002) Bergen-Belsen: From 'Detention Camp' to Concentra-

t¡on Camp, lg43-1g45. Göttingen; Vmdenhoeck & Ruprecht. For an illustrated account ofthe camp

placed in the context ofthe history of the Holocaust since 1933, see w Scheel (eà.) (2002) Bergen-Belsen:

Explanatory Notes on the bch¡b¡tíon. Hanoyer: Niedersächsische Landeszentrale für Politische Bildung.

HOLOCAUST AND THE MOVING IMÀGE

Sergeant Lawrie filmed scenes of British Commandos crossing the Elbe on 27 April and Sergeant Lewis

caught up with the t5ù scottish Division and filmed British troops crossing the Elbe on 29 April.

Other ñlming at Belsen was conducted by Lieutenant Wilson and Sergeants Haywood, Seaholme, Grant,

Leatherbarroq Hewitt and Parkinson. At the request of SHAEF, 2,000 feet of sync-sound film was also

shot by Paul Wyand and Martin Gray of British Movietone News.

13 Sergeant Harry Oakes, AFPU, Imperial War Museum Sound Archive interview accession no. 19888/4

reel 2,g TheRedArmy'sdiscoveryofMajdanekinJulylg44andAuschwitzinJanuâryl945waswidelyreported

in the press and in the case of Majdanek supported by radio-photographs, but there was much doubt

about these reports. The BBC refused to broadcast Alexander Werth's report on Majdanek in fuly 1944 as

it was considered 'soviet atrocify propagandaÌ The report first appeared in The lllustrated London News

on 14 October 1944.

l5 Letter to Tom Williams, I8 April, read during m interview recorded with Williams, Sound Archives, ac-

cession no. 154371513.

te AFPU Sergeant Mike Lewis, recorded interview, IWM Sound Archive, accession no.483319,reel7.

tz For exãmple, AFPU film shot by Sergeant Gordon ofthe deserted concentration camp ofs'Hertogenbosch

in southern Holland shows watchtowers, an electrifred perimeter fence, a gallows, a crematorium and a

heap ofashes, but the¡e is no human evidence or witnesses to explain what had happened ( A70 187 16,31

October 1944).

tB Sergeant Lewis and Sergeant Lawrie's footage shot at Celle on l2 April 1945 aPPears on A70 297 I3-419 From a recorded interview with Sergeant William Lawrie, AFPU, held in the IWM Sound Archive, ac-

cession no. 748L103, reel 2.

20 'Notes for Instracfors] for the seven-week course for ,{FPU trainees at Pinewood. This undated document

is held in the IWM Depütment of Documents.2l H. Caven (2001) 'Horror in Our Time: Images of the Conceotration Camps in the British Media, 1945i

The Hístorical Journal of Film, Radìo and Television,2l,3,205-53.22 More than 37 units of the British Army becme involved in the work at Belsen. This frgure does not in-

clude units from voluntary organisations such as the Friends' ReliefService, UNRRA, the Red Cross and

so on. Units from other Allied armies also contributed to the operation. See P. Kemp (L991) The RelíeJ olBelsen, April 1945: Elewitness Accounts.London: Imperial War Museum' 3l '

23 OneoftheearliestexamplesisfoundinSovietNewsreelNo.g(February1943,IWMcatalogueno.RNC9) which includes footage of a mass grave md various exhumed corpses oflocals that were killed by the

Germans at the village of Voronotsovo-Alexandrovskoe, North Caucasus. Among the bodies identified

were those ofMatvei Stepanovich KiP, a'non-Part)' activist ofthe local collective farm' and communist

Tatiana Ivanovna Kornienko. One of the ñrst Soviet-discovered sites of atrocity to aPPear in Britishnewsreels was the massacre of600 forced-labourers at the Lublin Castle. This item aPPeâred in a number

of newsreels including the War Píctorial News issue released on 25 December 1944 (lWM catalogue no.

wPN 190).

l0

24 'Notes Jor Instructorsl IWM Department of Documents.Lieutenant Colonel Hugh Stewart was the oficer in command ofNo. 5 Section ofthe AFPU, the Unitresponsible for covering the British Armyt activities in the northwestern Europem theatre; IWM Sound

Archive, accession no. 4579106, reel 4,

Sergemt William Lawrie, IWM Sound Archive, accession no. 748U03, rce12.

