The horrid footage

I think there are a number of factors that go into how well some things are remembered or recounted.

The Germans were of course notorious for meticulously documenting everything, so the sheer bulk of evidence in many forms makes it plentiful as well as comprehensive. The fact that they lost the war meant that all this material fell out of their hands and into those of people who would preserve and publicize it.

Also, the fact that the Germans live in the heart of Europe, of the western world, makes their history and actions more accessible to the peoples who dominate the global conversation, if you will. These were crimes committed in what would later become known as the "first world", and rightly or wrongly, news, information, history and much of the world's focus is governed by those of us in that "first world". The Nazis are such a notorious historical force, whose effects were mainly felt in that future "first world", that they have become and remain for millions the most immediately recognized epitome of evil.

Unfortunately as you say too many people ignore or wave away some of the less-well-known or -documented crimes. I don't think anyone discounts the Rape of Nanking but westerners tend simply to be less informed about things that didn't occur in parts of the world they don't identify with or know as much about. Again, our "first world" is more Euro-centric than Asia-oriented. (No pun intended.) No one who denounces the Nazis would defend or deliberately suppress the actions of their Japanese allies. The Bataan death march and the like are remembered and denounced. But like the Italian atrocities in Ethiopia or Libya, to many these are "side shows" to the main event, i.e., the war against Hitler -- not because they're less terrible or because anyone excuses them, but simply because, human nature being what it is, people tend to concentrate on the things they most readily remember or relate to.

When it comes to atrocities on the part of Communist regimes, you also have a point. In many instances these are played down by misguided liberal or leftist elements because they have a prejudice in favor of left-wing regimes. In large part this is because right-wing dictatorships specifically truckle in racial or nationalistic policies, touting one nation or race as superior and destined to subjugate others, and being brutally frank about their imperialistic, even murderous, designs. They explicitly attack democracy, freedom and the like. By contrast, leftist dictatorships or philosophies tend to mask their brutality in the language of freedom, brotherhood, the unity of all oppressed peoples and so on. To many this sounds more benevolent or altruistic, and makes it easier for idiots to be gulled by such regimes and defend them even in their cruelest actions. Some people just can't take off the blinders or think for themselves, and this goes for the left and right.

Unquestionably all the atrocities committed by both murderous right-wing regimes and murderous left-wing regimes, at least in the 20th century, are well documented (to varying degrees of course, depending on the era and circumstances). How much anyone is exposed to such evidence is another matter, often determined by who controls the dissemination of history and information, of how it's presented or emphasized, in which part of the world one lives. But at base if people have biases they're not going to be moved by evidence. They'll believe what they want to.

And on that truism, one last thing, about the infamous liar Walter Duranty. Eric, your claims that The New York Times has never apologized for his false reports about the famine, and has refused to return the Pulitzer Prize Duranty "won...for it" (as you put it above), are false.

First, Duranty did not win his Pulitzer for his reports on the Ukrainian famine. He won it for other reporting on the USSR, articles examining why the "Asiatic" Russians could never accept western political structures, why they needed a Tsar or other strongman, how their accustomed societies were communal in nature. Whatever the merit or lack of same in this nonsense, his prize was not won for any of his reporting on the famine.

Second, in the 1990s the Times did open an investigation of Duranty in following publication of a highly critical book about him. Here is the Wikpedia entry on the subject:

In response to Taylor's book, the Times assigned a member of its editorial board, Karl Meyer, to write a signed editorial regarding Duranty's work. In a scathing piece, Meyer said that Duranty's articles were "some of the worst reporting to appear in this newspaper." Duranty, Meyer said, had bet his career on Stalin's rise and "strove to preserve it by ignoring or excusing Stalin's crimes." Four years earlier, in a review of Robert Conquest's The Harvest of Sorrow, former Moscow bureau reporter Craig Whitney wrote that Duranty all but ignored the famine until it was almost over.

