The World at War Episode 20 - Genocide (1941 - 1945)
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00:00You
00:30What we went through will be difficult to understand even for our contemporaries and
00:38much more difficult for the generations that have already no personal experience from those days.
01:30The Office of the National Socialist Party in Munich in 1929. The keen young clerk who
01:46now comes forward has already been noticed. He is marked for promotion, for high responsibility.
01:53He is Heinrich Himmler. Himmler it is who refines the philosophy of Nazism, its ideas on politics
02:03and on race. Hitler has appointed him Reichsfuehrer of the SS. When I wanted to sign up, the man in
02:13charge asked me, were you a soldier? I said, yes, indeed. In the First World War? Yes, indeed. Do
02:20you have awards for bravery? Yes, indeed. What do you have? And then I said, Iron Cross 1st and
02:272nd class, and I served in the Hessian lifeguard regiment. Then he said, well, just as there was
02:34an elite guard in the Kaiser's time, there is an elite guard now in the new movement, and that is
02:39the SS. You should join the SS. So I allowed myself to be persuaded, and thereby, if you like,
02:51I came by fate to the SS, to be Himmler's adjutant. Himmler's dream for his elite guard had roots in
03:06the fabled past, in the culture of an older, Aryan Germany. When the Nazis came to power in
03:191933, he could put his ideas into practice. Himmler had set out to achieve a dream. He would inspire a
03:30new awakening of the Germanic race within the German people. Youth would achieve the dream.
03:41Youth had the nerve and the strength that would be needed. Fresh air, exercise, good food to build
04:03blood and bone and marrow. There were no limits to what healthy youth could do. And the dream had a
04:18pseudo-scientific base, neo-Darwinism, propagated in films like this. Only the fittest survive.
04:25The weak go under. That, after all, was the law of nature. Farmers knew it perfectly well. Horses
04:43were bred for pace or for the plough. Why not pedigree humans, too? It was time to develop a
04:58new race, a better one, a race of supermen. There was no harm in that. We must see how we could
05:04return to a more natural law, but only ever through positive racial thought, how one can
05:10improve something and breed it. Never with the thought, it never occurred to us, that we might
05:20arrogantly talk about exterminating anybody who didn't happen to have been born with a white skin,
05:25or who was culturally inferior to us, or was undesirable. The SS, the strongest, the purest,
05:37the fiercest, they would do more than survive. With Himmler at their head,
05:42they would create a racially superior Europe. The SS was based on the example of the Jesuit
05:53order, which had been founded as the elite guard of the Catholic Church. And Himmler
05:59had taken much from this, the hierarchy, the strict selection and leadership, and the punishments.
06:04Himmler himself exacts the oath of obedience unto death.
06:12They were subtly conditioned to see themselves as the sons of light, that they were engaged in a
06:24struggle against the powers of darkness, and that it was their duty to feel that they were at all
06:29times on duty for the nation, and in a wider sense, for the new order in Europe.
06:33Arbeich macht frei. Work sets you free, on the gates of Dachau, a model concentration camp.
06:46The SS were Hitler's instrument of terror in the creation of the new order. It was only logical
06:53that they should run the camps.
06:59Their first prisoners were the dissidents of the Nazi state, political and religious,
07:04as well as racial. The SS schooled themselves in brutality, systematically reducing their
07:11victims to total subservience, depriving them of individuality, no names, numbers.
07:18September 1935, the Nuremberg Laws. In the Reichstag, Hermann Göring spelled out the
07:32purpose of the Reich Citizenship Act, and the Act for the Protection of German Blood and German
07:38Honour. Pure must not mix with impure. From now on, intermarriage was forbidden, and sex declared
07:47illegal between pure Aryan and impure Jew. Appealing to feelings and beliefs deep-rooted
07:54in European Christian culture, Nazi propaganda pilloried the dirty Jew. Dishonest, scheming,
08:01money-lending capitalist, and subversive communist. Verminous, unclean, racially inferior. Jews are
08:09not wanted here. But for leaders seeking to unite a people, there were mighty useful scapegoats to
08:15unite against. In schools, the Jew boys stood by the blackboard as their classmates pointed out the
08:22difference. German schoolchildren were taught to despise Jewish culture as soft and evil,
08:29to be proud of their own strength, their own purity. From all over Germany, the young converge
08:38on Landsberg, the castle where, as a prisoner, Hitler had first set out his theory of a dominant
08:44Aryan race.
