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These are the user uploaded subtitles that are being translated: 1 00:00:04,804 --> 00:00:10,765 By 1944, 550,000 people had already been murdered here at Auschwitz. 2 00:00:14,514 --> 00:00:18,644 But now, during just a few weeks in spring and early summer, 3 00:00:19,285 --> 00:00:22,220 that figure was to increase by over 300,000. 4 00:00:25,792 --> 00:00:27,623 Four years after it first opened, 5 00:00:28,261 --> 00:00:31,196 a period of frenzied killing was to begin at Auschwitz 6 00:00:31,464 --> 00:00:33,659 unlike anything the camp had yet seen. 7 00:00:37,937 --> 00:00:41,464 But the history of Auschwitz in 1944 is notjust one of murder 8 00:00:43,476 --> 00:00:44,943 There is also intrigue. 9 00:00:47,447 --> 00:00:52,441 For this was also the year that the Nazis sent unlikely messengers to neutral territory 10 00:00:53,219 --> 00:00:56,154 - to try to sow seeds of confusion among the Allies. 11 00:01:08,268 --> 00:01:10,600 And as the Allies learnt more about Auschwitz, 12 00:01:10,804 --> 00:01:12,294 the pressure on them grew 13 00:01:13,406 --> 00:01:14,896 - what were they going to do about it? 14 00:01:17,343 --> 00:01:20,972 We wanted them to put bombs on the camp, 15 00:01:21,414 --> 00:01:24,713 hundreds and hundreds of planes daily coming 16 00:01:24,951 --> 00:01:28,250 And we are looking up and no bombs. 17 00:01:29,923 --> 00:01:34,451 This is the story of Auschwitz, the Nazis and the Allies in 1944 18 00:01:36,429 --> 00:01:39,523 - one of death, deceit and mystery. 19 00:02:08,495 --> 00:02:12,124 The vast majority of those who were murdered at Auschwitz in 1944 20 00:02:12,298 --> 00:02:14,892 came from one place - Hungary. 21 00:02:17,070 --> 00:02:20,631 ln March 1944, German troops entered Budapest. 22 00:02:21,674 --> 00:02:25,201 For the Nazis, this was a rich country, ripe for plunder. 23 00:02:26,045 --> 00:02:27,876 And though already allied to the Nazis, 24 00:02:28,348 --> 00:02:32,284 the Hungarians had been unreliable partners as far as Hitler was concerned. 25 00:02:33,286 --> 00:02:37,985 Not least in their refusal to deport the 760,000 Hungarian Jews. 26 00:02:41,261 --> 00:02:43,593 Shortly after they were established in Budapest, 27 00:02:44,164 --> 00:02:47,156 the SS called a Hungarian named Joel Brand, 28 00:02:47,467 --> 00:02:51,733 one of the most politically active members of the Jewish community, in for a meeting. 29 00:02:55,408 --> 00:03:01,040 On the 25th April 1944, he went to see SS Lt Col Adolf Eichmann. 30 00:03:03,316 --> 00:03:07,377 We know what was said from Brand's subsequent interrogation by British intelligence, 31 00:03:08,087 --> 00:03:09,816 as well as his post-war testimony. 32 00:03:11,791 --> 00:03:14,817 Eichmann, infamous for organising the mass murder of the Jews, 33 00:03:15,295 --> 00:03:17,786 was about to make a surprising proposal to Brand. 34 00:04:23,229 --> 00:04:25,720 We tried to understand what was going on. 35 00:04:27,200 --> 00:04:30,465 lt was possible that the Germans were just bluffing us. 36 00:04:32,505 --> 00:04:34,769 But we couldn't understand why. 37 00:04:40,313 --> 00:04:45,649 But events elsewhere cast doubt on the Nazis' genuine desire to sell the Hungarian Jews, 38 00:04:46,119 --> 00:04:51,386 because this man, SS Lt. Col. Rudolf Hoss, was returning to Auschwitz. 39 00:04:54,193 --> 00:04:56,684 Hoss had been removed as the original Commandant of Auschwitz 40 00:04:56,863 --> 00:05:00,060 the previous November, promoted to a job in Berlin. 41 00:05:01,167 --> 00:05:06,503 But now he'd been ordered to return to the camp to oversee the murder of the Hungarian Jews. 42 00:05:09,309 --> 00:05:10,537 At Auschwitz main camp, 43 00:05:10,710 --> 00:05:15,238 Hoss - a committed Nazi -held planning meetings with his senior staff. 