Night and Fog

(In color): We are moving at a walking pace across a verdant 
landscape; a blue sky filled with fluffy clouds. 

	[Narrator:] "A peaceful landscape ..."

Barbed wire nailed to high wooden posts. Then moving along 
another field; a cottage on the horizon; birds take wing.

	"An ordinary field with flights of crows, 
	harvests, grass fires." 

Moving along another fence,the wires severed and limp. 

	"An ordinary road where cars and peasants 
	and lovers pass." 

Moving past abundant grass in bright sunlight. Two walls of 
wire appear, weeds growing high between them, a watchtower 
in the distance. 

	"An ordinary village for vacationers - 
	with a marketplace and a steeple - can 
	lead all too easily to a concentration 
	camp." 

A camp today, surrounded by wires and posts cutting across 
the field. 

	"Struthof, Oranienburg, Auschwitz, 
	Neuengamme, Belsen, Ravensbruck and 
	Dachau were names like any others on maps 
	and in guidebooks." 

Still moving, a closer view of the maze of wires, with weeds 
growing around the fence posts. 

	"The blood has dried, the tongues are 
	silent. The blocks are visited only by a 
	camera. Weeds have grown where the 
	prisoners used to walk. No footstep is 
	heard but our own." 

Passing row after row of barbed wire.

(From color to black and white): Nazi soldiers marching in 
unison, rigid as the fence posts.

	1933 -- The machine gets underway. 

A rally hall, soldiers parading; stiff-arm salutes; a 
procession begins, with banners bearing the swastika, 
banners reading DEUTSCHLAND ERWACHE. An officer reviews 
marching columns of the Nazi military power; Hitler, 
standing in an open car, salutes the troops. An ecstatic 
crowd waving and cheering; buildings draped with swastika 
banners. Streicher, the Nazi newspaper boss, punctuates his 
speech with a fist.

	A nation must have no discord.

A fist strikes a drum. Two youth beat a drum roll. Hitler 
is on a podium, making a speech.
 
	No questions. 

Bare-chested men, standing in military formation, hold 
spades on their shoulders like rifles.

	They get to work. 

In unison, the spades are lowered to their sides.

Marshes extend for miles.

	A concentration camp is built like, a 
	stadium or a big hotel. 

Men in the field survey the land.

	You need contractors, estimates, 
	competitive bids. 

A steam shovel hangs motionless from a factory rig.

	And no doubt a bribe or two. 

Wooden watchtowers in trees. Watchtowers with sloped roofs, 
slanted roofs, flat roofs, each overlooking a barbed-wire 
barrier. 

	Any style will do. It's left to the 
	imagination. Swiss style; garage style; 
	Japanese style; no style at all. 

Buildings resembling villas at the entrance to a camp. 

	The architects calmly plan the gates 
	through which no one will enter more than 
	once. 

Spelled out in ironwork above an entrance gate: 
ARBEITSLAGER TRZEBINIA.

	Meanwhile -- Burgher, a German Communist; 
	Stern, a Jewish student from Amsterdam; 

Another main building of the camp, its gate closed, a 
crane towering over the camp.
   
	Schmulszki, a merchant in Cracow; 

Rows of flat barracks bounded by barbed wire. 

	Annette, a schoolgirl in Bordeaux--

High stone walls seclude a camp beyond. 

	All go on living their everyday lives, 

Rows of barracks with rounded roofs.
 
	Not knowing that there is a place, a 
	thousand miles away, already awaiting 
	them.
 
Rows of barracks with slanted roofs.
   
	The day comes when their quarters are 
	finished. 

A camp extending for miles.
   
	Nothing is missing but the occupants.

Arms raised above their heads, men, women, and children 
being gathered at gunpoint; a soldier pointing his rifle at 
a frightened child.
 
	Rounded up in Warsaw,
 
Streets packed with people being herded by soldiers; some of 
the people carry sacks on their backs; the Jews wear a star 
on their coats.

	Deported from Lodz, from Prague, Brussels, 
	Athens, 

A closer view of the patch on the coats -- two cloth 
triangles sewn in the shape of a star; many carry their few 
belongings; a Nazi officer smiles.

