Alfred Hitchcock’s documentary about the Holocaust is to be screened in 2015.
The Independent reports that the previously unseen documentary was suppressed for political reasons at the time.
Titled Memory of the Camps, the documentary was commissioned to educate the public about the crimes that the Nazis committed.
It’s reported that Hitchcock was asked to collect footage from the liberation of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945. The footage was shot by a British army cameraman.
Memory of the Camps was not shown until 1984, at the Berlin Film Festival but it was in poor quality and at the time was missing a sixth reel.
“It was suppressed because of the changing political situation, particularly for the British,” Dr Toby Haggith, senior curator at the Imperial War Museum, said.
“Once they discovered the camps, the Americans and British were keen to release a film very quickly that would show the camps and get the German people to accept their responsibility for the atrocities that were there.”
The film has since been restored in its full form.
“The digital restoration has made this material seem very fresh,” said Haggith. “One of the common remarks was that it [the film] was both terrible and brilliant at the same time.”
The Hitchcock documentary will be broadcast in the UK to mark the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Europe.
