Welcome to FlickFrenzy!
Subscribe now and dive into a world where every flick is a new thrill!
Subscribe now and dive into a world where every flick is a new thrill!
Category
😹
FunTranscript
00:00:00In the final stages of the Second World War, with the Red Army and Western Allies closing
00:00:13in on two fronts, the Nazis began clearing their concentration camps.
00:00:20Around 700,000 inmates were forcibly relocated.
00:00:24No one knows the exact number.
00:00:27They were forced to travel across Eastern and Central Europe, through fields, forests
00:00:32and villages, along coasts and rivers, towards Austria and Germany.
00:00:39Along the way, an estimated 250,000 to 300,000 people perished.
00:00:45They died of cold, hunger, thirst, exhaustion.
00:00:49Some were murdered by their guards, or even shot by civilians as they passed by.
00:00:57There are only a few images of these death marches, which took place in 1944 and 1945.
00:01:05But we do have accounts from those who survived.
00:01:09Is there any way to convey the incomparable cruelty of these marches?
00:01:17Was it collective torture?
00:01:19An act of revenge by a power on the verge of defeat?
00:01:24Did those responsible lose all restraint amid the downfall of the doomed Third Reich?
00:01:30To this day, the death marches are a little-known chapter of Germany's Nazi history.
00:01:36Taking a closer look at them can shed a new light on the collapse of the regime that terrorised
00:01:42Europe for more than 12 years.
00:02:24On 23 July 1944, the Red Army liberated a concentration camp for the first time.
00:02:45The huge Majdanek camp, outside Lublin, in occupied Poland.
00:02:51What they discovered was something like a death factory.
00:02:55Gas chambers, incinerators, gallows and mass graves, as well as mountains of items confiscated
00:03:03from the victims.
00:03:10The SS guards had not had time to remove the evidence of their genocide.
00:03:15Straight away, Soviet generals ordered that the Nazi mass extermination facility be documented
00:03:20on film.
00:03:22Soon, the world learned about this key aspect of what the Nazis called the Final Solution.
00:03:34The camp's 15,000 inmates had all disappeared, with the exception of a few hundred who were
00:03:40too sick to march.
00:03:44The Red Army was advancing on the Eastern Front.
00:03:48Shortly before it reached Majdanek, the SS had evacuated the camp.
00:04:01As early as the spring of 1944, prisoners from Majdanek began to be transferred in several
00:04:06stages as the Eastern Front approached.
00:04:09It was done in a relatively orderly way.
00:04:11It wasn't yet a complete evacuation.
00:04:14Excavations were more or less tolerable.
00:04:19Hundreds of people died, but at that stage, it wasn't especially chaotic.
00:04:32In April 1944, the SS began transferring tens of thousands of prisoners.
00:04:42Men and women were herded along the road leading from the Majdanek concentration camp
00:04:47towards the city of Lublin.
00:04:51And then the front came closer to Majdanek.
00:04:57By that time, we understood that they ran and that they have to go away.
00:05:03You know, you have to be pretty dumb not to know what was...
00:05:07We didn't know that they were liberated, that already some parts of Poland are free.
00:05:13You know, we didn't know this.
00:05:16You know, Eastern, like Eastern Poland.
00:05:19And we had to march with them again.
00:05:32And that march was awful.
00:05:34It was so hot.
00:05:37Without food and without...
00:05:39And burnt feet.
00:05:41And so hot and dirty and filthy.
00:05:45And the dogs right beside you, because there were a lot of guards and Germans, you know,
00:05:50they all were running.
00:05:58A hundred kilometres southwest of Lublin, they reached Szmierlo station.
00:06:04There, they were loaded into cattle wagons.
00:06:14Despite suffering abuse from the guards, the majority of them survived the journey.
00:06:19Most ended up at the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp.
00:06:24These first relocations were a reaction by the Nazi leadership to the Red Army's advances.
00:06:30Transferring inmates to camps still under German control was intended to be a temporary
00:06:36measure until the military situation improved.
00:06:45The historian Pierre Vidal-Naquet once said that you don't need to know the ending in
00:06:51order to write history.
00:06:52Well, now we know the ending.
00:06:57With a little distance, it's clear that after Stalingrad, Germany had lost the war.
00:07:04But of course, our perspective today is completely different to what people thought back then.
00:07:11Maybe not everyone, but certainly a lot of Nazis believed until the end, until May 1945,
00:07:18that they could still reverse the course of the war and win it.
00:07:31The Red Army's offensive, known as Operation Bagration, was launched on June 22, 1944.
00:07:39Its success took all parties by surprise.
00:07:42And yet Hitler refused to acknowledge that the Wehrmacht might be facing defeat on the
00:07:47Eastern Front.
00:07:51Maps showed just how unstoppable the Soviet troops were.
00:07:55Within two months, the Red Army had liberated Russia and Belarus from German occupation
00:08:00and advanced 600 kilometres to the Vistula River.
00:08:04It was a blow to the Wehrmacht, especially as the situation in the West was no better.
00:08:17Allied forces had landed in Normandy on June 6, 1944, and on the Côte d'Azur around two
00:08:23months later.
00:08:25The German Reich was surrounded.
00:08:35In 1944, the Allies began to advance.
00:08:39From the West came the Americans and British, and to a lesser degree the French.
00:08:43From the East came the Russians.
00:08:47Between them, they had Germany in their grasp.
00:08:54Given the situation, the Nazis began to worry that the Allies might liberate the concentration
00:08:59camps, so they decided to close them.
00:09:12On June 17, 1944, SS Chief Heinrich Himmler sent out a decree instructing how camps should
00:09:19be evacuated in the event of approaching Allied forces.
00:09:23Under the heading, Securing the Concentration Camps, he gave high-ranking SS and police
00:09:29officers decision-making powers when it came to the camps.
00:09:35They alone could decide on the evacuation of inmates, taking into account the military
00:09:40situation in a given region.
00:09:50Like so many Nazi orders, Himmler's decree was ambiguous.
00:09:55People always think everything was organized with precision, but it wasn't.
00:09:59The Berlin authorities only gave broad guidelines.
00:10:02At the local level, the police and the SS were then supposed to work in the spirit of
00:10:07the Führer, as one senior Nazi functionary put it.
00:10:10In other words, they were supposed to ask themselves what the Nazi leadership might
00:10:14want and then act accordingly.
00:10:20Himmler's general decree was distributed across a vast network of concentration and extermination
00:10:28camps which the Nazis had set up since coming to power.
00:10:36In 1944, there was an extensive network of more than 500 camps, including around 20 main
00:10:53camps spread throughout the Greater German Reich.
00:10:57When the evacuations began, prisoners were relocated and there was movement across the
00:11:02whole network.
00:11:03The evacuations massively increased the number of deaths.
00:11:15The concentration camps that were built in 1933 were by no means intended for Jews.
00:11:21They were places for what was called community education.
