FRONTLINE: MEMORY OF THE CAMPS (TV)
Summary
One in this documentary series hosted by Judy Woodruff. In this edition, a film made by the Allied troops of World War II, following the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps, is shown in its original, unedited form, and is narrated by actor Trevor Howard. Images shown and topics examined include the following: how the national socialist party came to power under Adolf Hitler; the staggering number of tangled, twisted, and decaying bodies found at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp; the Nazi guards, both men and women, who were captured and forced to prepare grave sites for the tens of thousands of bodies; why it didn't disturb the guards to carry the bodies to their graves; how the survivors were given food and hot water as soon as possible; the reactions of the public officials brought to the camp in order to witness the atrocities; how, after seven days, the bodies were still being brought to grave sites; how lice and typhus had spread throughout the living population; the astonishing number of children found alive and relatively healthy; how the camp was leveled and burned except for the ten massive grave sites marked with approximate body counts; how the camp at Dachau housed thirty-two thousand prisoners, which was four times the number it could hold; how many deaths occurred in one cabin during a twenty-four-hour period; why the gas chambers and crematoriums were placed next to each other; how the ovens were designed exclusively for burning human beings; how many of the eighty thousand prisoners at Buchenwald were systematically tortured and starved to death; the reactions from members of the British parliament who came to witness the carnage at Buchenwald; how several of the camps tried to destroy all signs of evidence when the liberation began; how the camp known as Auschwitz, the largest of the camps, held close to four million prisoners; and how Auschwitz was specifically designed to accommodate mass killings. The last reel of the film, as well as the soundtrack, has been lost and ends after a few scenes from Auschwitz. This program is closed-captioned. (Contains extremely graphic scenes.)
Cataloging of this program was made possible by Michael Finkelstein and Sue-ann Friedman.
Preservation of the Post–World War II American Television Documentary Collection is supported in part by a Federal Save America’s Treasures grant administered by the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Details
- NETWORK: PBS WGBH Boston, MA
- DATE: May 7, 1985 9:00 PM
- RUNNING TIME: 0:58:51
- COLOR/B&W: Color and B&W
- CATALOG ID: T:44882
- GENRE: Public affairs/Documentaries
- SUBJECT HEADING: Auschwitz (Poland: Concentration camp); Bergen-Belsen (Germany: Concentration camp); Dachau (Germany: Concentration camp); Concentration camps - Germany; Concentration camps - Poland; Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945); Holocaust survivors; Nazism; Public affairs/Documentaries
- SERIES RUN: PBS - TV series, 1983-
- COMMERCIALS: N/A
CREDITS
- Sidney Bernstein … Executive Producer
- David Fanning … Executive Producer
- Sergei Nolbandov … Producer
- Stephanie Tepper … Producer
- Judy Woodruff … Host
- Trevor Howard … Narrator
- Adolf Hitler