	From Zagreb, Odessa, or Rome.
 
Children, directed by a uniformed woman, file into a boxcar.
 
	Interned at Pithiviers ...

Nazi officers standing idle near the barracks, awaiting the 
arrival of transports. Hundreds of those to be transported 
gather at the depot; some stand and wait, others sleep on 
the stairs.
 
	Arrested at the Vel-d'Hiv ... 

Men file by -- as always, under scrutiny.

	Members of the Resistance herded at 
	Compiègne ... 

The depot filled to capacity, the platform a mass of 
deportees. 

	All those caught in the act, arrested by 
	mistake, or chosen at random, make their 
	way toward the camps.
 
A woman rocks her infant in her lap, a friend stroking the 
child's head. A woman stares into space; the aged sleep 
around her. The crowd moves onto a train; officers examining 
papers. A bearded man and three children hurry along the 
platform, the children bewildered, frightened. A woman in a 
cart is wheeled to the train, her suitcase at her feet. 
Officers chat at the depot, checking off the deportees. 
Prisoners march into boxcars. A child peers through a crack 
in the door. A hand waves farewell from within the train, 
as soldiers with rifles lock the doors. The train departs, 
as the officers look on. Soldiers board the runways of the 
moving train; car after car rolls by.

	Sealed trains, bolted. One hundred 
	deportees to every car. No night, no day; 
	just hunger, thirst, suffocation, and 
	madness.
 
A scrap of paper drops from a rushing train.
 
 	A message flutters down -- and sometimes 
	is picked up. Death makes its first 
	choice. A second is made on arrival in 
	the night and fog.
 
A train steams into a depot, glowing in the night like a 
furnace; soldiers await the transports with guns poised in 
the fog. 

(From black and white to color): Moving along an abandoned 
railroad track, the rails gleaming in the sun, with weeds, 
grass and flowers growing among the ties.
 
 	Today, along the same tracks, the sun 
	shines. Go slowly along it, looking for 
	what? For a trace of the corpses that 
	fell out of the cars when the doors were 
	opened? Or the footprints of those first 
	arrivals, driven toward camp at gunpoint 
	while dogs barbed, searchlights wheeled, 
	and the incinerator flamed in the 
	distance. ... 

(Black and white): A watchtower looms over a camp recessed 
in trees; the entrance gate promises ARBEIT MACHT FREI. 

	In one of those nocturnal settings so 
	beloved by the Nazis. 

A startled face, eyes wide with disbelief.

	First sight of the camp.
 
Throngs of people, naked and clothed, fill the yard of the 
camp.
  
 	It is another planet.
    
Rows of bewildered, naked men, some of them hiding their 
genitals with their hands.

	"For the sake of hygiene," they are 
	delivered to the camp stark naked, these 
	men who have already been humiliated.
 
A scalp.
  
	Shaved, 

A marked arm. 

	Tattooed, 

A numbered patch on a uniform. 

	Numbered, 

Two triangles in the shape of a star on a striped sleeve. 

	Dressed in blue striped uniforms, caught 
	up in the game of a still incomprehensible 
	hierarchy, 

The letters N N daubed in white paint on the back of a shirt. 

	Sometimes classified as Nacht und Nebel 
	-- Night and Fog. 

Various homemade triangles sewn onto shirts.
 
	Political deportees with their red 
	triangles meet the green triangles: 
	common criminals, masters in the ranks. 

An arm band spelling Kapo. 

	Above them, the Kapo.

An arrestingly brutish, bloated face. 

	Almost always: a common criminal.

An officer; in the background striped prisoners marching to 
the barracks.

	Still higher: the S.S., the untouchable. 
	One addresses him four four yards away.
 
Another officer, this one smiling, posing for a snapshot on 
the parapet above a concentration camp.
 
	Highest of all: the Commandant. From afar 
	he presides over the rites. He pretends to 
	know nothing of the camp.
 
(Into color, moving): A maze of wire, a stone camp, and 
wooden barracks set in luxurious grass, framed by the sky 
and warmed by a bright sun.
 