00:11:24The internees were mainly political enemies, Germans or Europeans who were considered degenerate,
00:11:30subhuman, criminal, the scum of the earth.
00:11:35Of course there were many Jews among them, but the places that were set up specifically
00:11:39for Jews from December 1941 onwards weren't camps but rather extermination facilities.
00:11:45There, new arrivals were to be murdered within a maximum of 90 minutes.
00:11:56By the early summer of 1944, shortly before Himmler's decree, the SS had already closed
00:12:02four extermination camps in occupied Poland.
00:12:06Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka and Chelmno.
00:12:11More than two million people had already been killed in those camps.
00:12:16The SS was mainly concerned with camps in what Nazi Germany called Reichskommissariat
00:12:22Ostland, primarily the Baltic region.
00:12:25Jews were the closest to being liberated by the Red Army during Operation Bagration.
00:12:32After the occupation of the Baltic states by the Wehrmacht in 1941, Jews in Estonia,
00:12:38Latvia and Lithuania were among the first victims of Nazi terror.
00:12:46In the Baltic states, there was a policy of exterminating Jews very early on.
00:12:56After December 1941, the only ghettos were those serving the war industry.
00:13:07The ghettos in Riga, Konus and Vilnius, which later became concentration camps, supported
00:13:13Germany's economy and industry by providing labour, including child labour.
00:13:22After Himmler's orders to dissolve the region's ghettos and camps, the fate of the inhabitants
00:13:27lay in the hands of the SS officers in charge.
00:13:38Himmler's order was implemented in different ways depending on the character of the camp
00:13:42commander or the officer responsible for the evacuation.
00:13:45There were huge differences.
00:13:48In concentration camps like Kloga in Estonia, there were mass murders.
00:13:53Almost every prisoner, all of them Jews, were killed.
00:13:57Hardly any survived.
00:13:59They weren't transferred to another camp.
00:14:03They were murdered on sight by the guards.
00:14:05So there was no evacuation.
00:14:07The SS shot everyone and then they left.
00:14:14When the Soviets reached Kloga, they found the bodies of murdered Jews on pyres of wood
00:14:19that the SS had built.
00:14:21The massacre had claimed the lives of 2,000 people.
00:14:25In the Baltic states, concentration camp inmates were predominantly Jews.
00:14:30That played a decisive role.
00:14:33To the SS leaders, a Jewish life was worthless.
00:14:38Killing their captives was the easiest way to make a quick escape from the advancing
00:14:42Red Army.
00:14:47We're talking about the SS here.
00:14:49They were the elite German force.
00:14:52To them, all non-Germans were not only inferior, but completely worthless.
00:14:57Their point of view was, we'll do what we want and if people die in the process, that's
00:15:02not our problem.
00:15:03They're here to serve our purpose.
00:15:05That was the Nazi ideology.
00:15:12But mass murders during evacuation operations were an exception.
00:15:17That's because the prisoners were a vital resource for the Nazi regime.
00:15:27These first evacuations, or relocations as the SS called them, had a military-industrial
00:15:33goal.
00:15:34It was about bringing workers who were necessary for the war effort to safety.
00:15:40Because the dominant narrative among the Nazis was that their fortunes were on the verge
00:15:44of changing.
00:15:45They thought they just had to produce the necessary weapons to bring about a geostrategic
00:15:52turnaround.
00:16:04In order to produce weapons, the factories needed workers, which were hard to find within
00:16:10Germany.
00:16:13For one thing, because all German men who were fit for military service were at the
00:16:16front.
00:16:19But even more importantly, because other sources of labor had dried up, including the Reich
00:16:25Labor Service, forced laborers from Ukraine and Poland, and the compulsory work service
00:16:32in Vichy, France.
00:16:36So they had to rely on the workforce they had.
00:16:39And that included concentration camp inmates.
00:16:52A few days before the Red Army crossed into the Baltic states, the Nazis decided to evacuate
00:16:58those interned there.
00:16:59For hundreds of thousands of people, hopes that Allied military pressure might bring
00:17:04them freedom were dashed.
00:17:10Instead, a new nightmare was about to begin.
00:17:15It was in July, they started to clear out the ghetto.
00:17:26And they told us where to go.
00:17:28Because at this point, they had already their minds made up to take us to the trains, to
00:17:36take us to Stutthof and Dachau.
00:17:40We didn't know, but of course, we found out later.
00:17:44And they told us where to go, where we're going to stay there.
00:17:47From there, we're going to go somewhere else.
00:17:53We were taken to the wagons, to the trains.
00:17:59And we, all of us together, the men and women, pushed us into those cattle trains, packed.
00:18:08There was no room even for...
00:18:10You couldn't sit down, just standing right next to each other.
00:18:16That night, and the second day, we were traveling, and suddenly the trains were stopped.
00:18:29And they asked everybody to get out.
00:18:32And at this point, they asked all the men to go on the side, and the women should go
00:18:37back to the trains.
00:18:40And this is when all the men were taken away from us, and my father among them.
00:18:47And the last look on his face, saying, we will meet again.
00:19:04And don't worry, I'll be okay.
00:19:06Just keep yourself alive, and we'll meet again.
00:19:10He said that, that sad, trying, with bright eyes, but a sad face.
00:19:19And that was the last time I saw him.
00:19:30While some prisoners were transported from the Baltic states on trains, several thousand
00:19:35others were taken away on ships.
00:19:38They landed on the coast of the occupied eastern territories in what's now Poland.
00:19:43There, they were interned in the Stutthof concentration camp.
00:19:48The barges were full of people, it was suffocating.
00:19:51We were just down in the hole, these were barges that carried freight.
00:19:58We did not know whether they were going to drown us, whether they were going to take
00:20:01us someplace.
00:20:05They were Latvians, and they were, believe me, worse than the German SS.
00:20:11They were Latvian SS, but they were so bad, so bad, and so beating, oh, they would beat
00:20:21for every little thing, and they were like, like mad dogs.
00:20:33In the distance, we could hear shots, or artillery fire, or something like that.
00:20:37There must have been Russian ships nearby.
00:20:39In any case, it was no walk in the park.
00:20:42There were also old and sick people in the hold.
00:20:46Being crammed together like that was terrible.
00:20:55In the summer of 1944, there was a sweltering heat wave.
00:21:00Soaring temperatures made the conditions in the cattle wagons of trains and the holds
00:21:04of ships even more miserable.
00:21:07According to accounts, people's mouths were so dry that swallowing what little food they
00:21:12had was torture.
00:21:14Licking their own sweat only made them thirstier.
00:21:18We prayed for rain, said one man who was freed in 1945, but none came.
00:21:28The weakest prisoners died.
00:21:31But despite the immeasurable suffering during transport, most survived and were interned
00:21:36at new camps, Stutthof or Dachau.
00:21:58As this footage shows, German civilians were also feeling the heat in the summer of 1944.
00:22:05Here on the outskirts of Munich, parents took their children for a refreshing dip, not far
00:22:11from the Dachau concentration camp.
