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Originally Posted by Botnst
I was just watching CNN and they interviewed an old fellow who was a WWII veteran. The old guy had been with the 101st and fought across Europe from Normandy to Germany and seen death and destruction on all sides. He had gotten accustomed to it on some level so that he could deal with the combat. He said that when his unit liberated a concentration camp that he wept for those prisoners, living and dead.
Back in the 1960's, shortly after Eichmann was executed, I think (I was living in 'lanta then), there was a TV show seen through the eyes of a concentration camp survivor. It juxtaposed historic film with a moddern visit by the survivor, I think in Poland but I'm not certain. I only saw it once and I couldn't have been more than 13 or 14 but the show has haunted me to this day. It was titled, "I Remember", I think. Coincidentally there was an old woman down the street from us who would walk the street early in the morning singing yiddish songs. Her voice was not pretty and we kids thought she was crazy-scarey. She was a large woman and walked funny, a large limp. My Dad told us kids that she had been in a camp liberated late in the war. The walking wounded I remember.
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Have you ever seen the French (sorry, couldn't resist to mention that
) documentary 'Shoah' by Claude Lanzman? I believe it was made in the 80's. It's an 8-hour or so production that consists mainly of plain interviews with all sorts of victims and perpetrators, also on location. The programme was on TV here again recently. Because the film style is so plain, it's very compelling stuff. There's a scene in a barbershop in Israel where this barber tells (while he's working) about his time in Birkenau where he was assigned to cut the hair of the victms before they were gassed. Horrifying stories, particularly about the moment when he has to cut the hair of his relatives (I believe even his sister).