08:59Hitler had dreamed of a youth as fierce as animals, with Christian tenderness and other degenerate soft mutations cleansed, burned out of him.
09:08Now, that youth was growing up to manhood.
09:14In November 1938, the synagogues burned on Kristallnacht.
09:26The morning after, Jewish males were marched off to concentration camps.
09:32The Jews were isolated, friendless. It was time to get out, if they could.
09:38Not many countries opened their doors to the Jew. In Germany, too, bureaucratic obstacles.
09:50Jewish emigrants paid stiff charges when they obtained permissions to leave from state officials such as Adolf Eichmann.
09:56I asked Eichmann, why don't you make it easier for these people when they want to get out?
10:03You want to get the Jews out, they want to leave of their own accord. Eichmann organised it.
10:10And they actually did it as I had envisaged it.
10:17There was a representative from the passport office, a representative from the finance authorities,
10:22a representative from the shipping offices and transport representatives.
10:26And this man, this poor Jewish man, who now wanted to emigrate, could make the rounds in two hours
10:31and could get all his confirmations and could get out.
10:38And as I said, I really must say it, Eichmann said to me once,
10:43you were actually the inventor of the central office for Jewish emigration.
10:51January 1939. Hitler threatens a new solution to the Jewish problem.
10:58If world Jewry drags Germany into another war, that will be the end of the Jews in Europe.
11:13September 1939. Germany attacks Poland.
11:17The victorious armies parade through Warsaw.
11:21Poland will be colonised. The population are not Aryans, they're Slavs and Jews.
11:32I remember that in front there was a German band with musical instruments.
11:38For me it was very nice. I remember that it was the first time in my life
11:44For me it was very nice. I was happy. I even remember that I clapped.
11:52German soldiers, aided by some Pole, beat up Jews in the streets.
12:09Nazi rule in Poland is based at once on ruthless terror.
12:13Any who resist, object, answer back, risk instant execution.
12:21There are public hangings by the thousand.
12:34The whole of Poland is on the move to be resettled on a racial basis.
12:38Those of German origin to Germany.
12:41The Poles themselves to designated areas, a workforce without rights in their own country.
12:47At the bottom of the heap, the Jews.
12:51By order, they will wear the Star of David at all times.
12:55There are heavy penalties for not doing so.
13:03Wearing it, they are easily identified.
13:09The Jews started the war. Now let them clear up the mess.
13:20German newsreel cameras could show the people back home
13:23that Jews at last were being made to do an honest day's work, to earn their daily bread.
13:30My mother, may her soul rest in peace, asked me to go down to the bakery
13:35and stand there the whole night in order to get a loaf of bread
13:38so that there would be something to eat at home the next day.
13:43When I arrived, there were already masses and masses of people standing in line.
13:48Among us, there were little children, non-Jews, Poles, running around.
13:53They pointed at each and every person.
13:56They pointed at each and every person.
13:59That's a Jew. That's a Jew. Das Jude. Das Jude. Das Jude.
14:04So that these people would be taken out of line and not get bread.
14:10My turn came. I turned around and saw that the boy was a friend with whom I played.
14:15I said to him in Polish, what are you doing?
14:18His answer was, I'm not your friend. You're a Jew. I don't know you.
14:24In 1940, Germany struck West. The SS went, too.
14:37Here again, a brutal terror.
14:42Less so, however, than in Eastern Europe.
14:45Many in the West were Aryans, too.
