They Looked Away (Documentary)
Picture: C+
Sound: C+ Extras: C- Documentary: B-
As a companion piece to Holocaust documentaries Genocide
and Liberation, Koch has issued a more recent (2003) work about why
during the endless bombing campaigns by the Allies of World War II, why were
the Nazi Death Camps not bombed?
The answer lies in part in the title of this piece: They Looked Away.
Although this is more of a speculation piece than the
others, the fact is that those camps should have been bombed ASAP, for endless
reasons beginning with saving the lives of the prisoners. The program never considers that the more
non-stop killing they got away with, the more it fueled their mania to fight
the Allies and destroy all that would not surrender. However, the investigative nature of the Stuart G.
Erdheim-directed work is narrated by Mike Wallace and asks long-overdue
questions.
The full frame 1.33 X 1 image is not bad for a recent
production and like many documentaries, has varying image quality when the
newly shot interviews are combined with much archival footage. I will add that the documentation shown is
of particular interest with historians.
The Dolby Digital 5.1 Stereo sound is more like simple stereo at best,
which is adequate for this program and oddly offers hardly any surrounds. The 5.1 just spreads out the sound
better. The only extras are trailers
for the aforementioned titles and the same featurette on The Simon Wiesenthal
Organization as those titles. An
interesting nearly hour-long piece worth your time, They Looked Away has
some moments you may not have seen, despite the proliferation of Holocaust
material on the market.
- Nicholas Sheffo
