Comparing Nb Elie Wiesel's 'Night And Fog'

Nuit et Brouillard – Presentation

Background.

- commissioned by a specialist government commission that dealt with assembling documentary material on the period of the French occupation, and an association devoted to the memory of those deported to camps

- In 1954 there was an exhibition on the camps in Paris, to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the Liberation. The extent of the horror was still relatively unknown

- Film coincides with the tenth anniversary of the Liberation and the exhibition

- Alain Resnais, at the time a young film director, was approached by the official Committee for the History of World War Two which itself was a representation of Resistance members. He turned down the offer initially because he felt that only someone who had had direct experience of the concentration camps could deal with the subject matter. He agreed to make the film with the collaboration of French poet Jean Cayrol who had been a concentration camp prisoner to write

The only time a specific reference to Jews is made is the mentioning of the Jewish student from Amsterdam.

- Israeli view –it was seen more as a philosophical discussion rather than a presentation of the victims. No sense of personal sympathising (Nb Elie Wiesel, Night and Fog) – this could be to do with the historicising nature of the film and the medium itself. Night and Fog and Night both contribute to the commemoration and memory of the Holocaust.

- Elie Wiesel also stresses the importance of relating what happened for its important place in our collective memory. He writes:

- “For the survivor who chooses to testify, it is clear: his duty is to bear witness for the dead and for the living. He has no right to deprive future generations of a past that belongs to our collective memory. To forget would be not only dangerous but offensive; to forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second