00:22:14Little did they know that in the highest circles of the Wehrmacht, there was a plot to bring
00:22:20down the Nazi leadership.
00:22:26On July 20th, Hitler received Mussolini at his eastern headquarters, the Wolf's Lair.
00:22:34This would be the last meeting between the two dictators.
00:22:37The Führer smiled, despite burst eardrums and an injured arm.
00:22:43He'd just survived an assassination attempt by Wehrmacht officer Klaus von Stauffenberg,
00:22:48who detonated a bomb at Hitler's feet during a meeting.
00:22:56The summer of 1944 was a catastrophe for the Nazis.
00:23:00Some Wehrmacht officers had finally come to the realization that Hitler was no longer
00:23:05making strategically sound decisions and had to be removed from power.
00:23:09He was standing in the way of what were seen as necessary peace negotiations, so there
00:23:14was a high-level conspiracy with the aim of assassinating him.
00:23:23The code name for the coup attempt by von Stauffenberg and his co-conspirators was Operation
00:23:29Valkyrie.
00:23:30It failed.
00:23:32Hitler survived, and peace negotiations with the Allies never took place.
00:23:38While he visited other victims of the attack, with cotton wool in his ears, the plotters
00:23:43were arrested and executed.
00:23:51This attack rocked the leadership at the highest levels.
00:23:55Even though it wasn't the first assassination attempt, it came from within.
00:24:00As a result, after July 20, 1944, Heinrich Himmler was given practically unlimited powers
00:24:06in all areas, including the military.
00:24:08Himmler was Hitler's most loyal, radical, fanatical follower, and he had command over
00:24:14everything.
00:24:20The concentration of power in Himmler, head of the SS, was intended to counteract divisions
00:24:26within the Nazi leadership apparatus.
00:24:29Ranks closed around Adolf Hitler, who assured himself that the German people were loyal
00:24:34to him.
00:24:36With renewed conviction, Nazi Germany continued the war, still believing it could win.
00:24:45In March 1944, a few months before von Stauffenberg's assassination attempt, Hitler had ordered
00:24:51the implementation of Operation Margareta.
00:24:55Wehrmacht troops marched into former-Allied Hungary to prevent the country from negotiating
00:25:01a truce with the Soviet Union.
00:25:06Imre Kertesz, Nobel Prize winner and Holocaust survivor, begins his novel, Fateless, with
00:25:12the line, I didn't go to school today.
00:25:16Kertesz was 14 years old when he was deported from his home in Budapest.
00:25:21He was one of 440,000 people taken to Auschwitz-Birkenau between May and June 1944.
00:25:30German Jews were the last major target of Nazi extermination policy, as implemented
00:25:35by Adolf Eichmann.
00:25:58In the fall of 1944, 50,000 Jews who had escaped the gas chambers of Auschwitz passed through
00:26:04the Hungarian city of Gür, between Budapest and Vienna, where the prisoners were sent
00:26:10to build defence fortifications.
00:26:18These images are among the few that exist depicting the death marches.
00:26:22Some of the men and women lower their eyes.
00:26:25Others look into the camera.
00:26:28Some are frightened.
00:26:30Others dejected.
00:26:32Some even smile, as though the hope of a better fate is what keeps them going on the long
00:26:37march, especially those carrying children on their backs.
00:26:45Thousands of them died along the way, either collapsed from exhaustion or shot in cold
00:26:50blood by the accompanying guards.
00:26:55This ordeal, suffered by 50,000 Jews on the road from Budapest to Vienna, is considered
00:27:01the first major death march of the Holocaust.
00:28:18On January 12, 1945, the Red Army launched a major offensive.
00:28:24Stalin himself directed the operation from Moscow.
00:28:28Its aim was to relieve the Western Allies, who had been pushed back by the Wehrmacht
00:28:33in the Ardennes.
00:28:36The initial plan was to completely liberate Poland.
00:28:40After crossing the Vistula, the Soviet troops took Warsaw, Lodz and Poznan, advancing as
00:28:46far as the present-day German-Polish border.
00:28:50Hitler could not have imagined the collapse of the Eastern Front, or the spectacular Soviet
00:28:55gains.
00:28:56But it was an unequal battle.
00:28:59A two million strong Red Army against 40,000 Wehrmacht soldiers, who were already weakened
00:29:06by previous fighting.
00:29:09The Russians had 15 times more tanks and artillery, and 12 times more aircraft.
00:29:16In February 1945, they reached the Oder River.
00:29:20They were now just 70 kilometers from Berlin.
00:29:40The four and a half million Germans of East Prussia and the occupied territories were
00:29:45left to their fate.
00:29:49Among those fleeing were women and children and the elderly, as well as countless soldiers
00:29:55who had deserted the Wehrmacht.
00:29:59There were also Nazi functionaries who had administered the eastern territories of the
00:30:04German Reich.
00:30:08Under a hail of Allied bombs, civilians and military alike moved west, leaving behind
00:30:14white flags meant to appease Russian soldiers.
00:30:26In fall 1944, the Nazis were telling people that if the Russians came, they'd really be
00:30:30in trouble.
00:30:32That propaganda was reinforced by images of atrocities like the one in Nemesdorf, an East
00:30:36Prussian village occupied by the Russians in October 1944.
00:30:43When the Wehrmacht recaptured the village, they found a horrific scene.
00:30:47Raped women and decapitated, disemboweled people nailed to barn doors.
00:30:52Goebbels took advantage of it, saying, look what these people are capable of.
00:31:04In many cases, warnings about a marauding Red Army proved to be justified.
00:31:10More than 40% of Soviet soldiers had lost a family member to German military aggression.
00:31:16Again and again, domestic propaganda urged them to take revenge.
00:31:23After the Red Army crossed the German border, officers could barely maintain discipline
00:31:28among the troops.
00:31:30Some were even murdered by their subordinates.
00:31:36Against this backdrop of chaos and brutality, Nazi Germany moved to evacuate its largest
00:31:42extermination camp in occupied Poland, Auschwitz-Birkenau.
00:31:57Until then, the Soviets hadn't gone further than Krakow.
00:32:00Suddenly, they were advancing westwards.
00:32:04And remember, Auschwitz was located at the easternmost tip of the German Reich.
00:32:08It's where the Soviets crossed onto German soil.
00:32:16The man in charge of Auschwitz and its sub-camps was General Ernst Heinrich Schmauser of the
00:32:21Waffen-SS.
00:32:23In mid-January 1945, he was ordered not to leave a single healthy prisoner behind in
00:32:28the camps he oversaw.
00:32:32Almost half the prisoners had already been transferred in the previous four months, as
00:32:36a precautionary measure.
00:32:39But there were still around 60,000 people living in Auschwitz.
00:32:44Schmauser hesitated.
00:32:46How would he clothe, feed and transport them in a region where countless soldiers and displaced
00:32:51civilians were already fleeing?