14:49In Poland, in 1940 and 1941, Jews were ordered into recreated medieval ghettos.
14:58We took a small cart. I, with my father, built a small cart and we began to move.
15:03Thousands and thousands, tens of thousands of people were walking,
15:07taking their belongings with them, some on their heads, some on their backs, on their shoulders.
15:12There were children, old people, babies, all of them, like the exile of the peoples.
15:18The exile from Egypt.
15:29The ghettos were closed off behind wire and long, high walls.
15:36In Warsaw, a road divided the ghetto in two, with a bridge over it for the Jews to cross by.
15:47There were only two water pits in the ghetto. The ghetto was small.
15:51When they brought us into the ghetto, they put three families with children into one room.
16:00In one room, three families with children. We never slept.
16:17Starvation rations.
16:23Harsh punishment for smuggling food.
16:38For resistance or attempts to escape, public execution.
16:48June 1941.
17:02June 1941. Germany attacks Russia.
17:06SS shocked troops in the first wave.
17:10Another racial war. More resettlement, mass deportations, forced emigrations.
17:16War against sub-humans, against Slavs and against Jews. Millions of Jews.
17:25We found a round figure of three million Jews in Poland,
17:29and then immediately after that came the Russian campaign,
17:32and we found another five million Jews in Russia.
17:36How on earth should we manage to emigrate this eight million by using these long and tiresome official methods?
17:44Now with the war we were cut off. We had no way out.
17:49To be rid of so many Jews.
17:53Only one alternative left. Kill them all.
17:56The job was begun by SS execution squads, Einsatzgruppen.
18:05They're shooting.
18:12People are already lying dead.
18:14My daughter was in my arms the whole time. Somehow I found the strength to carry her.
18:19She was so close to me that I couldn't undress. She wouldn't let me.
18:23She said, let's run away, they're killing us. Why do we just stand here?
18:29Why do people stand and not run away? Why are they standing?
18:33I said to her, I cannot really speak, I think I said, where are we going to run to?
18:39Some people did start to escape, but they didn't let them.
18:46There were many Germans guarding us.
18:48There were many Germans. Not only Germans.
18:51They even got non-Jews from the towns together to guard that we shouldn't escape.
18:56There was some sort of policeman there.
18:59So we undressed. There was no alternative.
19:04There were about 500 people altogether.
19:08Our turn came.
19:10I came up and saw how my father went.
19:15How my mother is shot.
19:18How my sisters are shot.
19:22My sister was very pretty, absolutely beautiful.
19:25The German looked into her eyes and she pleaded with him to let her go.
19:29Don't kill me. Just let me live.
19:33Nothing helped. She was shot.
19:40Then I, with my daughter in my arms, came up.
19:44He told me to put her down. I wanted to.
19:48I said, I don't want to.
19:50My daughter in my arms came up.
19:53He told me to put her down. I wanted to, but she wouldn't let me.
19:57She hid her head so as not to see what was being done with her.
20:02He forcibly, as far as I can remember, took her, stood her up.
20:08He shot, or didn't shoot.
20:11I neither saw nor heard.
20:14Then he shot me.
20:16I stood there and heard a shot.
20:20He didn't touch me.
20:23Then again a shot. I fell.
20:28I am lying in the pit and I feel that I do feel something.
20:34I didn't believe, I couldn't believe that I'm alive.
20:41I was lying in a pit of blood, a pit full of blood.
20:50This is how I lay the whole night, under corpses.
20:54In August 1941, Himmler visited a concentration centre near Minsk.
21:11It was crowded with Jews, Russian prisoners of war and others who were to die.
21:17The SS Reichsführer asked to see for himself how the killing was done.
21:22And there an open grave had been dug.
21:28They had to jump into this and lie face downwards.
21:31And sometimes when one or two rows had already been shot,
21:34they had to lie on the people who had been shot.
21:38And then they were shot from the edge of the grave.
21:46And Himmler had never seen dead people before.