44 00:05:18,084 --> 00:05:21,247 Auschwitz became the greatest human extermination centre of all time. 45 00:05:22,588 --> 00:05:25,751 The reasons behind the extermination programme seemed to me to be right. 46 00:05:27,226 --> 00:05:29,057 There's nothing new in anti-Semitism 47 00:05:29,495 --> 00:05:31,326 - it's always existed all over the world. 48 00:05:32,565 --> 00:05:33,623 It's only come into the limelight 49 00:05:33,800 --> 00:05:37,292 where the Jews have pushed themselves forward too much in their quest for power. 50 00:05:40,306 --> 00:05:42,399 Fuelled partly by these prejudices, 51 00:05:42,775 --> 00:05:47,075 Hoss prepared for the arrival of the Hungarian Jews at Auschwitz-Birkenau, 52 00:05:47,547 --> 00:05:49,708 2 miles away from Auschwitz main camp. 53 00:05:51,150 --> 00:05:54,381 He oversaw the completion of a railway line allowing new arrivals 54 00:05:54,554 --> 00:05:56,545 to be brought directly into Birkenau. 55 00:06:07,533 --> 00:06:11,435 Birkenau, part concentration camp, part extermination centre, 56 00:06:11,971 --> 00:06:15,338 had been the site of mass murder at Auschwitz since 1942. 57 00:06:16,709 --> 00:06:19,473 Here notjust Jews but Polish Political prisoners 58 00:06:19,645 --> 00:06:23,012 and others the Nazis thought a threat to their rule were imprisoned. 59 00:06:24,817 --> 00:06:29,151 Crucial to the operation of Birkenau were four crematoria with gas chambers attached, 60 00:06:30,022 --> 00:06:33,423 where those selected to die were murdered and burnt. 61 00:06:45,538 --> 00:06:48,803 What can't be shown, especially in Birkenau, 62 00:06:49,342 --> 00:06:52,505 is above all the stench of burning bodies. 63 00:06:58,851 --> 00:07:02,582 It spread a long way - kilometres from the camp. 64 00:07:02,922 --> 00:07:07,450 It wasn'tjust that the fire burnt for one day, went out and that was it. 65 00:07:08,361 --> 00:07:10,056 It burnt for months on end. 66 00:07:11,030 --> 00:07:16,627 Whether it rained or not, whether it snowed or not, the fire burned all the time. 67 00:07:22,508 --> 00:07:25,102 Hoss and his SS colleagues now anticipated 68 00:07:25,278 --> 00:07:27,838 that so many people were about to be murdered here 69 00:07:28,114 --> 00:07:33,711 the crematoria ovens simply would not cope, so huge cremation pits were prepared. 70 00:07:35,455 --> 00:07:38,549 And one prominent visitor to Auschwitz during May 1944 71 00:07:38,724 --> 00:07:40,783 was none other than Adolf Eichmann. 72 00:07:45,665 --> 00:07:46,893 Hoss knew him well. 73 00:07:48,734 --> 00:07:52,636 Eichmann was completely obsessed with his mission and also convinced 74 00:07:52,805 --> 00:07:56,673 that this extermination action was necessary in order to preserve the German people 75 00:07:56,843 --> 00:07:59,812 in the future from the destructive intentions of the Jews. 76 00:08:05,218 --> 00:08:07,015 Eichmann's visit I remember. 77 00:08:08,788 --> 00:08:10,119 His whole appearance. 78 00:08:12,124 --> 00:08:18,085 All the SS people had the same expression - they were always furious-looking, 79 00:08:19,599 --> 00:08:24,298 to show how important they were, to show they were important people. 80 00:08:29,075 --> 00:08:32,670 Yet at the same time as organizing the deportation of the Hungarian Jews, 81 00:08:33,179 --> 00:08:37,309 Eichmann allowed Brand to leave Hungary on the 17th of May 1944. 82 00:08:38,184 --> 00:08:44,089 His task: to see if the Allies would exchange 10,000 trucks for 1 million Jews. 83 00:08:49,128 --> 00:08:51,358 There was considerable urgency to Brand's mission, 84 00:08:51,664 --> 00:08:54,394 because in Hungary the deportations were already underway. 