 	And who does know anything? Is it in vain 
	that we in our turn try to remember. What 
	remains of the reality of these camps --
	despised by those who made them, 
	incomprehensible to those who suffered 
	here? These wooden barracks, these beds 
	where three people slept, these burrows 
	where people hid, where they furtively 
	ate, and where sleep itself was perilous.
 
Inside, moving along a row or triple-tiered wooden beds; 
there is sunlight spilling into the empty barracks; the row 
of beds goes on and on.
 
 	No description, no picture can restore 
	their true dimension: endless, 
	uninterrupted fear. We would need the 
	very mattress where scraps of food were 
	hidden, the blanket that was fought over, 
	the shouts and curses, the orders repeated 
	in every tongue, the sudden appearance of 
	the S.S., seized with a desire for a spot 
	check or for a practical joke. Of this 
	brick dormitory, of these threatened 
	sleepers, we can only show you the shell, 
	the shadow.
 
Moving along a corridor of cubicles with wooden planks 
ranged up each wall and embedded in brick -- three "beds" 
per cubicle for prisoners to sleep on.
 
Outdoors, still moving: soft grass, vivid flowers, and then 
sunlit brick buildings.
 
 	Here is the setting: buildings that might 
	be stables, garages, workshops. A piece 
	of land that's become a wasteland, an 
	autumn sky indifferent to everything.
 
(Black and white): Night silhouettes the distant camp, the 
watchtower and barbed wire; a speck of light flickers in 
the distance, the moon above the watchtower.
 
	This is all that is left us to evoke a 
	night shattered by screams, by 
	inspections, by lice, a night of 
	chattering teeth. Get to sleep quickly.
 
An endless row of cubicles; the prisoners in their quarters: 
the three-tiered beds cramped beyond capacity, three 
prisoners to each bed. Shaved and starved they stare at the 
viewer.
 
 	Waking at the crack of dawn, they stumble 
	over one another, looking for stolen 
	belongings. The interminable roll call in 
	the Appelplatz. Those who died in the 
	night always confuse the bookkeeping. An 
	orchestra plays a march from some operetta 
	at the time to leave for the quarry or the 
	factory.
 
A conductor leads a band of woodwinds, brass and strings; 
soldiers guarding the prisoners outside the camp.
 
Prisoners march in the snow, Nazi soldiers bringing up the rear. 

	Work in the snow that soon becomes frozen 
	mud. 

Men behind a barbed wire fence scraping the ditches and 
loading carts with stones; an endless stream of men with 
picks and shovels and poles.
 
	Work in the August sun -- thirst and 
	dysentery. 

An endless flight of sun-baked steps.
 
	Three thousand Spaniards died building 
	this staircase that leads to the 
	Mauthausen quarry.
 
A mass of white rock -- a black pit for its entrance. An 
empty, underground factory. Bulbs from the ceiling light 
the dreary workshops. The machines are still.

	Work in the underground factories. Month 
	after month, they burrow, they bury, they 
	hide, they kill. The factories all have 
	women's names: Dora, Laura.
 
Men in striped clothes work at machines in a dismal, 
cavelike factory, with soldiers on guard.
 
	But these foreign workmen who weigh 
	seventy pounds are unreliable. The S.S. 
	watches them, supervises them. 

The factory is filled with smoke and steam as the prisoners 
work, drilling and welding; an S.S. officer standing over 
them. 

	He reassembles, inspects them, and 
	searches them before they return to camp.
 
With shaved and bowed heads, prisoners file along the road. 
Road signs point the way to camp.
 
	Signs in rustic style direct everyone home.

A score sheet -- a column for each day. We see tallies of 
94, 57, 60.
 
	The Kapo has only to count the day's 
	victims.
 
Prisoners in uniforms sit hunched over; a man staring 
blankly, his chin in his hands.
 
 	The deportee returns to the obsession 
	which rules his life and dreams: food.
 
Behind barbed wire, men crouch with their bowls of soup. 

	Soup. Each spoon is priceless. One spoon 
	less is one less day to live.
 
The prisoners share their food.
   
	You swap two or three cigarettes for a 
	pan of soup. 