00:33:08Around 3pm on January 27th, 1945, Soviet soldiers entered the gates of Auschwitz.
00:33:16They passed the dismantled or destroyed crematoria and the gas chambers.
00:33:27Auschwitz was nearly deserted.
00:33:29The Russian camera crews filmed piles of corpses and these prisoners.
00:33:38The SS had left them behind because they were too weak to move.
00:33:43Now they were the first to be liberated.
00:33:46As Holocaust survivor Primo Levi wrote in his memoir, If This is a Man, the Germans
00:33:53were no longer there.
00:33:55The towers were empty.
00:34:07Not all prisoners were sent on the death marches.
00:34:10In the Auschwitz camp complex, for example, around 7,000 people were spared, either because
00:34:17they were too ill to walk or because they'd weighed their chances of survival and decided
00:34:22to hide.
00:34:24Given the million murdered in Auschwitz and 60 to 70 thousand sent on the death marches,
00:34:297,000 isn't a lot.
00:34:36But at least Primo Levi and Anne Frank's father Otto were among them.
00:34:40If Otto Frank hadn't survived, the diary of Anne Frank wouldn't exist today.
00:34:46And if Primo Levi hadn't survived, we wouldn't have his work, which is important both historically
00:34:52and as literature.
00:35:00The clearing of the camps had begun ten days earlier.
00:35:04Between January 17th and 21st, the SS evacuated around 56,000 prisoners from the main Auschwitz
00:35:12camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau, and many sub-camps.
00:35:16This prisoner relocation became several death marches.
00:35:29It was chaos, pure and simple.
00:35:31From January 1945 onwards, all these evacuation operations were extremely chaotic.
00:35:37And in January especially, they took place amid extreme weather conditions.
00:35:41All these transfers of prisoners are referred to as death marches, not only marches on foot,
00:35:47but also in freight trains to other camps, which were often followed by further marching.
00:35:55There were lots of different forms and combinations of death marches within the camp system.
00:36:11We were able to take a woolen blanket, which we wrapped around our bodies.
00:36:16We lined up.
00:36:17They gave each of us some bread and a tin of meat.
00:36:27I also had a spoon and two aspirin tablets I got in my hands on, plus a toothbrush.
00:36:34That was all.
00:36:36Those were my treasures.
00:36:50Outside I heard the gates of Auschwitz being closed behind us.
00:36:54That was January 18th, 1945.
00:37:15We walked away.
00:37:29We were escorted by SS guards, and behind us there was a group of SS men with dogs.
00:37:35We walked and walked and walked.
00:37:42After a while, some of the people walking in front of us got slower and slower and merged
00:37:47with our group.
00:37:55Some of them even fell behind our group.
00:38:00Then we heard shouting, dogs barking, and finally gunshots.
00:38:08We also heard shots from in front of us, and further on we saw corpses with their brains
00:38:13blown out, lying on the side of the road.
00:38:28From Auschwitz, the prisoners were made to march either west, to Loslau station, or northwest,
00:38:34to Gleiwitz.
00:38:36It was a journey of around 70 kilometers in the freezing cold.
00:38:41Thousands died on the way.
00:38:44Those who survived were then loaded onto freight trains and transported to Dachau, Bergen-Belsen,
00:38:50or Buchenwald.
00:39:04From the very first moment, anyone who could no longer walk or was falling behind was disposed
00:39:08of mercilessly.
00:39:09I'm not even going to say shot.
00:39:12They were disposed of like cattle.
00:39:20If you wanted to retrace the path of the death march from Gleiwitz to Auschwitz, you wouldn't
00:39:26need a map or road signs, because the corpses by the side of the road would mark the way.
00:39:32Although many prisoners were shot dead, the majority died of illness and exhaustion.
00:39:55After months or even years of imprisonment, they were given nothing to drink during the
00:40:00march.
00:40:02Sucking on pieces of ice brought only temporary relief, after which their thirst was even
00:40:08greater.
00:40:09Half-starved, the prisoners consumed on day one the meagre rations that were intended
00:40:15to last them several days.
00:40:25It was snowing.
00:40:26It was cold.
00:40:28We were hungry.
00:40:29We couldn't take any more.
00:40:31We automatically marched behind the person in front.
00:40:34We were running out of strength.
00:40:36Some of the men gave up and collapsed in the snow.
00:40:39My father was hallucinating.
00:40:42He was walking beside me, and I took his hand and supported him.
00:40:46I'm not a doctor, but I assume the hunger caused him to see things.
00:40:51In any case, he was hallucinating, and in the darkness, he saw the airship from the
00:40:57Jules Verne novel.
00:41:00My father had lost his will to live.
00:41:04He couldn't go on.
00:41:08He said to me, go, leave me behind.
00:41:24Of course, there was no question of that.
00:41:27As if by a miracle, among all the people, a Frenchman heard us talking, and he helped
00:41:32me.
00:41:33We got on either side of my father, and we made it to Gleiwitz.
00:41:50own kind of emotional community to survive.
00:41:55This movement, this mobility, this liberation possibility, you know, brings in a kind of
00:42:01new motivation for the individuals, because they want to keep going, but in a way, they're
00:42:06only as healthy as their last march, you know, and where they're going to next.
00:42:12And so it's very hard to think to the future, think ahead.
00:42:16And that's why friends are so important on these marches, to be that support network
00:42:22and to be that person.
00:42:24And there are studies done of the people who survived, the highest percentage survived
00:42:28with someone else, in terms of having someone to lean on, a companion, a friend, a relative.
00:42:37So it's that survival in pairs.
00:42:42Polish civilians reported seeing the prisoners march through towns and villages, their clothing
00:42:48frozen solid.
00:42:50The local people also witnessed murders, which were carried out in broad daylight.
00:42:57Time and again, this man's mother told him about what she had seen.
00:43:09She said that the convoy came through here and stopped at the farm.
00:43:13Today it's an industrial estate, but back then it was vacant land.
00:43:17Among the people was a young girl, just 18.
00:43:20She'd broken her leg.
00:43:21The people hid her behind a feeding trough in the barn.
00:43:25Then a German came, chased the children out and shot the girl.
00:43:29All he did was write down her number.
00:43:42No one knows exactly how many prisoners died on the icy roads, in the ditches and forests
00:43:48of occupied Poland.
00:43:52Here in the cemetery in Gliwice, known to the Germans as Gleiwitz, a common grave was
00:43:57built in 2007 to house the remains of several hundred Auschwitz inmates, Jews and non-Jews,
00:44:05people of various nationalities, all of them murdered by the SS in January 1945.
00:44:18If the Nazis had wanted to kill everyone, they'd have done it without hesitation.
00:44:23This was something else.
00:44:24In Nazi ideology, these people were simply objects, a commodity, and they were going
00:44:30to move that commodity from one place to another, whatever the cost.
00:44:35Any losses were taken into account, and their brutality knew no bounds.
00:44:49Despite the term death marches, some prisoners were also transported on trains.
