- Description
- Russian film produced by the Central Studio of Documentary Films in Moscow about the War Crimes Trial (IMT) in Nuremberg, 1945-46. War footage: Warsaw destroyed, Operation Barbarossa, transports. Courtroom scenes: prosecutors and defendants enter, seated. Courtroom. Gen. Rudenko, Soviet prosecutor.
Reel 1 begins with shots of defeated Berlin, Allied troops marching, hoisting flags and piloting tanks. MS of Nazi officers surrendering. Tracking and still MSs of Goering, Keitel, Doenitz, Goebbels' corpse, Jodl, Ribbentrop. Tracking shot of empty bombarded Nuremberg juxtaposed with archive footage of the city during Nazi rallies, Hitler saluting. Nuremberg Prison: close views of the cells of Nazi officers awaiting trial. Juxtaposed footage of ceremonial Nazi goose-stepping with shots of defeated Nazi officials entering courthouse (5 min). MS, CUs of Soviet soldiers serving as Nuremberg trial guards. Montage of International Tribunal convening to organize trial. Wide panning shot of courtroom across full crowd. CU, shelves of incriminating Nazi documents. LS of documents brought forth by Soviets alone. Montage of printing/copying lab processes. CU, shelves of Nazi literature with an ECU on the spine of "Mein Kampf". HAS, courtroom press. CU, artist Boris Yefimov as he sketches. MS Mikhail Kupriyanov, Porfiri Krylov, and Nikolai Sokolov (Kukryniksy). Montage of various courtroom artists, their subjects, and their sketches. MS of print journalists Ilya Ehrenburg, Vsevolod Ivanov, Vsevolod Vishnevsky. Montage of means of trial coverage: CU tape recording, telegraphing, photo transmitting, LS of interpreter translating into mic. Reel 1 ends with LS of crowded courtroom (9:40).
Reel 2 opens with LS of Nuremberg Palace of Justice, cut to MCU of USSR flag. Judges enter courtroom juxtaposed with archival footage of Majdanek, Auschwitz, and Babi Yar. Concentration camp scenes of prisoners and corpses. LS, ravine of corpses, CU skull, CU child corpse. MS group of children showing their tattooed numbers. ECU number on boy's arm. Crying victims. LS of Soviet army advancing, montage of wounded Soviet soldiers. Soldiers moving through snow and forests. CU, older woman shouting toward camera, cuts to MS of seated Nazi officials on trial. LSs of courtroom as trial is called to session (12:26). Judges in succession: Maj. Gen. Nikitchenko (USSR), Lord Justice Lawrence (UK), Judge Biddle (US), Judge de Vabres (France). ECU of docs listing charges against accused. Succession of CUs of Nazi officials on trial (13:35): Goering, juxtaposed with archival footage of him giving orders, marching, addressing camera; Rudolf Hess, juxtaposed with footage of him speaking at podium; Ribbentrop juxtaposed with archival footage of self; Keitel juxtaposed with archival footage of self; Kaltenbrunner; Alfred Rosenberg juxtaposed with archival footage of self; Hans Frank juxtaposed with ECU diary pages; Wilhelm Frick; Julius Streicher juxtaposed with archival footage of self; Walter Funk; Hjalmar Schacht; Grand Admiral Karl Doenitz juxtaposed with archival footage of self; Erich Raeder juxtaposed with archival footage of self; Sauckel; Jodl juxtaposed with archival CU of self; Von Papen; Arthur Seyss-Inquart; Albert Speer; Constantin Von Neurath; Hans Fritszche (19:45).
Reel 3 opens with LS of Nazi officials on trial, juxtaposed with MSs of German lawyers sifting through papers. MCU Prosecutor Robert Jackson (US) addressing court. Montage of archival footage chronicling the Nazi rise to power intercut with CUs of the accused: LS top view of German soldiers marching in the streets. MCU of Hess giving speech exalting Hitler. LS bookburning bonfires. LS marching crowds holding torches, cut to MCU of Hitler. Panning shots of SA in streets of Berlin. LS of Soviet Prosecutor Rudenko approaching podium (24:55). MCU of address to court. Cut aways to court coverage throughout address. Slow pan across accused followed by slow pan across judges bench. Archive footage of Hitler Youth playing with knives, troops marching, LS of Ribbentrop exiting plane and MCU addressing rally. ECU of espionage document signed by Ribbentrop and Himmler. MS of Hitler pointing to map. Cut to animated map of eastward German invasions. Numerous shots of advancing German soldiers. ECU of "Grun" plan for invading Czechoslovakia cut to CU Jodl. Reel ends with courtroom coverage.
- Duration
- 00:29:23
- Date
-
Event:
1945-1946
Production:
1946
- Locale
-
Nuremberg,
Germany
Soviet Union
Berlin,
Germany
Warsaw,
Poland
- Credit
- Accessed at United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Russian State Documentary Film & Photo Archive at Krasnogorsk
- Contributor
-
Director:
Roman Karmen
Director:
Jelizaveta Svilova
Producer:
Central Studio for Documentary Film, Moscow
Producer:
M. Eminow
- Biography
-
Roman Karmen was born in 1906 in Odessa. He enrolled in the Gerasimov Institute for of Cinematography in Moscow in 1929. Throughout the 1930s, Karmen worked at the Central Studio of Documentary Film and as a correspondent for Soviet newspapers. He covered the Civil War in Spain in 1936-39. During World War II, Karmen was present on the front lines, documenting the Leningrad blockade, the surrender of German field marshal Friedrich Paulus in Volgograd, and the liberation of the Majdanek concentration camp in Lublin. Karmen made the film "The Judgment of the Peoples" about the Nuremberg trials. Karmen later filmed in Vietnam, India, and South America. The Soviet Union awarded Karmen the Lenin Prize, the highest Soviet honor, for his 1953 film "Story of the Capsian Oil Workers." Karmen died in 1978 in Moscow.