All language subtitles for What They Found en

This programme contains scenes which
some viewers may find disturbing,

and graphic archive footage and
eye-witness accounts of the
Holocaust

which some viewers may
find disturbing

SWITCH SNAPS

FILM REEL PUTTERS

Army Film Unit cameraman,
Mike Lewis. Reel one.

Mike, could you tell me, please,
how you joined the Army Film Unit?

Well, it seemed that
I might have come at the right time.

Because they were trying to get
members of the Parachute Regiment

to join the Army Film Unit.

And I said, well, I had some
knowledge of photography,

a bit more training,
I could adapt myself to filming.

But at least the main part of it,
jumping from a plane,

he didn't have to worry about!

Erm, and so being at Pinewood
Studios was a new beginning.

It was... There's so many things
to know about.

I was given a small 35mm
camera with a single lens.

It was just a metal box, basically,

which took 100ft of spool-loaded
35mm of black and white film.

Very noisy, uncertain in its
running, so I found.

What was your most notable filming
experience in the campaign?

Uh, I was asked...

Erm...

I say "asked" - ordered.
It was the Army...

..to go on the next operation,

which was the Rhine operation
in Germany.

And I was to join
the Army Film Unit in Germany,

on the ground.

We didn't know quite how we were
going to be used, but, uh...

..I never did know.

Um, you never really know
what really is happening

in a war, generally.

Um, in fact, always.

You only know what's happening
immediately around you.

It may be that the battle
you're in, the fight you're in,

maybe in the scale of war
is very small, but not to you.

It's always the biggest and worst
war that anybody's ever been in.

Can you explain?

Well, war is mostly experienced
in one's feelings...

..and how exposed
and vulnerable one feels.

I remember on that journey over,

trying to sort my thoughts out.

What had happened and who was left

of those I had started out with.

It's, um,
the great big uncertainty of it,

that every day
that you're in it,

would you survive?

Would you survive the next day?

So there's always this terrible
possibility that next week

or next day would never come,
or the future would never happen.

But you are sustained by a belief
that what you're doing

is the right thing.

Otherwise, weapons are just
wood and metal in your hands.

I suppose it sounds pretty daft
to say it, but I can recall

in those days I had,
without questioning it,

this idea of a country.

Fairness, justice, integrity.

And bit by bit, I found that this
wasn't true in my own experiences.

Could you briefly describe
your background?

Yes. Uh...

I was born in London
at the end of the First World War.

Of Jewish parentage,

who had emigrated from Poland

and had received what was customary
at that time,

um, an elementary education.

I always wanted to go in
for what was considered

loosely art work. Painting, drawing.

Did your parents encourage
your artistic aspirations?

No. Being of workable age
by that time,

she thought I ought
to go out to work.

And so I did.

One always encountered hostility
from people as I grew up,

because they were aware
that I was Jewish.

Do you remember the Mosley marches?

Yes. Uh, I remember that.

I could not, like most English Jews,
really believe this of England.

But the world began to assume
a shape more real

than those things
we were taught about it.

It's not something I care
to speak about,

because the experience
really is, um...

..was painful.

Terribly painful.

We land in Germany.

I could see these planes black
through the trees,

desperately holding their courses,
then bursting into flames.

They were brave in the air.
They were coming in so low.

One of the few times in the war
I nearly wept, I really did.

To see those DCs and Lancasters
going through the black trees.

And all for what?

By that time,
Germany was in retreat.

And, as we went through it,

we met refugees fleeing on the way.

I felt sorry for them.
It was a terrible sight.

It's one of the things
that's stuck with me.

All the grief that had
been caused everywhere.

The cities smashed by air raids
to such an extent

that you could only
see where the streets were,

or had been, because the rubble
there was least highest.

We'd been going weeks, and it
seemed, I can't remember,

in fact, the world seemed far away,
England.

And we had reached a little town

called Celle - C-E-L-L-E.

There was a...

I was joined by another sergeant
of the Parachute Regiment

who'd joined the AFPU.
His name was Lawrie, I think.

I'd only been a very amateur
photographer prior to the war.

Very keen, but very amateur.

Um...

