An Alfred Hitchcock film detailing Nazi atrocities during the Holocaust will be publicly aired for the first time - 70 years after it was made.

Memory of the Camps , was shelved by the British government in 1945 due to political sensitivity after the Second World War, according to a report in the Independent .

The film, believed to be the brainchild of the Hollywood director and his friend Sidney Bernstein, was found in a "rusty can" by an American researcher in the 1980s.

Experts have restored the film, which until now was contained on six reels of film, five of which were held at the Imperial War Museum.

It will be aired on British television next year to mark the 70th anniversary of the end of the Second World War.

An Imperial War Museum spokeswoman confirmed that "there is use of real life and sensitive footage in the film" taken by the British and Soviet armies of the liberation of concentration camps across Europe. The footage is believed to include images of mass graves and naked bodies.

The spokeswoman also confirmed the film will be renamed before it is aired.

Mr Hitchcock was once said to be so traumatised by a British Army film of the liberation of Bergen-Belsen that he stayed away from Pinewood Studios for a week.