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Auschwitz: Inside the Nazi State
Produced by: Laurence Rees
Written by: Laurence Rees
While never losing sight of the suffering of the victims, this documentary offers a unique and alarming look at the mindset of the perpetrators.
Item Number: 13175
- Format:
- DVD Widescreen
- Region:
- 1 - More Details
- Run time:
- 5 hours
- Number of Discs:
- 2
- Closed Captions / Subtitles:
- Not available for this product
- Special Features:
- Interview with Lawrence Rees
A series of six follow-up discussions hosted by award-winning journalist Linda Ellerbee
The Making of Auschwitz: Inside the Nazi State
Surprising Beginnings - ?I saw an SS-man, a junior officer, walking around the gravel pit with a pistol in his hand ... It was sadism. ?You dogs! You damned communists!? And from time to time he would direct the pistol downwards and shoot.?
Jerzy Bielecki, Polish political prisoner, Auschwitz.
Auschwitz is the site of the largest mass murder in the history of the world ? more than one million men, women and children were systematically killed there. Yet its genesis is surprising, because although the vast majority of its victims were Jews, it was not built to deal with ?the Jewish problem? at all. Based partly on documents and plans only discovered since the opening of archives in eastern Europe, Auschwitz: The Nazis and the Final Solution is the story of the evolution of the camp and the mentality of the Nazis who created and ran it.
In Surprising Beginnings, camp commandant Rudolf H?ss arrives in the Polish town of O_wi_cim to create a new concentration camp, its role being to imprison and terrorise anyone who resists the Nazi occupation of Poland. Within 20 months, more than half of the 23,000 Poles first sent to Auschwitz are dead. Yet despite its obvious brutality, Auschwitz is almost a backwater in the Nazi occupation of Poland. But Auschwitz is destined for more ambitious things. Its proximity to rich seams of coal, lime and a plentiful water supply draws the interest of the giant German industrial conglomerate I G Farben. Soon SS-Reichsf?hrer Heinrich Himmler agrees to a massive expansion of the camp to provide the necessary slave labour for synthetic rubber production, and ultimately for the creation of a new model German town.
Hitler?s and Himmler?s plans for the total ?Germanification? of the East gather momentum with the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, and soon hundreds of Soviet prisoners of war are arriving in Auschwitz. As the German army advances into the Soviet Union, Jews, including women and children, are ruthlessly executed by special SS killing squads. But Himmler discovers that killing large numbers of people by firing squad is both bloody and psychologically damaging for many of his troops. A search is launched for a more efficient means of mass killing. An experiment using explosives to detonate groups of prisoners prove disastrous. In the end it is found that exhaust fumes from vehicles, if piped into confined spaces, kill those trapped inside. In fact, the Nazis? Adult Euthanasia Programme has been killing mentally ill and physically disabled people in Germany with carbon monoxide since the beginning of the war, but it is too expensive to transport the bottled gas to the East. However, a team from the euthanasia programme now visits Auschwitz to ?clear? the camp of those who cannot work. Ironically, given what is to happen, there is nowhere in Auschwitz to kill them without disturbance. So the first prisoners to be gassed are transported back to the ?old Reich? in Germany to be murdered. In August 1941, the first gassing experiments in Auschwitz itself take place, using Zyklon B, a powerful disinfectant used to delouse clothes. The experiment is carried out on Russian POWs and, after a shaky start, proves (from the Nazi?s point of view) to be the solution to the problem. The journey towards the mechanised extermination of millions gathers pace.
Surprising Beginnings includes shocking testimony from Polish political prisoners speaking about the harshness of life in the early days of the camp; Jewish survivors of Nazi executions; and an SS member who was responsible for murdering Jews by firing squad.
Orders and Initiatives - ?I could see everything that was going on as though it was laid out in the palm of my hand. An SS-man climbed onto the flat roof of the building, put on a gas mask, opened a hatch and dropped the powder in.?
J?zef Paczynsk, Polish political prisoner
Rudolf H?ss is to claim later that he was just acting under orders. But like many involved in ?the Final Solution?, he actually uses a lot of his own initiative in the killing process; never more so than in the search for more effective means of death.
In October 1941, the plans for the new camp extension at Auschwitz-Birkenau, already designed to house 100,000 people in the most terrible conditions, are altered to take even more inmates. But no more room is created to accommodate the additional 30,000 people. All that is changed is the number of prisoners expected to live in each block. Suffering is built into the very plans. Ten thousand Soviet prisoners are put to work building the extension. They are the victims of appalling brutality, singled out by the Nazis as ?subhuman? and beaten mercilessly. By now many of Germany?s Jews are being sent to the Lodz Ghetto in Poland but, unknown to them, this is not to be their final destination. The Nazis involve the Jewish Ghetto leadership in Lodz in selecting those who are to be sent to Che_mno to be murdered in mobile gassing vans stationed there.
