Having attended various Jewish schools for all my life until high school, I have been exposed to the events of the Holocaust extensively. Relatives of friends experienced it, I took a course on it in eighth grade, I read books such as Night and heard Elie Wiesel speak about it. Throughout high school, my participation in Hillel allowed me to stay close to the subject. Recently, however, I have not engaged in any activities directly causing me to think about the Holocaust. The acute emotional nature of Night and Fog did just this. On a purely personal note, I am so glad to have been assigned to watch this film for this reason. One of the most important things we must learn from the events of the Holocaust is to remember, so that history does not repeat itself. It is a terrifying thought for humanity to forget this genocide, and it’s scary when a period of time goes by in which I do not think about it to an extent of more than just a few minutes.
It is easy while watching this film to be so focused on the content itself that you ignore the documentarian. You watch the film and are so shocked and horrified by what you are seeing that you barely think of the person who actually put it together, who had to go through that footage over and over again. And not only that, he travelled to those places. Pieced together exactly what had happened at each bed, in each building, where he stepped. If the film can have such a capability to influence viewers, it is hard to imagine the emotional toll it could have taken on the filmmaker. This shows a similar kind of bravery to that of Kim Snyder, and how far it is sometimes necessary to go for telling truth and teaching morality.