85 00:08:58,671 --> 00:09:03,301 A task now performed with the essential co-operation of the Hungarian authorities. 86 00:09:10,216 --> 00:09:13,743 In the small town of Sarvar, close to the border with Austria, 87 00:09:14,387 --> 00:09:17,015 Alice Lok Cahana, her elder sister Edith, 88 00:09:17,189 --> 00:09:19,589 and the rest of their family prepared to leave. 89 00:09:21,427 --> 00:09:25,488 The scene of going out of Egypt came to my mind 90 00:09:26,065 --> 00:09:30,229 and we saw the cattle trains I told my sister this is a mistake, 91 00:09:30,403 --> 00:09:34,806 they have cattle trains here, they don't mean we should go in cattle trains. 92 00:09:45,651 --> 00:09:50,486 So we found ourselves in the cattle train they're closing the door on us 93 00:09:51,023 --> 00:09:57,986 and they're leaving a bucket for sanitary use and a bucket for water 94 00:09:59,165 --> 00:10:05,001 and I told Edith I would never use sanitary use bucket in front of 95 00:10:05,171 --> 00:10:08,038 these people no matter what happens to me. 96 00:10:08,407 --> 00:10:12,639 And the two of us went to the corner of the cattle train. 97 00:10:21,287 --> 00:10:25,553 Joel Brand arrived at Istanbul in neutral Turkey, on the 19th of May. 98 00:10:27,927 --> 00:10:29,986 He met representatives of various groups with links 99 00:10:30,162 --> 00:10:34,098 to the Jewish leadership in Palestine, at the Pera Palace Hotel. 100 00:11:28,554 --> 00:11:32,957 Whilst Brand encountered the first difficulties with his mission, the Hungarian Jews 101 00:11:33,125 --> 00:11:35,116 Were arriving at Auschwitz-Birkenau. 102 00:11:39,265 --> 00:11:42,701 As a general rule the taking of photographs was prohibited at Auschwitz, 103 00:11:43,669 --> 00:11:48,106 but one member of the SS did record the arrival of this Hungarian transport. 104 00:11:50,676 --> 00:11:53,201 No one knows just why these pictures were taken, 105 00:11:54,146 --> 00:11:59,015 but they constitute the most valuable visual record in existence of what happened here. 106 00:12:10,096 --> 00:12:14,157 The Nazis wanted to see who could work as forced labour and who could not. 107 00:12:15,701 --> 00:12:18,397 The first part of this selection process was to separate the women 108 00:12:18,571 --> 00:12:20,061 and children from the men, 109 00:12:20,940 --> 00:12:24,671 and then to choose from within each group who should die at once. 110 00:12:26,245 --> 00:12:31,615 When we arrived I told Edith nothing can be so bad like this cattle train 111 00:12:31,984 --> 00:12:37,149 I'm sure they will want us to work and for the children they will give better food. 112 00:12:37,456 --> 00:12:45,795 So they're saying right now the children should separate and go in another hut, group. 113 00:12:46,232 --> 00:12:48,097 Go line up with the children 114 00:12:49,802 --> 00:12:53,829 Alice, who arrived at Auschwitz with her family on a similar transport to this, 115 00:12:54,707 --> 00:12:56,937 had decided to stand with the mothers and children. 116 00:12:57,910 --> 00:13:00,344 She could not have picked a more dangerous spot. 117 00:13:01,680 --> 00:13:06,845 I went to that group with the children 118 00:13:08,287 --> 00:13:14,624 and I was very tall for my age and suddenly the German soldier asked me 119 00:13:14,827 --> 00:13:17,625 'Haben Sie Kinder?' - 'Do you have children?' 120 00:13:18,030 --> 00:13:25,266 I said 'No, I am just 15', in German, and then he put me to another group. 121 00:13:26,972 --> 00:13:28,371 That moment saved her life. 122 00:13:29,275 --> 00:13:31,709 Alice was taken from the group with mothers and children, 123 00:13:32,244 --> 00:13:34,474 all of whom were selected for immediate murder, 124 00:13:35,114 --> 00:13:37,241 and was placed with fit and healthy young women 125 00:13:37,416 --> 00:13:39,145 Who were chosen as slave labour. 