The men crowd together, their hands raised above their 
heads; some sit while others rest in a heap on the pavement. 

	Many are too weak to defend their ration 
	against thieves. 

Moving along black barbed wire and rows of barracks, framed 
against the snow.

	They wait for the mud or snow to take 
	them. At last to stretch out somewhere, 
	anywhere, and at least have one's death 
	to oneself.
 
(Into color): Moving now down a corridor of latrines, dozens 
and dozens of neatly cut black holes in an interminable 
public toilet bench; eventually, sunlight on the concrete 
blocks.
 
 	The latrines and their approaches. 
	Skeletons with babies' bellies came here 
	seven or eight times a night. The soup 
	guaranteed that. Woe to him who met a 
	drunken Kapo in the moonlight. They 
	watched one another in fear, on the 
	lookout for the familiar symptoms. "To 
	pass blood" was the sign of death. The 
	black market: clandestine buying there, 
	clandestine selling there; even 
	clandestine killing there. You met with 
	your friends there, exchanged news and 
	rumors, organized resistance groups. A 
	society took shape, made in the image of 
	terror. Less mad though than that of the 
	S.S. whose precepts ran:

(In black and white): REINLICHKEIT IST GESUNDHEIT.
 
	"Cleanliness is health." 

The iron gate with ARBEIT MACHT FREI spelled out across the 
top.
   
	"Work is freedom." 

Soldiers behind a gate reading JEDEM DAS SEINE.
 
	"To each his due." 

A skull painted on a sign: EINE LAUS DEIN TOD! 

	"A louse means death!" What about an S.S. 
	man then?
 
An orchestra arranged in a semicircle, officers idly 
standing around.

	Each camp has its surprises: a symphony 
	orchestra. 

A bear crouching on a mound of snow. 

	A zoo.
 
A row of sun-filled glass buildings.
   
	Hothouses where Himmler cultivates 
	delicate plants. 

A majestic oak in front of a camp.
 
	Goethe's oak tree at Buchenwald. They 
	built the camp around it, because they 
	respected the oak tree.
 
Wide-eyed children march in the snow; they are wrapped in 
rags. 

	An orphanage, transient but constantly 
	replenished. 

A column of hopping amputees supported by their crutches; 
stumps replace their legs.
   
	A barracks for the disabled.
 
Barbed wire strung tightly on posts; beyond it, homes, a 
village. 

	Then the real world of peaceful 
	landscapes, the world of the past, it 
	seems far off -- yet not so far.

(Into color, moving): A view of the barracks and buildings 
seen through watchtower windows.
 
	For the deportee it was an image. He 
	belonged only to this finite, closed 
	universe defined by watchtowers from which 
	the conduct of the camp was studied by 
	soldiers constantly watching the deportees 
	and, on occasion, killing them out of 
	boredom. 

(Black and white): A man clawing a barbed wire fence, his 
mouth hanging open, his nose bleeding; he is dead. Another 
prisoner ripped and spiked on the wires, a man strolling in 
the distance. Uniformed prisoners lie on the ground. Rows 
of naked men: the young, the old, the young grown old; a 
column of shaven heads, prominent ribs, distended bellies; 
men shielding their bodies with their hands. 

	Anything is a pretext for bullying, for 
	punishment. For humiliation. The roll 
	call lasts two hours.
  
A man being whipped and kicked; a soldier looks on.
 
	A badly made bed means twenty lashes of 
	the cane. 

With hands on hips, the guards watch the prisoners work.
 
 	Pass unnoticed. Make no sign to the gods. 

A gallows; the noose hanging empty and still.
 
	They have their gallows, their sacrificial 
	ground.

An empty courtyard: trees seclude the yard, the gallows cast 
a shadow on a bullet-riddled wall.
 
	This yard in Block XI, quite out of sight, 
	has been specially arranged for executions, 
	with its walls protected against 
	ricocheting bullets. 

A view of a castle.

	This is the castle of Hartheim where 
	coaches with smoked window's brought 
	passengers we shall never see again.
 
A cloud of dust trails a moving truck with a cargo of human 
beings. 