There was quite a tremendous battle
round about Celle to begin with.

Were you ever in any danger
yourself?

Oh, it's difficult to say
whether it was dangerous,

or you were very lucky or...

I don't think I looked
at it that way at all.

It was a case of, if something
spectacular was happening,

it was very difficult
to know what was spectacular.

Uh, troops marching along the road
looked for...

On the screen, must have looked
exactly as if they had been

going out for a picnic.

But it wasn't a picnic.

In a silent black and white film,
you don't see or hear the bullets.

You don't get the atmosphere.

It was very difficult to decide
yourself whether you were doing

something stupid,
or being very brave.

I met Mike Lewis,

and we were merely going into the
town to take over the town.

It was when that happened,

we discovered these people,

these, um, prisoners.

But at that time,
we were completely ignorant

of why they were in prison
or anything.

Presumably slave labour
for the German war machine.

But some of these people
had already escaped,

if that's the word to use.

And they were just wandering
about in the streets.

Uh...

But at that time there were
a lot of rumours going on,

and the horror of what was happening
inside Germany was only beginning.

By this time, Germany was collapsing

and they were only too willing
to put their hands up.

You had this staff car
with a white flag telling us

that there was a typhus hospital
ahead of us,

and would we be willing
to call a halt to any actual battles

until this area was taken
over in case of escapees into Europe

and the ravage
that would take place?

As far as I know,
we believed this story,

and we set sail
that evening to have a look

at this typhus hospital,
under a white flag.

The Army had told them the Germans
had a camp ahead,

what they called
with political prisoners,

and they wanted to hand
this over to us.

And would we go and cover it?

Well, we thought political prisoners
seemed a bit vague,

and it seemed rather dull,
but it seemed safer

than continuing
following the front up.

And...we drove up in a jeep,

through pine woods, to a wired gate.

And, erm...

..that place was Belsen.

You heard stories, uh,
what had happened abroad

to Jewish people.

But Belsen...

..Belsen was something different.

There were people
standing behind the wire.

They were not political prisoners.

This was a concentration camp.

And their faces, when they saw us.

They had heard that we were coming.

And I said I was Jewish.

And one of them said in a voice
of wonder,

"YOU are? And you are free?"

And we drove inside.

The number of dead
which were lying everywhere...

The massive scale of what
had happened to people...

There was a stench of death,

and the death of all
human dignity and hope.

I think I was too -
perhaps we all were -

too overwhelmed by feelings
to think clearly about it.

We went in that first evening
where we saw these...

..these half dead people
walking about, glazed eyes.

And there was people
from everywhere.

Gypsies, Poles.

And not necessarily Jewish people.

They were just people.

They were...

Well, I say people.

What we saw weren't people.

They were what was left of people.

Shells. Absolutely...

..dead. There was hopelessness.

Despair.

Like the end had come.

And nobody could do anything
about it.

And I don't think any of us
realised what was happening to us.

And it was getting too dark
for filming and we returned to...

about six, ten miles
back to the road we had come up.

We decided to stay there
and go in the next morning.

We... nobody...

I didn't know what was happening
to the rest of them,

but I remember that night
trying to sleep

and being completely
unable to sleep.

You couldn't say it was fear.

It was...

..just...

..something terribly wrong.

There was a kind of...

..terrible horror,
I can't explain it.

But we all obviously
were lying there,

full of thoughts
or full of feelings,

but never discussed them
with each other.

When we'd went back in
the following morning,

when we did get back to Belsen
the following morning,

I think it was even worse.

The people in the camp, uh...

It's hard to gauge their attitude,
their belief,

their...their feelings.

They had lost so much,
and been through so many horrors.

I did not speak to them,

yet if one could converse with them
because of the language problem,

because what does one say to people
who have been through hell?

And probably that hell
will continue,

even though they have survived
the camp.

And so I was busy filming,
and I was glad of that,

filming every day.

There were wooden towers,
watchtowers, dotted around the camp.

And I'd climbed up the wooden steps
to take a picture.

It was a different planet.

A different earth, a hell.

Although I'd seen
the terrible things in war,

to have treated ordinary people
like this,

how could it be?

