RadioTimes Reviews
Quote:
The Relief of Belsen
Monday 15 October
9:00pm - 11:05pm
Channel 4
When Allied troops liberated the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in April 1945 they found the ground scattered with unburied corpses. There were 40,000 remaining prisoners crammed into 200 huts; half were dying, either from starvation or from a raging typhus epidemic. Wisely, the makers of this high-minded drama haven't tried to re-create any of this, although we see harrowing archive footage. Instead, the film focuses on the story of those whose job it was to alleviate the horror - army doctors and nurses faced with a huge challenge: creating the largest hospital in Europe out of nothing. On the minus side this means a lot of scenes where men in khaki stand around lecturing each other or striking moral postures ("It's my men going to those godforsaken huts every day!" etc). On the plus side, we get a sense of the agonising choices they had to make: with 900 people dying every day, who do you save first? A quality cast put in strong performances, and although the shooting style tries to ape documentary, it always feels like drama. Just as well: any more real, and it might be unwatchable.
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I wonder whether this is based on
After Daybreak - The Liberation Of Belsen, 1945, which is mainly the story of the medical personnel who were involved from the moment of liberation onwards? An excellent, though harrowing, book.