At the synagogue where I happened to be singing last Saturday, the rabbi wrapped up her regular notices with a timely exhortation to her congregants to try to watch the André Singer documentary Night Will Fall.
In 1945, as the Allied forces fought their way across Europe, in the process uncovering the hideous network of Nazi death and slave-labour camps, film producer Sidney Bernstein was despatched by the Ministry of Information to lead a few dozen army cameramen tasked with documenting the astonishing extent of the German atrocities.
The project was intended to serve not merely as a current affairs update for the edification (and/or mortification) of the British public, but as evidence for the criminal trials which were certain to follow and an incontrovertible document to be placed before the (now occupied) German population. Considerable thought was given to ensuring that no-one could subsequently claim any of the footage had been faked.
The cameramen went around the camps for weeks, required by the nature of their brief to record the situation in appalling detail.
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