All language subtitles for The.Last.Musician.of.Auschwitz.2025.1080p.WEBRip.x264-CBFM_track3_[und]

This programme contains scenes which
some viewers may find upsetting

Those who survive
could answer the roll call

of all the nations of Europe.

They had been beaten down
to live like animals.

Far worse,

for few animals had lived
in the terror, hunger and filth

of these victims.

People who once had been
human beings like you and me.

Who would even suspect it
in the 20th century,

to think that it can be done?

The things that the Nazis did.

"Auschwitz,"

I said,
"Satan would have been envious."

Well, that crazy band as we were,
we survived.

I mean, the moment they don't want
music, we go in the gas chambers.

And I'm now, I think, the last
person left who was there.

TRAIN RUMBLES

TRAIN BRAKES SCREECH

We were walked to Auschwitz.

Suddenly,
I thought I am hallucinating

because I heard
Eine Kleine Nachtmusik from Mozart.

Oh!

They had such nerve.

We were greeted by a band.

There was a band playing.

The finest musicians in the world.

These were all prisoners
from all over occupied Europe.

There was an orchestra playing.

So we thought, it cannot be that
bad if they have concerts here.

There's an orchestra here?

I said, "Who needs music here?

"I mean, they're crazy!"

There is music. That threw me.

I mean, what's going on here?

It's really enough
to make you lose your sanity.

I sometimes think of this
as being very strange,

to have fine music
play in a death factory.

When people find out that music
was being made in Auschwitz,

it is a shocking realisation

that music and the extermination
of human beings

can be connected in any way at all.

It's something that I knew about

because my mere existence
is thanks to my mother's survival,

because she played the cello
and was in the women's orchestra.

My father was a lawyer
of some repute.

And my mother, apart from being very
beautiful, had many accomplishments.

But most important,
she was a fine violinist.

She would usually begin her
practising routine

with the opening octaves
of the Beethoven concerto.

It was a lovely, lovely childhood.

My mother was a very good violinist,

and it was normal that there
was new music, you know,

that was pre-television
and all that.

You can see in one of the
photographs,

I was sat on the floor
with a broomstick and a comb,

and my parents thought
that this child looks as if

she wants to play the cello.
So they bought me a cello.

Life was pretty good,
and it seemed inconceivable

that it should not
go on like that forever.

I suppose ours was a typical

middle-class, assimilated Jewish
family.

CELLO MUSIC

Make... Make sure
that you hear the second note.

# Da-da-dee da-dee da-dee-da. #

In the first years of the
20th century,

Jewish life existed across Europe.

But to be Jewish in Germany
was the best place to be a Jew.

They were successful,

they were established,

and a kind of marker of their
admission into German life

was music.

They had made a contribution in the
form of Mendelssohn or Mahler.

They would be in the audience
at the opera houses

and concert halls.

They were embracing high culture,

art, and all of it,
quintessentially German.

It was a very core part
of their identity.

Jewish, not Jewish, didn't seem
to be a problem in those days.

We had a Christmas tree
and we had Hanukkah,

you know, a menorah.

It was normal.

But one had no idea
what was going to follow.

Once the Nazis had seized power
in 1933,

they moved in increments
to isolate Jews

into ever-narrower parts
of social life.

Children would spit at me in the
street and call me a dirty Jew.

Since we had been scarcely aware
of our Jewishness at home,

I found this all very bewildering,

and was full of envy
for those people

who did not have
this mysterious stigma.

There were laws passed against
what they would have seen

as racial mingling.

There were travel restrictions.

Jews couldn't own businesses.

They couldn't own property.

They were evicted from their homes.

As time would go on,
they had to be distinguished

from the rest of the population

and forced to wear
the notorious yellow star.

They were squeezed out of
German life, stage by stage.

Suddenly everything got restricted.

Not allowed to sit
on a bench in a park.

You know, it was...

It was an atmosphere of fear,

suddenly.

Over here, a storm is gathering.

GERMAN BROADCAST

We listen to your news because
ours is dictated and false.

It looks very much like
there is going to be war,

As though our children won't
be able to reach a safe haven.

