The Sound of Atrocity Propaganda: Listening to the Concentration Camp in Allied Cultural Memory

Atrocity propaganda films showed the concentration camps shortly after their liberation, created by the Allies as part of a massive reeducation effort targeting German civilians. Because these documentaries used much of the same footage and similar narrative tropes, their differences were primarily aural rather than visual, as each occupier developed their own soundtrack. Examining the sonic counterpoint to these images of suffering, this article traces how music, commentaries, interviews, and even silence echo the Allied cultural memory of the camps by arguing that the soundtrack fundamentally influenced contemporary audience perceptions of guilt and victimhood.