Original subtitles

A Moroccan stronghold governed by a ruler

with friends in high places.

Charlie Chaplin, Winston Churchill, General George Patton,

they all came to pay homage.

In the Czech Republic, a place of hope in an age of tyranny.

He was watching the Holocaust happen.

He had to move people

to where they might have a fighting chance of survival.

An Amazonian paradise that fell victim to the lure of reality TV.

Celebrities and dignitaries all made the same trip

to this stretch of jungle.

That proved to be both a blessing and a curse.

And in Germany, a cathedral of industry

that exacted a heavy toll.

This really was not a healthy environment

and, quite tragically, many workers never saw the age of 40 as a result.

Decaying relics...

...ruins of lost worlds,

sights haunted by the past...

...their secrets waiting to be revealed.

High in Morocco's Atlas Mountains, an isolated settlement appears

like a mirage straight out of the Arabian Nights.

Large areas are in ruins, but it is a pretty imposing structure.

It has high walls and narrow windows.

It doesn't shrink into the landscape, it dominates it.

This place was clearly fortified.

Behind the mud brick ramparts,

a labyrinth of unexpected grandeur awaits.

It gets increasingly sophisticated the further in you go.

Every passageway leads to something completely different.

Either a crumbling ruin

or a beautiful room covered in mosaics.

Built by a dynastic family of great influence,

it evolved into the lavish outpost of an enigmatic leader.

Up here, a mountain warlord rose to become

one of the most powerful men in Morocco

and one of the wealthiest in the world.

Yet hubris would lead to his downfall.

To some, he was a pragmatist

who saw the imperial tide crashing in and adapted.

To others, he was a traitor to his country.

Brice Bexter is directly descended

from the powerful clan that once occupied this site.

I first came here in March, 2020, in order to discover

where I was from.

It does give me goosebumps.

My ancestors started our family's name and our family's legacy here,

so, obviously, there's a lot of history and a lot of emotions

when I come back here.

Yet under the rule of Brice's controversial great-grandfather,

Thami El Glaoui, the family's legacy was tainted.

It is undeniable our name comes back a lot in the press,

whether it's positively, whether it's negatively.

I don't think my great-grandfather was a perfect person,

definitely not, but I also always tell people

to not judge their history 100 years later.

This is Kasbah Telouet,

the extravagant seat of power of the El Glaoui family,

who first rose to prominence in this region

200 years before Thami took control.

A kasbah is essentially

a fortified residence for a ruler.

They often housed key buildings,

like garrisons for troops, mosques and residences.

It was like a mini town, and those walls protected that town.

The kasbah and all the people in the region would live

off the agriculture around and bring

all of this harvest back in the kasbah,

so it could be protected here as well.

Here in the Atlas Mountains, this kasbah was a key point

on a vital trade route.

Telouet is on the way to what, in Morocco,

we called the caravan route.

It was the way for the African and the Arab world

to exchange spices, a little bit like the Silk Road in India.

So, you had to go through it with your camels and your horses.

That's how the family slowly and surely built its strength

by controlling taxes and caravans as they were coming through,

in and out of Morocco in the south.

By 1860, the El Glaouis had amassed enough money to build

this commanding symbol of dominance.

As their wealth increased from salt, saffron and the olive trade,

so, too, did the size of their kasbah.

Over the centuries, every one of my ancestors added

their own touch, and you can see the evolution

of all the different time periods.

The biggest change was still to come.

In 1893, a rare event provided the family an opportunity

to elevate their status even further.

At the time, Brice's great-grandfather, Thami,

was 14 years old, and served as second-in-command

to his older brother, Madani.

The Sultan of Morocco was in the Atlas Mountains

when he and his men were caught in an unexpected snowstorm.

My great-grandfather and his brother brought them back here

until the harsh winter passed,

so they had to feed an army of 3,000 people as well as the king himself.

In return for their hospitality,

the family was given political power over Morocco,

south of the Atlas Mountains.

He gave the Glaouis

a 77-millimetre Krupp cannon,

and this was the only weapon of its kind in Morocco

outside of the Imperial Army.

The Glaoui used this weapon to subdue rival warlords.