The terrible discovery came to me
one night in a sort of revelation,

a flash of lightning, because it
penetrated these terrible scenes

that made me think.

All the stories I had heard
about the persecution of people

from my mother and father,
here they were, true.

But this was on a scale
that it had to be organised.

It had to be done...

Could only be done with a modern
administrative service.

It had to be planned and worked for.

It was a sort of death
by administration.

Impersonal.

And then,
were the Germans alone to blame?

Why were not the railway lines
to the camps bombed?

Where were the religious
institutions of the world?

They knew what was going on.

We had heard rumours, we had known.

And surely these people
would have known better

than us ordinary people.

And they had been silent.

Your first reaction
was to give them something.

Cigarettes.

Chocolate, biscuits.

But it soon became apparent
that that was wrong,

because they were
being violently ill.

I don't know whether you...
We ourselves withdrew

into another...

..space, time, existence.

But you could never associate
what you were seeing

with your own life,
if you know what I mean.

This was something
completely separate.

It was another world.

Uh...

I don't think if we...

If you had become too involved,
I think you would probably

have gone mad.

The fact that this had to be
recorded somehow...

..uh, I suppose that did help.

We had to be deloused
every day to get into the camp.

Rehabilitation
started almost immediately.

The British medical staff
had the unenviable task

of deciding who was worth
the effort, and who wasn't.

Everybody was worth the effort.

I'm not saying that
it was done that way.

Everybody was scrubbed,
carbolic cleaned.

Uh, but eventually it had to come
down to where was the line

to be drawn?

And there was no time to waste.

There was literally...

Days made a difference
to some of these people.

It was conveyor belt
medical treatment.

The nurses were washing,
bathing and cleaning people

that hadn't been washed
and bathed for weeks,

and had been living
worse than animals.

There was no chatter
going on all the time.

It was a very quiet,
silent business.

Once they became used to us,

I'm saying "they" as if there was
something different.

Once the people in the camp
became used to us being there,

and they realised that we were,
uh, a liberation unit

rather than a different
kind of oppressor,

it was, uh, it wasn't unusual
for somebody to grab your hand

and hold on to it.

They didn't say anything.

They didn't. They...they couldn't.

They may well have been saying,
thinking something,

but in the most cases,
they just grabbed your hand

and looked at you,

and that was enough.

The contrast was between
the arrogance of the German troops

in the camp,

and the absolute desperate,
hopelessness of the situation,

the people that they were
controlling.

They, well, they were finished.

And these people...

They could...they didn't
think there was anything

peculiarly wrong
with what was happening.

They had excuses.

But I felt terrible anger,

when you just wanted to hit it.

They were so...

..for the first two or three days,
very arrogant.

Before they started
having to bury their dead.

As the days went on...

..the bodies, they were dummies.

They were dolls. They were...

You lost contact,
and reality went.

Right?

TRANSLATED:

Righto.

Today is the 24th of April, 1945.

My name is Gunner Illingworth,
and I live at Cheshire.

I am at present in Belsen camp
doing guard duty over the SS men.

The things in this camp
are beyond describing.

When you actually see them
for yourself,

you know what you're fighting
for here.

A picture in the paper
cannot describe it at all.

The things they have committed,

well, nobody'd think
they were human at all.

We actually know now what has been
going on in these camps,

and I know personally
what I am fighting for.

I wasn't aware of it
at first in the camp.

In fact, I'm not
sure when it came to me.

Looking back on it, that I knew
that the camera had, in a sense,

pushed the reality of the sights
away from me

and protected me from it.

How could you,
looking at all this death...

..um, keep going?

None of the terrible things
that came to me,

I had to do an awful lot
of thinking when I was in Belsen,

one of the discoveries I made was,
why in Germany?

What was there about the Germans
that made them do this?

And the discovery came to me.

It was a horrifying discovery.

Not only the Germans,
any race was capable of it.

Anybody, given the circumstances
of Germany, could achieve this.

It's something I'd rather
not think about.

But now I know,
after all these years,

that it's something
that will never leave me.

From that day onwards,
it had altered everything

that I had seen life as.

Thank you very much.