Nationalities, Histories, Rhetorics: Real/Reel Representations of the Holocaust and Holocaust Trials and a Poethics of Film and Law

This article examines the general trajectory of the role film has played in relation to evolving historical and legal narratives of the Holocaust, a complex historical arc relative to other forms of representation of the Holocaust. The article begins by analyzing an American documentary film, Nazi Concentration Camps (1945), which functioned as a ‘self-evident’ witness during the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal. The article then assesses American docudramatic depiction, which embedded documentary footage into fictional rendition, as in Stanley Kramer's Judgment at Nuremberg (1961). From there, the article turns to analyzing Film Documents of Atrocities Committed by the German-Fascist Invaders (Kinodukumenty o zver-stvack nemetsko-fashistskikh zakhvatchikov; hereinafter Film Documents of Atrocities) (1945), the Russian equivalent of Nazi Concentration Camps, and its contemporaries. Finally, the article turns to comparatively examining Sud Naradov, hereinafter The Judgment of the Nations (1946), t...