Nothing but swastikas everywhere.

It's like dancing on a powder keg.

Ilse was a multi-talented,

cosmopolitan young woman.

She wrote poems and short stories,

but the most important interest
focused on music.

She had two children,
Hanus and Tommy,

and the letters throw a blunt light

on the anti-Semitism and Nazi terror

that increasingly poisoned
the Jews' life in Czechoslovakia.

The worst is for us Jews.

How Hitler must fear us
that he persecutes us so.

Germany had been defeated
in the First World War.

The country
was on its knees financially,

and a myth developed

that Germany had been the victim
of the so-called stab in the back,

and along comes the Nazis
with a narrative

which says the people to blame for
bringing mighty Germany to its knees

are the Jews.

You can see here,
on the cover of Der Sturmer,

a Nazi propaganda paper,
hideously caricatured Jews.

Nazism uses all that
to advance its theory

that there is a racial war going on,

pitting Aryans against Jews,

and that only one of these two races
can win.

Up to this day,
I have believed in God,

but if he doesn't give us a token of
his existence soon, I can no longer.

This persecution of Jews is inhuman.

What should we do?

Where should we go?

In this desperate situation,

Ilse heard about a rescue operation

that was planned by an English
stockbroker, Mr Nicholas Winton,

for 669 children,

and Hanus was one of them.

Some Mr Winton in London
is running a children's transport.

So my older boy is going to England.

Perhaps for a long time.

It won't be easy
for us to part from him,

but nevertheless, we'll be happy
when he gets away

from the bad atmosphere here.

When she put Hanus on the train,

she was a desperate mother,

being aware that
she might not meet her son again.

She had to send him away
to save his life.

But music gave her the strength
to survive without him.

SHE SINGS IN GERMAN

BIG BEN CHIMES

EXPLOSIONS

War!

Precisely at dawn
on September 1st,

without warning,

the German Wehrmacht
rolled over the Polish border.

The deportations began,

and my sister and I
were determined not to wait

till somebody comes and takes me
away in order to kill me.

We said we were going to run away.

We were teenagers,

and it was a crazy idea.

We got ourselves
false papers and, er...

..tried to get to the
unoccupied zone of France.

But, er, we didn't get there.

We were arrested already
at the station.

And then my big odyssey
started in prison,

and I was very lucky to be
in prison.

It's much better to be in prison
than to be in a concentration camp.

And it took about a year
before the court case came up.

But, as soon as the sentences
were announced,

the Gestapo came up

and we were sent separately...to
Auschwitz.

Auschwitz was, er, notorious.

There were all sorts of rumours
about the conditions of the camps,

and especially about Auschwitz
and the gas chambers.

I now had to come to terms
with the bitter truth

that this was
precisely what was ahead of me.

It would be dishonest of me
to say that I was not scared.

But, in an odd way, one can become
so accustomed to being scared

that it becomes
part of one's make-up.

We had lived in fear
for so many years

that it had merely become
part of the background.

And now...I was being confronted
with the real thing.

At this point, the overwhelming
majority of Jews

who arrived in Auschwitz
believed they were going to form

a new community together.

That is why they had brought
with them suitcases, pots, pans.

They believed that this was
some kind of fresh start.

They took all our luggage
right away.

And they make us give all
our jewellery.

Every murder mill
had its storage room.

Each contained jewellery, watches,

wedding rings,

heaps of eyeglasses.

We arrived at Auschwitz-Birkenau
in the evening.

I don't know what time it was,
but it was dark.

When I try to recall my first
impressions of Auschwitz,

what comes to mind
are black figures in capes,

dogs barking,
and a great deal of shouting.

We were taken to a barracks,
and there we had to wait.

I was not aware that I had
already passed the first hurdle.

Selection.

A trainload of Jews would arrive,

and there and then, on the railway
platform, they would be selected.

To the left you would be sent
immediately to the gas chambers.

But if you were chosen
to go to the right,

that meant you were of an age
and a level of fitness

where you might be useful
as a worker.

At the first light of day,
we were taken to a different block.

There, the welcoming ceremony
took place.

We were naive young people.