The whole region was mostly in their hands during that time.

The El Glaouis' stronghold grew to reflect

their unrivalled wealth and authority.

This is the main entrance to the kasbah.

And so, when my ancestors used to welcome people,

they were always welcomed by all the tribe, chanting and dancing,

and just using all their instruments to do

what we call, in Morocco, "loud welcoming."

The farther in you went,

the more exclusive the spaces became.

So, we're in the riad. In Morocco, riads are open courtyards.

All of our houses always have, like, a common area

with, most of the time, a fountain in the middle.

And people used to hide themselves from the shade

and do a lot of, like, gatherings.

And back in the days, they had harems, so a lot of women,

and they used to, you know, have all their women waiting for them here.

Well, you don't have much left of it,

but you can get an idea of what it used to look like.

Below ground, Brice finds the quarters of the servants

who waited on the family above.

You can hear the bats.

SQUEAKING

So, we're under the main room here, and it's not always safe,

but it gives you access to the upper parts

and ways for all the employees to get around the palace.

By 1909, although Thami had not ascended

to be head of the El Glaouis,

he had still made full use of his family's influence

to secure the coveted position of Governor or Pasha of Marrakesh.

Three years later, the world outside the kasbah walls was changing

and Thami's time would come.

In the European scramble to divide up Africa,

Morocco lost its independence to France in 1912.

The French quickly understood that, in order to do anything

in southern Morocco, you would have to ally yourself with the Pasha.

For the younger El Glaoui brother, this was a moment of reckoning.

He could either fight for independence or cast his lot

with the new European powers.

For a man of his ambition, there was only one option.

El Glaoui sided with the French and, in return, gained rule

over a large swathe of southern Morocco.

My great-grandfather was quickly associated

as a collaborator with the French, so, obviously, he was considered

a traitor by most of the people.

After the death of Thami's older brother, Madani,

the French further repaid his support by appointing him

as head of the family instead of his sibling's sons,

who were the rightful heirs.

Over the next two decades, Thami leveraged his position

to consolidate his wealth and become one of the world's richest men.

This was the pinnacle of his power and influence,

and this was a man who enjoyed flaunting it.

This was built by my great-grandfather back in the 1930s.

Of course, he liked to show off, you know.

Like anyone who's successful in life, at some point, I guess,

like, you want to show, you know, the extent of that success.

So, yeah, it was a statement.

He amassed so many riches that everyone either wanted

to see or be seen with him.

He was called the Gatsby of Morocco,

so he used to love throwing amazing parties, hosting great people.

Charlie Chaplin, Winston Churchill and General George Patton all came

to the kasbah to be hosted by the Pasha.

But as the 20th century wore on,

Moroccan nationalist tension grew under continued French rule.

El Glaoui, still aligned with the colonialists,

was about to make a fateful decision,

and no amount of powerful friends could save him.

In 1953, he conspired with the French

to overthrow Sultan Muhammad V.

It was intense. There was a lot of pressure

that came from the French being around and wanting to keep

their... their hands on Morocco as long as possible.

Thami El Glaoui had misread the mood of the nation.

An independence movement in Morocco was simmering under the surface.

The next two years was an eruption of violence

and a unified demand for the return of their Sultan.

In 1955, the French were forced to concede

and bring him back to Morocco, and this spelled disaster for the Pasha.

In an extraordinary scene, the Pasha was publicly shamed

when he was brought to Paris and forced to beg and grovel

at the Sultan's feet.

It was the end of a stunning fall from power.

The Pasha died just months later.

In March, 1956, two months after Thami's death,

Morocco gained independence.

The impact on Kasbah Telouet proved fatal.

That's when most of their palaces, most of their goods

and most of their fortune was seized.

We did get the place back in the late '80s,

but, I mean, the state of the kasbah was already totally degraded.

It had been looted by, you know, all the people in the region

over the decades, so we were left

with almost everything you see today.

Now reunited with his family's property,

Brice must come up with inventive ways to keep the kasbah standing.

It was lucky, I guess, to bring a movie set here

that had this Arabian Nights feeling to it, and it was beautiful

to be able to see, well, Telouet live again like this,

and to be able to imagine what it would have looked like

back in the days.

