Kinderblock 66 - Return to Buchenwald

This direct use of the footage showing the children in Auschwitz with the Number Tattoos is a prototypical case of a generic illustration. The documentary focuses explicitly on child survivors, mainly on children that survived the children’s section in the Buchenwald concentration camp. Based on interviews with liberators, survivors, and experts, as well as film footage, photographs, and visits to the historical sites of atrocity, the documentary creates a group portrait of children and young adults in the Holocaust. In this sequence, the historical footage from Auschwitz is related to an interview with Holocaust historian Dalja Ofer, which neither refers to the specific fate of the children in Auschwitz, being subject of barbaric medical “experiments,” nor to the topic of survival, the two aspects related to the actual footage. On the contrary, Ofer speaks about the majority of children that died during the Holocaust and refers to forced labour and slave labour camps in which young adults had to work until they died. Thereby, this case of a generic illustration also implies a largely decontextualising use of the footage sequence.