From the BBFC:
"Under the Video Recordings Act 1984, a video is an exempted work if is designed to inform, educate or instruct; is concerned with sport, religion or music; or is a video game.
However, if such a work depicts human sexual activity or gross violence to any significant extent it will need a BBFC classification."
I guess it does not actually depict the violence in Belsen, but merely the result of it.
Supplement from 09/02/2008 10:43pm:
slaps forehead
just realised you probably meant your question as why shouldn't we classify the more extreme images of reality.
I partly agree with you in that concentration camp stuff should not be viewed by the very young. Very disturbing stuff, a lot of it. *But* it's in the context of an educational program (history), and these are not likely to be viewed without responsible adult supervision (a teacher) and I'd hope that they're responsible enough to only expose their pupils to it at an appropriate stage in their development (is that what the curriculum is for?).
Again, *but* the explosion in cable/satellite/internet tv means that pretty much any documentary program can be viewed anytime, which means that a sprog may channel hop to a history channel in all innocence, and then see horrid images and start screaming. Not sure if the schedulers exercise discretion in placing programs with such images before the watershed.
Can't say I remember seeing such things before mid-late teens - but that was nigh on 20 years ago, and there's much more footage of similarly bad stuff on YouTube (and others) from more modern conflicts - and in "glorious technicolor", too. This is only going to become more of an issue due to the lack of control of access to such material.
