Alfred Hitchcock unseen Holocaust documentary to be screened in 2014

PanARMENIAN.Net - An unseen Alfred Hitchcock documentary about the Holocaust is to be screened later this year.

The iconic director's film has been restored in the form Hitchcock intended, to mark the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Europe, Digital Spy said, citing The Independent.

Hitchcock was originally asked to collect footage shot by a British army cameraman at the liberation of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945.

The documentary was commissioned in order to educate the German people about the crimes committed by the Nazis. However, it was not shown at the time.

It was first released as an incomplete version in 1984 at the Berlin Film Festival. It was missing a sixth reel and was in poor quality, and was shown on PBS in the US a year later.

Titled Memory of the Camps, it is said to have disturbed viewers at test screenings, and contains descriptions of "sightseers" at a "chamber of horrors".

Imperial War Museum curator Dr Tony Haggith said: "It was suppressed because of the changing political situation, particularly for the British.

"Once they discovered the camps, the Americans and British were keen to release a film very quickly that would show the camps and get the German people to accept their responsibility for the atrocities that were there."

He added: "The digital restoration has made this material seem very fresh. One of the common remarks was that it [the film] was both terrible and brilliant at the same time."

The film will be broadcast on UK television in 2015, along with a new documentary by André Singer. They will both be shown at film festivals and cinemas later this year.