( NSFL) Night and Fog - A 1956 Documentary About the Holocaust.
18 replies, posted
[B]Repeated warning: this documentary is brutal and contains a lot of death and misery.[/B]
This is Night and Fog (Nuit et Brouillard), a 1956 French documentary about the concentration camps.
I wanted to share this because this documentary is for many French people the first contact point with the holocaust, and the first time they'll ever see a corpse or misery this extreme.
In school, when we begin to learn about World War 2 (it used to be around High School, but was moved to earlier iirc) and the holocaust is brought up, 30 minutes are dedicated to showing this. This became a recurring thing in 1991, after a man desecrated a Jewish cemetery, dug out a freshly buried corpse and impaled it on a stake, which prompted the government to broadcast this on all three national TV channels at once.
Sadly the only version with English subs I could find is hosted on liveleak, in two parts.
Part 1: [url]https://www.liveleak.com/view?i=373_1324912412[/url]
Part 2: [url]https://www.liveleak.com/view?i=f32_1324912040[/url]
I'm posting this because I want people to have a bit on an insight on how the French get to teach their kids how bad the nazis are. I think it's pretty effective.
[B]Repeated warning: this documentary is brutal and contains a lot of death and misery.[/B]
This is a classic doc, thanks for sharing. Not only is it an important landmark in film history, it still holds up as a powerful film. And it's a great reminder why Nazis should still be seen as the bad guys.
Our history teacher in 9th grade showed us the entire thing in class. For most of my classmates it was their first time actually seeing atrocities against humans outside of movies where it's glorified into a spectacle. A few left the classroom at the bulldozer.
This shit is a must watch for everyone.
No matter how many times I see it, the atrocities of the holocaust hit me to the very core. Every fucking time. Goddamn...
This needs to be seen. It's worth your time.
This reminds me of a doc about the Holodomor, since the actions taken were fairly similar, especially in regards to “just dump the bodies in a grave doesn’t matter if it all of them are dead”.
Humanity has seen genocide before, but never so...industrialized. It’s nearly impossible to wrap ones mind around the death of a single person they know, and to think about 11+ million? Fucks you up if you think about it for too long
Stuff like this and the fact that I spent a lot of time studying WW2 as part of my work at university is part of the reason why I don't think any tolerance should be given to neo-nazi movements. And its extremely frustrating seeing so many people today defending them.
[QUOTE=EcksDee;52819963]Our history teacher in 9th grade showed us the entire thing in class. For most of my classmates it was their first time actually seeing atrocities against humans outside of movies where it's glorified into a spectacle. A few left the classroom at the bulldozer.
This shit is a must watch for everyone.[/QUOTE]
No one outright left when the bad stuff started to happen, but there were points where you could hear people start to shuffle uncomfortably in their chairs. The guy dead with his eyes wide open was a strong one for many people, but the bulldozer caused a wave of discomfort you could practically feel take the room.
It's an incredibly efficient and timeless documentary piece. Even the last bit about the surviving perpetrators of the holocaust, while fairly outdated in its most literal take (it was shot barely more than a decade after the war and those perpetrators were in some part still out there), can still be taken as a very solid statement about those who, today, try to promote the same ideals, hiding behind a friendly facade or abusing the inherent rights of Democracy to advertise ideals which to their core are meant to kill it.
Thanks for posting this.
For some reason what hit me wasn't the bulldozer but the warehouse of hair, and the rest of the processes using their corpses. I wish we saw this movie in primary school. We did however visit two concentration camps, I just wish it was more in a serious setting as everybody was just giddy from traveling outside the country. I will never understand anyone who wants to associate themselves with the masterminds of the genocide of 11 million people. While I can see some white nationalists viewpoints even if I very strongly disagree with them (race purity etc) I can never, ever understand wanting to brand yourself as a nazi or neonazi.
[QUOTE=Zillamaster55;52820020]This reminds me of a doc about the Holodomor, since the actions taken were fairly similar, especially in regards to “just dump the bodies in a grave doesn’t matter if it all of them are dead”.
Humanity has seen genocide before, but never so...industrialized. It’s nearly impossible to wrap ones mind around the death of a single person they know, and to think about 11+ million? Fucks you up if you think about it for too long[/QUOTE]
Technically yes, but before the Holocaust any genocide was only called that retroactively. The Holocaust was so uniquely evil and awful they had to come up with a new word for it.
I remember we saw something similar in school and a bunch of kids proceeded to just make gas chamber jokes all day after bullshitting during the movie.
Kids suck.
[QUOTE=JeSuisIkea;52822177]I remember we saw something similar in school and a bunch of kids proceeded to just make gas chamber jokes all day after bullshitting during the movie.
Kids suck.[/QUOTE]
Why in the hell would you ever show a documentary like this to kids.
Fuck me, those rooms filled to the brim with human hair was one of the most shocking and disgusting things I have ever seen. Had no idea that was a thing.
[editline]26th October 2017[/editline]
[QUOTE=ClauAmericano;52822228]Why in the hell would you ever show a documentary like this to kids.[/QUOTE]
Kids are less "hardened" for lack of a better term. Stuff like this hits them, and will remain with them for life. I have a feeling that, if many of today's modern neo-nazi's had seen atrocities such as this, in detail such as this, they wouldn't be the piles of shit they are today.