126 00:13:55,534 --> 00:13:59,265 The moment of selection captured in these photographs, took only seconds. 127 00:14:00,406 --> 00:14:03,341 It was a procedure every new Jewish arrival endured. 128 00:14:05,311 --> 00:14:07,176 A couple of Germans were separating us 129 00:14:07,346 --> 00:14:11,282 - when he was looking at the old people he put to the right 130 00:14:11,917 --> 00:14:13,475 and the young people to the left. 131 00:14:14,119 --> 00:14:15,677 So this is where they separate us. 132 00:14:16,488 --> 00:14:22,393 The right lane they took them right away to the gas chambers. 133 00:14:48,220 --> 00:14:52,748 My family was done already was down to the crematoria there, 134 00:14:53,125 --> 00:14:54,990 they perished right away you know, 135 00:14:55,160 --> 00:15:01,690 when they take direct to the crematoria after a couple of hours you don't exist anymore 136 00:15:10,442 --> 00:15:13,741 On average, 75% of the people on each transport 137 00:15:13,913 --> 00:15:17,508 from Hungary were selected to be murdered straight away. 138 00:15:26,058 --> 00:15:27,923 As the transports continued to Auschwitz, 139 00:15:28,460 --> 00:15:30,928 Joel Brand travelled to Aleppo in Syria 140 00:15:31,463 --> 00:15:36,025 and on the 11th of June 1944 met with a representative of the Jewish Agency. 141 00:15:37,836 --> 00:15:40,862 Also present was a Major from British counter intelligence, 142 00:15:41,340 --> 00:15:42,830 who recorded the conversation. 143 00:15:43,976 --> 00:15:46,103 Brand was about to hear bad news. 144 00:16:59,451 --> 00:17:02,818 The British believed they knew why the Nazis now proposed a deal. 145 00:17:07,926 --> 00:17:09,484 The Germans were losing the war. 146 00:17:11,997 --> 00:17:14,056 The Red Army was marching on the Reich. 147 00:17:20,639 --> 00:17:23,540 And the Nazis said the trucks they wanted in exchange for Jews 148 00:17:23,709 --> 00:17:28,271 would be used only on the Eastern Front, in the war against the Soviet Union. 149 00:17:31,750 --> 00:17:33,581 Heinrich Himmler of the SS, 150 00:17:33,786 --> 00:17:37,847 who was behind the Brand mission, wanted to split the Allies. 151 00:17:40,692 --> 00:17:42,557 On May the 31st 1944, 152 00:17:42,728 --> 00:17:44,127 at the Foreign Office in London, 153 00:17:44,496 --> 00:17:47,693 the Brand proposals were considered by a Committee of the War Cabinet. 154 00:17:51,136 --> 00:17:55,300 Their conclusion was that the idea of exchanging trucks for Jews was 'blackmail' 155 00:17:56,108 --> 00:17:57,166 and should be rejected. 156 00:17:59,445 --> 00:18:01,037 But during the discussion there was another, 157 00:18:01,213 --> 00:18:04,649 less idealistic reason suggested to refuse the Nazis' offer. 158 00:18:05,884 --> 00:18:09,285 Which was that to accept it might 'lead to an offer to unload 159 00:18:09,455 --> 00:18:12,424 an even greater number of Jews on to our hands.' 160 00:18:14,293 --> 00:18:15,920 Shortly after the British decision, 161 00:18:16,395 --> 00:18:18,329 the Americans and Soviets also agreed 162 00:18:18,497 --> 00:18:20,931 that there should be no negotiations with the Nazis. 163 00:18:25,404 --> 00:18:29,568 The Germans kept repeating that the Jews are almighty, 164 00:18:30,209 --> 00:18:32,837 that the Jews rule the world. 165 00:18:35,314 --> 00:18:41,150 They kept saying America and England do whatever Jews ask, 166 00:18:42,020 --> 00:18:44,079 but we could see that that wasn't true. 167 00:18:49,061 --> 00:18:51,325 Meanwhile, the Allies did not communicate 168 00:18:51,497 --> 00:18:55,058 their rejection of the Brand mission to the Nazis here in Budapest. 