All language subtitles for Auschwitz 4 of 6 - Corruption

In 1943, Auschwitz was about to enter
the most crucial phase of its existence.

One that would eventually make it the site
of the largest mass murder in the world.

In March 1943 new gas chambers
and crematoria opened,

increasing dramatically the
killing potential of the camp.

Enormous wealth stolen from the arriving
Jews flooded through Auschwitz.

And contrary to the direct orders
of the Nazi leadership,

individual members of the SS
took great personal advantage.

They were taking home lots of gold
and other valuables,

nobody counted it
- it was a bonanza for them.

This is the surprising and shocking story
of life and death at Auschwitz,

during what for the Nazis at the camp
was the start of the boom years.

Of how corruption pervaded all aspects
of the extermination process,

and why for many of the SS, life was good.

The special situation at Auschwitz
led to friendships

of which I'm still saying today
I like to look back on with joy.

Auschwitz main camp was on the banks of
the Sola river in Southern Poland.

And it was here that the Commandant,
SS Lieutenant Colonel Rudolf H�ss,

worked hand in hand with businessmen to
grow a giant industrial complex.

Ultimately, about 60 million Reichmarks
- 125 million Pounds in today's money

would be generated here
for the Nazi state.

For there was not one Auschwitz camp,
but many.

Danke. Wieadershen
- Wiedersehen

Eventually there were 45 sub camps dotted
round the region,

most providing slave labour
for armaments factories

and other industrial concerns.

And at the centre of this web
of slave labour

and industry was the giant camp
of Auschwitz-Birkenau.

The vast Auschwitz complex
was now a self-contained universe.

A place to live, a place to work,
a place to die.

At the heart of Birkenau
were the gas chambers,

one of which stood on this site.

Selections were made from arriving
transports of Jews.

Those thought fit enough were taken away
to be worked to death.

The remainder - the old, the weak,

the children were murdered immediately
in buildings like these.

There are, there were people

"That they were starting to understand
that something was funny going on there,

but nobody could do anything.

The process had to go you know

they had everything was done
from the German point of view.

They were all precise.

There were the people screaming at the,
the Germans screaming,

'Schnell, schnell!'

The Jews were ordered to undress,

and then forced towards a room
further down the building

and told they would take a shower.

Could you imagine what, what was done
with the children and their,

their families, their thinking,

they didn't know what to do scratching
the walls,

crying until the,
the the gas take effect.

And when everything stopped you know
and they opened

the doors and I see these people
I saw a few minutes,

half an hour before
that they were going in,

I see them all standing up,
some black and blue from the gas,

no place where to go, dead.

A few hundred yards from the gas chambers

was the area of the camp known as 'Canada'

because Canada was thought to be a land
of untold riches.

This is where the belongings snatched

from the arriving transports were sorted

before being repacked and sent to Germany.

For the inmates, working in Canada

was one of the few sought after jobs
in the camp.

Working in Canada saved my life
because we had food, we got water

And that was the best working unit
for life for us

because we were not beaten.

The majority of inmates who worked
in Canada were women.

They could grow their hair
and were able to snatch extra food

from the belongings as they sorted them.

Against the explicit rules of the SS

friendly relationships could develop
in Canada

between the German guards
and the women prisoners.

Helena Citronova, a Slovakian Jew
who'd been sent to Auschwitz in 1942,

became the object of attention of one
of the SS who worked in Canada.

When he came into the barracks
where I was working,

he passed me by and threw me a note.

I destroyed it right there and then,

but I did see the word 'love',
'I fell in love with you'.

I thought I'd rather be dead than be
involved with an SS man.

For a long time afterwards
there was just hatred

I couldn't even look at him.

But over time Helena's feelings changed,

especially with the arrival of one
particular train at Auschwitz Birkenau.

Helena's sister was on board,
along with her daughter and baby son.

After they arrived at Birkenau,

Helena learnt that they were being
taken to the gas chamber.

Her SS admirer - Franz Wunsch,
ran to see if he could help.

So he said to me,

'Tell me quickly what your sister's name
is before I'm too late.'