00:44:56There, the suffering they faced was just as unspeakable as on the roads.
00:45:03The rail network was overloaded, broken and severely damaged by Allied bombing.
00:45:09The railroad wagons themselves were intended for goods and livestock, not people.
00:45:17This film was shot secretly by an amateur filmmaker in what's now the Czech Republic.
00:45:24These are the only images that exist of the transportation of prisoners from Auschwitz.
00:45:33Defenceless, at the mercy of the Nazis' cruelty, those on board experienced a living
00:45:44hell.
00:45:46We were crammed into wagons normally used to transport things like iron ore.
00:45:59The wagons weren't covered.
00:46:01There were 100 to 150 people in each.
00:46:06We had to stand the whole time.
00:46:10Every now and then we tried to sit down together, but it wasn't easy.
00:46:16In fact, it was impossible.
00:46:19There were so many of us that we'd have suffocated.
00:46:24It was unbearable.
00:46:28One man didn't have enough space, but no one was willing to give up the few centimetres
00:46:34between him and his neighbour, and so he was bumped back and forth until he was dead.
00:46:47It was one of the worst experiences of my time in the concentration camp, a death for
00:46:54which we were all partly responsible, and yet we weren't.
00:46:58It was a horrible moment.
00:47:16Many people died in the wagons from cold and hunger.
00:47:23At every station corpses were taken out and left there, which means that everyone could
00:47:28see what state we were in.
00:47:32We also passed through the suburbs of Prague and Vienna.
00:47:37First it was Prague.
00:47:38The train passed right by the houses.
00:47:44And when people saw us in the wagons, they'd throw bread and sausages to us from the windows.
00:47:50When we stopped at a station, if the SS allowed it, they'd bring us something to drink.
00:47:56Then we came to Austria.
00:47:58Things were definitely different there.
00:48:07At the beginning of winter 1945, vast convoys of prisoners marched or were transported across
00:48:13central Europe.
00:48:16One group of 15,000 left Auschwitz for the Gross-Rosen concentration camp, which they
00:48:21reached after a horrific 12-day journey on foot.
00:48:44I said to Halina, I'm going to run away while we're still in Poland.
00:48:48No matter what happens, I won't cross the border.
00:48:51If we're going to save ourselves, then it'll have to be in our own country.
00:48:55Suddenly airplanes appeared.
00:49:02Panic broke out.
00:49:04The Germans went forward to the front of the convoy, so the rear part was no longer guarded.
00:49:09I threw a blanket over me and jumped into the snowdrift.
00:49:12I pulled Halina down beside me and said, we're staying here.
00:49:16She said, no, I'm scared, I'm going to keep going.
00:49:19So I let go of her hand, and Halina left while I stayed put.
00:49:23Wanda Kasperk jumped second, and Severna Smagleska last.
00:49:28We waited under our blankets until the group had moved on toward the brick factory.
00:49:33We listened for the sound of the dogs to tell whether the group had gone.
00:49:39We just lay in the snow and waited.
00:49:41Finally, we crawled away.
00:49:43We crawled over the mound of snow on our hands and knees.
00:49:47Behind it, we came to a dirt road.
00:49:55The thunder of artillery from the front behind us was getting closer.
00:49:59The SS were afraid of getting caught, so they changed the route.
00:50:03That was the day before we arrived at the Gross-Rosen camp.
00:50:07We stood by the road early in the morning, ready to march.
00:50:16The farmers from the village came with carts and unloaded cauldrons of boiled potatoes.
00:50:21The people on the front row were right in front of the cauldrons.
00:50:24They were so hungry that they jumped on the potatoes.
00:50:29A commotion broke out.
00:50:36The SS guards were taken completely by surprise and started shooting like crazy.
00:50:41It was horrific.
00:50:42The snow was red with blood.
00:50:45The potatoes were red with blood.
00:50:47Our fellow prisoners lay mangled in the potatoes.
00:50:52We pulled out the bodies of those who had been shot and ate the potatoes anyway.
00:50:56We were so hungry.
00:51:01Then we arrived at the Gross-Rosen camp.
00:51:03At the entrance, they counted us.
00:51:05Over 800 of us had been shot or died of exhaustion.
00:51:09In 12 days, we'd lost more than 800 people.
00:51:15Because of its geographic location, the Gross-Rosen concentration camp became a collection point
00:51:21for thousands of inmates evacuated from camps further east.
00:51:26It was situated around 300 kilometers northwest of Auschwitz.
00:51:31Nearly 77,000 people ended up there.
00:51:34In utterly overcrowded, unbearable conditions.
00:51:44In the final winter of the war, people were crammed into barracks without doors or windows,
00:51:50without toilets or washrooms.
00:51:53During the day, they waded through snow, mud and excrement.
00:51:57At night, they slept on their knees because it was too crowded to lie down.
00:52:03Meanwhile, the SS leadership was sending home all officials no longer needed in the eastern
00:52:08territories, which were now as good as lost.
00:52:12Many families had already left for Germany by car.
00:52:15The personnel followed.
00:52:18This man is thanked by officers for his service.
00:52:21Despite having only a horse and cart for the journey, he's well prepared for the cold in
00:52:26his winter coat.
00:52:33The SS guards were ordered to evacuate the main Gross-Rosen camp in early February 1945.
00:52:44They faced the logistical challenge of transferring approximately 40,000 inmates to other concentration
00:52:50camps further inside German territory.
00:52:54Bergen-Belsen, Buchenwald, Dachau and Mauthausen, among others.
00:53:03We stayed in that camp for three or four days.
00:53:13One day they rounded us up.
00:53:15We were given some provisions and loaded into open wagons.
00:53:19As soon as the train picked up speed, the cold became unbearable.
00:53:23We traveled for four days and four nights in appalling conditions.
00:53:27Many died of exhaustion, mostly inside the wagon.
00:53:34I huddled in a corner with my brother and some friends.
00:53:37We had piled the corpses into a wall to protect us from the wind.
00:53:41That's how we traveled.
00:54:09One other camp was to be evacuated as the Russians approached, the Stutthof concentration
00:54:15camp to the east of Danzig in present-day Poland.
00:54:18Camp commander Paul Werner Hoppe had planned everything meticulously, including the route
00:54:24of the march, supplies and how the prisoners would be guarded.
00:54:31He even had advice on what to do with those who did not survive.
00:54:37He recommended collecting the bodies and burying them all together.
00:54:43At the time, there were 46,000 prisoners in Stutthof, many of them Jews.
00:54:54About half of them set off on January 25, 1945.
00:54:59None had suitable clothing.
00:55:02Some did not even have shoes.
00:55:17We were lined up like usually to go to work.
00:55:21And since we didn't have any belongings, they just said, you have your blanket, you have
00:55:26your dish, your food for, your dish for food, yes, we are leaving the camp.
00:55:34So where were we going?
00:55:36Nobody told us.
00:55:37They just said, we are evacuating the camp.
00:55:41And this is how it started, our death march.