21:49And in his curiosity he stood right up at the edge of this open grave,
21:53a sort of triangular hole, and was looking in.
21:57While he was looking in, Himmler had the deserved bad luck
22:01that from one or other of those who had been shot in the head,
22:04he got a splash of brains on his coat.
22:07And I think it also splashed onto his face.
22:12And he went very green and pale.
22:14He wasn't actually sick.
22:18But he was heaving and turned around and swayed.
22:24And then I had to jump forward and hold him steady.
22:27And then I led him away from the grave.
22:45GUNSHOT
23:03GUNSHOT
23:04GUNSHOT
23:12After the shooting was over, Himmler gathered the shooting commanders.
23:20And standing up in his car so that he'd be a little higher
23:23and be able to see the whole unit, he made a speech.
23:26He could not relieve them of this duty.
23:29He could not spare them.
23:31In the interests of the Reich, in this planned thousand-year Reich,
23:35in its first decisive great war after the takeover of power,
23:39they must do their duty.
23:52But shooting was messy, distressing, inefficient.
23:57So vast an undertaking required careful planning.
24:01At Wannsee in January 1942,
24:04Himmler's deputy, Heydrich, convened a conference.
24:07Senior civil servants attended from various departments of state.
24:11They were representatives of the ministries of justice and of transport.
24:15Formal minutes were kept.
24:17And lists of Jews, country by country.
24:19In Poland, over two million.
24:21In Norway, 1,300.
24:23England, 330,000.
24:26Russia, five million.
24:28Grand total, over 11 million.
24:33Eichmann, with his experience in transportation,
24:36was appointed permanent administrator
24:38for this final solution of the Jewish problem.
24:42It had been decided that all the Jews in Europe were to be gassed.
24:51All occupied Europe had a concentration camp system
24:54based on the model camp Dachau.
24:57The camps were not only an instrument of terror.
25:00They were an important factor in war production,
25:03each with its cluster of labour camps attached.
25:06Now, they were also to be the means of the final solution.
25:11In the occupied East, new camps were specially built,
25:15and old ones equipped with new industrial capacity.
25:18They were to be machines to kill human beings by the million,
25:22utilise the by-products, dispose of the waste.
25:26The camps were sited on railway routes to facilitate transportation.
25:30Eichmann chartered rolling stock from the state railways.
25:34The biggest camp of all was built astride the main railway line
25:38from Krakow to Vienna,
25:40in the outskirts of the Polish town of Auschwitz.
25:46In summer 1942, Himmler visited Auschwitz to inspect progress,
25:51to see for himself how things were getting on.
25:55Work was underway.
25:57Manufacturers' tenders had been called for, choices made.
26:00Plans and architects' drawings for the new combined gas chambers and crematoriums
26:04were ready for inspection,
26:06with their carefully designed chimneys and specially patented furnaces.
26:26Outside, construction workers, slave labourers,
26:29were striving to keep to their schedules in the warm summer weather.
26:38The gassing would be done with cans of poison pellets
26:41developed from a commercial pesticide, Zyklon B.
26:44The pellets were shaken through a roof grill.
26:47Exposed to the air, they gave off cyanide gas.
26:51In the occupied territories, the round-ups began.
27:12In some countries, this is Holland, no Stampede.
27:16The Jews gathered for resettlement in orderly fashion.
27:20The order of their going worked out by their own community leaders.
27:24Behind it all, the SS and the Gestapo.
27:28Jews everywhere were told, and they were ready to believe,
27:32they were being transported for resettlement.
27:36In the starving ghettos of the East, those who volunteered to go got bread.
27:41To escape starvation, they willingly paid railway fares for the journey.
27:54Bewildered, under armed guard, they walked to the station.
28:00The cattle trucks were waiting.
28:03There were soldiers on the platform.
28:06They climbed aboard.
28:09The minute we got in, the minute they closed it on us with a bolt,
28:13terrible cries began inside.
