The War On Terror Is Older Than We Think

'Night and Fog' is a thirty minute
documentary film released in 1956
on the horrors of the Nazi death camps.
It was made by Alain Resnais.

It is a film that was much admired
in it's time, the style of it
has been much copied since.

I have seen it, twice.

Every time you see news footage
of natural disasters and wars
in high density urban settings,
where the camera lingers
over where life is no longer present
those images copy the images
of Auschwitz and Mejdanek
that Alain Resnais filmed.

But I feel appalled that never delved
into the origins of the film's title.

It was the title of the 1941 Nazi policy
which was the original 'War on Terror'.
The forced removal of political opponents
who when they were arrested lost all recourse
to the due process in law that they had before
under the Geneva Convention, as the Nazi State,
prosecuted their war the length and breadth of Europe.