Tag Archives: TV

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Propaganda!

Completely at odds with everything posted so far but just a little read about a serious topic and tv documentary I watched.

Today I got home from college and decided to catch up a bit on some programmes i had recorded on Sky+. 

So I decided to watch Warsaw Ghetto, The Unfinished Film which had been on More4 a few days ago. Basically it is a documentary explaining the propaganda film made by Nazis Germany during WW2 about life in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1942 were half a million Jews lived in an area 3sq miles before being shipped to the concentration camps and death.
With scenes set up, apartments made look roomy and comfortable and a feeling of life as normal the film is a mixture of reality and fantasy. As the film was left unfinished it will never be known what the true purpose of the movie was.

Some of the scenes, including a champagne reception are pure fantasy and cover the real horror of what was the Warsaw Ghetto in 1942, a few short months before it would be systemically destroyed.

Court testimony with the cameraman, the only member of the film crew ever identified, after the war gave an insight into what the crew thought they would be filming and the orders they worked under. From filming set up scenes to filming filth lying on streets the cameraman knew it was for propaganda as they were filming extremes of society, very poor and seemingly well off.

A question I was asking myself while watching was what was this going to be used for. Obviously propaganda but i reckon to help instill more racial hatred and to justify the Final Solution. 

A moving film which had a terrible underlying feel. With the hindsight of history we now know that the film was going to be used as part of the propaganda war but exactly how we shall never know. The explanation provided by the documentary as to how the film was made was interesting and for someone like me who has a bit of a interest in this aspect and period of history it was a good but hard watch.