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Poster for Death Mills (1945)

Death Mills (1945)

1945 · Short film · 21 min · dir. Sidney Bernstein

  • Documentary
  • History
  • War

Synopsis

Originally made with a German soundtrack for screening in occupied Germany and Austria, this was the first documentary to show what the Allies found when they liberated the Nazi extermination camps: the survivors, the conditions, and the evidence of mass murder.

Synopsis from TMDb

Details

Director
Sidney Bernstein
Writer
Hans Burger
Studio
U.S. Army Signal Corps
Released
1945-07-10
Original title
Die Todesmühlen
Running time
21 minutes

Cast & crew

Reviews on the Internet Archive

★★★★★ · Death Mills · b8byc8kes · 2010-01-06

Horrible, ghastly images of Holocaust victims from the Nazi master race. Be prepared to contain your humanity to endure the views of concentration camps shortly after liberation. Image after image of death lying on the ground and the few who survived looking like bags of bones. A strong image reminder of what is probably happening to the dissidents in Communist China today. I wonder when we will see the films of current 21st century death camps in China? Are we as guilty today as we were then to allow such atrocities? Or is it a lack of moral capacity? Riveting images.

★★★★★ · Americans. . . · Zeugitai · 2010-02-05

Holy Americans traipsing across the moral high ground making stone-ignorant remarks about "communist China today" while their own global military and CIA murder people wholesale across the Middle East and around the world, imprisons them indefinitely, tortures them, all while ignoring international law, the Nuremberg Principles, and the Geneva Conventions! It's too much for me to take. Incredible. The film is something that should be seen by everyone as a lesson in how human beings, including Americans, are capable of treating one another. It is not to be construed as showing what "they" did…

★★★★★ · Horrifying things that National SOCIALISTS did. · bizzyditch · 2010-08-07

And let me mention that anyone who compares the deliberate and systematic murder of 20 million people to taking icky pictures of naked Muslims with their underwear on their heads is legally insane (yes, Zeugitai, that would be you.) As to the film - it's very horrible, not too propagandish, except towards the end. Excellent America Army film.

★★★★★ · Worldwide Terror · BMBRKLRTXT · 2012-04-27

The killing in the concentration camps was the first organized killing system and it worked sadly and unfortunately perfect. I'm german and I'm sick of it when people point the finger on "german nazis" as the ultimate killers. Killing people is a woldwide desaster. Americans, Asians, Africans, South Americans, Europeans... And personally I think, it is much more worse, if these killings still exists after all what history told us!

★★★★★ · Responding to other Responders · allensonofSiegfried · 2015-01-21

My Father was BORN in Germany. He was lucky to get out in time to save his life, since he was JEWISH. My Father never wanted to go back to Germany because of what the NAZI'S did to his immediate family and also what they did to the whole JEWISH race that lived in EUROPE. After all it is said that the NAZIS murdered some 6 MILLION Jewish PEOPLE during this HITLER ERA. After I saw this film I would also NOT like to go visit Germany either.

★★★★ · Very saddened. · Rachael M. · 2013-02-12

It is a sad thing indeed when anyone can watch this and be so callous as to not feel any outrage for what took place. No one with any brains in going to hate the German people today for the past sins of their "fathers", that is not the point. This piece did not seek to recreate the daily life of the concentration camps, but to show the horror of what the allies found on entering them. The film, guessing from the opening, was not originally meant to be seen by the world at large, but by the German people and select groups in America, apparently, now it is available for public viewing. Anyone…

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