169 00:18:59,872 --> 00:19:02,864 So, Brand's wife, Hansi, together with Rudolf Kasztner, 170 00:19:03,041 --> 00:19:08,502 another Jewish activist, was able to plead repeatedly with Adolf Eichmann for a gesture 171 00:19:09,248 --> 00:19:12,479 that would show the Nazis were prepared to negotiate with the Allies. 172 00:19:13,485 --> 00:19:17,615 Both Rudolf Kasztner and Hansi Brand later testified as to how the meetings went. 173 00:19:57,763 --> 00:20:02,894 Eichmann was not prepared to spare one person's life as a result of humanitarian pleas. 174 00:20:05,103 --> 00:20:08,561 But he and his SS colleagues were prepared to listen to another argument. 175 00:20:17,416 --> 00:20:22,285 They announced that one train full of Jews could leave Budapest for a safe destination, 176 00:20:23,121 --> 00:20:25,521 as a so-called gesture of good faith. 177 00:20:31,430 --> 00:20:36,060 The price per seat on the train: 1,000 US dollars. 178 00:20:43,408 --> 00:20:45,603 On the 30th of June 1944, 179 00:20:45,811 --> 00:20:51,579 a train containing 1,684 Hungarian Jews pulled out of a Budapest station. 180 00:20:55,454 --> 00:20:58,355 A special committee, on which Rudolf Kasztner sat, 181 00:20:58,557 --> 00:21:00,616 had decided the final passenger list. 182 00:21:02,728 --> 00:21:09,566 The Kasztner list was compiled on purpose like a Noah, Noah's Ark. 183 00:21:10,669 --> 00:21:13,433 Everybody and everything should be represented 184 00:21:13,605 --> 00:21:17,405 this will be the only part of Jews f Europe who remain alive 185 00:21:17,576 --> 00:21:19,874 There should be a representative portion. 186 00:21:20,545 --> 00:21:22,513 But this was a strange Noah's Ark. 187 00:21:23,148 --> 00:21:26,413 Massively over-represented on the train were Kasztner's own relatives 188 00:21:26,585 --> 00:21:28,780 and people from his home town of Kolozsvar. 189 00:21:29,588 --> 00:21:33,115 And places were also given to several hundred rich Hungarian Jews 190 00:21:33,358 --> 00:21:35,952 who subsidised anyone on the train who couldn't pay. 191 00:21:37,596 --> 00:21:40,497 If you have to save your life you'll try it in every way, 192 00:21:41,233 --> 00:21:44,498 even in a criminal way if it comes to that, but you have to save it, 193 00:21:44,670 --> 00:21:50,768 your life is the first you are nearest to yourself whatever people try to say. 194 00:21:56,114 --> 00:22:03,282 When they, we were in the train we were afraid, we never knew what will be our future. 195 00:22:07,159 --> 00:22:10,560 Eichmann had promised that the train would travel to neutral Switzerland, 196 00:22:11,596 --> 00:22:12,426 but it didn't. 197 00:22:13,398 --> 00:22:16,299 At Linz in Austria, the train stopped 198 00:22:16,601 --> 00:22:19,661 and Jews on board were told to get out and take a shower. 199 00:22:20,972 --> 00:22:27,400 I was standing naked before the doctor and looking very proud into his eyes and ah, 200 00:22:27,913 --> 00:22:30,313 thought he should see how a Jewish woman is going, 201 00:22:30,482 --> 00:22:32,916 a proud Jewish is going to die, 202 00:22:33,385 --> 00:22:35,910 because most of us knew that in Auschwitz 203 00:22:36,088 --> 00:22:41,048 from the taps there didn't come any water but gas. 204 00:22:41,426 --> 00:22:46,159 And ah, from the taps came fine warm water, 205 00:22:46,631 --> 00:22:49,566 afterwards we dressed up and returned to our train. 206 00:22:49,735 --> 00:22:56,038 It was a very relieving experience after we were ready to die there. 207 00:22:58,143 --> 00:23:00,941 The train travelled on to Bergen-Belsen camp in Germany 208 00:23:01,713 --> 00:23:03,977 where those on board stayed for up to six months 209 00:23:04,149 --> 00:23:08,176 before the Nazis finally allowed almost all of them to travel to neutral Switzerland. 