00:55:44We call it the death march because we, the inmates, gave it the name.
00:55:50And since I am younger than my sister, my sister gave me her shoes.
00:55:54And she left.
00:55:55It was January, cold, snow, sleet.
00:56:00And she wrapped her feet with schmatis.
00:56:02She took an old blanket and wrapped it in schmatis, and we walked.
00:56:08This was the death march.
00:56:11We walked and walked.
00:56:12I saw one of my friends had a little imitation fur coat.
00:56:19She froze to death in front of our eyes.
00:56:27Nobody wanted to be the last or close to the last.
00:56:32Everybody wanted to try to be at least in the middle or in the front of the procession.
00:56:39And because the SS soldiers were walking with us on both sides and in the back, and if they
00:56:45saw anybody who wasn't able to, they would just take them out to the side of the road
00:56:51and shoot them and leave them.
00:56:55And I'll never forget when these three sisters were pulling their sisters, you know, the
00:57:02two pulling their sisters, and the SS noticed.
00:57:06They just took her out from their arms to the side of the road and shot her right in
00:57:12front of them, in front of everybody.
00:57:16And we had to go on.
00:57:23If you were at the front of the march, you were vulnerable because you had to keep the
00:57:28pace.
00:57:29If you were at the back of the march, you were vulnerable because you couldn't fall
00:57:32behind.
00:57:33So the best place to be or the most advantageous place to be was in the middle.
00:57:39And you would have your support system of your camp acquaintance or friend to keep you.
00:57:45People would walk arm in arm on those marches to keep people going.
00:57:59The situation worsened by the hour, and the worse it got, the more anger and despair took
00:58:04hold.
00:58:05There was a sense of hopelessness and a complete lack of options.
00:58:09For the guards, the only thing that mattered was escaping the Russians.
00:58:16But to do that, they had to move faster and faster.
00:58:20So the slowest people were a liability, which they dealt with by shooting them.
00:58:35Because of the large number of camps and sub-camps in occupied Poland, the evacuations
00:58:48that had begun in January 1945 dragged on over the winter.
00:58:54The guards leading the convoys of prisoners began taking it upon themselves to shoot more
00:58:59and more of them.
00:59:02Amid the violence, the women of the SS broke one final taboo.
00:59:07Until then, men had been murdered by men and women by women.
00:59:12But in the panic of the retreat, all order fell by the wayside.
00:59:16Afraid of being taken prisoner themselves, those charged with escorting the concentration
00:59:21camp inmates became war criminals overnight.
00:59:25Later, they would have no explanation for their actions, except that they felt overwhelmed.
00:59:37One group of women from a sub-camp of Stutthof arrived on the Baltic coast on January 27,
00:59:441945.
00:59:46Three thousand female prisoners, most of them Jewish, were marched through the small town
00:59:51of Palmniken in the bitter cold.
00:59:54The guards' supplies were used up and the population treated the exhausted, starving
00:59:59prisoners with open hostility.
01:00:09The Soviets were close enough for their artillery to be heard.
01:00:16A few days later, the guards drove the women towards the sea.
01:00:24One survivor wrote,
01:00:27We reached the coast late at night.
01:00:30They drove us onto a cliff high above the Baltic Sea.
01:00:34From both sides, men with machine guns shot into the crowd to keep us moving.
01:00:40When I opened my eyes again, I found myself on the frozen sea, surrounded by piles of
01:00:45corpses.
01:00:47Of the three thousand women, only a few survived what would become known as the Massacre of
01:00:52Palmniken.
01:00:56So the death marches are one that uses the landscape as complicit in that extermination.
01:01:06One that also involves the guards, the villages where people are walking through, the witnessing.
01:01:15Around 30% of those people who are moved will die during the death marches, and that
01:01:20is through intentional killings and also through fatigue and exhaustion.
01:01:33Around 150,000 prisoners who were designated as fit for work were removed from Auschwitz,
01:01:39Gross Rosen and Stutthof on Himmler's orders.
01:01:44It's not known exactly how many died on the death marches.
01:01:48There are no exact numbers.
01:01:51But according to estimates, at least one quarter to one third of them didn't survive.
01:02:11In February 1945, as the Eastern and Western Fronts began to close in on Germany, the Allied
01:02:18air war reached its climax.
01:02:21Almost half a million tons of bombs fell on industrial targets, transport routes and German
01:02:27cities.
01:02:42During the night from February 13th to 14th, heavy air raids destroyed the historic centre
01:02:48of Dresden, which had been known as the Florence of the Elbe.
01:02:54At least 25,000 residents died.
01:02:58The burning city became a symbol of Germany's defeat.
01:03:15When parts of the Reich Chancellery collapsed in Berlin, Hitler retreated to his Führerbunker.
01:03:22He hardly left it, despite demanding that soldiers and civilians continue to fight.
01:03:29German people knew the war was lost, even if they put on a brave face for propaganda
01:03:34films that showed them working together to fortify the capital.
01:03:39In truth, they were despondent.
01:03:43They only hoped the Western Allies would reach Berlin before the Russians, who they feared
01:03:49would want revenge.
01:03:58In this devastated country, there now arrived hundreds of thousands of concentration camp
01:04:03prisoners from the East.
01:04:06They were distributed to camps on German territory, chiefly to Buchenwald, Flossenburg, Dachau,
01:04:13Ravensbruck, Mauthausen and Bergen-Belsen.
01:04:19According to Himmler's orders, the transported prisoners were to be put to work making weapons
01:04:24for the Third Reich.
01:04:27Despite a shortage of materials and the Allied bombing raids, the armaments factories were
01:04:32running at full speed.
01:04:43For a modest sum, German industry was able to acquire labor from the concentration camps.
01:04:51Cheap labor is every boss's dream.
01:04:54Think about Ferdinand Lassalle's Iron Law of Wages, which states that wages can't be
01:04:58lowered any further than subsistence levels in order to replenish the supply of workers.
01:05:04Well, that law no longer applied to German industry, because the SS provided an endless
01:05:11supply of labor, and German industry profited from that in a very real way.
01:05:30That's when I got to know Germany.
01:05:32I came to Berlin, to the Siemenstadt industrial district.
01:05:37Germany was at rock bottom.
01:05:39Germans tried to exploit the people they'd bought as much as possible.
01:05:43We worked nights.
01:05:44We replaced the workers in the Siemens factories.
01:05:58We were about 800 women from Bergen-Belsen.
01:06:02We were sent to work in the factories, day and night.
01:06:05We were replacements for the missing workforce.
01:06:08That was the beginning of the nightmare.
01:06:12On the way there, children would throw stones at us.
01:06:15They'd shout, dirty Jew.
01:06:17That's how it was, because the road to the factory led through the village.
01:06:26When we passed by, the women saw us, but it was as though we were invisible, non-existent.
01:06:33They never gave us anything, not a piece of bread, or a smile, or even a glance.
01:06:42It was unbearable to walk through there every day.