So I said, 'You won't be able to,
she came with 2 little children. '

He replied, 'Children, that's different.
Children can't live here.'

So he ran to the crematorium
and found my sister.

Wunsch could not save the children,
but he rescued Helena's sister

claiming that she was a member of his work
detail in Canada.

"Here he did something great."

"There were moments when I forgot
that I was a Jew

and that he was not a Jew and honestly,

in the end I loved him, but it could not
be realistic. "

Both Helena and her sister
survived Auschwitz.

And although nothing came of
her relationship with Wunsch,

she did give evidence on his behalf at his
war crimes trial many years later.

There were other temptations for the SS
in Canada.

"Every piece had to be searched
- underwear,

everything, and we found lots of diamonds,
gold, coins ah,

money, dollars, foreign currency from
all over Europe. "

Workers in Canada were meant
to put any valuables

they found in a locked box in the centre
of the barracks.

But their SS guards often managed to
interfere with this procedure.

"They were taking home lots of gold
and other valuables

because they were stealing,
nobody counted it.

And it went on all the time
while I was working in Canada. "

"If a lot of stuff is piled up together,

then you can easily stash away something
for your personal gain.

Stealing things for yourself was
absolutely common practice in Auschwitz. "

In 1943 Oskar Groning was a 22 year old
corporal in the SS.

He'd been employed in a bank before the
war and so was put to work in Auschwitz

managing the foreign money stolen
from the incoming transports.

Every few months, he'd pack up the
currency and take it to Berlin.

Supervision was so lax that he had the
chance to steal some of it for himself,

using it to buy goods on the thriving
black market in Auschwitz.

One day Groning decided he'd like to buy
his own hand gun.

So I said: "My dear friend,
I need a pistol with ammunition.

And he said: "Well how much
do you want to spend?"

"I don't know what does it cost?"

"Well, you as the Dollar King
should pay in Dollars,

so I'd say it'll cost you 30 Dollars.

And then he came back with the pistol
and got his 30 Dollars.

The ready availability
of foreign currencies

and valuables to pilfer
was just one of the reasons

that Auschwitz was a surprisingly
attractive posting

for many members of the SS.

Auschwitz was not just a profitable place
to be for them,

it was also a good deal more comfortable

than fighting with their comrades against
the Red Army on the Eastern Front.

"The main camp of Auschwitz
was like a small town,

with its gossiping and chatting.

There was a grocery, where you could
buy bones to make broth.

There was a canteen, there was a cinema,

there was a theatre
with regular performances.

And there was a sports club
of which I was a member.

It was all fun and entertainment,
just like a small town.

Alcohol played a big role there.

Every day we were allocated a ration
of alcohol,

which sometimes we'd all collect to have
a really big drinking bout.

Far from being driven to psychological
torment by the knowledge

that they were participating

in the mass murder of men,
women and children,

the majority of SS working at Auschwitz

seem to have carried out their jobs
with few qualms.

Prost
- Prost

With death and starvation around them,
they gorged themselves on food and drink,

much of it stolen
from the arriving transports.

They drank everything there.

It was like some kind of gangsters' feast.

They drank, they sang,
they patted each other.

There was an assortment of alcohol
on the table

a whole variety of French cognacs.
And we served them food.

It all looked so disgusting, this feast,
that when the prisoner overseer,

Paschke, saw one of them vomiting,

he said with contempt:
'These pigs sure know how to vomit.'

It was only the prisoners
who were to be starved to death.

Being at the camp was a slow execution
through starvation,

beatings and hard labour.

The SS, however, lacked for nothing.

And when we look at this feast,
they had everything.

Throughout Auschwitz military discipline
was actually very loose.

The lack of discipline meant that we went
to bed completely pissed

and we had our pistols in their holsters
hanging off the bed frame,

and when somebody was too lazy
to turn off the light,

we just shot it out.

And nobody said anything about the bullet
holes in the walls.

Getting wildly drunk was only one symptom
of a widespread attitude among the SS

that the circumstances of Auschwitz
allowed them to behave however they liked.

Even, on occasion, commit sexual assault.