I'd love to see it go back to its prime.

We have to, you know, rebuild it a little,

but, I mean, we're doing our best today

to protect it and tell its story.

In the Czech Republic, 100 miles east of Prague,

a rundown facility tells an extraordinary story

of deception and survival.

This looks like an ordinary Czech town,

but in the centre, there appears to be abandoned warehouses

configured around a central courtyard.

What was its purpose?

Inside, you see raised concrete plinths

and sturdy pillars holding up the floor, all of which suggest

that this place was once filled with heavy machinery of some sort.

You see, there are sacks of fibre and there are bobbins,

so, clearly, there's some textile industry going on here.

This structure seems to be part of an operation

that's been forgotten by history.

Yet within these walls, an improbable saviour risked everything

to defy a ruthless killing machine.

He was an entrepreneur, a spy and a playboy,

and he conned one of Europe's most dangerous regimes.

There's no doubt it's one of the most important stories

of the 20th century.

What this place produced was hope,

and that's a precious commodity in dark times.

The events that took place here inspired an Oscar-winning movie

known as Schindler's List.

So, I first came back in 1973

when I was very young, with my father.

This was my grandfather's factory.

It's where he worked with his two brothers.

Dr Daniel Low-Beer is the custodian of this site today.

In the early 1900s, this was the beating heart

of his ancestors' thriving textile business.

Our family had been here for many hundreds of years,

and they felt very much part of this land.

They were accepted in Czechoslovakia.

This is where the Jews could express themselves fully, culturally.

But in 1938, the rise of a terrible evil left

Daniel's grandfather, Walter, staring into the abyss.

So, from one day to the next, Czechoslovakia is one country,

and then, it's split into two, and the border goes along the stream

that goes through our factory. And my grandfather wakes up,

and on the other side of the river is a battalion of Nazi soldiers,

who had come in partly to invade, partly to loot,

partly to find what they could.

He said, "You can't come over this river. This is the border.

"Go and check your orders and your borders."

And he held them up,

a Jew on that border holding up the Nazis for three days.

Walter was just one man standing against an entire army.

Shortly afterwards, the Low-Beers were forced to flee,

leaving their life's work behind.

They went to France, and then my father, on a false passport,

was able to get into England. Their identity was shattered

and the factory was stolen by the Nazis.

In the early years of the Second World War,

a variety of companies worked at the factory,

producing textiles and armaments for the German war effort.

Then, in 1944, the site underwent a horrifying transformation.

This was a concentration camp. So, you first of all,

have to imagine the barbed wire which closed it off,

the watchtowers, which would have been looking over this place.

There was 80 to 100 armed SS guards here,

some of them extremely dangerous.

Around 1,200 Jewish captives were transported from Poland

to work in this labour camp.

But the Nazi industrialist who brought them here

had an extraordinary secret.

He certainly was no saint. He didn't regard himself

as a humanitarian. But even ordinary people

can behave in extraordinary ways.

His name was Oskar Schindler,

and this was to be a safe haven to protect a people under siege.

At the start of the war,

his motivation could not have been more different.

Schindler is getting rich,

taking over factories that belong to Jews.

Schindler is coining money.

He is stuffing his pockets cos he's a Nazi,

he's friends with Nazis.

There's Nazi money to be made, and Schindler is living well.

But somewhere or some time during the Second World War,

he began to change his perspective.

People are being taken from Poland's ghettos to Poland's death camps,

and they're being murdered on a wholesale basis.

Schindler was watching the Holocaust happen.

It seems that it was during this period

that Schindler's motivations changed. If he had done nothing,

all of his Jewish workers would have been deported

to extermination camps, most likely Auschwitz.

It was then that Schindler came up with a plan

to outsmart the Nazis. His path to redemption had begun.

Oskar Schindler, with the help of his employees,

began to draw up lists -

lists of people who would effectively be saved

by working at his labour camp.

Schindler told the SS that those on the lists were

highly skilled workers and essential to setting up

and running the factory.

Schindler needs to insulate the people he's trying to save

from the deadly casual brutality of the SS guard force.