01:06:47It was the free world, but we weren't really in it.
01:06:58The influx of prisoners from the East caused the number of inmates in concentration camps
01:07:02to explode.
01:07:05There was not enough food or shelter, and the long marches had left their mark on survivors.
01:07:12Illness and mortality rates reached record levels.
01:07:18Amid reports that the camps were becoming something like open-air morgues, Himmler sent
01:07:22the head of camp administration, Oswald Paul, to see for himself.
01:07:30He was joined by Rudolf Huss, the former camp commandant responsible for mass exterminations
01:07:36at Auschwitz.
01:07:38In mid-March 1945, his inspections revealed the appalling conditions to which the prisoners
01:07:44were being subjected.
01:07:49A few weeks later, the advancing Allies reached the camps, documenting hellish conditions
01:07:55and death.
01:08:00This is Oderuf, the first concentration camp in Germany to be liberated by the Americans.
01:08:19From January to March 1945, more people died in Buchenwald than in the previous two years.
01:08:27One survivor of Dachau said that there was so much death that the bereaved didn't even
01:08:31have time to mourn their loved ones.
01:08:35Perhaps the worst conditions were in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where starving prisoners
01:08:41were forced to live among corpses amid a rampant typhus epidemic.
01:08:46In March alone, more than 18,000 of the 45,000 inmates died.
01:08:53Among them, Anne Frank and her sister Margot, as well as Yvonne Jacob, mother of French
01:08:58politician Simone Weil.
01:09:03Because of the health situation, Bergen-Belsen was one of the few concentration camps in
01:09:08Germany that the SS didn't evacuate.
01:09:23We assumed that the war was over because people were arriving from all over the place.
01:09:29We wouldn't have lasted much longer.
01:09:31Typhus, hunger, exhaustion.
01:09:36Our will to live had been broken.
01:09:40We felt so degraded.
01:09:46Back in Birkenau, we still had the will to survive.
01:09:49And we fought to survive.
01:09:52But now we said to ourselves, even if we get out of here, we'll never have a normal
01:09:57life again.
01:10:03In mid-February 1945, the Russians crossed the Oder in the east, while the Western Allies
01:10:10crossed the Rhine in the west.
01:10:13Entire regiments of the Wehrmacht were taken prisoner.
01:10:17Germany's defeat was now only a matter of weeks away.
01:10:20For months amid the death throes of Nazi Germany, Himmler had secretly been trying
01:10:25to present himself to the Allies as a powerful, responsible and rational leader.
01:10:40The Nazi elite was thinking pragmatically, trying to save its own skin.
01:10:45Himmler considered everything, especially the new geostrategic environment the world
01:10:49was about to enter, namely the Cold War.
01:10:55He firmly believed that the Third Reich and the SS would play a role when it came to this
01:11:00new world map.
01:11:06In this simulation game, he intended to use the surviving Jews and other prisoners as
01:11:10bargaining chips, as a sign of his goodwill.
01:11:17Not only to pave the way for friendly dialogue with the West, but also to get money.
01:11:27Himmler is said to have told Franz Ziereis, commandant of the Mauthausen concentration
01:11:33camp, take good care of these Jews and treat them well, they're my best asset.
01:11:40In order not to lose this asset, the SS leadership moved to evacuate all camps as Allied troops
01:11:47continued to advance in the spring of 1945.
01:11:53For prisoners dreaming of freedom, these marches, whose dangers were well known, became a final,
01:12:00brutal test.
01:12:03Once you're outside the concentration camp, it is an interesting intensification of your
01:12:08vulnerability from so many directions.
01:12:12The landscape, the roads, the fields, the accommodations of where you'll sleep, of who
01:12:18you're with, these are all uncertainties.
01:12:21The camp is a kind of a known, it's a known entity, it's a familiarity.
01:12:27And so to leave it requires a new socialization, an experience that they haven't had before.
01:12:35Everyone who was fit enough to move was taken away, either on foot, by ship or by train.
01:12:41But the extremely poor state of the roads and railroads meant that the transports were
01:12:46dramatically delayed.
01:12:48The fate of a train that left Buchenwald on April 7th, 1945, was discovered by the Allies
01:12:54during the liberation of Dachau.
01:12:57It shocked the public.
01:13:12Allied bombing raids on Germany posed an additional danger to the prisoners.
01:13:38Near Schwabhausen on April 27th, 1945, low-flying US aircraft mistakenly bombed a train carrying
01:13:45inmates to Dachau.
01:13:48After the war, the 150 victims were buried here.
01:13:58Every death march and every transport was marked by its own immeasurable suffering.
01:14:04What's more, there was no longer any sense of purpose.
01:14:15The first thing to say is that 69 people are buried here.
01:14:19They all died here in this church parish.
01:14:22They were shot by their guards.
01:14:24The procession went up the hill to the church and then carried on.
01:14:28We were in the house with our grandmother and suddenly there was a strange noise.
01:14:37You could hear lots of people but no talking.
01:14:41Nobody spoke.
01:14:42There was just muffled stomping.
01:14:44Many of them had to walk barefoot.
01:14:50Many wore clogs that basically just flapped around their ankles because the soles had
01:14:56gone.
01:15:00It was a huge procession.
01:15:01I thought it would never end.
01:15:03I can see it like it was yesterday.
01:15:05It's still in my head.
01:15:07You don't forget something like that.
01:15:15Just like in the Baltic states in the summer of 1944 and Poland in the winter of 1944-45,
01:15:22the prisoners' fate lay in the hands of the SS guards.
01:15:26But in both Austria and Germany, civilians now joined the SS, taking part in the murderous
01:15:32crimes of the last days of the war.
01:15:36I swear by God, this holy oath, that I, the Führer of the Great German Reich, Adolf Hitler,
01:16:01The fact that people participated in this wave of crime can be traced back to the formation
01:16:10of the Volkssturm, national militia.
01:16:13In the spring of 1944, under propaganda minister Josef Goebbels, the idea of a total mobilization
01:16:20of the German population was put into practice.
01:16:35It took the form of local militias, which were essentially made up of the remaining
01:16:39male population for whom there was no compulsory military service, so those over 45 as well
01:16:46as 15 to 20 year olds.
01:16:49In some cases, women were also involved.
01:16:52The Volkssturm's task was to defend the homeland, which meant fending off the Soviet troops
01:16:57who were advancing all the time.
01:17:03The Volkssturm was mainly equipped with small arms, chiefly Mauser rifles and the infamous
01:17:09Panzerfaust, which was used for anti-tank defense.
01:17:15So basically, we're talking about frightened and desperate civilians.
01:17:24They were armed and placed under the authority of the most loyal and ruthless Wehrmacht members.
01:17:32To a certain extent, that explains the aggression and violence against the convoys of prisoners
01:17:38on the death marches.
01:17:53With the actions of the Volkssturm, the violent crimes committed on the death marches in the
01:17:58Third Reich reached a tragic climax.
