Captured German officers; press; Belsen atrocities; forced confrontation
Creator(s)
- Imperial War Museums
Scope and Content
War Pictorial News was the official newsreel sponsored by the British Ministry of Information and the US Office of War Information. Brief shots of soldiers placing branches on top of and inside a torpedo/plane, soldier getting inside. LSs, pan planes (silent). SEQ, with sound in English: Men in German uniform, including Doenitz, Jodl, and Hans Georg von Friedeberg (now POWs) exiting an airplane. Mass arrests of civilian officials. Men in courtyard and street marching. Nazi personalities exiting building with hands behind head, guarded by British soldiers with guns, civilians watching. Shots of Friedeberg dead (committed suicide). Silent: US soldier talking with older man. VAR, soldiers in leather coats. CU soldier's hat. Group of soldiers talking. Two German soldiers, mountains in BG. Exterior shots of house, interior shot of Himmler's body with CU of face, and the hidden capsule with which he committed suicide. British soldiers hold outdoor press conference with Hermann Goering. Silent. Shots of reporters taking notes, Goering speaking to crowd while sitting at small table, cameras set up. SEQ, with sound in English and music in the background: Atrocities in Belsen. Soldiers in disinfection (anti-typhus) suits carrying out dead bodies, laying them in mass graves as narrator describes how internees continued to die after liberation as a result of the conditions. Burial service with Church of England chaplain and rabbi. Soldiers digging graves. Allies destroying camp (huts, etc.) by bulldozer and setting it on fire. Narrator comments, "But, what can ever cleanse the guilt of Germany?" VAR views of fires and civilians watching. In a small town nearby in Germany, civilians enter cinema under compulsion to view film about the atrocities at concentration camps.
Note(s)
Some Cyrillic intertitles throughout. See Story 2591, Film ID 1000 for duplicate footage of forced confrontation at the cinema.
Subjects
- DISINFECTION
- JODL, ALFRED
- MILITARY OFFICERS
- BERGEN-BELSEN
- CORPSES
- SOLDIERS/MILITARY
- FORCED CONFRONTATION
- KESSELRING, ALBERT
- AIRPLANES
- BULLDOZERS
- MASS GRAVES
- BURIALS
- HIMMLER, HEINRICH
- FIRES
- CIVILIANS
- SOLDIERS/MILITARY (BRITISH)
- DOENITZ, KARL
- CHAPLAINS
- CONCENTRATION CAMPS
- GOERING, HERMANN
- MOUNTAINS
- ALLIES
- SOLDIERS/MILITARY (GERMAN)
- GRAVES
- ATROCITIES
- PRESS
- GUNS
- GERMANS
- RABBIS
- NAZI OFFICIALS
- TOWNS
- ARRESTS
- DISEASES
Places
- Bergen-Belsen, Germany
- Minden, Germany
Genre
- Newsreels.
- Film