Genocide (1982)

Orson Welles anchors the narration here describing some of the most heinous imagery from human history. He commences with a potted history of the often enforced transient existence of the Jewish communities in Europe before bringing us to twentieth century Germany where millions are unemployed, the economy is still on it’s knees after the defeat in the Great War and homelessness is rife. Skilfully navigating this national maelstrom, Adolf Hitler arrives with a clear and concise message: it’s all the Jews’ fault. Following on from Nero’s proven philosophy that giving people someone to loathe is always an effective way of cementing political power and diverting attention from the real issues, a period of persecution begins. Initially it’s registration, then their property is seized and then as the Nazi regime becomes more firmly entrenched and embarked on pan-European expansion, the rest of the holocaust unfolds before us. The production uses an effective combination of archive and animations to illustrate the story and for some especially poignant readings from many of their diaries, Elizabeth Taylor infuses a poignant degree of emotion as she delivers some perspectives from those tortured souls facing certain death at the hands of brutes in uniform or white coats. Viewers of this type of documentary will have seen much of the library footage before, but it never ceases to disgust as the inhumanity beggars belief, the corpses pile up and those aerial shots of the concentration camps never fail to affect.