At Auschwitz, H?ss is finding that large-scale murder has its complications. The crematorium only yards from his office has been used for gassings since the autumn of 1941. But the location is far from ideal for mass murder. The screams of the victims cannot be muffled, even by two loudly revving motorcycles deliberately posted outside the make-shift gas chamber. H?ss, in consultation with his colleagues, now authorises the conversion of a peasant house ? the Little Red House ? in a more remote part of Birkenau, where the killing can be more discreet.
By the summer that year, H?ss and his colleagues at Auschwitz have discovered how to murder thousands of people. But these improvised methods of killing cannot keep pace with the demands of ?the Final Solution?, which dreams of eliminating many millions. The Nazis begin to scour the whole of Europe for more and more people to bring to Auschwitz and kill. Orders and Initiatives hears disturbing testimony from a female prisoner from Lodz Ghetto, who was forced to provide sexual favours to the Jewish leader in order to survive. There is also testimony from prisoners, including those who witnessed the first gassings at Auschwitz. And for the first time on television, there is an interview with a Slovak perpetrator who knowingly helped to send his Jewish compatriots to their death.
Factories of Death - ?When the vehicle with the mounted machine-gun arrived, there was a silence, a terrible silence. ?My mother was in the first row of the women and she signalled to us with her eyes. Michel was crying. That?s the last image I have of my mother.?
Annette Muller, on the separation of children from parents at Beaune-La-Rolande camp, France.
The year 1942 is to be the most significant of ?the Final Solution? as the Nazis now begin to comb western Europe, even taking Jews from as far afield as the British Channel Islands. France is the first western country to deport resident Jews: the Vichy Government makes a deal with the SS to round up ?foreign? Jews living in France, but not those with French citizenship. More than 4,000 Jewish children are separated from their parents, deported from France and sent to Auschwitz, where they are gassed on arrival.
Even occupied Britain becomes involved in the deportation of Jews. In Guernsey, the police hand over three of the island?s Jewish residents for deportation. When they finally arrive in Auschwitz, 900 miles away, they are murdered. Neither the French nor the Channel Island authorities knew for certain what would be the fate of the Jews they helped to deport ? but they most certainly did know how much the Nazis hated the Jews.
Himmler now orders that all Jews in the General Government, an area that had been central Poland until September 1939, are to be killed. He selects newly constructed death camps like Treblinka for the task.
Treblinka, unlike Auschwitz, is a pure extermination camp, but its small gas chambers cannot keep up with demand and, despite burial in make-shift pits, bodies lie rotting in the summer heat. At Auschwitz, the corpses of those murdered in gas chambers of the converted farmhouses are also rotting. The Nazi leadership knows that solutions must be found quickly. Changes are introduced to the running of the Treblinka camp. In order to lull new arrivals into a false sense of security, a fake railway station with flowers, timetables and signs to other towns is constructed. Bigger gas chambers are also built, capable of killing more than 3,000 people at a time. Ninety-nine per cent of those arriving at Treblinka are dead within two hours.
H?ss is also making ?improvements? at Auschwitz. In order to make the camp a more efficient killing factory, he seeks advice from the SS expert in body disposal, SS-Colonel Paul Blobel, and examines his new field cremation units at first hand.
Not every German soldier is prepared to participate in extermination campaigns. Lieutenant Albert Battel refuses to allow all the Jewish workers in the ghetto of the Polish town of Przemy_l to be deported. He even shelters some of them in the army headquarters. He is posthumously awarded the title Righteous Among The Nations by Yad Vashem in Israel. But nothing can stop the forward momentum of ?the Final Solution? and by March 1943, the new crematoria at Auschwitz are fully operational. Two months later the camp gets a new physician ? SS-Captain Dr Josef Mengele. He will become known as The Angel of Death.
Those interviewed in Factories of Death include two Jewish children who were separated from their mother by the French authorities and would have followed her to their deaths in Auschwitz, with 4,000 other children, had she not arranged for their rescue. People who remember one of the Jewish girls deported from Guernsey, with the co-operation of the British police, speak fondly of her, and a prisoner at Auschwitz recalls digging up the rotting corpses of those gassed in the camp.
Corruption - ?If a lot of stuff is piled up together, then you can easily stash away something for your personal gain. Stealing things for yourself was absolutely common practice in Auschwitz.? Oskar Gr?ning, SS garrison, Auschwitz
By 1943, 45 sub-camps are dotted round the Auschwitz region, most providing slave labour for armaments factories and other industrial concerns. At the centre of this web is the giant camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau with another, even more sinister, source of income ? clothes and valuables taken from Jews arriving there to be gassed.
The Nazi leadership naturally intends such wealth to fill the coffers of the Third Reich in Berlin, but much of it actually stays at the camp, as the SS at Auschwitz have their fingers well and truly in the till. And despite it contravening the Nazis? strict racial purity laws, sexual liaisons in the camp between the SS and prisoners are also occurring, often forcibly, in exchange for life-saving favours. There are even love affairs.