210 00:23:13,058 --> 00:23:16,289 The 1600 Jews who had left on the Kasztner train in June 211 00:23:16,461 --> 00:23:21,489 represented less than half of 1% of the Hungarian Jews deported to Auschwitz. 212 00:23:24,436 --> 00:23:26,631 The Spring and early Summer of 1944 213 00:23:26,805 --> 00:23:29,672 was to be the most notorious period in the history of the camp. 214 00:23:31,710 --> 00:23:35,009 The four crematoria with gas chambers were struggling to cope 215 00:23:35,180 --> 00:23:37,307 with the numbers the Nazis wanted to kill. 216 00:23:39,751 --> 00:23:43,380 Two of them lay here in the western part of the Birkenau complex, 217 00:23:43,855 --> 00:23:45,686 with the gas chambers above ground. 218 00:23:48,427 --> 00:23:50,395 Two more were positioned close to the railway line 219 00:23:50,562 --> 00:23:52,996 that took new arrivals into the heart of Birkenau. 220 00:23:53,999 --> 00:23:55,933 These had the gas chambers in the basement. 221 00:24:03,074 --> 00:24:07,238 The Nazis had hugely increased the number of Jewish prisoners in the Sonderkommando 222 00:24:07,412 --> 00:24:10,438 they made work in the crematoria in order to deal 223 00:24:10,615 --> 00:24:12,742 with the massive numbers they wished to murder. 224 00:24:16,054 --> 00:24:18,852 So much so that a crematorium and gas chamber like this 225 00:24:19,024 --> 00:24:23,552 was operated by around 100 Jews and just 4 Germans. 226 00:24:28,967 --> 00:24:33,597 The torment endured by the Sonderkommando, forced on pain of their own immediate death, 227 00:24:33,772 --> 00:24:35,603 to assist in the killing process, 228 00:24:36,208 --> 00:24:38,904 is one of the most shocking parts of the history of Auschwitz. 229 00:24:42,180 --> 00:24:46,480 When people was in that gas chamber you could hear some kind of a voice calling "God". 230 00:24:49,020 --> 00:24:53,616 It looked like those voice coming from kind of a catacombs 231 00:24:55,527 --> 00:24:59,554 which I still got the kind of voice I've still got them in my ears. 232 00:25:01,800 --> 00:25:04,496 These wire columns contained the Zyklon B gas pellets 233 00:25:04,669 --> 00:25:06,933 which were lowered in from above by the Nazis. 234 00:25:08,139 --> 00:25:11,404 And while it was always the Nazis themselves who committed this act of murder, 235 00:25:12,143 --> 00:25:14,008 it was the prisoners of the Sonderkommando 236 00:25:14,179 --> 00:25:17,205 who had to perform the horrendous task of collecting the bodies, 237 00:25:17,749 --> 00:25:23,119 taking them out and up a small lift to burn either in the ovens of the crematorium, 238 00:25:23,788 --> 00:25:25,949 or increasingly in the open air. 239 00:25:31,029 --> 00:25:35,125 When the the big you know transport from ah, 240 00:25:35,700 --> 00:25:41,696 Hungary came in then they were daily you know, they wanted to finish them fast, 241 00:25:42,240 --> 00:25:44,606 that's why they had the pits to go through 242 00:25:53,218 --> 00:25:56,710 This photograph, which a Sonderkommando risked his life to take, 243 00:25:57,522 --> 00:26:01,117 shows bodies lying by the open cremation pits in 1944. 244 00:26:06,031 --> 00:26:12,869 Every day they were burning dead bodies every day, every day, every day. 245 00:26:13,371 --> 00:26:14,429 You get used to it. 246 00:26:15,173 --> 00:26:18,939 We know it, if we wondered that, we had a bullet in our head. 247 00:26:21,446 --> 00:26:22,674 It was like a robot. 248 00:26:26,585 --> 00:26:29,486 On occasion, when killing small numbers of prisoners, 249 00:26:30,021 --> 00:26:33,980 the gas chambers were not used and the Sonderkommando were forced to stand 250 00:26:34,159 --> 00:26:36,184 just inches away from the murders. 