I wouldn't have taken my clothes off
in front of my mother,

and we're ordered to take our
clothes off.

Everything.

They shaved our hair.

Everything was shaven off.

The death mills were
made to pay in many ways.

Thousands of garments
were stripped from prisoners.

Human hair -

women's hair -

methodically packed, it was ready
for sale to manufacturers.

Another crew came in
and put numbers on our arm.

At that moment, my name and my life
became a number.

The first thing I had removed when
I came to the United States.

Right there.

I felt this was the last
stripping away of my identity.

In the space of a few minutes, I had
been stripped of every vestige

of human dignity,

and become indistinguishable
from everyone else around me.

There is a sort of
welcoming ceremony,

and all this is done by prisoners.

We started this conversation
and she asked me,

"What did you do
before the war?"

I said I used to play the cello.

Then she immediately said,
"There's an orchestra here.

"They need a cellist. Stay here."

And so she went
to find the conductor.

The last thing I had imagined
when going to Auschwitz

is that I would ever have
a conversation

about playing the cello.

Here I was, stark naked,

and she was asking me,
"Who did you study with?"

It was somehow rather incongruous.

I heard the words,
"You will be saved".

She said someone would come for me
and I would have an audition.

I wasn't exactly on top form,
but it was good enough.

They didn't have a bass instrument.

They were...very happy to have me.

My name is Adam Kopycinski.

On the 6th of January 1942,
I was transported to Auschwitz.

I became a member of the orchestra,
and then the conductor.

The high-voltage perimeter fence,

cutting us off
from the outside world,

marked the boundary
of our existence.

Cast out beyond
the margins of society,

we were able to create a new world.

Those who inhabited
this bizarre world,

who wanted to live and vegetate
within those narrow confines,

had to forget about freedom,

and attempt to create at least
the semblance of a normal life...

..and the things
you could find there.

By the end of the second year
of the camp's operations,

there'd be beautiful music

and fine performances from
first-rate vocal artists,

for residents to enjoy.

Just a few days before they
forfeited their life.

There's a big, huge gate

with a sign up on top,
"Arbeit macht frei".

"Work will make you free".

For the Nazis,
there were two projects.

One was a final solution to the
persistent, stubborn presence

of Jews in the world,

which was their wholesale
elimination and murder.

But another was to turn the Third
Reich into an economic superpower.

They envisaged Auschwitz and the
area around it as an industrial hub.

They invited the big industrial
giants IG Farben and Siemens

to build big factories there.

But there would be one advantage -

the advantage that all empires
have had for thousands of years -

namely, slave labour.

Part of the process
was to drill them

with almost military-like
efficiency.

And so these working units
would leave the camp at dawn

each morning, and to accompany
them there would be music.

What they wanted the orchestra
to play were marches.

We had sheet music for over 100.

They filled up two closets,
which stood in the music room

in block 24.

MARCHING MUSIC

We played out of doors,

even in temperatures down to minus
five degrees centigrade.

Pain forcing tears from our eyes.

Well, we had to play marches
every morning and every evening

because Auschwitz
was surrounded with factories

and people should march
nicely in step.

So we had to sit by the gate
and play marches

for about an hour or so,
till everybody was out,

and the same thing in the evening,
on the way back.

But we were scared stiff
to play wrong notes.

It was just better to be scared
stiff than to look out of the window

and see the smoking chimneys.

There were tens of thousands
of prisoners

who were working as slaves.

Their life expectancy was rarely
more than two or three months,

and it became this kind of
black hole

in the heart of
Nazi-occupied Poland,

into which Jews from all
over Europe were disappearing.

Auschwitz was a certain kind of
negative world

to which we were abducted.

White became black, and black white.

Values were turned around
180 degrees.

My father, he was Jewish
and was very musical,

and so ended up in Paris,

which was the great place
where artists concentrated.

Then came the war with
the German invasion of France.

He was arrested.

And then he was deported
to Auschwitz.

The first questions I asked myself
were, "What kind of a world is this?

"What sort of creatures are those
zebra-like beings with shaved heads,

"swaying on their feet, emaciated,
like skeletons?"