In 2003, in response to an international campaign launched by the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association, the Pulitzer Board began a renewed inquiry and the Times hired Mark von Hagen, professor of Russian history at Columbia University, to review Duranty's work. Von Hagen found Duranty's reports to be unbalanced and uncritical, and that they far too often gave voice to Stalinist propaganda. In comments to the press he stated, "For the sake of The New York Times' honor, they should take the prize away." The Times sent von Hagen's report to the Pulitzer Board and left it to the Board to take whatever action they considered appropriate. In a letter accompanying the report, Times publisher Arthur Ochs Sulzberger, Jr. called Duranty's work "slovenly" and said it "should have been recognized for what it was by his editors and by his Pulitzer judges seven decades ago."

Ultimately, the administrator of the board, Sig Gissler, refused to rescind the award because "there was not clear and convincing evidence of deliberate deception, the relevant standard in this case."

(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Duranty)

It was also a fact that at the time of the famine the Times's editorial pages were at odds with Duranty's reporting, on the famine and other things.

I thought your statements were mistaken and misleading but wanted to check first to refresh my memory. Whether what the Times said and did constitutes a formal "apology" or not may be a matter of interpretation, but the paper itself has long and clearly repudiated Duranty, contrary to your frankly false assertion otherwise. If any blame attaches to the un-revoked Pulitzer, it rests with the Pulitzer board itself, not the Times.

Just as your friend William F. Buckley was "forced" (I doubt that) to use his program to show Harvest of Despair, while continually ignoring, suppressing, dismissing or just plain lying about the nature of racial discrimination in the South in the 50s, 60s and 70s and opposing Civil Rights laws (all of which he later acknowledged and apologized for), people do indeed see things through the prism of their own biases. We may not always be able to surmount those, but we can strive to at least be fully informed about the things we declaim -- and denounce.

It is actual footage from the liberation of Buchenwald. The "table of horrors" was set up for the German locals who were made to look at the atrocities.
The voice-over in the movie, however, gets it a bit wrong. The lampshade was not made of human skin. A human skin lampshade could never be recovered, neither from Buchenwald, nor any Nazi kingpin household. All artifacts who were ever exhibited in Holocaust museums were either from non-anthropodermic leather or plastic. The holocaust memorial site in Buchenwald no longer exhibits the small lampshade it used to have on display, which was revealed to be a fake. The large lampshade seen on the "table of horrors" in the footage shown in Judgement at Nuremberg was never recovered, and it does not match any description of any human skin lampshade described contemporaries who claimed to have seen one with their own eyes. People who testified that they saw a human skin lampshade are Martin Bormann Jr. and a Buchenwald survivor, who claimed to have seen the tattoo of a fellow prisoner, Hansel and Gretel, on a lampshade in the house of the commander's wife, Ilse Koch.
The pieces of skin with the drawings on them are anthropodermic, but they were not used for "drawing pictures", as claimed in the voice-over, but they were pieces of tattooed skin. Some of them have holes punched into them because they were part of a "scientific" collection. It was part of a doctoral thesis, which, in fact, is also to be found on the "table of horrors". The merit of the thesis (prevalence of tattoos among criminals) was claimed by the camp physician, who was also Ilse's lover, but it was ghost-written by an inmate. The framed piece of human skin with the drawing of the naked female figure with butterfly wings is in the National Archives and used to be filed as "human skin lampshade". It might have served as panel for a lampshade, but according to the way the piece of skin (a man's chest, actually) is truncated, the erotic tattoo would have been upside down.
The shrunk heads are actual tsantsas from a museum collection and were not fabricated at the Buchenwald camp.
The "human pelvis, used as an ashtray" is the pelvis of a human male, but there's no indication that it served as an ashtray. It may have been just another part of the anatomical collection, which included a pair of lungs, a kidney, and a heart pierced by gunshot.
Well, if that isn't a "table of horrors", I don't know what is. I borrowed the expression from Ken Kipperman, a gentleman who spent many years trying to find the infamous human skin lampshade.

You may cross-examine.