Barely two years after the Second World War had ended, a few of the barracks on the former site of Auschwitz-Birkenau were rebuilt. Along with the restored Appellplatz, they served as the set for The Last STAGE (Ostatni Etap), a film by the Polish director Wanda Jakubowska, who had been interned for years herself, first in the women's concentration camp at Ravensbrück, later in Auschwitz. By filming on location, she and her fellow prisoner Gerda Schneider, the scriptwriter, wanted to create the most authentic possible image of the horrors that they had experienced, but also of the close ties of mutual solidarity between the prisoners in the women's camp – a message perfectly suited to the contemporary political climate in Poland, which was governed by a motley coalition of left-wing parties until 1948, when the Stalinists made short work of their former allies.

One striking thing about THE LAST STAGE is that hundreds of survivors took part in it as actors or as extras – a method with which other directors were also experimenting around this time, such as Rossellini in ROMA, CITTÁ APERTA (ROME, OPEN CITY), the seminal film of Italian neo-realism. But while most other feature films, documentaries, and semidocumentaries about the war took place in a familiar setting, The Last STAGE transported the viewer to a world where people lived on the brink of the Endlösung. In Poland and elsewhere – it was released in fifty countries – Jakubowska's film made a powerful impression. It won a number of prizes at international festivals, though its barely concealed leanings toward pacifism and international socialism drew criticism from some quarters. Judging by the plot and the style of the film, its makers had two main motives. First of all, they wanted to spread a political message. The Last STAGE is a film about solidarity – women's solidarity – based on collective suffering, irrespective of one's background or nationality. Jewish prisoners are equated with non-Jewish war victims, even though it becomes clear that the Jews are the only ones being systematically murdered in the gas chambers. At the same time, the film aims to bear witness, giving people who were never in a concentration camp an impression of what went on there.