The corruption is clearly out of control. An SS investigator arrives to root out the offenders and uncovers clear evidence of misdemeanours by the SS. Rather than being disgraced, H?ss is promoted to a desk job in Concentration Camp Administration in Berlin. Himmler agrees to formalise the role of sex for privileged prisoners by opening a brothel in the main camp. He believes it will help to motivate the workforce.
Meanwhile, Mengele uses the inmates at Auschwitz to carry out horrific pseudo-scientific experiments. He is particularly interested in children, especially twins, and uses them to research the power of genetic inheritance, an area of interest to many Nazi scientists.
Those interviewed in Corruption include a woman who tells how Mengele carried out horrifying experiments on her; a member of the SS garrison who fondly recalls the friendships he made at the camp; a prisoner who was one of the 50 survivors of a daring escape bid from the Sobibor death camp; a Slovak Jewess who still remembers her SS lover; and a Polish political prisoner who had personal access to the Auschwitz brothel.
Murder and Intrigue - ?If you have to save your life you?ll try it in every way, even in a criminal way if it comes to that, but you have to save it. Your life is first. You are nearest to yourself, whatever people try to say.? Eva Speter, Hungarian-Jewish survivor of ?the Final Solution?
The most important year in the history of Auschwitz is 1944, the year when more people are killed than ever before. It is also the year in which the Nazis send unlikely messengers to the East to try to sow seeds of confusion amongst the Allies and when the Western Allies struggle with the dilemma of whether to negotiate with the Nazis about the Jews and whether or not to bomb the camp.The Hungarians under Admiral Horthy have been unwilling to deport their Jews up to now, but in the wake of the German occupation of March 1944 comes Adolf Eichmann, the man charged with organising the deportation of all the Jews in Hungary.Eichmann makes a mysterious offer to one of the most politically involved members of the Jewish community, in which he gives him a chance to broker a deal with his contacts abroad ?1 million Jewish lives saved for the provision of certain goods. But at the same time, Eichmann continues to organise the deportations from Hungary to Auschwitz, where H?ss is back in charge to oversee the murder of hundreds of thousands of people. He ensures that the ovens in Crematorium V are fully operational and that five ditches are dug next to this gas chamber complex. Work is speeded up on the railway sidings into the camp. Within ten weeks of the start of the deportations, 437,000 Hungarian Jews are sent to Auschwitz. About 75% of them are killed on arrival. Whilst the scale of the killing grows, the Jewish envoy sent by Eichmann, Joel Brandt, meets Jewish Agency representatives in Aleppo, Syria. He does not get the help he expects.
News of the offer also reaches the Allies, but it is dismissed as blackmail. When confirmed news of the mass gassings finally reaches the Western Allies, they appear lukewarm about a bombing mission to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Until now, Gypsy families have been kept separate from the other inmates at Birkenau in a special family camp. Orders are given to liquidate it. Because they know what fate awaits them, the Gypsies struggle with the SS to avoid being killed, but without success. The Sonderkommando, who work in the gas chamber complexes, are aware that they will also be killed one day to protect the secret of their grim task ? the processing of the bodies that are killed in the gas chambers. In October 1944, in Crematoria II and IV, they revolt but are crushed by the SS guards. Meanwhile, the Red Army east of Auschwitz is drawing near and Himmler is busy trying to negotiate a deal with the Western Allies.In December 1944 and January 1945, the gas chambers in Auschwitz-Birkenau are dismantled to cover the Nazis? tracks. Those prisoners who are well enough to walk are forced on a march in sub-zero temperatures back towards Germany, while Nazis like H?ss and Mengele prepare to go into hiding. Retribution is close at hand.Murder and Intrigue includes testimony from a witness to the liquidation of the Gypsy family camp, members of the Sonderkommando who worked in the gas chamber complexes and a Hungarian Jew who survived ?the Final Solution? by accepting a place on Eichmann?s ?goodwill gesture? to the Allies ? a train of Jews bound for neutral Switzerland.
The Search for Redemption - ?If you have to save your life you?ll try it in every way, even in a criminal way if it comes to that, but you have to save it. Your life is first. You are nearest to yourself, whatever people try to say.? Eva Speter, Hungarian-Jewish survivor of ?the Final Solution?
On 27 January 1945 Red Army soldiers liberate the concentration camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau. They are not warned about its existence in advance, so when they enter it, they are utterly shocked by the walking skeletons, the remains of the gas chambers and the piles of human hair. But it is not only Auschwitz-Birkenau that horrifies the world. A few months later other concentration camps are liberated ? among them Bergen-Belsen, where thousands of unburied bodies are strewn over the ground. The British are horrified and unprepared for how to deal with the situation ? 14,000 prisoners die in the first five days following their liberation; another 14,000 succumb in the following weeks.Tragically, life for many liberated prisoners continues to be appalling. Women are raped by the advancing Soviet soldiers. When Jewish survivors return to their homes in countries such as Slovakia or Poland, they find that their property has been confiscated and they are told by their neighbours to return to where they came from.