By housing the workers inside the factory

and the guards in a separate building,

he reduced the likelihood of these attacks.

So, there's three floors.

The first two would be used for production

and they would have lived above this floor.

This was a relative place of safety.

From the very start, Schindler had no intention

of using his factory to make weapons,

yet he had to convince Nazi officials of the exact opposite.

Schindler has got to pretend that he is building German armaments

in his factory, even though he's producing

approximately no German armaments.

It was tense from the morning to the evening.

There was danger everywhere.

And when the inspections came, yeah, there would be a huge flurry.

He would have to find munitions, he would have to forge documents.

Every hour, every day,

every breath that those people took

was an act of defiance against the Nazis.

Schindler and his workers maintained the deception for over six months

until Germany's total surrender came on 8th May, 1945.

He actually opens the radios of the camp

so that Winston Churchill's victory speech is on.

Everybody hears it, including the German soldiers,

including the Jews.

It's here that he gives a speech, with the German soldiers here,

where he challenges them to be men, not murderers, to disperse.

But only the Jewish prisoners knew Schindler's secret.

In the eyes of the advancing Allied forces,

he was a wanted Nazi war criminal.

It's at five past midnight that the roles change.

He was in charge of his camp,

and then, suddenly, he becomes the hunted.

Some of the workers put together a letter explaining

that Schindler had done everything he could

to save the largest number of Jewish lives possible.

It also asked anyone he showed the letter to

to help him in any way they could.

But paper burns and ink dissolves,

so they made him a ring.

And there's no gold anywhere, apart from on their teeth.

And so, they melt this ring out of their teeth.

But on it, there's a phrase which is taken from the Talmud,

which says, "If you save a life, you save the world entire."

While the workers waited for the camp's official liberation,

Schindler fled west to American lines with the letter,

the ring and a remarkable story.

He had helped save 1,200 people from the Holocaust.

And it is estimated that the descendants of those 1,200 people,

7 to 9,000 people, are alive today

because Oskar Schindler risked everything

to save the lives of people to whom he owed nothing.

It's not clear why he did what he did,

but in some ways, that's what keeps the story alive

and allows the next generation of children

to make their own mind up. And then, most importantly,

what would you do in the same situation?

If Schindler could do it, why couldn't more people do it?

In 2019, Daniel was able to buy back his family's old factory.

Today, he is working to turn the site

into a museum dedicated to those who survived here.

In the Jewish sense, when the world is shattered,

you want to put it back together again.

At the beginning of a marriage, they shatter a glass

because the Jews assume that the world is shattered,

and the job of any marriage is

to try and put bits of it back together.

And I think it's a little bit of the impetus we have here,

in this ruined factory, is to put something back together,

which can tell the story and show survival.

In Brazil, deep in the Amazon rainforest,

are the neglected remains of a pioneering venture.

As you navigate through the waterways,

you come across this ruin

that's just rotting on the side of the jungle.

There is this mess of stilts and beams,

and they reach up hundreds of feet into the air.

You can see the remains of a boardwalk

and some platforms teetering high above the water.

As more wooden skeletons emerge from the forest,

the extent of this site becomes apparent.

This area is remote and exposed. It's not exactly a place

where you would imagine there to be a settlement.

This is a footprint of a vast complex.

To build somewhere like this would have required

specialist local knowledge.

It makes you wonder, why was this created?

Was this some sort of an industrial facility?

This place was built with one thing in mind -

an existential threat to humanity.

Roberto Abdias has worked in the Amazon all his life.

For 17 years, this was home.

Today, these derelict ruins are only accessible by boat.

When first built, a helicopter was

the favoured method of transportation

for those who could afford it.

To see it now, you wouldn't think that some of the richest people

on Earth came to visit this, but they did.

Its story began with a chance encounter

more than four decades ago.

In 1982,

one of the most renowned explorers,

Jacques Cousteau, came and visited this part of the Amazon.

He explored the world and he brought attention

to matters like the disappearing rainforest.

It was while staying at a hotel in the city of Manaus

Cousteau grew close to its owner, Francisco Ritta Bernardino.

Cousteau made a prediction to his new friend.

