6 | Documenting Nazi Crimes through Soviet Film
Recent Submissions
- ArticleA Travelling Archive: Tracing Soviet Liberation FootageSchmidt, Fabian; Ebbrecht-Hartmann, Tobias (2025) , S. 1-29The study delves into the image migration of liberation films shot by Soviet camera teams in the concentration camps Auschwitz and Majdanek. Scattered and incomplete, these films pose challenges for scholars seeking origin, context, and migration paths. For this exploration, the EU Horizon 2020 project ‘Visual History of the Holocaust’ (VHH) marked a watershed moment. Through digitization and computer aided film analysis, VHH compiled and categorized Allied liberation films, including footage previously unknown to the public. This facilitated a nuanced understanding of how footage migrated in various versions and hence will help to explore its historical significance. The project linked the original liberation footage with its use in early documentaries, revealing how compilation films functioned as carriers for dispersed archives worldwide. In case of the Soviet liberation materials, much of the iconic footage only survived in early compilations like OSWIECIM and MAJDANEK. However, comparisons between newly acquired and known footage allows reconstructing the missing archival records to a certain extent. Geopolitical challenges limited access to certain film versions, emphasizing the importance of external research for completing the archival records. Despite these obstacles, the VHH project showcases how technology and comprehensive analyses transform the study of historical film footage, unveiling layers of untapped cinematic memory.
- ArticleSoviet Footage from the 1940s and the Holocaust at Babyn Yar, KyivBerkhoff, Karel (2025) , S. 1-54In the 1940s, film footage was recorded at the ravine of Babyn Yar, the main Holocaust site in Kyiv. This article presents the first systematic attempt to describe this footage, while excluding some material that appears to show the ravine but in fact does not. As I shall discuss, a substantial quantity of footage was shot, partly showing visiting foreign correspondents.
- ArticlePeople with Disabilities as Nazi Victims on Screen and Paper: A Close Reading of the 1943 Krasnodar Trial RecordsRebrova, Irina (2025) , S. 1-33This article examines the Soviet propaganda documentary film THE PEOPLE’S VERDICT / PRIGOVOR NARODA (1943) and the records of the Krasnodar open trial from 1943. The primary focus of this research is to illustrate the narrative constructed in the propaganda documentary and to uncover what was concealed from the public regarding the mass killings of a specific group of Nazi victims — psychiatric patients — in Krasnodar region under the Nazi occupation.
- ArticleDepicting Atrocities. Ethics of Sharing Holocaust ImagesHögner, Anna; Schmidt, Fabian (2025) , S. 1-26Engaging with Holocaust films and photographs presents complex ethical dilemmas. This article delves into the ethical considerations surrounding the use of shocking Holocaust images and explores diverse approaches to their presentation.
- ArticleTowards a History of Soviet Film Records (Kinoletopis')Pozner, Valérie (2025) , S. 1-27This article looks at the specific features of Soviet audiovisual archives showing traces of the Holocaust. The aim is to retrace the history of the archival project behind this collection, from its creation in the 1920s, showing the different types of intervention carried out on the material, in order to understand the consequences on the elements currently preserved in the former USSR. This allows to underline the limits inherent in the interpretation of these images by researchers. Finally, the article looks critically at some examples of how these archives have been used in the past and more recently.
- ArticleZinovii Tolkachov's Graphics from the Auschwitz-Birkenau and Majdanek Death Camps: Testimonial Works, Viewer's Perception, and Uses in Political PropagandaVyshislavsky, Glib (2025) , S. 1-38The article analyzes the circumstances of the creation of the graphic series Majdanek, Flowers of Auschwitz, and Auschwitz by the artist Zinovii Tolkachov (1903–1977) about the camps that the author visited as a correspondent after their liberation.
- ArticleFilming Auschwitz in 1945: OsventsimBruttmann, Tal (2025) , S. 1-22The film made by Soviet operators at Auschwitz following the discovery of the camp by the 1st Ukrainian front plays a central role in the construction of memory and representations of the site. Many of the scenes extracted from it have survived to the present day, and regularly feature in documentaries devoted to the subject in its broadest sense, far beyond Auschwitz alone: the concentration camp universe, Nazism and the Second World War.
- ArticleReflections on the Geography of the Holocaust Based on Soviet Film Footage: The Cases of Kremenets and Vyshnivets (July 1944)Moutier-Bitan, Marie (2025) , S. 1-24The article looks at a Soviet film shot at the time of the liberation of Western Ukraine, and seeks to identify the locations and reconstruct the events by cross-referencing this film footage with maps, pre-war photographs, testimonies from survivors and neighbors, and archives. These images bear witness to the material destruction inherent in the Nazi genocidal enterprise. By rigorously analyzing them, they provide further documentation of the Holocaust in Soviet territories.
- ArticleIssue 6: Documenting Nazi Crimes through Soviet Film. EditorialTcherneva, Irina; Moutier-Bitan, Marie; Pozner, Valérie (2025) , S. 1-13
- ArticleSoviet Film Footage and Professional Practices (1941–1945)Tcherneva, Irina (2025) , S. 1-50The documentary footage taken by the Soviets as they uncovered war crimes in the USSR, the Baltic states, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Germany and Hungary reveals a seminal tension between the media coverage of acts of violence and the expert use of images as evidence. Through an examination of professional, institutional and social constraints under which filmmakers operated, thie article delineates an intermediary space between the orders issued by central authorities and individual intentions – a space where interactions with bystanders, victims and witnesses were codified by the profession.
- ArticleForgotten: Film Documents from the Liberated Camps for Soviet POWsQuinkert, Babette (2025) , S. 1-32The Second World War was not only the war with the heaviest losses in history, it was also marked by previously unimaginable mass violence. The German invasion of the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941 marked a turning point. The German occupation forces had already systematically committed crimes in Poland.