“They Saw Their Guilt on Screen:” The Archive Effects of Death Camp Sachsenhausen (1947)

ABSTRACT: Premiered in a Stalinist show-trial in 1947, the overlooked East German Holocaust film Todeslager Sachsenhausen (Death Camp Sachsenhausen) is treated at length for the first time in English. Using the framework of Jaimie Baron’s archive effect and drawing on archival records to chart the film’s production and contested reception through the end of the twentieth century, this article maps the complex and contradictory discourses of authenticity and archivality that defined its use and reuse as they intersect with volatile notions of history during German division and reunification. Analysis of the film’s heterogeneously authentic sources leads to the discovery that it was the first Holocaust film written by a Jewish Holocaust survivor.