He predicted that, within 15 years,

the whole world would be talking about the Amazon,

not just climate scientists and biologists,

but also regular concerned citizens.

Bernardino was inspired by Cousteau.

In an effort to prevent further deforestation,

he wanted to make a difference.

He was also a keen businessman with an eye for opportunity.

When Cousteau encouraged him to consider

the fast-growing industry of eco-tourism,

it seemed like the perfect fit.

This is all that remains of Bernardino's Ariau Towers Hotel.

By establishing a resort like this,

people could come and experience the Amazon

without damaging the Amazon.

They could take away from it memories,

without leaving anything behind.

This would be a unique building that would immerse people

right into the heart of this incredible ecosystem.

Bernardino began his ambitious project in 1984.

From the beginning, there were challenges to overcome.

For half of the year, this area is under water.

After two years of building,

Ariau Towers was ready to welcome its first guests.

What Bernardino achieved really was this massive feat

of construction and engineering.

He built, on stilts, 300 rooms, a helipad,

dining rooms, and so much more.

There were walkways that linked one building to the next.

There were catwalks that were up in the trees

so that you could experience the part of the Amazon

where most of the life lived. They'd be able to see pink dolphins.

They would be able to see any number of brilliantly coloured birds.

Ariau Towers tapped into a growing trend,

and its exclusivity attracted the rich and famous.

This was built in an era

when problems with the Amazon rainforest were just becoming

general knowledge in the way that that elimination of rainforest

was also displacing tribal people that lived in the Amazon rainforest.

At its height, it wasn't uncommon

to see celebrities or politicians here.

Business was booming,

and Bernardino's investment appeared to be paying off.

In the late '90s, it is estimated that revenue was

somewhere around $12 million

from the 36,000 guests it was receiving per year.

Then, in 2002, a reality TV juggernaut came calling,

and it seemed like a lucrative opportunity too good to miss.

The hit reality series Survivor was looking for a location

for its sixth season, and Ariau Towers fit the bill.

The production went ahead

and they booked out the entire place for months.

It turns out that interrupting your regular stream of guests

for an entire three months can really be disastrous

in the tourism industry.

The number of visitors began to decline,

and soon, there were staff layoffs that followed.

The hotel limped on for another decade,

but the business never recovered.

Operations ceased in 2016,

and the Amazon quickly reclaimed its ground.

All of the locals who helped to build and operate Ariau Towers

really saw this as their own, so when the facility became defunct,

they took the timbers, they took the beams and the roofs,

leaving very little standing there today.

The Ariau Towers Hotel may have ended in failure,

but Roberto believes it should be remembered

for the good it tried to achieve.

In Germany, just outside of Berlin,

a peculiar collection of buildings litter the countryside.

About 20 miles east of the capital,

this sprawling city gives way

to these portions of green and dark patches of woodlands.

Looking through the trees here,

we start to see some strange stone structures.

Some of them look like they might be churches

or maybe medieval forts. In one place, we see something

that looks like it could be a temple in Cambodia.

Exploring deeper, a confusing picture begins to emerge.

There are long, dark corridors,

and there are deep holes that lead to nowhere.

On the lower levels are the remains of railroad track and old carts.

It's hard to figure out what we're looking at

or what was here.

The rusting metal remains suggest that this was

some sort of industrial complex, but for what trade?

From the fires of this vast complex,

one of Europe's greatest cities was forged.

Just from looking at what is left here, you would have no idea

of the role that this place played in the building of modern Germany.

Kathrin Jurkat is a historian

who works in the shadow of this towering behemoth.

The ground on which it's built is the very reason it exists.

So, 240 million years ago,

at this site, there was an ocean.

There were shells and other animals living inside of it.

These shells, when they died, were transforming into limestone.

Limestone is a really great material to work with

as a building material. It's easier to cut into different shapes

than, say, granite, and it's easier to quarry.

Berlin really is a city of limestone.

You can find it everywhere, from the floors of the Berliner Dom Cathedral

to the roads of the working-class neighbourhoods.

This is Rudersdorf.

For over 750 years,

it was at the heart of an industry that built the German capital.

But this site produced more than Berlin's building blocks.

It also created the vital ingredient that held them together.