01:18:01In the last days of the war, as concentration camp inmates were being herded from camp to
01:18:08camp, these Nazi militias saw them as enemies to be killed.
01:18:27I can remember what happened very well.
01:18:29I was already 13 years old at the time.
01:18:32It was April 5th.
01:18:41A third convoy arrived, and 12 prisoners had escaped from it.
01:18:46But they were caught by local Nazis and sympathizers.
01:18:52They were given picks and shovels from the village, and they had to dig their own graves.
01:19:03An SS officer commanded about 12 Hitler Youth boys who had been drafted into the Volkssturm.
01:19:15They were in black uniforms and had the Volkssturm patch here.
01:19:20And these boys, who weren't older than 16 or 17, had to shoot these boys in the head.
01:19:27And these boys, who weren't older than 16 or 17, had to shoot these prisoners on the
01:19:33orders of the SS officer.
01:19:38Even today, I can still hear their voices.
01:19:42I have nightmares about it, how they shouted,
01:19:46please don't shoot.
01:20:00But it was no use.
01:20:02The SS officer gave the command to fire when ready.
01:20:06And then they fell into the pit that they had dug with their own hands.
01:20:16They fell into the pit that they had dug with their own hands.
01:20:33Throughout the country, prisoners could be shot dead at any time,
01:20:37on the whim of a convoy leader, local officials or even members of the public.
01:20:46Why did they do it?
01:21:08Did they think it wouldn't be killing if they shot someone who no longer seemed to have any
01:21:15human features, someone who was a shadow of a person, emaciated, half-naked,
01:21:22having been stripped of practically all their human characteristics?
01:21:31The philosopher Emmanuel Levinas talks of the importance of the face,
01:21:36and historian Georges Mousse of the importance of clothing.
01:21:40But were those striped pyjamas really clothes?
01:21:43I don't think so.
01:21:44The civilian Nazis stigmatized these beings, these shadows of themselves.
01:21:49They saw them as enemies and also as sub-human,
01:21:53so that what they were doing couldn't be murder.
01:22:03These mass murders reflected the prevailing mood among some parts of the population.
01:22:08But not everyone felt that way.
01:22:11In some places, people threw food or blankets to the prisoners, or brought them water.
01:22:18A few even hid those who had escaped.
01:22:23But mostly, the emaciated figures moving through Germany and Austria
01:22:28were met with either horror or indifference.
01:22:32There are very few photos of the death marches.
01:22:36Those we have were taken by anonymous witnesses, whose motives remain unknown.
01:22:46The photos all have something in common.
01:22:49They were taken secretly, from a distance, from a hiding place.
01:22:56That means that the photographers weren't participants.
01:23:00They weren't guards or people watching by the roadside.
01:23:04They were silent witnesses who wanted to record what was happening.
01:23:15So we have some recent cases of a young woman, Maria Seidenberg,
01:23:20and she took some photographs of marchers walking through her village.
01:23:28I think this was early, mid-1945, in those third wave of evacuations.
01:23:34And she claims that her mother gave the marchers some food, some potatoes,
01:23:40and this enabled her to kind of take some photos.
01:23:50It's very difficult to find this archived footage of the marchers
01:23:55because people are still reluctant to come forward
01:23:59because of the shame about holding these archives and a fear of reprisal.
01:24:05If they come forward, and also a reputational association,
01:24:09that they witnessed something so profoundly dehumanising,
01:24:13but also did nothing about it.
01:24:26Hitler had strictly forbidden any negotiations with the Allies.
01:24:31After his suicide on April 30th, 1945,
01:24:35talks and negotiations with the Allies began.
01:24:39They lasted a week, during which the violence and suffering continued.
01:24:43Germany's unconditional support of the Allies
01:24:46was the only way to keep the Allies at bay.
01:24:50It lasted a week, during which the violence and suffering continued.
01:24:54Germany's unconditional surrender was signed in Reims on May 7th,
01:24:59and in Berlin on May 8th.
01:25:08On these final days, freedom was close at hand.
01:25:12But the fear of being shot or hit by bombs was very real.
01:25:16One survivor wrote on May 3rd, 1945,
01:25:19''Our liberation is so close, it's hard to believe.
01:25:23''The idea of having to die at the last minute
01:25:26''makes it even more unbearable.''
01:25:32On one march, a Lithuanian prisoner met a compatriot
01:25:35who had volunteered with the SS unit guarding her convoy.
01:25:40For many, the tables were turning.
01:25:44The woman hoped for liberation,
01:25:46while the SS soldier may have been wondering
01:25:49what would happen to him after the war.
01:26:02We walked on and on. How long was it?
01:26:05Eight days, I don't know.
01:26:07Then came May 1st.
01:26:10It was a fine morning.
01:26:13At night, they always took us to a meadow,
01:26:16but when we woke up that morning, the SS was gone.
01:26:26I walked back and forth. No more Germans.
01:26:30The Germans were gone.
01:26:32I ran like a madman to my father.
01:26:34I said, ''The Germans are gone. It's over.''
01:26:43My father had dysentery. He could hardly express his joy.
01:26:48I immediately ran to the nearby village and dared to go to a farm.
01:27:00When the people from the farm saw this guy,
01:27:02this skeleton in striped clothes,
01:27:05they fed me, potatoes, meat and other things.
01:27:09I ran back overjoyed.
01:27:11We ate, made a fire and so on.
01:27:14Suddenly a car appeared in the distance.
01:27:16We got scared. We thought, ''Who could it be?''
01:27:19The car pulled up and stopped, and it was a Russian officer.
01:27:31We marched off, five of us, all alone through Germany.
01:27:35Suddenly a soldier appeared in the distance.
01:27:37I shouted, ''Sabine, that's not a grey-green uniform.
01:27:41They're allies.''
01:27:43She said, ''Come on, let's go.''
01:27:45Then we were standing in front of them.
01:27:47There was this soldier with his machine gun.
01:27:49Behind him was his jeep, the first jeep I ever saw.
01:27:53He asked, ''Polish, Russian, French?''
01:27:56I said, ''French.''
01:27:58He said, ''Any French women in Germany must be volunteer fighters.''
01:28:02I said, ''What?''
01:28:04Sabine, who was like a mother to me, said,
01:28:07''Even if all the other deportees have papers, we don't have any.''
01:28:11He said, ''So you must be volunteers.''
01:28:14I showed him my number and said, ''How's that for papers?''
01:28:17Then in Yiddish he asked if we were Jewish.
01:28:19It turned out to be a Jewish division who wanted to avenge their families.
01:28:25On May 10, 1945, a day or so after the war ended,
01:28:31the Russians arrived at the camp.
01:28:34Through the window of my hut, I saw a man on a motorcycle with a red flag.
01:28:39But it was too late.
01:28:41We no longer felt any joy at being liberated.
01:28:44We were on our last legs.
01:28:46Another few months and no one there would have returned home.
01:28:50To be continued...
01:29:20To be continued...