I tried to shake off this nightmare.

To tell myself that it was a dream,
but...

..an awakening did not come.

My father doesn't extend on what
he described as "the horror".

Well, there is one sentence.
"It's indescribable,

"and so I won't describe it."

But the horror is there.

I remember every day
marching out to work,

and there was
this orchestra playing.

I remember how ironical it was.

We left the camp every day with
the soldiers and their Tommy guns

and the dogs,

and we built a road
that somehow it seemed to me,

was going to nowhere.

The work group that I was part of

went out every day
with a strength of 600.

Only half of whom returned
to the camp in the evening

on their own two legs.

It consisted of loading a sort of
wheelbarrow with earth.

It was carried by two people
and emptied 100m away.

Now, imagine if you can,
that we had to run all day long

under an uninterrupted
hail of blows.

Unbelievable as it may seem,

after 20 days of this "work",

I was still alive.

Who can do this job with no food
in their stomach?

Every time we see them coming back,

they were holding three dead people.

In Auschwitz, we had a collection
of the greatest musicians

entertain us as we were walking
out of the gate to work,

and when we were coming back.

Now, who the heck -
we needed entertainment?

We needed food.

I cannot explain it
any other way but sadism.

German nationalism in its Nazi form

took as read that German culture
was the highest form of culture.

Just as they believed the greatest
literature ever written

was by Goethe, they would insist
that the greatest music ever written

was by Beethoven or Bach.

Germany and Germans
were better than everyone else.

There was a movement against
degenerate art, so-called,

and as part of that,
the music of Jews,

composers long dead, was banned.

So you would not be able to hear
the music of Mendelssohn or Mahler

in a concert hall in Nazi Germany.

Because the sound of the Jew
was to become forbidden,

even if that Jew
was long in the ground.

BROADCAST: In Hitler's Germany,

the music of any Jewish composer
is outlawed.

Masterpieces the world has loved

are confiscated as unfit
for Nazi ears.

Apart from our twice-daily outings
to the camp gate to play marches

for the outgoing and incoming
commandos,

we had other functions.

We gave concerts most Sundays.

We also had to be ready to play
for any SS personnel who came

into our block for some light relief

after selecting who should live
and who should die.

During the internment of my mother,

Josef Mengele, the infamous doctor,

who uses qualifications
for experimentation on inmates,

for his light entertainment,

he entered the barrack
where my mother was,

and requested a performance
of Traumerei,

part of Schumann's
beautiful Kinderszenen,

which depicts idyllic scenes
of childhood.

A great irony,
considering what was happening

around and what he was busy doing.

So, it's a very poignant moment
for me to play the same music.

They could come in any time
to ask for...for a nice tune.

When Mengele came in, he wanted
to hear the Traumerei, by Schumann,

and that was one of my repertoires,

so I played the Traumerei,
by Schumann.

People asked me, "How did you feel?"

I said, "I didn't feel anything.

"I played it as fast as possible
and said, "Get out."

This kind of classical music was
the lifeblood of the German people.

But there are many examples
of these very cultured people

doing the worst atrocities
ever known to humankind.

There really is no doubt

that the Germans are
music lovers from birth.

Their insistence on having music
at a place like Auschwitz

is only one example of this passion.

How could people,
who love music to this extent,

people who could cry
when they hear it,

be at the same time capable

of committing so many atrocities
on the rest of humanity?

It's just an extremely
striking paradox,

which implies that culture
does not protect one

from being...a beast.

No-one has any idea

how difficult it is to write
about Auschwitz

without being misunderstood,

especially when it comes
to a discipline of the arts,

such as music,
which in the eyes of most,

sadly, always has been
a sort of entertainment.

So, for many people, it will seem
strange that music helped

to fulfil such an important role.

After all, for us musicians,
it is our livelihood.

We need it to live.

But in this particular situation,
we needed it to survive.

One evening, like every evening,

I was lying on my pallet wondering
how much longer I would last,

when the barracks chief called out,

"Is there someone here who speaks
Polish and plays bridge?"

