I a Jew. I have been to holocaust museums in Philadelphia, Washington, and in Israel and I have never seen something so grabbing and graphic.
The film instantly put me on edge with its ominous and daunting music. I became truly terrified when the music became heavier and they started to show shots of the train. I was immersed in a nightmare when the train pulled into the concentration camp as night with soldiers silhouetted in the fog. I knew what was to come next. I had heard stories from survivors, I have seen pictures of the shower houses and the camps themselves, but I have never seen something so graphic. I have never seen a starved human rag doll. I have never looked into the stare of a beheaded human head. I have never seen people carry the skulls of another human and put them in a row next to other skulls. This film took me to a living hell and I never want to see it again.
But that is the point of the film as it ends with “It can happen again” which are the only words shown through out the movie. It could happen again. I write this with Newtown in mind and in the wake of Texas and know that mass shootings have happened again and again, as have genocides. We now have the means to capture the true hell that these events are; we now have cameras. We have always had people to tell us stories and artifacts to bring back, and statistics to point to, but we have never had cameras. We can now capture the true graphics of an event and show them to people. This is one of the most disturbing films I have ever seen and I never want to see it again and I will damn make sure I do everything I can to prevent another genocide. But after saying Newtown I might say the same thing, but I don’t feel the same way. I don’t feel that same disgust and unease after watching Newtown as I did after Night and the Fog. Maybe we do need to see the graphic, to understand the full story and to feel the whole set of emotion. Maybe instead of arming everyone with a gun, we need to arm them with cameras.