From atrocity to action: how Soviet cinema initiated the Holocaust film: imagining the unimaginable in a Soviet context

The Soviet Union was the only anti-Nazi power to be both occupied and free to make and distribute its own films and was able to produce the first films about occupation, racial cleansing and extermination. In this article the newsreel film 'Majdanek' of December 1944 is analysed as an example of one of the first cinematic engagements with the reality of Nazi atrocities. Although the film contained important documentary evidence it was silent on the Jewish identity of the victims illustrating the Soviet authorities ambivalence about the subject of death camps.