Paul Wyand (British Motieton¿ N¿ps cameraman) in a letter to Frank Chisnell (News Editor at BritishMovietone News), 22 April 1945, IWM Department of Documents.The Sope sheets', officially called 'secret caption sheets', were the descriptive shotlists witten out by the

26

F¡LM AS WITNESS 47

AFPU cameramen in the fierd and sent back with the exposed reels of ñrm to the uK. These detailedwhen and where the firm was exposed, the cameraman's name, basic information about what appeared inthe ñlm and technical information for the benefit of the film processors and editors.Secret Caprion Sheet no. A70Ol304lt & 2, sheet 2. Sergeant Mike Lewis, t6 April 1945.strictly speaking' oakes maybe talking metaphorically here, as the AFpu cameramen were trained to

29

30

ñlm wirh both eyes open when shooting.It Sergeant william Lawrie, AFPU, Imperial war Museum sound Archive Interview, accession no. 74grl03reel 2.32 AFPU secret Dope sheet, Ayy 556/l/3, sergeant Hopkinson, 29 September 1943. This footage subse-quently appeared in an issue ofthe Warwork News (IWM catalogue no. Sl5 33).33 sery€ant william Lawrie, AFPU, Imperial war Museum Sound Archive Interview, accession no. 74grl03reel J.

34 Secret Caption Sheet no. AZ0O 30413, 17 April 1945.3s Gas chambers were filmed at Auschwitz-Birkenau, Majdanek, Dachau and Mauthausen.36 To counter these doubts camera teams filmed visits to the camps by well-kaown Allied political and mili-tary figures and enforced insPection of the camps by German civilians. General Eisenhower was filmedvisiting ohrdruf on 7 April 1945, along with German citizens and a wehrmacht officer who was forcedto insPect the dead (IWM film catalogue number 470 514-14). This item later appeared in issue 210 ofwarPictorialNews(lwMcatalogueno wPN210).ABritishParliamenta.yD.t"grtion,",6lmedvisit-

ing Buchenwald (IWM 6lm catalogue number 470 514-22). This footage was edited into the GaumontBritish News and British Movietone News issues released at the end of April (IwM catalogue nos. RMy144 & NMV 830_2).37 'As the AFPU did not routinely record sound Brit¡sh Mov¡etoneNers, which had cameramen and thebulþ recording equipment in Germany, was asked to go the camp to film these scenes (pRo INF l/636).On22 paul Wyand at Movietone, .I would appreciate you taking

:::1i man SS men etc. at rh€ Belsen concentrarion campsl Healso ln ge should be coordinated with the work done by AFpU,.wyand and the soundman Martin Gray filmed tound shots' for the .M.o.I. SpECIAL oN BELSEN,on23 and 24 April' The two reels of synchronously recorded film runs for 2,000 feet, about 20 rninutes inrunning time' The 'AFPU cameramen shot additional mute ¡eels of mmy of the scenes covered by thesound team' As an extra precaution wyand was careful to identifu and name in the shot sheet (describingthe individual when necessary), all those filmed. These sound reels are held in the IWM Film and videoA¡chive and are numbered A7O 514197 & 9g.38 These scenes were used with devastating irony by the editors and scrip t wriÍers of Memory oÍ the campstA Painful Reminder (IWM catalogue no. MGH 3320A).39 T¡lis sequence aPPears in reel 470 308i3-4. The handle of the spade is in the foreground with FatherMorrison and Father Kadziok in the bacþround standing at the edge ofone ofthe m-ass graves, presum-ably blessing the grave.40 sergeant Harry oakes, AFPU photographe¡ Imperial war Museun sound Archive Interview, access¡onno. 19888/4, ¡eel 3.4l sergeant Harry oakes, AFPU Photographer, Imperial war Museum sound Archive Interview, accessionno. 19888/4, reel 3.42 Sergeant Hewitt, Secret Caption Sheet AZ00 335/4 , t5ll6 May t945.a: Sergeant Mike Lewis, Secret Caption Sheet AZ00 3 04/ I _2, 16 Aptil 1945.'l¿ 'I understand from the women imprisoned in the concentration camp that these SS women committedmany cruelties upon them' For instance, the women could only get their very meagre portion offood if4E HoLocAUsT

^ND TrI8 òIovING IMAGE

they carried away at least one dead body a day' Sergeant Mike Lewis, Secret Caption Sheet, 4700 304/l&2, Lewis l6 April, 1945.

Sergeant Lawrie, Secret Caption Sheet 4700 30414, 18 April 1945.

Sergeant Lawrie, Secret Caption Sheet 4700/304/3, l7 April Ì945.

Reilly 1998:31.

A job that was very difficult as the cameramen's 'army French and German' did not equip them to com-

municate with the Poles, czechs, Russians, Dutch and many other nationalities which populated the

camP.

45

46

47

48

PILM AS WITNESS