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September 1943: the Special Court of Oldenburg pronounces a verdict against an office courier. The man was found guilty of absconding two bars of soap and a tin of shoe polish. As a dangerous public enemy, he is sentenced to death. More than 16,000 death sentences were passed by the Special Court and the People's Court during the Nazi era. And the judges and state prosecutors who perpetrated these injustices were back on the bench after 1945. Peggy Parnass, a Jewish journalist and a relative of victims of Nazi injustices, experienced this continuity and described many of its ramifications in more than 10 years as a court reporter. The film follows her radical, subjective viewpoint and her incredible encounters with Nazi jurists in today's courts of law.
Status
Released
Original Language
DE
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".
