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At the end of the Second World War, following negotiations with the State of Israel and with Jewish organizations around the world, the German government decided to compensate the Jewish survivors of the concentration camps by offering them a spa treatment every two years. The shooting of this documentary film, which takes place mainly in the town of Evian-les-Bains, features the collective confrontation and respective testimonies of former Jewish deportees, including Solange Najman, the director's own mother.
Director
Writer
Status
Released
Original Language
FR
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".
Through deeply personal interviews with her siblings and an examination of the photographs, letters, and belongings left behind, Mariska assembles a new portrait of her mother Jayne Mansfield, an extraordinary and complex woman.