	Black transport trucks that leave in the 
	night and of which no one will ever know 
	anything. 

A handmade toy soldier.
 
	Yet man has incredible powers of 
	resistance. When the body is worn out with
	fatigue, the mind goes on working. Hands 
	covered with bandages go on working. They 
	make spoons, marionettes which they 
	carefully hide. 

A toy crocodile. 

	Monsters.
 
A handmade match box. 

	Boxes.
 
Notes scratched on papers.
 
	They managed to write, make notes.

A French menu.

	Train the memory with dreams.
 
A Hebrew Scripture.
 
 	They can think of God.
 
Two men huddle together, looking about cautiously. 

	They even come to organize politically, 
	disputing with the common criminals their 
	right to control the internal life of the 
	camp.
 
A sick and aged man stands wrapped in a blanket. 

	They look after friends worse off than 
	themselves. 

Men lie feebly on the ground. Inmates support the sick under 
their arms.

	They set up centers for mutual aid.
 
(Into color): Moving in on a brick hospital, its façade 
bright with sun.
 
 	As a last resort and with anguished hearts, 
	they take the dying to the hospital -- the 
	"dream house." Approach this door and you 
	had the hallucination of real sickness, 
	the dream of a real bed. And you ran the 
	risk of death by injection.
 
(Black and white): Wooden beds with thin mattresses; and men 
lying wrapped in blankets and bandages, their limbs shrunk 
to the bone. A husk of a man lies still in his bed, his 
bones bulging his tissue-thin skin; his leg twitches.

	The medicines are a mockery, the 
	dressings mere paper.
 
A man writhes in his blankets, his medicine glass and spoon 
on a nearby table.

	The same ointment is used on every sore. 
	Sometimes the starving eat their 
	dressings.
 
A double berth: below, a man's chest heaves; above, a man 
with a skeletal body stares wildly.
 
	Eventually, the deportees come to look 
	alike, conforming to a model that has no 
	age but dies with its eyes wide open.
 
(In color): Moving among the buildings; the hospital again. 

	There was a surgical block. It almost 
	looked like a real clinic. 

(Black and white): The fat face of a balding, spectacled 
doctor. 

	An S.S. doctor.
 
A fierce, gap-toothed woman in white nods as she talks. 

	A terrifying nurse.

White cabinets line the surgical room, an operating table 
prepared with sheets. A stained stone morgue table with a 
drain for blood. 

	What's behind the façade? Useless 
	operations, amputations, experimental 
	mutilations.
 
The surgical instruments: glass tubes and rubber gloves, 
syringes, ointments, hypodermic needles, cartons of 
capsules, cartons of poison.
 
	The Kapos as well as the S.S. surgeons 
	keep their hands in. The big chemical 
	factories send samples of their toxic 
	products to the camps or, better yet, 
	they buy direct a batch of deportees to 
	try them out on.
 
A doctor with calipers measures a swollen square on a 
prisoner's arm.
 
	Of these guinea pigs a few survive, 

Three men sit on a table, bare-chested, their hands in 
their laps; one is speaking to a doctor. 

	Castrated,
 
A hand holds a glistening foot in the air. It is burnt to 
the bone. It twitches. A patient watches from his bed. 

	Burned with phosphorus.
 
A woman reveals her shriveled limbs.
 
	There are some whose flesh will be marked 
	for life. 

Hands thumb through identification cards and registers that 
are filled with names; occasional lines are drawn through 
the entries.
 
	The administration photographs these men 
	and women as soon as they arrive. Names 
	also are noted. Names from twenty-two 
	nations. They fill hundreds of ledgers, 
	thousands of index files. The dead have a 
	red stroke through their names. Deportees 
	keep these mad, always inaccurate books 
	under the eyes of the S.S. men and 
	privileged Kapos. These are the bosses, 
	the upper crust, of the camp.
 
An immaculate sun-filled room, striped uniforms hanging in 
the closet, a vase of flowers adorning the table, a rug 
covering the floor; there is a dresser, a wash bowl, a neat 
bed.
 