Many face pogroms in their home cities. Others decide to leave for Palestine, but the majority are stopped on their way by British patrols and placed in British camps in Cyprus.Whilst Hitler and Himmler commit suicide, frustratingly large numbers of perpetrators manage to remain hidden. Ex-Auschwitz commandant Rudolf H?ss is captured by the British but they do not recognise him. He is subsequently freed and finds work on a farm in northern Germany. Adolf Eichmann becomes a lumberjack in the same region, while Josef Mengele works as a farmhand in Bavaria where he writes self-pitying poems about his long and hard-working days.Groups of avengers are created by Jews who wish to take revenge into their own hands. In the chaos of post-war Europe, they track down Nazis and murder some of them. H?ss is hunted down by the British, tried in Poland and eventually hanged at Auschwitz. Eichmann and Mengele escape to Argentina. In May 1960 Eichmann is finally captured by the Israelis, brought to trial and executed a year later. Mengele successfully evades capture and dies of natural causes in 1979.Overall only a small percentage of the SS-men from Auschwitz are ever found and put on trial. The problem is that they can only be convicted if there is sufficient evidence of personal involvement in the crimes committed in the camp. Many of the perpetrators have never confronted their role in ?the Final Solution?. In contrast, those they persecuted are unable ever to forget.The Search for Redemption hears from a member of the SS garrison at Auschwitz who, towards the end of his life, decides to confront the Holocaust deniers. The programme also follows individual stories of former prisoners who did not find peace after returning home, as well as the story of a Jewish avenger who admits to the murder of several Nazis and gives a first-hand description of Adolf Eichmann?s capture.
Jerzy Bielecki, Polish political prisoner, Auschwitz.
Auschwitz is the site of the largest mass murder in the history of the world ? more than one million men, women and children were systematically killed there. Yet its genesis is surprising, because although the vast majority of its victims were Jews, it was not built to deal with ?the Jewish problem? at all. Based partly on documents and plans only discovered since the opening of archives in eastern Europe, Auschwitz: The Nazis and the Final Solution is the story of the evolution of the camp and the mentality of the Nazis who created and ran it.
In Surprising Beginnings, camp commandant Rudolf H?ss arrives in the Polish town of O_wi_cim to create a new concentration camp, its role being to imprison and terrorise anyone who resists the Nazi occupation of Poland. Within 20 months, more than half of the 23,000 Poles first sent to Auschwitz are dead. Yet despite its obvious brutality, Auschwitz is almost a backwater in the Nazi occupation of Poland. But Auschwitz is destined for more ambitious things. Its proximity to rich seams of coal, lime and a plentiful water supply draws the interest of the giant German industrial conglomerate I G Farben. Soon SS-Reichsf?hrer Heinrich Himmler agrees to a massive expansion of the camp to provide the necessary slave labour for synthetic rubber production, and ultimately for the creation of a new model German town.
Hitler?s and Himmler?s plans for the total ?Germanification? of the East gather momentum with the invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, and soon hundreds of Soviet prisoners of war are arriving in Auschwitz. As the German army advances into the Soviet Union, Jews, including women and children, are ruthlessly executed by special SS killing squads. But Himmler discovers that killing large numbers of people by firing squad is both bloody and psychologically damaging for many of his troops. A search is launched for a more efficient means of mass killing. An experiment using explosives to detonate groups of prisoners prove disastrous. In the end it is found that exhaust fumes from vehicles, if piped into confined spaces, kill those trapped inside. In fact, the Nazis? Adult Euthanasia Programme has been killing mentally ill and physically disabled people in Germany with carbon monoxide since the beginning of the war, but it is too expensive to transport the bottled gas to the East. However, a team from the euthanasia programme now visits Auschwitz to ?clear? the camp of those who cannot work. Ironically, given what is to happen, there is nowhere in Auschwitz to kill them without disturbance. So the first prisoners to be gassed are transported back to the ?old Reich? in Germany to be murdered. In August 1941, the first gassing experiments in Auschwitz itself take place, using Zyklon B, a powerful disinfectant used to delouse clothes. The experiment is carried out on Russian POWs and, after a shaky start, proves (from the Nazi?s point of view) to be the solution to the problem. The journey towards the mechanised extermination of millions gathers pace.
Surprising Beginnings includes shocking testimony from Polish political prisoners speaking about the harshness of life in the early days of the camp; Jewish survivors of Nazi executions; and an SS member who was responsible for murdering Jews by firing squad.
Orders and Initiatives - ?I could see everything that was going on as though it was laid out in the palm of my hand. An SS-man climbed onto the flat roof of the building, put on a gas mask, opened a hatch and dropped the powder in.?