The women most at risk worked in the
sorting area in Canada.

'Fat swines', that's what the SS officers
called us.

We looked good.

We looked as though we were
from the normal world.

Not like the others.

Once there was a very good looking woman,
she wasn't thin, she had a full body.

An SS man came in. He raped her.

There was no God in Auschwitz.

There were such horrible conditions that
God decided not to go there.

It wasn�t just men who exploited
the situation

they found themselves in
- women did as well.

Irma Grese was one of 170 female SS staff
at Auschwitz.

She was just 20 years old in 1943,

and her combination of beauty and cruelty
was to make her notorious.

But there was nothing in her background

before she came to the camp
to give any hint

of the monster that she was to become.

She didn't go to school.
She was a farmer's daughter.

I thought she was a small
silly country bumpkin.

She became someone just because
she was wearing a uniform

and had a whip in her hand.

Irma Grese was one of the SS

who supervised the women's camp
at Auschwitz Birkenau.

By the end of 1943, in the southern part
of the camp complex,

there were 30,000 women,

housed in 62 barracks in some of the worst
conditions in the whole of Auschwitz.

There was little running water,
and disease was rampant.

For Irma Grese the women's camp
became a sadistic playground.

She shot one woman dead
who was standing in front of me.

Her brains landed on my shoulder.

The next day, after the selections,
Irma came to see me.

I refused to talk to her. She asked,
"Are you angry with me?"

I replied,
"You nearly killed me yesterday".

She answered:
"One down, it doesn't matter..."

After the war Irma Grese was tried for
war crimes and sentenced to death.

She was executed two months
after her 22nd birthday

But it was a member of the SS
who worked on this site,

where crematorium 2 in Birkenau
once stood,

who became most infamous for exploiting
the opportunities Auschwitz had to offer.

Dr Josef Mengele arrived at Auschwitz
in May 1943.

There had been medical experiments
conducted at the camp before his arrival.

At least two German doctors had been
examining new methods of sterilising men

and women at Auschwitz since 1942.

And in the process hundreds
had already suffered.

But Mengele began a variety
of new experiments,

each related to his own obsessions.

He saw Auschwitz as a human laboratory,

one which allowed him to pursue
any idea he had,

no matter how bestial or inhumane.

He experimented on children
- particularly on twins.

This footage shows some
of the children he selected,

filmed by the Soviets immediately
after the liberation of the camp.

It is thought that Mengele
used these children

to research the power of
genetic inheritance,

an area of interest
to many Nazi scientists.

Children were installed
in special barracks,

for Mengele's exclusive use.

Every day Mengele came and every day

he brought some toys, sweets, chocolates,
and new clothes.

The children called Mengele
the 'good uncle'.

But his treatment of them
was entirely cynical.

Because he wanted them to co-operate

when he came to pick them
for his experiments.

Mengele came in every morning after roll
call to count us.

He wanted to know every morning
how many guinea pigs he had.

Three times a week both of my arms
would be tied to restrict the blood flow,

and they took a lot of blood
from my left arm.

On occasion enough blood until we fainted.

At the same time that
they were taking blood,

they would give me a minimum of
5 injections into my right arm.

After one of those injections
I became extremely ill

and Dr Mengele came in next morning
with four other doctors.

He looked at my fever chart and he said,
laughing sarcastically,

he said: "Too bad, she is so young.
She has only 2 weeks to live."

I would fade in and out of consciousness,

and in a semi-conscious state of mind

I would keep telling myself:
I must survive, I must survive.

They were waiting for me to die.

Would I have died, my twin sister Miriam

would have been rushed immediately
to Mengele's lab,

killed with an injection to the heart

and then Mengele would have done
the comparative autopsies.

That is the way most of the twins died.

For the comparative examination from
the viewpoint of anatomy and pathology,

the twins had to die at the same time.

So it was, that they met their death
at the hand of Dr. Mengele.

This phenomenon was unique
in world medical history.

Twin brothers died together,

and it was possible to perform autopsies
on both.

Where, under normal circumstances,

can one find twin brothers who die at the
same place and at the same time?