28:16In Polish, Yiddish, German, pleading, requests,
28:21there's no air, we're suffocating, suffocating, suffocating.
28:28Here suddenly you had a hell on wheels.
28:32And people suddenly stopped to be preoccupied,
28:36either with the past or with the future, but with surviving the journey.
28:44The first to faint were children, women, old men and women.
28:48They all fell down like flies, exactly like flies.
28:55Father was standing next to me.
28:57All of a sudden, I see that he is falling, he has collapsed.
29:01I cried, father, father.
29:07Then I found a piece of wood on the floor of the wagon.
29:14I got up and began to beat with the piece of wood.
29:18It was a club or something.
29:21I began to beat the people who were standing around me in the wagon,
29:25so that they would make room for father, so that father could get up.
29:30I remember that I didn't care about the suffering of others.
29:34I didn't care about the suffering of others, their cries, their threats.
29:38Only that father should get up.
29:50We had read the name of Auschwitz on the label on the trucks,
29:55in the trucks of wagons, trucks.
29:59But nobody of us knew what Auschwitz meant.
30:10I could see two rows of barbed wire, which were obviously electrical.
30:19I saw a row of people with carbines and a row of docks, very disciplined docks.
30:27And I was more amused than uneasy.
30:30I didn't think that they were going to shoot me, because I couldn't see any reason for that.
30:38The car was opened, they undid the bolt.
30:41The first moment it was opened, there was a sudden gust of air.
30:47It was good.
30:49We began to throw out the dead bodies.
30:52But all of a sudden, there were voices.
30:56Raus, raus, raus, schnell, schnell, schnell. Quick, quick, out, out, out.
31:02I was afraid, then for the first time. You know why.
31:06There were flames until the sky and a strange smell.
31:14The smell I remember from home when my mother burned on Friday a chicken.
31:19On the platform to greet them, an SS reception committee.
31:26New arrivals were divided into two columns.
31:29A quick medical inspection by the camp doctors.
31:32Those fit to work were put to one side.
31:45In the other column, all the rest.
31:47The old.
31:49The sick.
31:52The lame.
31:53Pregnant mothers.
31:55Women with children.
32:00Some suspect the worst.
32:02Most have no idea.
32:05The idea for a mother being told after this terrible journey
32:11that her children are going to be gassed
32:13was an utter outrageous idea in her mind.
32:16Because after all what she suffered,
32:19here comes a gangster who wants to increase her suffering.
32:23So she was tempted to go immediately to the next need officer
32:27and say that this man says,
32:30Sir, that my children are going to be gassed.
32:34And he says, Madam, do you think you are barbarian?
32:42Those selected to be gassed were told
32:44that they would be de-loused in the showers before starting work.
32:48Then they would rejoin their families.
32:53They waited their turn, sometimes for hours.
32:58Helbringer said to me, Richard, you are interested in the actions?
33:02I said, yes, very interested indeed.
33:05He said, I'll take you with me this evening.
33:11The new arrivals had to get undressed.
33:13And when a certain number had gone inside, they shut the doors.
33:16And that happened three times.
33:21And every time Helbringer had to go out to his ambulance
33:24and they took out a sort of tin.
33:26One of the SS-Blockführers did that.
33:30And then he climbed up the ladder
33:32and then at the top there was a round hole
33:34and he opened the little iron door and held the tin there and shook it.
33:39And then he shut the little door again.
33:41Then a fearful screaming started up.
33:43Approximately, I would reckon, after about ten minutes
33:46it slowly went quiet.
33:50I said to Helbringer, can we get a bit nearer when they take them out?
33:53So we went a bit closer.
33:55They opened the door. That was the prisoner's squad who did that.
33:58Then a blue haze came out.
34:00And I looked in and I saw a pyramid.
34:02They'd all climbed on top of each other
34:04until the last one stood on the very top.
34:07All one on top of the other.
34:09It was a pointed heap. It all came up to a point.
34:14And then the prisoners had to go in and tear it apart.