J?zef Paczynsk, Polish political prisoner
Rudolf H?ss is to claim later that he was just acting under orders. But like many involved in ?the Final Solution?, he actually uses a lot of his own initiative in the killing process; never more so than in the search for more effective means of death.
In October 1941, the plans for the new camp extension at Auschwitz-Birkenau, already designed to house 100,000 people in the most terrible conditions, are altered to take even more inmates. But no more room is created to accommodate the additional 30,000 people. All that is changed is the number of prisoners expected to live in each block. Suffering is built into the very plans. Ten thousand Soviet prisoners are put to work building the extension. They are the victims of appalling brutality, singled out by the Nazis as ?subhuman? and beaten mercilessly. By now many of Germany?s Jews are being sent to the Lodz Ghetto in Poland but, unknown to them, this is not to be their final destination. The Nazis involve the Jewish Ghetto leadership in Lodz in selecting those who are to be sent to Che_mno to be murdered in mobile gassing vans stationed there.
At Auschwitz, H?ss is finding that large-scale murder has its complications. The crematorium only yards from his office has been used for gassings since the autumn of 1941. But the location is far from ideal for mass murder. The screams of the victims cannot be muffled, even by two loudly revving motorcycles deliberately posted outside the make-shift gas chamber. H?ss, in consultation with his colleagues, now authorises the conversion of a peasant house ? the Little Red House ? in a more remote part of Birkenau, where the killing can be more discreet.
By the summer that year, H?ss and his colleagues at Auschwitz have discovered how to murder thousands of people. But these improvised methods of killing cannot keep pace with the demands of ?the Final Solution?, which dreams of eliminating many millions. The Nazis begin to scour the whole of Europe for more and more people to bring to Auschwitz and kill. Orders and Initiatives hears disturbing testimony from a female prisoner from Lodz Ghetto, who was forced to provide sexual favours to the Jewish leader in order to survive. There is also testimony from prisoners, including those who witnessed the first gassings at Auschwitz. And for the first time on television, there is an interview with a Slovak perpetrator who knowingly helped to send his Jewish compatriots to their death.
Factories of Death - ?When the vehicle with the mounted machine-gun arrived, there was a silence, a terrible silence. ?My mother was in the first row of the women and she signalled to us with her eyes. Michel was crying. That?s the last image I have of my mother.?
Annette Muller, on the separation of children from parents at Beaune-La-Rolande camp, France.
The year 1942 is to be the most significant of ?the Final Solution? as the Nazis now begin to comb western Europe, even taking Jews from as far afield as the British Channel Islands. France is the first western country to deport resident Jews: the Vichy Government makes a deal with the SS to round up ?foreign? Jews living in France, but not those with French citizenship. More than 4,000 Jewish children are separated from their parents, deported from France and sent to Auschwitz, where they are gassed on arrival.
Even occupied Britain becomes involved in the deportation of Jews. In Guernsey, the police hand over three of the island?s Jewish residents for deportation. When they finally arrive in Auschwitz, 900 miles away, they are murdered. Neither the French nor the Channel Island authorities knew for certain what would be the fate of the Jews they helped to deport ? but they most certainly did know how much the Nazis hated the Jews.
Himmler now orders that all Jews in the General Government, an area that had been central Poland until September 1939, are to be killed. He selects newly constructed death camps like Treblinka for the task.
Treblinka, unlike Auschwitz, is a pure extermination camp, but its small gas chambers cannot keep up with demand and, despite burial in make-shift pits, bodies lie rotting in the summer heat. At Auschwitz, the corpses of those murdered in gas chambers of the converted farmhouses are also rotting. The Nazi leadership knows that solutions must be found quickly. Changes are introduced to the running of the Treblinka camp. In order to lull new arrivals into a false sense of security, a fake railway station with flowers, timetables and signs to other towns is constructed. Bigger gas chambers are also built, capable of killing more than 3,000 people at a time. Ninety-nine per cent of those arriving at Treblinka are dead within two hours.
H?ss is also making ?improvements? at Auschwitz. In order to make the camp a more efficient killing factory, he seeks advice from the SS expert in body disposal, SS-Colonel Paul Blobel, and examines his new field cremation units at first hand.
Not every German soldier is prepared to participate in extermination campaigns. Lieutenant Albert Battel refuses to allow all the Jewish workers in the ghetto of the Polish town of Przemy_l to be deported. He even shelters some of them in the army headquarters. He is posthumously awarded the title Righteous Among The Nations by Yad Vashem in Israel. But nothing can stop the forward momentum of ?the Final Solution? and by March 1943, the new crematoria at Auschwitz are fully operational. Two months later the camp gets a new physician ? SS-Captain Dr Josef Mengele. He will become known as The Angel of Death.
