Stills from a Film that Was Never Made

I came across the photograph this video essay begins with by accident, whilst browsing through the Yad Vashem Digital Collections online. Ever since this unexpected encounter, SS Obersturmführer Gemmeker’s gaze has been perplexing me and, to use a worn metaphor, haunting me – and so has Frau Hassler’s response to his apparent seduction. Was I being a witness to a secret love affair in a concentration camp?

Surely, such stories are not unheard of and I find it difficult to articulate what actually struck me at the moment of realisation. The ordinariness of their gestures, or, as I later found out, the performance of what appears to be a generic and banal film script within an utterly abnormal setting? The almost tangible realness of the SS officer’s and his secretary’s feelings, whilst at the same time the lovers seem nothing but mere puppets of history?