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Film producer Gene Gutowski (Repulsion, Cul-de-Sac, The Pianist) was fourteen years old when first the Soviets then the Nazis invaded his hometown of Lwow, Poland. With a combination of chutzpah, street smarts and an unflinching will to live, he spent the war flirting with danger as a teenage Jew hiding in plain site. Witnessing first-hand the unspeakable horrors of the Nazi occupation, frequently cheating death himself and losing his entire family in the process, Gutowski's story is ultimately one of hope. As recounted with humor and pathos to his son, filmmaker Adam Bardach, his remarkable survival tale represents a thumb of the nose at darkness and totalitarianism.
Director
Status
Released
Original Language
EN
When Allied forces liberated the Nazi concentration camps in 1944-45, their terrible discoveries were recorded by army and newsreel cameramen, revealing for the first time the full horror of what had happened. Making use of British, Soviet and American footage, the Ministry of Information’s Sidney Bernstein (later founder of Granada Television) aimed to create a documentary that would provide lasting, undeniable evidence of the Nazis’ unspeakable crimes. He commissioned a wealth of British talent, including editor Stewart McAllister, writer and future cabinet minister Richard Crossman – and, as treatment advisor, his friend Alfred Hitchcock. Yet, despite initial support from the British and US Governments, the film was shelved, and only now, 70 years on, has it been restored and completed by Imperial War Museums under its original title "German Concentration Camps Factual Survey".