Those interviewed in Factories of Death include two Jewish children who were separated from their mother by the French authorities and would have followed her to their deaths in Auschwitz, with 4,000 other children, had she not arranged for their rescue. People who remember one of the Jewish girls deported from Guernsey, with the co-operation of the British police, speak fondly of her, and a prisoner at Auschwitz recalls digging up the rotting corpses of those gassed in the camp.
Corruption - ?If a lot of stuff is piled up together, then you can easily stash away something for your personal gain. Stealing things for yourself was absolutely common practice in Auschwitz.? Oskar Gr?ning, SS garrison, Auschwitz
By 1943, 45 sub-camps are dotted round the Auschwitz region, most providing slave labour for armaments factories and other industrial concerns. At the centre of this web is the giant camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau with another, even more sinister, source of income ? clothes and valuables taken from Jews arriving there to be gassed.
The Nazi leadership naturally intends such wealth to fill the coffers of the Third Reich in Berlin, but much of it actually stays at the camp, as the SS at Auschwitz have their fingers well and truly in the till. And despite it contravening the Nazis? strict racial purity laws, sexual liaisons in the camp between the SS and prisoners are also occurring, often forcibly, in exchange for life-saving favours. There are even love affairs.
The corruption is clearly out of control. An SS investigator arrives to root out the offenders and uncovers clear evidence of misdemeanours by the SS. Rather than being disgraced, H?ss is promoted to a desk job in Concentration Camp Administration in Berlin. Himmler agrees to formalise the role of sex for privileged prisoners by opening a brothel in the main camp. He believes it will help to motivate the workforce.
Meanwhile, Mengele uses the inmates at Auschwitz to carry out horrific pseudo-scientific experiments. He is particularly interested in children, especially twins, and uses them to research the power of genetic inheritance, an area of interest to many Nazi scientists.
Those interviewed in Corruption include a woman who tells how Mengele carried out horrifying experiments on her; a member of the SS garrison who fondly recalls the friendships he made at the camp; a prisoner who was one of the 50 survivors of a daring escape bid from the Sobibor death camp; a Slovak Jewess who still remembers her SS lover; and a Polish political prisoner who had personal access to the Auschwitz brothel.
Murder and Intrigue - ?If you have to save your life you?ll try it in every way, even in a criminal way if it comes to that, but you have to save it. Your life is first. You are nearest to yourself, whatever people try to say.? Eva Speter, Hungarian-Jewish survivor of ?the Final Solution?
The most important year in the history of Auschwitz is 1944, the year when more people are killed than ever before. It is also the year in which the Nazis send unlikely messengers to the East to try to sow seeds of confusion amongst the Allies and when the Western Allies struggle with the dilemma of whether to negotiate with the Nazis about the Jews and whether or not to bomb the camp.The Hungarians under Admiral Horthy have been unwilling to deport their Jews up to now, but in the wake of the German occupation of March 1944 comes Adolf Eichmann, the man charged with organising the deportation of all the Jews in Hungary.Eichmann makes a mysterious offer to one of the most politically involved members of the Jewish community, in which he gives him a chance to broker a deal with his contacts abroad ?1 million Jewish lives saved for the provision of certain goods. But at the same time, Eichmann continues to organise the deportations from Hungary to Auschwitz, where H?ss is back in charge to oversee the murder of hundreds of thousands of people. He ensures that the ovens in Crematorium V are fully operational and that five ditches are dug next to this gas chamber complex. Work is speeded up on the railway sidings into the camp. Within ten weeks of the start of the deportations, 437,000 Hungarian Jews are sent to Auschwitz. About 75% of them are killed on arrival. Whilst the scale of the killing grows, the Jewish envoy sent by Eichmann, Joel Brandt, meets Jewish Agency representatives in Aleppo, Syria. He does not get the help he expects.
News of the offer also reaches the Allies, but it is dismissed as blackmail. When confirmed news of the mass gassings finally reaches the Western Allies, they appear lukewarm about a bombing mission to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Until now, Gypsy families have been kept separate from the other inmates at Birkenau in a special family camp. Orders are given to liquidate it. Because they know what fate awaits them, the Gypsies struggle with the SS to avoid being killed, but without success. The Sonderkommando, who work in the gas chamber complexes, are aware that they will also be killed one day to protect the secret of their grim task ? the processing of the bodies that are killed in the gas chambers. In October 1944, in Crematoria II and IV, they revolt but are crushed by the SS guards. Meanwhile, the Red Army east of Auschwitz is drawing near and Himmler is busy trying to negotiate a deal with the Western Allies.In December 1944 and January 1945, the gas chambers in Auschwitz-Birkenau are dismantled to cover the Nazis? tracks. Those prisoners who are well enough to walk are forced on a march in sub-zero temperatures back towards Germany, while Nazis like H?ss and Mengele prepare to go into hiding. Retribution is close at hand.Murder and Intrigue includes testimony from a witness to the liquidation of the Gypsy family camp, members of the Sonderkommando who worked in the gas chamber complexes and a Hungarian Jew who survived ?the Final Solution? by accepting a place on Eichmann?s ?goodwill gesture? to the Allies ? a train of Jews bound for neutral Switzerland.
