In 1945, British forces liberated concentration camps in Germany, Poland, and throughout Nazi Europe. Accompanying them was a crew of documentary filmmakers, tasked with recording the horrors.
One of those filmmakers was Alfred Hitchcock.
At that point, Hitchcock was already a talented director–the previous year, he directed Lifeboat, a collaboration with author John Steinbeck that showed some of the destruction of WWII. However, the 1945 documentary, whose production Hitchcock advised on, depicted the war with a level of intensity not previously seen. SS officers are shown being put to work burying bodies. Former concentration camp prisoners are given new clothes and fed, yet nobody knows what to do with them.
After the documentary was produced, the British government deemed it “too gristly” for television, and it was not publically aired. Finally, in 1985, it was aired in America under the title “Memory of the Camps.” It’s now watchable in its entirety, free, on Google Video. Even in a documentary, Hitchcock’s masterful touch as a director is evident.
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