A few minutes later,
dirty, unshaven,

not believing my eyes and ears,

I was sitting at a bridge table
in the private room

of the barracks chief,

in the company of two other VIPs,
in striped clothing, playing,

like an equal - with equals.

During one of the hands,
I managed to mutter to him

that I was a violinist and composer.

He looked at me with
a bitter, honest reproach.

"Why didn't you tell me this sooner?

"Tomorrow you'll stay in the
barracks and I'll take

"you over to the orchestra."

A second companion added,
choking with laughter,

"And if you're accepted,
maybe you'll live a little longer."

My father has abilities
as a real composer,

and one day he is chosen as the
director of one of the orchestras.

Musicians had
a better chance to survive,

and being in the orchestra,
that was what one would call

a relatively safe place.

Not...not really safe,
but somewhat safer.

I have some picture after the war

sitting at the piano

in this very apartment.

If you are interested, actually,
I could play it for you.

In order to survive there,
you had to compromise.

Either you place yourself
on the side of the torturers -

the best example is the Jews
that saved their own life

by burning their companion Jews -

or you can compromise
by accepting to be a musician

and to be part of the Nazi politics
against your will.

The best way of describing it
is the expression of Primo Levi,

which speaks of a "grey zone",

where moral values and so on
are so shaken

that it affects your own world view.

Music became a means of surviving,

and my father was self-conscious
about the way

that he didn't have
to suffer from hunger

in a way that his companions
couldn't.

If they wanted to punish you,
today no food.

As simple as that.

The starvation was just terrible.

And hanging and beating.

Living in constant terror and fear
for your life.

In the morning, some of them
ran out of the barrack,

and we could see them holding
the electrical barbed wire

in their hand.

That's how they committed suicide.

I saw a girl died.

She touched the electric fire.
You know,

we don't feel sorry for her.

We thought, she's free already,
you know.

We thought she was lucky to die,
you know.

My experiences were, of course,
different from those of the vast

majority of prisoners, for the
simple reason that I was lucky

enough to be in the orchestra.

I had not lost my identity totally.

I may no longer have had a name,
but I was identifiable.

I was the cellist.

It helped me to maintain
a shred of human dignity.

However, the background
was the same for all of us.

We must not forget that
outside our little world,

the gas chambers
were working nonstop.

One can get used to anything,
to the most monstrous things.

Habituation to everything
that is going on around us.

I personally believe that music was
simply one of the parts of camp

life, and that it stupefied
the newcomer in the same way

as everything he encountered
in his first days in the camp.

Music kept up the spirit,
or rather, the body, of...

..only the musicians who did not
have to go out to hard labour...

..and who could eat
a little better.

Some people thought it was...

They could shut their eyes and
listen to some music and dream

themselves out of the situation
they're in.

And others find it offensive.

And I can understand both.

But nothing took you away
from Auschwitz.

You're in Auschwitz.
You sit there. You're in Auschwitz.

So for half an hour,
you can think of something else.

It's very powerful.

And I made some mistakes.

But you have an idea of what it is.

The Nazis operated on a system of
racial hierarchy.

They, the Aryan race,
the master race, was at the top,

and Jews were at the very bottom.

But there were other groups
that they categorised

as racially inferior.

Among them were the Roma people,
the Sinti people,

people who Germans would call
by their word for gypsies,

who had their own
cultures and traditions

that the Germans deemed polluting
of the purity of the German race.

They too, were victims of Nazism.

For my family,
Auschwitz is primarily related

to my maternal grandfather's family.

Most of the people in that family
who died, which was a lot of people,

died at Auschwitz.

And he had this repeated phrase

until his death by suicide,

which was, "They burned my whole
family, so let me be burned, too."

Which is really significant

because you do not get cremated
if you're Romani.

It's not a thing.

And for him, it was a statement,
you know,

that's a memorial
to the Holocaust.

The term "gypsy" is a tricky one
because it has all

these negative connotations.

But then most English-speaking
Romani people

refer to themselves as gypsies.

You can't sort of will it
out of existence.

Before the war, there was
enormous discrimination

for hundreds of years.

Around the 18th century,
there were gypsy hunts,

and you could just
legally go and just hunt down

and kill Romani people.