34:24They had to tug and pull very hard to disentangle all these people.
34:30Then we went back to the hall
34:32and now it was the turn of the last lot to get undressed.
34:35The ones who'd managed to hang back a bit all the time.
34:38Then the prisoners had to check where small children had been hidden and covered up.
34:42They pulled them out and opened the doors quickly again.
34:45And whoosh!
34:47They threw all the children in and slammed the doors.
34:51I'm going to be sick, I said.
34:53Oh my, I said, I've never seen anything like it in my life.
34:56It's absolutely terrible.
34:58And just imagine, when they threw the children in,
35:01how the people inside screamed
35:03because then they suddenly realised what was happening.
35:06I said, Karl, can we leave soon? I can't stand it anymore.
35:10And he said, you do get used to anything in time.
35:20A few, the strong, the young, would work till they died.
35:27Some would die of exhaustion.
35:29Some were beaten to death.
35:31Some, too weak to work another day, were gassed in their turd.
35:36And prisoners had other uses.
35:39Medical experiments.
35:52Some, their hearts broken, chose to die on the electrified wire.
35:57Outside that wire, SS men free to go home to their families
36:02at the end of the day's work.
36:06And I remember when we passed,
36:0810,000 naked women in a frosty morning
36:11were already sorted out, you see, and put on the lorries.
36:15And they knew, they were all prisoners already.
36:17And they knew that they are now going to the gas chamber.
36:20And they were quiet, and somehow people were accustomed
36:23to live with the moment, with the knowledge that the death will come.
36:28But when the motor started, you know, this noise,
36:32this created a panic between the women
36:34and a terrible noise went up from those lorries, you see,
36:38the death cry of thousands of young women, you know,
36:41who were already reduced to skeletons.
36:43And their, their, their, their futile attempts,
36:47which they knew by any logic that they can't succeed,
36:50to jump out from the, from the lorries,
36:52which takes them to the gas chambers,
36:54which are only perhaps less than a mile away,
36:56and which were already stoked,
36:58and the fire was coming out from the chimneys.
37:01This means everything was prepared.
37:03You see, this was a moment when Moshe Zolenshah, the Rabbi's son,
37:06spoke to his God,
37:08God show them your power.
37:11This is against you.
37:13And nothing happened.
37:15And then he said, there is no God.
37:21We used to say, where is the whole world?
37:24Where is the United States?
37:26Where is Russia?
37:28Do they know what is happening here in the extermination camps at all?
37:33Well, there had, of course, been
37:37only too much evidence of persecution of the Jews
37:41before the war began in Hitlerite Germany.
37:45And then, as the war progressed,
37:48some horrifying reports began to come out.
37:52At first, it was very difficult to, naturally,
37:56to assess their, their, their accuracy.
37:59And they were, indeed, so horrible
38:01that it's hard to believe they could be true.
38:06Among the working prisoners, a resistance movement.
38:10They smuggled out photographs
38:12with a plea to the great powers for help.
38:15The evidence was so extensive,
38:17one could hardly fail to give it credit.
38:21And we decided that one of the things we must do
38:24was to make a joint statement
38:28in each of our capitals at the same time,
38:32declaring what our information was
38:35and what this horror was that was being perpetrated,
38:38and also making plain our detestation of it
38:42and our determination that those responsible for it
38:45should be published, punished, when the war was over.
38:49And that we got agreement upon after some negotiation,
38:53and it was near the end of 1942
38:56when we, I made this statement on the House of Commons,
39:00with, I must say, a dramatic effect
39:03far exceeding anything that I'd expected.
39:07And the speaker, a very fine speaker, Alger Fitzra,
39:10he got up and he said,
39:12it is for the House to rise if it so wishes
39:15to express its feelings, and the whole House got up.
39:18And I remember Lloyd George coming to me afterwards
39:21and saying, all my years in Parliament,
39:23I've never seen anything like this.
39:25He was deeply impressed, and so was I.