I have many vivid, visual memories of stuff like this that I saw when I was younger; whether it was from history books, documentaries, or just stuff I saw online, it all stuck with me. This is interesting since I don't inherently have a photographic type of memory.
If these images were able to break through that limitation and stay with me all these years later, I'd imagine it'd do the same for other kids.
I guess I understand the idea of showing it to kids so they can hold onto it, but why not just wait until they're at least teenagers to show them?
Even if you show this to kids I feel like they'd just remember the imaginary and not the actual context since we're talking about a french documentary with eng subs, waiting until they're at least 12+ would help them comprehend the gravity of this time in history better.
[QUOTE=ClauAmericano;52822305]I guess I understand the idea of showing it to kids so they can hold onto it, but why not just wait until they're at least teenagers to show them?
Even if you show this to kids I feel like they'd just remember the imaginary and not the actual context since we're talking about a french documentary with eng subs, waiting until they're at least 12+ would help them comprehend the gravity of this time in history better.[/QUOTE]
Well hopefully, they'd further expand on the holocaust through their teenage years. I know here in Canada, a portion of Grade 10 history was devoted to WW2, and a large chunk of that was Holocaust related(we talked about WW1 and 2 in prior years, but just as a broad subject). We unfortunately didn't see anything as grim as this, but we did watch Schindler's List if I recall correctly.
The way I see it is, if they were shown these images in their youth, and they do in fact go on to retain that image in their heads, all the way to their teenage years, then they would be able to paint a picture that corresponds to the sickening words they read on the subject.
It baffles me how people can deny this happened.
I knew a couple of dudes who did, and their logic was pure retardation. They saw this one shitty documentary on youtube and that was enough to convince them.
I vividly remember getting into an argument with one of them over it. The only """""evidence""""" he could provide was a grainy picture of a wooden door that he claimed was for a gas chamber and "wood cant stop gas"
They also did the same thing to 9/11 as well, just watched one or two crap youtube video about it and suddenly they believe its all a hoax.
I dont talk to these morons anymore and havent for years now. After that bullshit I just cut contact with them.
Also one of them was german, and isnt it illegal to openly deny the holocaust over there? The dude also openly hated jews and put swastikas up all over his forum. Im 90% sure thats also illegal in germany.
Also a part that stuck with kids at the time where they showed it to us in class was the mention of the weight of the prisoners. I don't think any of them in the classroom really understood until that point just how truly famished the the inmates were until the documentary mentioned the fact they weighed 66 pounds on average.
Also, to throw in a little piece of trivia, this documentary back at release, despite being met with overall extremely positive feedback, was also criticized by some for this:
[img]http://la-feuille-de-chou.fr/wp-content/photos/nuit_et_brouillard2-dcac4.jpg[/img]
That cap on the left is a [url=http://www.compagnie-des-uniformes.com/upload/catalogue/KEBGDDTMJSCz1WEB.jpg]Gendarme Kepi[/url], very typical of the French police hard to mistake for anything else. The documentary tends to keep the nationality of the perpetrators out of the picture: there's actually relatively few mentions if any at all of the guards being specifically German, bar the fact most of them were SS, and this picture is here to remind us that our own respected authors of authority have also partaken in the horror at the time.
People were rather vocally opposed to the showing of this picture, because this was at a time where De Gaulle's big resistance lie was still fresh and people had yet to snap out of the whole "we liberated ourselves and were never collaborators" mindset (which has in great part faded away now). As much praise as people wanted to give the film, they were still extremely anxious at the idea of acknowledging [I]their[/I] nation's part in it. This is how the picture was in most versions of the documentary until as late as 1997:
[t]http://la-feuille-de-chou.fr/wp-content/photos/pithiviers_sans_kepi2-070ae.jpg[/t]
I think the liveleak version I've posted uses the uncensored version of this picture, since the quality does match. I can't find the exact timestamp.
The entire issue, repeated censorship or unwillingness to approach the issue and silence from those who had lived through it notably were the basis for this song:
[media]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3k8VsijdTwo[/media]
Which is basically one giant call-out of people who wanted to shut the whole issue up and refused to talk about the holocaust after it happened (basically going "why talk about sad things, just ignore it and sing about happy things"). And, sadly rather unsurprisingly, the government at the time tried to censor it so as to not disturb political motions towards a reconciliation with Germany. Thankfully several radio hosts simply refused to appeal to the censor and broadcasted it anyway, which lead to vast appreciation of the song and a strong bolstering of the "never forget" mentality that we still have today about the holocaust.
You can find translated lyrics [url=http://lyricstranslate.com/fr/nuit-et-brouillard-night-and-fog.html]here[/url] but I am uncertain about their quality. They still get the point across.
[QUOTE=ClauAmericano;52822305]I guess I understand the idea of showing it to kids so they can hold onto it, but why not just wait until they're at least teenagers to show them?
Even if you show this to kids I feel like they'd just remember the imaginary and not the actual context since we're talking about a french documentary with eng subs, waiting until they're at least 12+ would help them comprehend the gravity of this time in history better.[/QUOTE]
show them an english language documentary like [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ziYO5s1Jgo]German Concentration Camps Factual Survey[/url]
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