You cannot ask WHY! There was no WHY
in Auschwitz. Only WAS

I was asked by somebody,

"You're very strong.
How did you become very strong?"

And I said, "I had no choice:
I overcame or I would have perished."

Mengele experimented not just on twins,

but also on dwarves and prisoners
with the form of gangrene

of the face known as Noma,
which was common in Birkenau

because of the privations
in which inmates were held.

He worked closely with an anthropological
institute in Berlin,

sending them human body parts,
especially eyeballs.

The parcels were stamped
'Urgent - war materials'

Doctor Mengele was a member
of Heinrich Himmler's SS.

And, like Mengele,
every member of the SS was told

to pride themselves on their hardness
and lack of pity.

But during 1943, Himmler realized
that he must try harder

to prevent the SS from being

as he saw it corrupted by the
extermination of the Jews.

In a speech he gave at Pozna?

on the 4th October 1943,

Himmler spelt out just how he wanted the
SS to feel about the murders.

But it was all lies, because in a place
like Auschwitz,

Commandant Rudolf H�ss was presiding

over an institution that was riddled
with corruption.

So much so that in the Autumn of 1943
another SS officer,

Lieutenant Konrad Morgen, arrived to look
into the running of the camp.

There was to be no investigation,
of course,

into the fact that every week thousands
of innocent people

were being murdered in the gas chambers.

In Himmler's eyes that was a sacred duty.

Instead Morgen's investigation was to be
centred on theft

on ensuring that the money
and goods stolen

from the incoming transports ended up
in the coffers of the State,

not the lockers of individual members
of the SS.

Morgen was shocked by what he found.

'Examination of the lockers yielded
a fortune in gold,

rings, pearls and money,
in all kinds of currencies.

The conduct of the SS staff was beyond
any of the standards

that you'd expect from soldiers.

They gave the impression of being
degenerate and brutal parasites. '

I was on a business trip to Berlin
to deliver English pounds

and American dollars and just at that time

they raided the quarters of the NCO's
and other ranks.

And when I returned my locker was sealed.

Groning knew that two of his comrades
had already been arrested

because contraband had been found
in their possession.

One of them later hanged himself
in his cell.

Knowing his own locker
contained stolen goods,

Groning came up with an ingenious way out
of his predicament.

The Gestapo had sealed the front of
his locker,

so Groning simply took off the back.

I went to the Gestapo and said,

"Look, what nonsense are you up to,
I can't get into my locker."

"Oh, we are sorry."

'Listen, I've just returned from a trip
and I need it. "

"Well, we've got to check it first."

So they came, took the 3 seals off,
opened the locker,

found nothing, patted me on the shoulder
and said, "It's ok. Carry on."

But looking back, aren't you sorry

that you made your own life more
comfortable while millions actually died?

Absolutely not. Everybody is looking out
for themselves.

So many people died in the war,
not only Jews.

So many things happened, so many were shot
so many snuffed it.

People burnt to death, so many were burnt,

if I thought about all of that I wouldn't
be able to live one minute longer.

This attitude that it was acceptable
to profit personally

from the Jews wasn�t just common
at Auschwitz,

it became entrenched throughout the area
of the killings.

This footage, of Jews being robbed in
Eastern Europe,

shows how easy it was for the Nazis
and their collaborators

to pocket money
and jewellery for themselves.

And it was the corruption
of individual Nazis

which enabled Jews to fight back
in the autumn of 1943.

A major act of resistance occurred
in the East of Poland,

at a Nazi death camp called Sobibor,

where the SS were just as corrupt
as they were at Auschwitz.

They did steal despite everything,
they had a good time,

they weren't, they didn't go to the Russia

where their comrades were killed
in the in the Russia, ah,

in the Russian Front under Stalingrad,
they killed innocent babies,

that's a good life for them.
They could live like kings.

Sobibor was a tiny camp,
hidden in a forest.

This is an impression of what
it looked like.

Several hundred Jews were given
a temporary stay of execution

and forced to work here, most sorting
the belongings of those

who had been murdered in the gas chambers
of the camp.