39:28Well, that was something that we could do.
39:31In April 1943, the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto rose,
39:36led by young men and women
39:38who knew the truth about resettlement
39:41and determined to fight.
39:44They had pitifully few arms.
39:47They fought bravely.
39:51It took the Germans 33 days to crush the ghetto.
39:58The survivors were marched off to share the fate
40:01of those who had gone unresisting before them.
40:06Theresienstadt.
40:08The Nazi cover story,
40:10Resettlement in the East, was elaborately documented.
40:14This propaganda film, made in 1943,
40:17was designed to show the German public
40:19at the International Red Cross
40:21what conditions in the resettlement camps
40:23were really like.
40:26At the time this film was released,
40:28most of the people seen here
40:30were already dead in the gas chambers at Auschwitz.
40:36By 1944, the Germans were losing the war.
40:39The SS speeded up the rate of killing.
40:44The railway tracks now led straight to the gas chambers,
40:48and still the trains rolled in from Italy,
40:50from Greece, from Hungary.
40:54They took us to crematoria three and four.
40:59There we saw hell on this earth.
41:02Large piles of dead people,
41:07and people dragging these bodies to a long pit,
41:12about 30 metres in length and 10 metres in width.
41:16There was a huge fire there, made of trees.
41:21On the other side, fat was being taken out of this pit,
41:24with a bucket.
41:27We immediately had to begin working.
41:29Four people would take hold of one dead person,
41:34but the SS came and said,
41:35no, each one of you will take one.
41:42He showed us how, with a simple walking stick.
41:45One was to take the body under the chin,
41:47put the stick on the neck,
41:48and drag the body to the pit,
41:50like you would drag a rag or a piece of wood.
41:54At the edge of the pit there were still more people
41:56who pushed the dead into the pit.
42:00Some of our group threw themselves,
42:02jumped into the pit, alive.
42:06They apparently thought it better to be burned alive
42:08rather than work at such a job.
42:12There were only four or five SS men altogether.
42:18They were so well organised
42:19that there were just the four or five of them with us.
42:25But there were electric fences,
42:27and beyond this fence there were SS guards.
42:31Escape was impossible.
42:37After a week,
42:38they suddenly took me one night to crematorium one.
42:43There the whole job was more mechanical.
42:46All around there were water installations,
42:48as if for showers.
42:53Everyone crowded around these showers.
42:56They still didn't know.
42:58Some who did, did not dare to believe
43:00that they were going to be poisoned there.
43:04They would put about 2,000,
43:062,500 people in there.
43:09If there wasn't enough room,
43:10the small children would be thrown on top of the people's heads.
43:16There were invalids.
43:18They would take out their service cards
43:19showing that they had fought in the First World War
43:22with all kinds of distinctions and medals
43:24which they had from that time.
43:26They shouted,
43:27What's this?
43:28We fought for Germany
43:29and now they're going to burn us, to kill us.
43:31This is impossible.
43:32We protest against such a thing.
43:35But everyone just laughed at them.
43:38They didn't take it seriously, these SS men.
43:41They laughed at the whole thing.
43:44There were invalids whom I helped to undress,
43:46as they couldn't do it by themselves.
43:49There were many of us who helped.
43:51I would talk to these people.
43:53There were cases where I saw acquaintances.
43:56My heart wouldn't let me walk over to them
43:58to let them recognize me.
44:01No one who hasn't gone through such a thing
44:03can imagine what the will to live is,
44:06what a moment of life is.
44:10Every person, without exception,
44:13is capable of doing the worst things
44:15just to live another minute.
44:28Many women miscarried during the poisoning.
44:32People hit each other.
44:34People scratched with their nails.
44:36There were fingernail marks on people.
44:39Everyone wanted to survive,
44:42but it was impossible there.
44:50We went in to take out all the corpses.
44:52We took them up by lifts to the ovens.
44:59Near the ovens, upstairs,
45:01there were men who removed gold teeth and false teeth.
