Night and Fog 70th anniversary

 

"The prisoners will vanish without a trace. No information may be given as to their whereabouts or their fate."
Chief of the Wehrmacht Wilhelm Keitel, 1942.

Night and Fog (Nuit et brouillard / Nacht und Nebel) is a documentary by Alain Resnais. The filmmaker and his crew visited the Auschwitz-Birkenau and Majdanek concentration camps in 1955. The finished film was shown in various French theaters in 1956.

Some of the archive footage shown in this documentary was used to convince people that the Holocaust happened. In just 31 minutes it shows more than I ever wanted to see. Photos of mass graves are nothing like moving images of dead bodies being bulldozed. Their personalities become more visible.

This is one of the best documentaries of all time. The decision not to include any interviews makes it even more powerful.

Night and fog is an old figure of speech that in this case describes the secrecy of extermination operations. The false idea that none of the obsessively recorded details of the Holocaust would ever be publicly available was a characteristic feature of the Nazi regime's delusion.