German Concentration Camps Factual Survey
The history of German Concentration Camps Factual Survey, told in the film Night Will Fall, is the foundation story of the creation of 3 Generations.
“If you destroyed all the films except for this one, this is the film that has all the issues involved in cinema.” – Daniel Kasman, Mubi
“In April 1945 my father, Sidney Bernstein, was with the Allied Forces that liberated the Nazi concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen. As a film advisor to the Ministry of Information, he was responsible for overseeing the film units as they documented the atrocities found there.” – Jane Wells, Founder and Executive Director of 3 Generations.
Sidney Bernstein was a filmmaker during World War Two, who worked for the British Army and later SHAEF (the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force). For five months in 1945 his orders were to film the liberation of Bergen-Belsen, and to collect footage shot by the Allied Forces to create a documentary. The aim was that the film would provide evidence; it would show the German people what had been done in the name of Hitler and the Third Reich.
The story of what he and his colleagues witnessed, recorded and assembled has produced three films: German Concentration Camps Factual Survey (begun and then suppressed in 1945, finally released in 2014); A Painful Reminder (a partial telling of events released in 1985); and Night Will Fall (an Emmy award-winning contemporary documentary detailing why the original film was never shown, released by HBO in 2014).
German Concentration Camps Factual Survey has been painstakingly digitized and fully restored by the Imperial War Museums in London, who are the guardians of the footage and the archives. The restoration precisely follows the original script, notes and cameramen dope sheets from 1945. The quality of the restoration brings the 21st-century viewer face-to-face with startling documentary evidence of atrocity. Sequences depicting Adolf Hitler are striking in their clarity. He appears disquietingly revived; one can see the beads of sweat that drip down his face. The footage from the concentration camp––shot by skilled cameramen––is artful yet unsparing in its brutally accurate depiction of events. Alfred Hitchcock was careful to employ techniques that would refute accusations that the atrocities documented did not take place.
3 Generations is committed to keeping this footage and the truths it tells alive and available in the 21st century.
For more information about the film, visit the Imperial War Museum site.
Download the electronic press kit here.
Download History of GCCFS & 3 Generations deck here.
Credits
ORIGINAL PRODUCTION TEAM
| Produced by: | Sidney L Bernstein |
| Production Supervisor: | Sergei Nolbandov |
| Editor: | Stewart McAllister Peter Tanner |
| Treatment and Commentary: | Colin Wills Richard Crossman |
| Treatment Adviser: | Alfred Hitchcock |
| Cameramen: | Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, Germany 1945 No. 5 Section, Army Film and Photographic Unit Major Hugh Stewart MBE Lieutenant Martyn Wilson MBE Sergeant Harold Haywood Sergeant Slim Hewitt MBE Sergeant William Lawrie Sergeant Michael Lewis Sergeant Roy Parkinson |
RESTORATION PRODUCTION TEAM
| Restoration Producer: | David Walsh |
| Restoration Director: | Dr. Toby Haggith |
| Restoration Editor: | George Smith |
| Narrator: | Jasper Britton |
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