Leading on from my previous post: in spite of the Allied countries turning a blind eye to the discrimination against Jews taking place in Nazi Germany, they were uninformed and thus completely unaware of the treacherous horrors of Hitler's concentration camps. Despite their being numbers pieces of propaganda demonising and condemning the Jew, there was no artistic documentation of the traumas they faced as a result of this.
The Nazi leadership aimed to deceive the German population, the victims, and the outside world regarding their genocidal policy towards Jews' (The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum 2018). Despite general statements being broadcast about the end means of eradicating the Jews, the details of their captivity and mass murder was not of public knowledge. Instead what emerged was Nazi propaganda which preached 'half-truths'(Lipstadt 1993) about the action being taken. The most popular artistic medium through which this was communicated was a variety of staged films, offering an overtly positive portrayal of both life for Jews in the ghettos and in concentration camps.
The Terezin propaganda film is a prime example of this. The Nazi production of 1944 shows images of women appearing to be cheerfully enjoying their spacious living quarters, it fails to show the ridiculously overfilled barracks within which they were forced to sleep. Whats more, the top bunks of the beds had been removed and where usually over 20 women would be sat around one table, there were only 6, appearing to enjoy a life of leisure in the style of a feature film. It simply does not convey the experience of living in these huts.
Lipstadt, D.E.,
1993. Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory.
London: The Free Press.
Myers, J., 2012. (11)
Terezin Propaganda Film - YouTube [Online]. Available from:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmIPNktUeoI [Accessed 8 April 2018].
The United States Holocaust
Memorial Museum, 2018. Decieving the Public [Online]. Available from:
https://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10007822 [Accessed 8 May
2018].