On n'oubliera pas, Beaune-la-Rolande 1942
Nothing predisposed a rural commune in the Loiret region such as Beaune-la-Rolande to embody the height of the Holocaust in France. Yet it was there that a camp was set up where Jewish families were interned, separated, their children abandoned to their fate before being deported alone to their deaths. Long hidden from view, more than eighty years after the events, this tragedy remains a sensitive subject that can still divide opinion on what should or should not be done to ensure it is not forgotten. Following personal journeys and collective commitments, this film meets activists, elected officials, and teachers who are committed to helping a region recover its memory and reconnect with its history, however painful it may be.
Auschwitz Projekt
Kunst aus dem Todeslager
The Nazi concentration and extermination camps were places of incomprehensible cruelty, misery and death. But even here, creation took place. Creation as a means of survival against destruction. Art against dehumanization. On behalf of the SS, but also secretly at the risk of their lives, people drew and painted, sculptors and model makers worked, concerts were performed and theater was played. Prisoners created paintings and other works of art, which the SS henchmen sold or sent home to their families. In the Austrian Mauthausen concentration camp, inmates made sketches of the crime scenes where fellow prisoners had allegedly died while trying to escape. In the Buchenwald concentration camp, prisoners had to rehearse a camp song in the freezing cold until it sounded perfect to the ears of their tormentors. In addition to this forced art, however, there were also illegal drawings that could give the outside world an insight into actual camp life.
A Painful Reminder: Evidence for All Mankind
This documentary incorporates the footage shot by Sidney Bernstein, head of the Allied Film Section of the Psychological Warfare Division, under wartime conditions, two or three days after the Allied troops liberated Belsen and other Nazi concentration camps. It depicts the unspeakable carnage of thousands of corpses being buried in large pits. The film was made as a record to show the German people what had been allowed in their country under Hitler. It was judged to be too harrowing for viewing at the time and was suppressed by the British government. In updated sequences, Bernstein describes the filming of these wartime atrocities and the assistance he received from Alfred Hitchcock. Survivors of the camps recount their hellish experiences.