A group of them realised they might be
able to take advantage

of the Germans' greed and lure them
to nearby workshops.

There's a beautiful leather coat
in the sorting area,

would you like to ah,
to take a look at it?

Of course they were very greedy;
they picked up gold,

they picked up clothing they sent it
later home.

When the tailor made appointment
with this officer

to come 3 o'clock to try on his uniform,

you could be sure he was 3 o'clock
exactly there.

So we were able to plan approximately
a new divided time

of the killing, you could see
that every few minutes,

every 50 minutes, a German was killed.

Me and Lerner went to the cobblers' shop
and we hid behind some clothes.

I had an axe and he had an axe too.

A German came in to try on some boots that
the prisoners had made for him.

They sat him down opposite
my hiding place.

At that moment I stepped out and hit him.

I didn't know that you should do it with
the flat side of the axe,

I hit him with the blade.

We pulled him away
and put some clothes over him.

Almost immediately another German came in.

He walked up to the corpse,
kicked him and said

"what is this, what is this mess over here
what's going on?"

At that moment I hit him with the axe
and Lerner hit him as well.

Then we took his weapons

I took one pistol, Lerner took
the other one and we ran away.

The inmates rushed to the wire fences
that surrounded the camp,

all the time under fire from Ukrainian
guards in the watch towers.

They pushed the fences down

and ran straight towards the forest,
crossing a minefield.

I was, was probably the last one to run

I fall down about
two or three times down,

each time I thought I'm hit,
but I did get up,

nothing happened to me
and I did run to the forest

100 metre, 50 metre...
finally the forest.

300 of the 600 Jews in Sobibor
managed to escape that day.

In the end about 50 of them evaded capture
and survived the war,

many of them former Red Army Soldiers
who had been imprisoned in the camp.

Only those who flocked together
could survive.

The only thing that saved me
and my friends

was that we were like brothers
to each other.

In the wake of the Sobibor revolt Himmler

ordered the closure of a number of camps
in Poland,

and the murder by shooting
of over 40,000 people.

But the Nazis' "Final Solution"
was not progressing

as Hitler and Himmler would have wished.

The Italians,
although allies of the Nazis,

had consistently refused
to deport their Jews.

It wasn't until the Germans occupied
their country that deportations began.

In Bulgaria, although the government
had already given up 11,000 Jews

from occupied territories,
there were protests during 1943

about proposals to deport Bulgarian Jews.

And in Romania, Prime Minister Antonescu,

having permitted the destruction
of many Jewish communities,

refused to co-operate further.

For everyone knew that the Germans
were losing the war.

In the East, in the fight against
the Red Army,

whole German units had been captured.

But one occupied country in Europe

did more than any other
to protect Jews - Denmark.

The Germans had first occupied Denmark
in 1940 but it was only now,

in August 1943, after Danish resistance
had increased,

that they imposed full military rule.

Now German brutality was practiced
in the open

and the Danish Jews were hugely at risk.

In September 1943 Hitler's representative
in Denmark,

Dr Werner Best of the SS,

a man whose hands were already bloodied

by the persecution of Jews in France
and Poland,

met with the German diplomat,
Georg Ferdinand Duckwitz,

a known sympathiser of the Danes.

According to their later testimony,

Best first informed him that 8000 Danish
Jews would shortly be rounded up.

It was at this point that Best acted
seemingly out of character.

Best's heavy hint about a bridge
for the Danish Jews

to neutral Sweden was clearly understood
by Duckwitz.

He immediately warned Danish politicians
who in turn warned the Jews.

As a result on Wednesday
the 29th of September 1943

in the central synagogue
in Copenhagen Rabbi Melchior

made a surprise announcement.

During the service
of that morning my father

stopped the service and ah,
repeated the message that he had received.

Don't be at home on Friday night.

On Friday, the 1st of October,

when German Security Police visited
the homes of Danish Jews,

they found that the vast majority
had fled.

Most had travelled to Danish ports where
they sought a crossing to Sweden.

And at every stage of their escape the
Jews were helped by their fellow Danes,

even by members of the Danish Police.