So there wasn't this sort of
nothing, nothing, nothing,

and then suddenly
Hitler and Holocaust.

It wasn't like that at all.

It was a much kind
of smoother transition.

And then there was a decree
made by Himmler.

It was basically just everybody
who's Romani in any way, shape or

form, half, quarter, whatever,
like, they're just all going to die.

The gypsy family camp was situated
right next to Mengele's lab.

He was very interested in twins.

And a lot of the images that people
actually might recognise,

are actually Romani children.

And we have unspeakably horrific
testimony of these children

who were just tortured alive.

But it's impossible to imagine
a group of Romani not singing.

I mean, people absolutely
would have been singing

to their last breath, I think.

"Ausvicate hi kher baro",

which means "There's a big building
in Auschwitz",

is a song entirely
in the Romani language.

We don't know
who originally wrote it,

and I've tried to ask
my grandmother,

"Where did you first learn this?"

And she says
it was just in the family.

It talks about the blackbird,
which is a symbol of death.

Then it talks about the hunger,
you know, the beatings.

And it has a very roundabout
way of talking about rape.

But it really is the best example
of folk poetry

that we have to give testimony.

It does take a lot
to sing the song,

because I owe it to the song
and to the history

to really connect to the imagery.

But I sang it a bunch of times
and people would clap.

I was so uncomfortable.

So I always now say,
"Please do not clap.

"This is not a performance.

"This is a testimony."

Well, I was very grateful,
as I am to this very day...

..for love of music.

We had a little group - we just
got together and we sang...

..and we hummed.

I used to whistle very well.

In the block inside,
we used to have groups.

We sang together Yiddish songs,
Polish songs, any songs.

Gives you self-respect.
You are somebody.

You still didn't forget yourself.

You're still retaining
the Yiddish guy.

We cannot explain what happened
in the camps with logic.

The war is a negation of logic.

But gradually, day after day,
week after week, year after year,

in the camp, a great music
literature was born.

While the world was failing,

musicians realised that they had
the duty to save the civilisation.

This music
doesn't belong to the past.

This music belongs to the future.

In the face of death,

and this is how we lived every day
in the hell that was Auschwitz,

why did so many people
search for support in music?

For a crushed man,

overwhelmed by the struggle
for everyday survival,

he could find more in music
than just temporary relief,

but a clearer solution to many
problems and a deeper sense

of harmony to save
and restore his nature.

That was indeed a huge help.

Something which sometimes was a cure
for prisoners' damaged psyche.

Speaking to prisoners,
or prisoners getting themselves

organised, wasn't allowed.

But we could speak out.

We had a voice and we could act.

Because music is a nonverbal
and profound form of speech.

We had no vodka, so we sought
forgetfulness in the music.

I had composed my own
four-part piece for this group,

which we rehearsed
when conditions permitted.

Jewish music and Polish music
was forbidden.

So this piece had to be practised
in secret...

..because it would have been
considered as an act of resistance,

and that was dangerous.

What I think is that the piece
that was performed at that time

was a draft of what was to become
the Third Quartet.

You see, there is the title
in French and in Polish.

"Third string quartet based
on Polish popular tunes."

This Third Quartet
is entirely based on

pretty well-known Polish tunes.

It looks as a kind of national hymn,

something to the glory of Poland.

And it can be easily felt as a kind
of assertion of Polishness.

One day we were playing
in a strange concentration,

when suddenly a completely unknown
SS man entered the room.

We jumped up like one man.

He asked, "What was that?

"Whose music is it?"

I could not say
that I was the composer.

In panic, I quickly
raced through my memory

and suddenly got the idea of
mentioning an Austrian musician

who isn't very well-known.

"A very beautiful quartet.

"One could tell right away
it was German music."

And out he went.

I always thought that the Polish
side of the Third Quartet

really fit as an act of resistance
against the annihilation of Poland,

and of Jewish music
at the same time.

So I interpreted it as
an expression of,

"We are there. Here is our culture
and we won't give it up."

If this episode could be regarded
as a sign of resistance,

it's the only one I can boast of

during my rather long
stay at Birkenau.

