International Holocaust Remembrance Day 2021

 

Film program:

EVERY FACE HAS A NAME (73 MINS, 2015)
In late April of 1945, as World War II drew to a close, the Swedish Red Cross arranged for nearly 2,000 concentration camp survivors to be sent to the relative safety of Malmo, Sweden. News photographers were on hand to capture their arrival as they pulled into port. Almost 70 years later, Magnus Gerrten (Harbour of Hope, SFJFF 2012) embarked on a quest to match as many names as possible to the faces caught on film. In Every Face Has a Name Gerrten meets with survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, members of the Norwegian and French Resistance, grown men who arrived in Malmo as swaddled infants, and an American woman arrested in Italy by the Germans on the assumption that she was a spy. The shock of seeing themselves, friends and loved ones on film is palpable. While staring at the footage they are temporarily transported back to the brutality of life in the camps and the euphoria of liberation. Gerrten skillfully juxtaposes the found footage of 70 years ago with contemporary news footage chronicling the plight of refugees fleeing violence in North Africa. Gerrten reminds us that war is still with us and that compassion demands we extend aid when we can. The question is, will we?

 

GERMAN CONCENTRATION CAMP FACTUAL SURVEY (72 MINS, 1945/2017)
Ordered in April 1945 by the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force, ​German Concentration Camps Factual Survey​ is an official documentary about the atrocities committed at concentration camps under Nazi leadership. Producer Sidney Bernstein assembled a team at the Ministry of Information that included editors Stewart McAllister and Peter Tanner, writers Colin Wills and Richard Crossman; and Alfred Hitchcock who gave directorial advice. A compilation of footage shot by combat and newsreel cameramen accompanying troops as they liberated occupied Europe, the film was to be screened in Germany after the fall of the Third Reich – shown to German prisoners of war wherever they were held – but was ultimately shelved before completion due to a shift in the priorities of the British government.

BEHIND THE SWASTIKA: NAZI ATROCITIES (5 MINS, 1945)
This short documentary reveals the atrocities that occurred in German concentration camps during World War II. With images of suffering humans and mass graves, this film depicts the events that transpired under Hitler’s rule and the condition of the prisoners when they were liberated by the Allied Forces. This short will be shown as part of the talkback program.