There is a deep sorrow pervading around my brain. That is not to say that I am depressed to any great degree, but there are things going on around the world which are disturbing to say the least. In trying to distract my thoughts towards a brighter outlook I turn to the BBC podcasts and other soundscapes to entertain one’s little grey cells. I listen to a lot of Poirot with the wonderful John Moffat as well as the various Simon Brett series, No Commitments and his Charles Paris Mysteries.
On browsing through the Drama category of listening on offer I came across a piece entitled The Film by Martin Jameson with the flowing caption:
April 1945. A Ministry of Information army film crew enters Bergen-Belsen to record the unimaginable horrors of the Holocaust that many were already refusing to believe. But faced with all this footage, the head of the unit - Sidney Bernstein, is overwhelmed. He needs to get a film out there as soon as possible, but how to do justice to such suffering? So he summons his friend Alfred Hitchcock from Hollywood. And Bernstein - who later establishes Granada Television - determines that together they can create an irrefutable cinematic testimony.
Sidney Bernstein.........................................Henry Goodman
Alfred Hitchcock.........................................Jeremy Swift
Richard Crossman…………………………........Geoffrey Streatfeild
Mrs Haig.......................................................Fenella Woolgar Secretary.......................................................Hamilton Berstock
Over the years I have seen pictures of the Holocaust. Images impossible to forget; however, I was not aware of the Sidney Bernstein and Alfred Hitchcock connection. Appallingly, their work of 1945 was actually shelved for 40 years until an edited version, produced through the Imperial War Museums broadcast by PBS Frontline in 1985 as Memory of the Camps. It was originally entitled German Concentration Camps Factual Survey. Apparently the full length version of the film was restored in 2014 by scholars around the world and is in the Imperial War Museum, London.
The PBS Frontline edit can be seen at: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/camp/
Clearly this is not something to pull one out of sorrow, and rather the opposite, but I was curious to hear what Mr Jameson had made of the Bernstein/Hitchcock encounter. I had no knowledge of the collaboration or their friendship, and certainly had no idea that their very difficult work had been shelved for so many years. I also had no idea of the involvement of Richard Crossman as writer. The effort and trauma that they had gone through to educate the world of 1945 as to what had just occurred, to lay out the facts of what can happen to a society that allows a madman to take control of the state, must have taken a great toll on their own lives. For it to be shelved for what is practically 7 decades is extraordinary. Not only did the British Government at the time take the view that it was ‘not the right time’ for the film to be shown, but the premise was to emphasise that all manor of dissidents, catholics, communists had been killed as well as jews and homosexuals. The fact that 6 million jews had just been exterminated was not the immediate issue.
A lot of the footage taken by a variety of soldiers and serving officers from the allied armies was of course shown at various times over the years, but Bernstein had gathered over 75 thousand feet of film to work with, about 14 hours worth. It was a very painstaking and difficult assignment to complete. The resentment and confusion they must have felt as a result of the decision to shut them down must have been agonising in the extreme. Taking in the realisation that, the hours, days and months of looking at such horrors, trying to collate it all together into some form of explanation as to why, how and what had happened to the German people and the rest of the world over the previous decade, was for nought, must have been soul destroying. In addition, when later in the year the revelations of what had occurred in Japanese Prisoner of War camps in the far east was revealed, their efforts would have given even greater perspective on the insanity of imperialism.
None of the above is in anyway distracting or strategic topic drift; however, it is a glimpse of a small event in the continuing history of human activity. It is a clear indication that we have all been here before. Historical events are repetitive, but they do not appear to be educational. We seem not to learn from mistakes. We remember the calamity resulting from mistakes, but we seem to forget the events and activities that brought about the calamity. At times comparisons are made between current and past events, but for some reason they are dismissed as being distinguishable and no longer relevant. Trump’s rants, raves and diatribes against immigrants and enemies of the state, when compared to fascism are dismissed. The actions of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, when likened to the GESTAPO is considered inflammatory, unpatriotic and exaggerated, even although they are exactly that. The very idea that their actions could lead to a holocaust is derided and mightily condemned. The miscreants even demean the opponents of their activity by using the fact of the holocaust as an example of preposterous exaggeration with scornful claims of ‘it can’t happen here’.
Having started with a radio drama called The Film, I reference another film Judgment at Nuremberg (1961). There is a scene in the film between Judge Dr. Ernst Janning (played by Burt Lancaster) and Chief Judge Dan Harwood (played by Spencer Tracy) which is rather relevant and appropriate:
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