The Search for Redemption - ?If you have to save your life you?ll try it in every way, even in a criminal way if it comes to that, but you have to save it. Your life is first. You are nearest to yourself, whatever people try to say.? Eva Speter, Hungarian-Jewish survivor of ?the Final Solution?
On 27 January 1945 Red Army soldiers liberate the concentration camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau. They are not warned about its existence in advance, so when they enter it, they are utterly shocked by the walking skeletons, the remains of the gas chambers and the piles of human hair. But it is not only Auschwitz-Birkenau that horrifies the world. A few months later other concentration camps are liberated ? among them Bergen-Belsen, where thousands of unburied bodies are strewn over the ground. The British are horrified and unprepared for how to deal with the situation ? 14,000 prisoners die in the first five days following their liberation; another 14,000 succumb in the following weeks.Tragically, life for many liberated prisoners continues to be appalling. Women are raped by the advancing Soviet soldiers. When Jewish survivors return to their homes in countries such as Slovakia or Poland, they find that their property has been confiscated and they are told by their neighbours to return to where they came from.
Many face pogroms in their home cities. Others decide to leave for Palestine, but the majority are stopped on their way by British patrols and placed in British camps in Cyprus.Whilst Hitler and Himmler commit suicide, frustratingly large numbers of perpetrators manage to remain hidden. Ex-Auschwitz commandant Rudolf H?ss is captured by the British but they do not recognise him. He is subsequently freed and finds work on a farm in northern Germany. Adolf Eichmann becomes a lumberjack in the same region, while Josef Mengele works as a farmhand in Bavaria where he writes self-pitying poems about his long and hard-working days.Groups of avengers are created by Jews who wish to take revenge into their own hands. In the chaos of post-war Europe, they track down Nazis and murder some of them. H?ss is hunted down by the British, tried in Poland and eventually hanged at Auschwitz. Eichmann and Mengele escape to Argentina. In May 1960 Eichmann is finally captured by the Israelis, brought to trial and executed a year later. Mengele successfully evades capture and dies of natural causes in 1979.Overall only a small percentage of the SS-men from Auschwitz are ever found and put on trial. The problem is that they can only be convicted if there is sufficient evidence of personal involvement in the crimes committed in the camp. Many of the perpetrators have never confronted their role in ?the Final Solution?. In contrast, those they persecuted are unable ever to forget.The Search for Redemption hears from a member of the SS garrison at Auschwitz who, towards the end of his life, decides to confront the Holocaust deniers. The programme also follows individual stories of former prisoners who did not find peace after returning home, as well as the story of a Jewish avenger who admits to the murder of several Nazis and gives a first-hand description of Adolf Eichmann?s capture.
?...distressing, compelling and important...?- Sunday Express
?Remarkable, powerful and utterly compelling.?- Daily Mail
?Much of the testimony here is harrowing. But the series remains an impeccably researched and compelling work.?- Guardian
?...distressing but vital...?- London Evening Standard
?A major contribution to documentary making ... I urge you to watch Auschwitz, not as an act of penance but because it is a documentary of outstanding class, containing much you will not know and frequent insights into the human condition.?- The Times
?One of the outstanding achievements of this series is the way in which it uses narrative to create a sense of calm, describing the gradual evolution of the Final Solution and letting eyewitnesses and first-hand testimonies describe what took place. Even the dramatisations of the Nazi hierarchy, which could have been a disaster, are restrained and convincing, serving to contrast the mundane organisation of the Holocaust with its monstrous consequences. It is a rare example of television that will benefit future generations as much our own.? -The Times
?Along comes a series like Auschwitz: the Nazis & the 'Final Solution' to remind you that, no, it really is OK to be as pernickety a bastard as I am about the standards on television because actually there are people out there still capable of maintaining them. Producer Laurence Rees, for example. Of course, you've seen plenty of programmes on the subject before, but none surely which gets the balance quite so right between narrative, unobtrusive dramatic reconstruction and interviews with everyone from the Polish trusty, whose job it was to give the camp commandant his haircut, to an SS soldier, who admitted to having participated in countless massacres ... ?we haven't even got to the worst bit yet ... I can't say I'm looking forward to it exactly. But it's definitely not something I'll allow myself to miss.?- Spectator
?Although disturbing to watch, this documentary gives a vivid insight 60 years on into the death camp. The world continues to mourn one of the most shameful episodes in our history, and it is programmes like this which really hammer home the horrors it entailed.? Daily Mirror ?A fine documentary ... Television can still lead a national debate on important issues and all week newspapers have been responding to this programme's chilling if unspoken implication that Nazis were not good men led astray by a mad leader and a moment in history, as is often suggested.?- Daily Telegraph
?Remarkable, powerful and utterly compelling.?- Daily Mail