The rest...was
a struggle for survival.

BROADCASTER: Gas chambers were the
principal agent of death,

and their use
was admirably organised.

Prisoners were told to prepare
themselves for a shower bath.

They were even given towels
to make them believe this story.

When the doors of the bathroom
were closed behind them,

poison gas, Zyklon, was released.

The gas chamber was about
as far away from me as, er...

You could see it.

You could see it.
You could see the smoke.

You could hear it.

You could see the people walking in
and coming out, and smoke.

And it was a matter of time when
we are going to go in there.

I mean, that was the thing.
We're still alive today,

well, tomorrow we may be in smoke.

When we found out what they do,
the gas...

..can you just imagine those people?

Keep hearing the scratches.

Being on the campsite where I was,

one night we went to sleep,

and next to us
there were 10,000 gypsies.

The next day,
the campsite was empty.

On the night between
August 2nd and August 3rd of 1944,

what remained of
the entire gypsy family camp,

those people were killed.

Um, they were put into
the gas chambers, um...

and that was the end of the camp.

We thought it was maybe
around 3,000.

Now it's closer to 4,000
Roma and Sinti

who were killed in that one night.

And overall,
there are several countries,

and over 80%
of the Roma and/or Sinti there

were killed in the Holocaust.

CHILD SINGS

People ask me why I teach
my kids Romani.

It's a language that's definitely
on the decline.

It's very much
an endangered language.

But one of the major reasons
is because

it was supposed to be exterminated.

The Nazis were trying to exterminate
that whole culture.

THEY SING TOGETHER

And for me,
it's a form of resistance.

And I think it's a way for me
to honour all the people

who didn't make it through the war.

All the people who, you know,

would have still been speaking
Romani after the war,

and they couldn't.

BROADCASTER: Cremation was
the chief means of disposal

of the great mass of bodies.

Having been put to all
this expense of murder,

the Nazis were determined
to make a profit.

The charred remains were ground up

and sold to German farmers
as fertiliser.

I saw this huge, huge chimney,

and I was standing there,
mesmerised.

I said, "My God, these flames
are reaching the heavens".

And I didn't know what it was.

We see not so much flames,
but smoke.

Ah, now we know why the smell.

It's a bakery.

They were baking bread.

Strange smell.

We were told
that this building is a bakery.

Only, it didn't smell like a bakery.

We found out what it was.

It took us a while to believe it.

And the stench.

Oh, the stench.

She raised her arm and said,
"Do you see that cloud there?

"Do you smell the smell?"

And then she said,
"Here are your relatives.

"Here they go."

That's how we learned.

The smoke was so thick,
burning 10,000 human beings a day.

The stench.

50 years later, you do not know
what is lodged in my nostrils.

Unbelievable.

I can recall the stench of
burning flesh from this distance.

I not only can recall it,
I cannot not recall it.

One of the strangest things
about this whole period

is that at the moment
the Nazis are losing the war,

in the summer of 1944,

is actually when the Holocaust
reaches its darkest phase.

The Nazis bring in on those trains
430,000 Jews,

the overwhelming majority
of them murdered in Auschwitz.

They reach a level of efficiency

that they have not been able
to match at any other time.

If you visit Auschwitz-Birkenau now,
you just see rubble.

That's because, as the Nazis knew
that the Russians were coming,

they wanted to destroy the evidence.

So these pictures do show
the way the process worked.

They show a train arriving.

It's not a passenger train,
it's a goods train.

These would have been people
from the Hungarian provinces.

And there's a child
being held by its mother.

The whole process would happen
extremely quickly.

The people would have to be
disembarked,

their possessions taken from them

and sorted for
what the Nazis wanted to keep.

Then they would have been
corralled into columns,

and the rest would be
a job of herding those people

in big numbers to the gas chambers.

And, as soon as one transport
had come in and was cleared,

a train would be arriving,
bringing a new load.

It was the height of German
industrial efficiency,

like you would see
in an assembly line,

except the product in this case
were human corpses.

Thousands upon thousands of
Hungarians poured into the camp.

The death machinery was totally
unable to cope with the influx.

Gassing, murdering and burning...

