Who were the victims rounded up and loaded into trains to concentration and extermination camps? If viewers on this "documentary," they would assume they were a virtual United Nations of religions and ethnicities, rather than almost all of Europe's Jews. There is only one religious symbol on any victim. And that's a cross. And only one victim is identified. He's called a "Polish engineer."
Then there's the gratuitous humiliation of the victims by the filmmakers. The Nazis had already deprived them of every semblance of privacy and modesty. So the makers of this documentary piled,on by lingering on the breasts of the women bathing after their liberators provided them with hot water . And each skeletal male had to be shown in full frontal nudity as their liberators dragged them who-knows-where. The filmmakers couldn't be bothered with focusing above their genitals, just as their "saviors" couldn't be bothered with carrying these half-dead creatures on a litter
And then there's Trevor Howard 's eccentric narration delivered in a tone that can best be described as ironic. The wrongheadedness of this entire project perhaps can be summarized when Howard asks about the child captives, "what crime did they commit?" to bring them to this terrible state? The mindless implication is that the millions of adults murdered by the Nazis and their accomplices might somehow not be innocent.
There is now a vast repertory of thoughtful and informative documentaries about the Holocaust. This tasteless and ill-informed project isn't among them.
Then there's the gratuitous humiliation of the victims by the filmmakers. The Nazis had already deprived them of every semblance of privacy and modesty. So the makers of this documentary piled,on by lingering on the breasts of the women bathing after their liberators provided them with hot water . And each skeletal male had to be shown in full frontal nudity as their liberators dragged them who-knows-where. The filmmakers couldn't be bothered with focusing above their genitals, just as their "saviors" couldn't be bothered with carrying these half-dead creatures on a litter
And then there's Trevor Howard 's eccentric narration delivered in a tone that can best be described as ironic. The wrongheadedness of this entire project perhaps can be summarized when Howard asks about the child captives, "what crime did they commit?" to bring them to this terrible state? The mindless implication is that the millions of adults murdered by the Nazis and their accomplices might somehow not be innocent.
There is now a vast repertory of thoughtful and informative documentaries about the Holocaust. This tasteless and ill-informed project isn't among them.