Night Will Fall Page #3

They used the camera

in a very specific way.

It was there was a...

it began to directed

to collect evidence,

to gather evidence.

So one of the difficulties

about filming an atrocity

or a... is that in order to

reveal that a person has

been murdered or brutalized,

what you have to do is

you have to reveal that

by getting close to the person

because you have to show

the wounds, have to give

some indication

of how they've been killed.

Now that went against

the tradition previously

of combat cameramen,

where they'd shied away

from representing or

recording scenes of people

who'd been killed or brutalized.

For Bernstein,

the visit to Bergen-Belsen

was galvanizing.

On his return to London,

he began planning

a full-length documentary.

Its purpose was clear

from guidelines he issued

to the Allied cameramen.

My instructions were

to film everything

which would prove

one day that this

had actually happened.

It'd be a lesson to all mankind,

as well as to the Germans

for whom the film that we were

putting together was

designed, to show

to the German people

because most of them

on our way down

and on the troops' way down

had denied they knew

anything about the camps.

This would be the evidence

which we could show them.

First of all, I

wanted them to record that

all the local bigwigs

and people,

the municipal burgomaster

and like,

who lived within

a reasonable range

saw what was being done,

burying these tragic figures.

Some of the Germans we

brought in to be filmed

when the bodies were being

buried in the pit

just couldn't look anymore.

I wanted to prove

that they had seen it

so there was evidence

because I guessed rightly that

most people would deny

that it happened.

Bernstein also used footage

of German SS officers

helping with the worst

of the tasks in the camp.

There was

an urgent need to get rid

of as many bodies as possible

as quickly as possible,

so all the SS were set to work.

500 Hungarian troops

captured with the SS

were started

on a grave digging operation.

Here. Here.

No. Here. Here.

The SS

themselves were made to do

the unpleasant job they had

forced the inmates to do.

This, after all, was

nothing to these men.

They, the Master Race, had

been taught to be hard.

They could kill in cold blood,

and it seemed

to the British soldier

fit and proper that

the killers should bury

the nameless,

hopeless creatures

they had starved to death.

The army film units

had no sound equipment.

It wasn't until news teams

arrived that Bernstein

was able to access

some sound recordings.

Today's the 24th of April 1945.

My name is Gunner Illingworth,

and I live in Cheshire.

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