Yom Hashoah

Yesterday, May 2, was Holocaust Remembrance Day -- Yom Hashoah. The Holocaust marks a break in history, a series of events so terrible that it seemed to challenge one's sense of what it means to be human. What is one to think and feel after the Holocaust?

Documentarians have made their own contributions to the question of witnessing and remembering the Holocaust. The image here is from Alain Resnais, Nuit et Brouillard -- Night and Fog -- (1955), available from Criterion. Resnais combines color footage that he shot in the abandoned camps with black and white archival footage, opening a dialogue between past and future that draws the viewer into a meditation on response and responsibility, on the difficulty of seeing and acknowledging, remembering and forgetting.

In the Gazette (Montreal), Jeff Heinrich marked the day with a useful list of Holocaust documentaries.

See also --

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum