I am asking the above question because I really don’t know the answer. The article that follows is for your consideration.

The U.K. Independent is reporting today that a previously unseen Alfred Hitchcock documentary about the Holocaust is about to be released.

The article reports:

In 1945, Hitchcock had been enlisted by his friend and patron Sidney Bernstein to help with a documentary on German wartime atrocities, based on the footage of the camps shot by British and Soviet film units. In the event, that documentary was never seen.

“It was suppressed because of the changing political situation, particularly for the British,” suggests Dr Toby Haggith, Senior Curator at the Department of Research, Imperial War Museum. “Once they discovered the camps, the Americans and British were keen to release a film very quickly that would show the camps and get the German people to accept their responsibility for the atrocities that were there.”

The film took far longer to make than had originally been envisaged. By late 1945, the need for it began to wane. The Allied military government decided that rubbing the Germans’ noses in their own guilt wouldn’t help with postwar reconstruction.

Five of the film’s six reels were eventually deposited in the Imperial War Museum and the project was quietly forgotten.

In the 1980’s the film was found, restored, and the missing sixth reel reconstructed. The film and a new documentary, Night Will Fall, are scheduled to be shown on British TV in 2015 to mark the 70th anniversary of the “liberation” of Europe.

Showing the film would remind the world of what happened in Germany and it would take some of the wind out of the sails of those who deny the Holocaust. Releasing the film would illustrate how cruel man can be to his fellow men, but will it actually accomplish anything?

The thing to remember is that there are people who walk among us who still are anti-Semitic. Releasing the film (or not releasing the film) is not going to impact that fact at all.

I am in favor of releasing the film because it represents a real part of the history of the world. It shouldn’t be glossed over as if it didn’t happen. The Holocaust happened to real people with real children and real parents. In some cases entire families were wiped out. It is a shameful event in world history, and if reminding the world of that event will prevent it from happening again, we need to remind the world of that event every day.