45:06They would shave the women's hair
45:08and look for all sorts of valuables
45:10in the most intimate of places,
45:13especially on the women.
45:16In the oven, it took 15 minutes to burn them.
45:20Only a few ashes were left from all those corpses.
45:25The industry of death had useful by-products.
45:28Women's hair was packed in bales,
45:30teeth melted down,
45:31artificial limbs and spectacle lenses
45:34recycled for the German war machine.
45:37It all helped.
45:47In July 1944,
45:49the Russians liberated Lublin in eastern Poland.
45:54Close by, they found the extermination camp at Majdanek,
45:58where tens of thousands had died.
46:08The proofs of horror were all too clear.
46:12Only 170 miles away,
46:15the ovens of Auschwitz were busier than ever.
46:21There were two shifts at work,
46:23from six in the morning to six at night.
46:29I was present when they brought the gypsies one night for burning,
46:34for poisoning.
46:36It was a terrible sight.
46:42There were cries to the sky.
46:50The cries in the bunker,
46:52in the crematorium,
46:54in the gas chamber,
46:57horrible.
47:00I still wonder today how God didn't hear these cries.
47:07The German army was now retreating on all fronts,
47:10leaving fire and destruction behind.
47:13They tried to destroy evidence of the camps,
47:16pulling up railway lines, dismantling equipment.
47:27Yet even now, Himmler urged the master race to fight on.
47:32Defeat was unthinkable, their task unfinished.
47:38Eichmann said at that time,
47:40six million people have been killed.
47:45Four million in concentration camps and similar set-ups,
47:49and two million by shooting.
47:52Einsatzkommandos.
47:54Einsatzkommandos.
47:56And he told me at that time, it was fantastic, really.
47:59I had thought a lot of people had been killed, but six million.
48:03Well, he said,
48:05and just imagine, that was still too few for Himmler.
48:09Himmler said to me, there must be more than that,
48:12and he set up his own statistics unit,
48:14today one would say computer people,
48:16who were to check up on this.
48:19The Russians reached Auschwitz in January 1945.
48:25The Germans had moved most of the surviving prisoners back west into Germany.
48:30Some too old or too sick to be moved remained.
48:49And there were the relics and belongings of those who had been brought here.
49:05Then rescuers reached the camps in Germany itself,
49:08where by now the survivors of the extermination camps had been abandoned.
49:19They found the stench of rotting corpses, cholera, typhus.
49:25Many who were rescued were too weak to survive.
49:29Some lived to bear witness.
49:34When the Americans entered, I weighed 42 kilos.
49:43I had a terrible time.
49:54I had a terrible time.
49:59I was skin and bones.
50:05I walked around the camp naked.
50:07I had a belt with a plate,
50:11spoon and revolver.
50:15This was all my property after the liberation.
50:29I was a slave.
50:43I bless every day that I continue to live,
50:46because every day that I live is pure profit.
50:50I could say that today I'm 27 years old.
50:53The years before the camp don't count,
50:55as I was dead in the camp,
50:57and reborn after the liberation.
51:27I was a slave.
51:29I was a slave.
51:31I was a slave.
51:33I was a slave.
51:35I was a slave.
51:37I was a slave.
51:39I was a slave.
51:41I was a slave.
51:43I was a slave.
51:45I was a slave.
51:47I was a slave.
51:49I was a slave.
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51:57I was a slave.
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52:01I was a slave.
52:03I was a slave.
52:05I was a slave.
52:07I was a slave.
52:09I was a slave.
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52:13I was a slave.
52:15I was a slave.
52:17I was a slave.
52:19I was a slave.
52:21I was a slave.
52:23I was a slave.
52:25I was a slave.
52:27I was a slave.
52:29I was a slave.
52:31I was a slave.
52:33I was a slave.
52:35I was a slave.
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52:39I was a slave.
52:41I was a slave.
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52:45I was a slave.
52:47I was a slave.
52:49I was a slave.