?Much of the testimony here is harrowing. But the series remains an impeccably researched and compelling work.?- Guardian
?...distressing but vital...?- London Evening Standard
?A major contribution to documentary making ... I urge you to watch Auschwitz, not as an act of penance but because it is a documentary of outstanding class, containing much you will not know and frequent insights into the human condition.?- The Times
?One of the outstanding achievements of this series is the way in which it uses narrative to create a sense of calm, describing the gradual evolution of the Final Solution and letting eyewitnesses and first-hand testimonies describe what took place. Even the dramatisations of the Nazi hierarchy, which could have been a disaster, are restrained and convincing, serving to contrast the mundane organisation of the Holocaust with its monstrous consequences. It is a rare example of television that will benefit future generations as much our own.? -The Times
?Along comes a series like Auschwitz: the Nazis & the 'Final Solution' to remind you that, no, it really is OK to be as pernickety a bastard as I am about the standards on television because actually there are people out there still capable of maintaining them. Producer Laurence Rees, for example. Of course, you've seen plenty of programmes on the subject before, but none surely which gets the balance quite so right between narrative, unobtrusive dramatic reconstruction and interviews with everyone from the Polish trusty, whose job it was to give the camp commandant his haircut, to an SS soldier, who admitted to having participated in countless massacres ... ?we haven't even got to the worst bit yet ... I can't say I'm looking forward to it exactly. But it's definitely not something I'll allow myself to miss.?- Spectator
?Although disturbing to watch, this documentary gives a vivid insight 60 years on into the death camp. The world continues to mourn one of the most shameful episodes in our history, and it is programmes like this which really hammer home the horrors it entailed.? Daily Mirror ?A fine documentary ... Television can still lead a national debate on important issues and all week newspapers have been responding to this programme's chilling if unspoken implication that Nazis were not good men led astray by a mad leader and a moment in history, as is often suggested.?- Daily Telegraph
Auschwitz occupies a chilling and disturbing place in the history of humankind. It began as a Nazi labor camp to terrorize the local Polish population and evolved into the site of the largest mass murder ever recorded. Narrated by actress Linda Hunt (The Practice, The Year of Living Dangerously), this six-part series, created in conjunction with the 60th anniversary of the the liberation of Auschwitz, presents an in-depth examination of the camp's evolution and the decisions that enabled such an incomprehensibly inhuman place to come into being.
Auschwitz: Inside the Nazi State is a result of three years of research, drawing on the close involvement of world experts on the period, recently discovered documents and nearly 100 interviews with camp survivors and perpetrators, many of whom are speaking in detail for the first time. It interweaves this exceptional new testimony with archive footage and dramatic reconstructions of some of the key decision-making moments. While never losing sight of the suffering of the victims, this documentary offers a unique and alarming look at the mindset of the perpetrators - killers like the Commandant of Auschwitz Rudolf H?ss; camp doctor Josef Mengele; and S.S. Commander Heinrich Himmler.
Auschwitz: Inside the Nazi State is written and produced by Laurence Rees, the Creative Director of BBC History Programs. Assisting Mr. Rees is the award-winning Hitler biographer, Professor Ian Kershaw. The last major project that Laurence Rees and Professor Ian Kershaw worked on together was The Nazis - A Warning From History, which was shown in 30 countries and won eight international awards including the Peabody Award.
Auschwitz: Inside the Nazi State is a result of three years of research, drawing on the close involvement of world experts on the period, recently discovered documents and nearly 100 interviews with camp survivors and perpetrators, many of whom are speaking in detail for the first time. It interweaves this exceptional new testimony with archive footage and dramatic reconstructions of some of the key decision-making moments. While never losing sight of the suffering of the victims, this documentary offers a unique and alarming look at the mindset of the perpetrators - killers like the Commandant of Auschwitz Rudolf H?ss; camp doctor Josef Mengele; and S.S. Commander Heinrich Himmler.
Auschwitz: Inside the Nazi State is written and produced by Laurence Rees, the Creative Director of BBC History Programs. Assisting Mr. Rees is the award-winning Hitler biographer, Professor Ian Kershaw. The last major project that Laurence Rees and Professor Ian Kershaw worked on together was The Nazis - A Warning From History, which was shown in 30 countries and won eight international awards including the Peabody Award.
It is the site of the largest mass murder in the history of the world - Auschwitz. Yet few know the true and surprising history of this most infamous place, nor how it fitted into the Nazis' overall plan for the mass extermination of the Jews - what they called the 'Final Solution'. For Auschwitz, via its destructive dynamism, became both a microcosm of the Nazi State and the logical consequence of Hitler's warped worldview. Combining rare archive footage, CGI illustrations of the camp never before seen on television and dramatic reconstructions of the key decision-making moments, the story of Auschwitz and the horrific ideology behind it unfolds.