	The Kapo has his own room where he can 
	hoard supplies, and at night receive his 
	young favorites.
 
A villa recessed in the trees.
 
	Quite near the camp is the Commandant's 
	villa.
 
The Commandant, his wife, and his dog relax in their home. 
The Commandant entertains a friend with chess.
 
 	Here his wife manages to maintain a family 
	life and sometimes a social life, as in 
	any other garrison town. 

Guests are assembled, chatting, laughing, drinking.
 
 	Perhaps, though, she is a trifle more 
	bored. The war seems determined not to 
	end.
 
(Into color): Moving past barred windows.
 
 	Luckier still, the Kapos had a brothel. 
	Better fed women, but prisoners still, 
	like the others doomed to death. Sometimes 
	from these windows a crust of bread falls 
	for a comrade outside. So the S.S. had 
	managed to reconstitute in the camp the 
	semblance of a real city, with its 
	hospital, its residential district, its 
	red-light district and -- yes, even its 
	prison.
 
Traveling past metal air vents embedded in the brick wall.
 
	Useless to describe what went on in these 
	cells. In cages so designed that they 
	could neither stand nor lie down, men and 
	women were conscientiously punished for 
	days on end. The air holes were not 
	soundproof.
 
(Black and white): The arrival of Himmler; he greets the 
Commandant, who takes him on a tour of the camp. He 
discusses and plans the crematoriums with technicians and 
officers. A blueprint of the crematorium. A model of the 
crematorium. The actual crematorium, inmates helping to 
construct it.

	1942. A visit from Himmler. "We must 
	destroy, but productively." Leaving the 
	production aspects to his technicians, 
	Himmler concentrates on the destruction 
	side. Plans, models are studied. They are 
	carried out, the deportees themselves take 
	part in the work. 
 
(In color): Moving around the peaceful crematorium, shaded 
by trees that sway in the breeze. 

	A crematorium can be made to look like a 
	picture-postcard. Today, tourists have 
	themselves photographed in front of them.
 
(Black and white): People congregate with their suitcases 
and sacks.
   
	Deportation extends to all of Europe.
 
A train arrives carrying deportees; people piled in dead 
heaps in cars, a tangled mass of limbs.
 
	Convoys get lost, stop, then start again, 
	are bombed, but finally arrive. For some, 
	the choice has already been made. 

Officers driving people toward the camps; the captives are 
stripped; soldiers survey a row of nude women.
 
 	For the rest, the choice is made immediately. Those 
	on tie left will work. Those on the right ...

Women stand naked in the grass, clutching their children, 
and themselves, shielding their bodies with their hands; 
soldiers stand in the background.
   
	These pictures were taken a few moments 
	before extermination. 

Naked men and boys await their execution. Crates of 
cylinders of gas are piled one on the other.
   
	Killing by hand takes time. Cylinders of 
	zyklon gas are ordered. 

(Into color): Moving again outside -- blue sky, peaceful 
landscape -- a sunlit building that contained a gas chamber. 
Moving inside the building: gas tanks, steel doors, valves 
and nozzles for the gas to escape.
 
	Nothing distinguished the gas chamber 
	from an ordinary block. Inside, what 
	looked like a shower room welcomed the 
	newcomers. Their hosts closed the doors. 
	They watched.
 
Moving into the room, looking at the ceiling. The wood is 
cracked, the concrete scratched.
 
 	The only sign -- but you have to know it 
	-- is this ceiling, dug into by 
	fingernails. Even the concrete was torn.

(Black and white): A dead woman stares. The air is thick 
with smoke as men burn a heap of bodies.
   
	When the incinerators proved inadequate, 
	open fires were used.
 
The faces of prisoners are smoking ash. A heap of bodies, 
cinders, steam on the ground.
 
(In color): Moving along past the ovens: the doors hang 
open, the ovens are empty.

	Yet the new ovens had a capacity of 
	several thousand bodies per day.

(Black and white): A mountain of spectacles, combs, dishes 
and pans, clothing and shoes, scissors, and shaving brushes.

	Everything was saved. Here are the 
	stockpiles of the Nazis at war. Here are 
	their warehouses.
 