I would go out and find one
of the fishermen

that I knew
and tell him how many I had

and we would have to beg
and borrow enough money

to pay the fishermen as much as we could
to get everybody on board.

Once in neutral Sweden, the Danish Jews
were given food and shelter.

Altogether 95% of Danish Jews were saved
in a rescue action

that is without parallel in the history
of the Nazis' "Final Solution"

The Danes considered the Jewish population

as a part of the Danish population

and they could not understand why these
people should have separate treatment.

And I think it was very much a question
of fairness and justice,

I would even say more that than love.

But while the motive of the Danes
who helped the Jews was clear,

it's less easy to understand
why Werner Best acted as he did.

One possible explanation is
that he wanted the Jews

to escape to save him the trouble
of deporting them himself.

Best sent a report to Berlin on
October the 5th. He said:

"As the objective goal of
the Jewish action in Denmark

was the de-Judification of the country
and not a successful headhunt

it must be concluded that
the Jewish action has reached its goal. "

Even committed Nazis like Best were lacing
their ideological hatred with pragmatism.

And in 1943 here
within Auschwitz main camp,

there was the most extraordinary example
of that same thinking.

And so, in 1943 I and many others
were living in Block 24A.

The block elder came in and said:

"We're moving out because there's going
to be a brothel here.

"We all started laughing.

But it wasn't a joke.

It was bizarre - but true

Block 24 just beside the main gate of
Auschwitz was to become a brothel.

And the decision to make it happen had
come from the very top of the SS.

Heinrich Himmler had been considering
for some time

how to provide incentives to prisoners
within the concentration camp system.

He'd written to Otto Pohl
of the SS Economic Division:

'I consider it necessary to provide
in the most

liberal way hard working prisoners
with women in brothels. '

These instructions were passed
onto commandants

like H�ss in a directive from Pohl
in 1943.

The idea wasn't for every prisoner
to use the brothel

certainly not the Jews,
but for vouchers for the brothel

to be issued only to those prisoners

whom the Nazis considered
of special value.

Prisoners like Ryszard Dacko,
a member of the Auschwitz fire brigade.

If I wanted to get a voucher,
I had to sort things out with an SS-man

And they only gave vouchers
to healthy prisoners,

they wouldn't give them to prisoners
who were on their last legs.

Prisoners who worked as cooks for the SS,
as hairdressers for the SS

the special prisoners got those vouchers
I got 2 vouchers.

Little is known about the women who were
forced to work in the brothel

this whole subject is one many prefer
not to talk about.

But it's believed they were selected from
non-Jewish prisoners already in the camp.

They were given these rooms
on the first floor of Block 24

where prisoners who had
the necessary vouchers visited them.

"I wanted to cuddle up to her
as much as I could,

because it was three and a half years
since I'd been arrested,

three and a half years without a woman. "

In the brutalized atmosphere of Auschwitz,

prisoners like Ryszard Dacko found it hard

to have sympathy for the women
who worked in the brothel.

"The girls were treated very well,

they had good food, they went for walks.

They just had to carry out the work
that was required of them. "

The brothel lasted until January 1945

and the suffering endured by the women

who worked in these rooms is one
of the least acknowledged

aspects of the history of Auschwitz.

Shortly after supervising the opening
of the brothel,

H�ss learnt that he was to be removed
as Commandant of Auschwitz.

He didn't want to leave.

He and his family had manufactured a
comfortable life for themselves.

The SS investigation had uncovered clear
evidence of corruption at the camp.

But H�ss wasn't disgraced; he was promoted

to a desk job in Concentration Camp
Administration back in Berlin.

He left on his own.

Rather than move to Berlin,

his family preferred to stay on after

he'd gone in the Commandant's house
on the edge of Auschwitz main camp.

But H�ss was not finished
with Auschwitz yet.

Just 2 months after he left the warehouse
in Auschwitz,

where much of the evidence
about corruption

at the camp was being stored,
mysteriously caught fire.

H�ss would return to the camp in 1944,

where he would oversee the dramatic months

that made Auschwitz into
the biggest killing centre

the world has ever seen.