..the crematoria worked
around the clock.

In the end, people were thrown
into the flames alive.

In Theresienstadt,
she made it her mission

to set up a children's infirmary.

She cared for her little patients
during the day,

and during her night watches,

she made up lullabies

to take them
to a world of happiness.

Moments of happiness, at least.

And all the time,
she was thinking of her son, Hanus.

Their first son,
she had to send away.

She saw him, little Hanus,

in all of the children.

So, when the children of
Ilse's infirmary

came on the transport list
to Auschwitz,

Ilse couldn't but sign up also.

And so she accompanied the children,

together with her younger son,
little Tommy, to Auschwitz.

When they came to Birkenau,

they had to wait
in front of the gas chamber,

where you could see a sign.

Disinfection.

They were approached by
a member of the Sonderkommando -

that was a commando that had to pull
the corpses from the gas chamber

after the death of the people.

A man that recognised Ilse
from Theresienstadt...

..he gave her advice.

"Go as quickly as possible
into the chamber.

"Sit with the children on the floor
and start singing.

"Sing what you always sing
with them.

"That way, you will
inhale the gas quicker.

"Otherwise, you will be trampled
to death when panic breaks out."

This guardsman, he testified that
when they were in this room,

he heard her sing
the lullaby Wiegala...

..so that the pain of dying, for the
children, will be alleviated.

REPORTER: Death mills that ground
out their dead until the very day

Allied armies
broke through their gates.

Now they were free.

Most of them
couldn't even walk...or crawl.

Everywhere was the repeated
monotonous sight and stench

of corpses, shrivelled bodies like
old bones picked over by dogs,

piles and heaps
like the litter of a boneyard.

The bodies was a mountain
two storeys high with dead people.

When you ever saw these mountains
of bodies...

..you always saw somebody you knew.

Best friend of mine, I saw.

Nobody thought you'd get through
the gate alive.

You know, it is so disgraceful.

Yeah, what happened there.

My father, Aleksander Kulisiewicz

after the war, he believed that

his life is not his family,
unfortunately.

What was important for him
was his mission,

to show the people,

"We were there in the camps,

"and our friends died
because they were murdered.

"And this is the music
they wanted...

"..to give us.

"And I want to give it to you."

Part of the music
was a form of resistance,

created to show
that we are not cows,

we are not sheep who say nothing,

who cannot leave the testimony.

It was resistance.

And the message was,

"You should never surrender."

Even if you are in hell,
like they were in Nazi hell.

Even if you are not sure
if you survive,

if you see that other people die...

..you should not surrender.

Never.

My father was inspired by his
great friend Rosebery d'Arguto,

a Jewish composer
and choir director.

Rosebery wanted to keep
this information for the future,

so he created the Jewish Deathsong.

He chose a Jewish folk song

about brothers
who were selling wine,

and the number of these brothers
was smaller and smaller.

He wanted to show the people
that the Jews,

this was exactly
what was happening.

They were smaller and smaller -
the number of Jews

was becoming smaller and smaller.

My father promised d'Arguto
that he will do all his best

to go around the world
and to sing this song.

And my father
did it until the very end.

He always told me,

"When the nation has its music,
it has something.

"It has culture."

MAN SINGS

The headline account of the loss
of the Holocaust that we give is

that figure of six million.

But, in a way, it doesn't convey
the full depth of the tragedy,

because there was a whole world
that has all but vanished.

There was a language - Yiddish.

There was a civilisation
and a culture.

There were books written.

There were forms of music.

Forms of religious study,
costume, humour.

Herded into those gas chambers
were poets and writers and artists,

and who knows what those people
would have done.

And then, when you look at
these photographs

and you see that baby,
you think of not just that life,

but there was also the potential,

the future generations
that went with them,

because every one of those people

did not have a child
or a grandchild,

or a great-grandchild.

And when Jews mourn the Holocaust,

I think that is partly
what they mourn -

is not just the lives,
but the world that was lost.

I'm just appalled what we are going
through now again with

senseless, stupid anti-Semitism...

..and how badly
everybody is behaving.

So, what have we learned?

MAN SINGS