Hollywood directors John Ford, George Stevens, and Samuel Fuller entertained audiences with American cinema classics like The Grapes of Wrath, Shane, and The Big Red One. But their most important contribution to history was their work in the U.S. Armed Forces and Secret Services, filming the realities of war and the liberation of Nazi concentration camps. Their documentation provides an essential visual record of WWII. This exhibition presents rare footage of the liberation of Dachau with detailed directors’ notes, narratives describing burials at Falkenau, and the documentary produced as evidence at the Nuremberg trials, among other historic material. Now, for the first time in the U.S., this material is being made available to a general audience.
The exhibition, curated by historian and film director Christian Delage, was designed, created, and circulated by the Mémorial de la Shoah (Paris, France) and made possible through the generous support of the SNCF. The New York presentation of Filming the Camps is made possible through the generous support of the Pickman Exhibition Fund.