Night and Fog

(Nacht and Nebel)

   Adolf Hitler’s secret order issued on 7 December 1941 regarding the method to be used in combating resistance in Nazi-occupied Europe. The immediate cause of the Fuhrer’s order was to quell the growing resistance movement in France. Those arrested under the Hitler directive were to be subjected to torture, and then disappear into the “fog of the night.” Hitler’s order prescribed that their deaths not be divulged. In February 1942, special courts were convened to conduct the Night and Fog trials. By April 1944, the courts had sentenced 1,793 defendants to death. Night and Fog is also the name of an influential documentary film directed by Alain Resnais in 1956. The film scans the ruins of Auschwitz in all of its graphic detail. Resnais, however, does not mention Jews in the film’s narration but refers to the dead as “deportees.” Perhaps, because of his leftist politics (Resnais was a socialist), he eschewed singling out the Jews in exchange for a universal condemnation of the Nazi genocide.

   See also Film and The Holocaust.