
Film still: Regisseur Magnus Gertten am Schreibtisch aus seinem Film Every face has a Name. © Auto Images
zeitgeschichte|online: Working as a director of documentary films you have spent many years studying biographies of the victims and the survivors of the Shoah. What was your motivation to start your work on the subject?
Magnus Gertten: I became fascinated by this little film reel, a news journal that was screened in Swedish theaters and cinemas in May 1945. This film is quite famous. It is a Swedish narration with a voice over. It is mainly based on the story of the Swedish Red Cross Mission traveling to Germany during the last weeks of the Second World War, trying to - because that was the deal the Swedish made with the German Nazi leaders - rescue the Scandinavian prisoners in the camps first. But while they were there, they brought back a lot of other prisoners as well.
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