It was 70 years ago next week, on Jan. 27, 1945, that the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz was liberated. That day is now marked as Holocaust Memorial Day, with observations dedicated to preserving the memory of what happened there, and elsewhere, during World War II.
But one way of preserving that memory was, for decades, mostly lost.
When Auschwitz and several other camps, like Bergen-Belsen, were liberated, the British army sent along a film unit. Under the aegis of Sidney Bernstein, and with the help of supervising director Alfred Hitchcock, the grisly and shocking footage was meant for a documentary called German Concentration Camps Factual Survey. However, as the war came to a close, the governments that had once supported exposing German crimes had a new interest in reconciliation. So plans for the film were scrapped, and most of the footage was archived at Britain’s Imperial War Museum until the 1980s.
A new documentary, Night Will Fall, tells the story of how the footage came to be, and what happened to it. In the exclusive clip above, some of that footage is shown and Branko Lustig — an award-winning film producer who was in Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen as a child — describes what it was like to be there. Though the clip shows mostly recovering patients after the liberation, Night Will Fall also includes terrifying and uncensored video from the camps, images that, as is appropriate for Holocaust Memorial Day, no viewer is likely to be able to forget.
The new HBO documentary film, Night Will Fall, will debut Jan. 26 on HBO, with an encore on HBO2 the following day.
The Liberation of Buchenwald, April 1945
Survivors gaze at photographer Margaret Bourke-White and rescuers from the United States Third Army during the liberation of Buchenwald, April 1945.Margaret Bourke-White—Time & Life Pictures/Getty ImagesNot published in LIFE. A Czech doctor (right) prepares to examine a Buchenwald concentration camp inmate while other inmates surround him, awaiting treatment, April 1945.Margaret Bourke-White—Time & Life Pictures/Getty ImagesNot published in LIFE. Examining Buchenwald prisoners after the camp's liberation by U.S. troops, April 1945.Margaret Bourke-White—Time & Life Pictures/Getty ImagesCaption from LIFE. "Deformed by malnutrition, a Buchenwald prisoner leans against his bunk after trying to walk. Like other imprisoned slave laborers, he worked in a Nazi factory until too feeble."Margaret Bourke-White—Time & Life Pictures/Getty ImagesNot published in LIFE. Prisoners at Buchenwald during the camp's liberation by American forces, April 1945.Margaret Bourke-White—Time & Life Pictures/Getty ImagesNot published in LIFE. Prisoners, too emaciated to walk, at Buchenwald during the camp's liberation by American forces, April 1945.Margaret Bourke-White—Time & Life Pictures/Getty ImagesNot published in LIFE. Prisoners at Buchenwald gaze from behind barbed wire during the camp's liberation by American forces, April 1945.Margaret Bourke-White—Time & Life Pictures/Getty ImagesNot published in LIFE. The dead at Buchenwald, April 1945.Margaret Bourke-White—Time & Life Pictures/Getty ImagesNot published in LIFE. The dead at Buchenwald, piled high outside the camp's incinerator plant, April 1945.Margaret Bourke-White—Time & Life Pictures/Getty ImagesNot published in LIFE. The remains of an incinerated prisoner inside a Buchenwald cremation oven, April 1945.Margaret Bourke-White—Time & Life Pictures/Getty ImagesNot published in LIFE. A newly liberated prisoner stands beside a pile of human ashes and bones, Buchenwald, April 1945.Margaret Bourke-White—Time & Life Pictures/Getty ImagesNot published in LIFE. As German officers and Weimar civilians bear witness, after Buchenwald's liberation, to atrocities committed at the camp, a dummy in striped prisoner garb hangs from a gallows Ñ a gruesome demonstration of one of the many public ways that inmates were murdered at the camp.Margaret Bourke-White—Time & Life Pictures/Getty ImagesNot published in LIFE. Prisoners at Buchenwald display their identification tattoos shortly after camp's liberation by Allied forces, April 1945.Margaret Bourke-White—Time & Life Pictures/Getty ImagesNot published in LIFE. German civilians are forced by American troops to bear witness to Nazi atrocities at Buchenwald concentration camp, mere miles from their own homes, April 1945.Margaret Bourke-White—Time & Life Pictures/Getty ImagesNot published in LIFE. German civilians are forced by American troops to bear witness to Nazi atrocities at Buchenwald concentration camp, mere miles from their own homes, April 1945.Margaret Bourke-White—Time & Life Pictures/Getty ImagesLife magazine, May 7, 1945. Credits: page 32—George Rodger; page 33—George Rodger (top), Margaret Bourke-White (bottom).LIFE MagazineLife magazine, May 7, 1945. Credit: pp. 34, 35—William Vandivert.LIFE MagazineLife magazine, May 7, 1945. Credits: page 36—John Florea; page 37—George Rodger.LIFE Magazine
