'Night and Fog' and the concentrationary gaze

Saxton raises the issue of attention through considering the act of witnessing. She suggests that one of the recurrent motifs in the archive photographs and footage used in 'Night and Fog' is that of the observer, bystander or witness. In representing onlooking as an inherently political act, she argues that it was one of the first films to ask what it means to 'regard the pain of others' and to view such spectatorship in political and ethical terms