An enormous mountain of gleaming hair rising toward the sky.
 
	Nothing but women's hair ...
 
Reams of cloth, its hair surface glistening in the light. 

	At fifteen pfennig the kilo, they made 
	cloth from it. 

An oven door is opened, bones line the pit. Bones of skulls, 
torsos, legs, and arms rise in massive heaps.
 
	From bones ...  

A stretch of fertile land and vegetation.
 
  	Manure. At least they tried.
 
Open crates packed with shriveled corpses. A barrel of human 
heads. Rows of decapitated bodies.
 
	From bodies ... But there's nothing left 
	to say.

Cakes of soap on a table.

	From bodies, they wanted to make ... soap.

Bins of dried skin. Sketches inked on dried skin. 

	As for skin ...

Aerial views of the camps. Endless rows of barracks in the 
snow.
 
	1945. The camps are full and spreading. 
	They are cities of 100,000 inhabitants. 
	Full house everywhere. Heavy industry 
	takes an interest in this indefinitely 
	replenishable labor force. Factories
	have their own camps, forbidden to the 
	S.S. Steyer, Krupp, Heinckel, I.G. 
	Farben, Siemens, Hermann Goering do their 
	shopping at these markets. The Nazis may 
	win the war. These new towns are part of 
	their economy. But they are losing. There 
	is enough coal for the incinerators, not 
	enough bread for the men. The streets of 
	the camps are strewn with corpses.
 
The streets are lined with dead piles of naked bodies.
 
	Typhus ...
 
A monstrous mass of knotted limbs -- abstractions in bone. 
A pyramid of heads with eyes opened or eyes removed. An 
array of stray legs. A dead woman stares, her mouth gaping. 
A bulldozer pushes the bodies, hurling the dead into pits.
 
	When the Allies open the doors ...
 
Led out by the Allies, Nazi women in knee boots stream out 
of a barracks door, soldiers following. 

	All the doors ...

Allies stand guard as men file out with the dead on their 
backs. Corpse after corpse is hurled into a pit. Nazis 
carry human heads. The skulls are arranged on the ground. 
Prisoners huddle together and peer through the wires.
 
	The inmates look on without understanding. 
	Are they free? Will they return to everyday 
	life?
 
A Kapo, a Junker, and then an earnest, pleasant-looking 
young man testify in court. 
 
	"I am not responsible," says the Kapo. 
	"I am not responsible," says the officer. 
	"I am not responsible." 

A final look at a mountain of naked, mutilated corpses. 

	Then who is responsible?
 
(Into color): Moving over a rich field with flowers; the 
twigs and rocks on the ground are reminiscent of the human 
bones. 

	At the moment I speak to you, the icy 
	water of the ponds and ruins is filling 
	up the hollows of the charnel house. A 
	water as cold and murky as our own bad 
	memories. War is napping, but with one 
	eye always open.
 
Moving along the sunny landscape, flowers swaying in the 
breeze; the camps are in the background.
 
	The faithful grass has come up again on 
	the Appelplatz, around the cell blocks. An 
	abandoned village, but still full of peril.
 
Still moving: crematorium ruins; twisted wires; broken 
watchtowers; crumbled chambers; slabs of cracked concrete; 
abstract figures of stone.
 
	The crematorium is no longer in use. The 
	devices of the Nazis are out of date. Nine 
	million dead haunt this landscape. Who is 
	on the lookout from this strange tower to 
	warn us of the coming of new executioners? 
	Are their faces really different from our 
	own? Somewhere among us, there are lucky 
	Kapos, reinstated officers, and unknown 
	informers. There are those who refused to 
	believe this, or believed it only from 
	time to time. And there are those of us 
	who sincerely look upon the ruins today, 
	as if the old concentration camp monster 
	were dead and buried beneath them. Those 
	who pretend to take hope again as the 
	image fades, as though there were a cure 
	for the plague of these camps. Those of 
	us who pretend to believe that all this 
	happened only once, at a certain time and 
	in a certain place, and those who refuse 
	to see, who do not hear the cry to the 
	end of time.
 


Narration by Jean Cayrol