WWII - Nazi Concentration Camps (1945) / Nuremburg Trials (1947)

Nazi Concentration Camps: To a world still reeling from the unrelenting carnage of WWII, the shocking images that surfaced from the recently liberated Nazi concentration camps were beyond belief. Haunted faces on skeletal bodies... mass graves... gas chambers... searing scenes of human misery dampened the post-war joy that spread across the globe when the Axis powers fell. As the Allied forces rolled into conquered territories, U.S. Army cameramen recorded the horrors uncovered at each camp. They provided the world with an unfiltered look into the black heart of Hitler's fiendish Third Reich.The true power of these films lies less in their indictment of Nazism than their stark testimony to the corruption at the heart of modern civilization. In hundreds of brutal slave labor camps, the extreme barbarity of supposedly civilized people proved beyond doubt that despite millennia of real technical, artistic and philosophical evolution, our dark animal nature is seething below the surface.

Filmed by well-known Hollywood director George Stevens, then serving in the Army, this heart-shattering documentary was introduced as evidence by prosecutors in the Nuremberg war-crimes trials. Perhaps repeated viewing will prevent the recurrence of such horrors.

Filmed by Lt. Col. George C. Stevens, U.S. Army Signal Corps

The Nuremburg Trials: In response to the unprecedented level of brutality exhibited by the Nazis during WWII, the Allied forces convened the world's first international war crimes trial. Their purpose was to hold accountable the men responsible for the atrocities that came to light as the war ended. The world soon became familiar with a hitherto little used term - genocide - as it related to Adolph Hitler's "final solution" of the "Jewish problem." These historic trials established the precedent that conscience supersedes the blind following of "orders" - a powerful new idea.

This rare film is the official documentary produced by the Soviet Union to educate its citizens about the groundbreaking proceedings, and provides a fascinating counterpoint to the familiar Western histories.

Directed by S. Svilov, Central Documentary Film Studios, Moscow, U.S.S.R.

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