So, this is the chamber kiln. It was built in 1666,

and this is the oldest structure we have here in Rudersdorf.

It was used for burning lime.

The cooking of the limestone changes its chemical structure.

If you'd let it cool down, you could crumble

the rocks into a fine powder, what we call quicklime.

Then, if you add water and throw in some sand and other things,

you would have cement.

Quicklime's impact on the city is impossible to overstate.

Berlin's population in 1701 had swelled to over 100,000,

and it was growing in all directions.

As European society advanced

and bigger and bigger stone buildings were being built,

the demand from these furnaces or kilns was enormous.

In order to keep up,

it was the poorly paid labour force that suffered most.

Can you imagine just how difficult and dangerous this work was?

They were moving chunks of rock that were heated to 1,000 degrees.

If the burnt lime came into contact with their skin or their sweat,

which was inevitable in conditions like this, it was like acid.

They could get very severe burns.

Despite the risks, there was constant pressure

to keep the kilns burning, no matter what.

The entire procedure, however, was incredibly inefficient.

The problem with this method is you have to load the kiln,

build this intense fire for four or five days,

you had to pull the limestone out, and repeat the process.

As demand for cement increased, this method wasn't fast enough.

But that wasn't the only issue.

The fuel that fed the fires was also in short supply.

The chamber kiln needed

wood to run, but the Brandenberg Forest was

running out of trees at an alarming rate.

If the city's rapid growth was to continue,

Rudersdorf needed to find a solution fast.

An innovation by British-American inventor Lord Benjamin Rumford

in 1802 would prove vital.

The Rumford kiln operates like a kind of vertical conveyor belt.

Workers bring chunks of lime with carts to the top of the structure,

and they drop it into the central shaft.

There's fires that are kept burning at all times around the shaft.

As the limestone cooks down, they keep adding more limestone

to the top, but at the bottom, workers can open the shaft

and shovel out the cooked limestone.

Whereas, before, it had taken about a week

between loading and unloading the kiln,

this one burned continuously, and instead of burning wood,

which was running out, it used peat for fuel.

Peat burns hotter and there was an untapped supply

in the wetlands around Berlin.

This, combined with the Rumford kilns' ability

to operate 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, saw production triple.

The technological leap was good for business,

but did little to improve the lives of the labour force.

So, this great invention of the Rumford kiln was

not so good for the workers. Before that, they didn't work that long,

but now, they had to work 16 hours a day.

Also, it was very harmful for them to inhale the dust.

A lot of the workers here had a problem with their lungs.

This really was not a healthy environment and, quite tragically,

many workers never saw the age of 40, as a result.

Despite the human cost, the kilns worked around the clock.

Even though 28,000 tons of quicklime were being produced every year,

there was always a need for more.

Berlin was quickly becoming one of the largest cities in Europe.

In 1871, with unification,

Germany became a really great power for the first time,

and that led to a much faster pace

of economic and industrial development.

Berlin had become the capital city of the entire German Empire,

and its population had reached 800,000.

They needed more raw materials. They needed more cement.

At this time, Rudersdorf had five Rumford kilns in constant operation.

It wasn't enough.

The answer was to build something even bigger.

So, this is the shaft kiln battery. It was finished in 1877.

So, the innovation here is that they put 18 kilns

right next to each other so that it functioned like a factory.

This structure was built in a kind of a ditch,

which, at the top, allowed railcars to reach the roof,

and from the bottom, carts could be loaded straight onto the railway.

This complex, located where it is,

is part of why Berlin was able to grow as rapidly as it did.

This place helped build a lot of what remains

as kind of iconic Berlin today, including the Brandenburg Gate.

For almost a century, these kilns burned,

producing hundreds of thousands of tons of quicklime,

fuelling Germany's path to become the nation we know today.

But by the late 1960s,

the once cutting-edge technology was becoming obsolete

and, by 1967, it had been abandoned.

Today, Rudersdorf is open to the public.

It provides a unique insight into a factory that built a city.

It's interesting that it was never torn down

or reused for other purposes. And that's really great,

because you can see what's essentially a museum and a tribute

to all the hard work and innovation

that went into developing these modern building materials.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media