A Painful Reminder: Evidence for All Mankind (1985)
A Painful Reminder: Evidence for All Mankind (1985) This Discovery Channel documentary about a uniquely gruesome film that was made in soon after WW II, was not released. Originally, it was designed to be a filmed record of Nazi atrocities in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, liberated by British forces in April 1945. Sidney Bernstein had worked with the Psychological Warfare Division in SHAEF (Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force) and saw the opportunity to film Bergen-Belsen as soon as it came into Allied hands. Later, Bernstein obtained films of other camps liberated by the Americans and Russians and integrated some of them into the final product.
Bernstein’s film, or parts of it, were shown to German POWs in American captivity. At first, the German POWs refused to believe what they saw, but they were so disturbed that they talked about it in their barracks. Originally, the film makers held that the entire German people were responsible for this mass horror. The British government finally shelved the production and never showed it publicly. Much of what subsequently has become stock footage of the Holocaust was initially assembled by Sidney Bernstein.
Robert C. Doyle Franciscan University of Steubenville rcdoyle@sbsglobal.net