251 00:26:37,596 --> 00:26:42,693 We, we had to take them they bring one by one we take them by the ears 252 00:26:43,201 --> 00:26:52,269 and behind him was an SS shoot him in the back and the guy would come down 253 00:26:52,444 --> 00:26:57,143 with a lot of blood was some of us there with the water putting down 254 00:27:09,494 --> 00:27:12,156 After a while you don't know nothing, 255 00:27:12,330 --> 00:27:14,423 Nothing, nothing bothers you. 256 00:27:14,833 --> 00:27:17,768 That's why your conscience you know gets inside of you 257 00:27:18,069 --> 00:27:21,232 and stays there until today you know, 258 00:27:21,406 --> 00:27:26,673 somebody else is in inside of me that tells me from time to time you get awake 259 00:27:26,878 --> 00:27:29,369 what happened why we did such a thing. 260 00:27:33,551 --> 00:27:38,215 By now the Allies knew about this place and its role as an extermination camp. 261 00:27:40,592 --> 00:27:42,924 Gradually, from early 1944 onwards, 262 00:27:43,461 --> 00:27:47,420 the level of knowledge about what was happening here had been increasing amongst the Allies, 263 00:27:47,966 --> 00:27:53,029 thanks to the escape of a handful of Auschwitz prisoners and the work of the Polish resistance. 264 00:27:54,873 --> 00:27:58,400 This culminated in a document which drew together the available intelligence 265 00:27:58,777 --> 00:28:01,541 and which came to be known as the 'Auschwitz Protocols'. 266 00:28:05,216 --> 00:28:08,151 It included sketches showing the position of the major crematoria 267 00:28:08,353 --> 00:28:09,911 and gas chambers at Birkenau. 268 00:28:12,424 --> 00:28:15,757 As a result, from June 1944 Jewish organisations asked 269 00:28:15,927 --> 00:28:19,863 that the railway lines to Auschwitz and the gas chambers of the camp be bombed. 270 00:28:20,965 --> 00:28:23,900 Requests which reached the American government only a few weeks 271 00:28:24,069 --> 00:28:26,196 after the landings on the D Day beaches. 272 00:28:30,408 --> 00:28:32,342 Assistant Secretary of State John Mc Cloy 273 00:28:32,510 --> 00:28:35,343 rejected the requests saying the bombing was 'impractical' 274 00:28:36,014 --> 00:28:38,676 and would lead to 'diversion of considerable air support' 275 00:28:38,850 --> 00:28:40,340 that was essential elsewhere. 276 00:28:41,953 --> 00:28:44,114 A clue as to the strength of McCloy's opposition to the bombing 277 00:28:44,289 --> 00:28:46,484 requests comes from this inter-office memo, 278 00:28:47,058 --> 00:28:52,189 where his own assistant, Colonel Gerhardt, writes 'I know you told me to 'kill' this...' 279 00:28:53,231 --> 00:28:57,099 In Britain, requests to bomb Auschwitz were once again referred to the Americans, 280 00:28:57,635 --> 00:28:59,159 and so the idea died. 281 00:29:02,741 --> 00:29:04,936 But the Americans went on in August 1944 282 00:29:05,110 --> 00:29:10,742 to bomb the IG Farben factory being built at Monowitz just four miles from Birkenau. 283 00:29:12,083 --> 00:29:19,717 Ah, we heard the aeroplanes coming and we wanted them to put the bombs on the camp, 284 00:29:19,891 --> 00:29:25,591 at least we could run. And hundreds and hundreds of planes were coming 285 00:29:25,930 --> 00:29:29,366 and we are looking up and no bombs. 286 00:29:29,901 --> 00:29:32,028 So this we couldn't understand. 287 00:29:32,270 --> 00:29:38,869 So absolutely, God forgot us and people of the war forgot us, 288 00:29:39,077 --> 00:29:44,344 didn't care about what's going on and they knew what's going on there. 289 00:29:45,250 --> 00:29:47,741 During a reconnaisance flight on the 25th of August 290 00:29:48,319 --> 00:29:51,413 the Americans accidentally took this picture of Auschwitz-Birkenau. 291 00:29:54,058 --> 00:29:54,922 Whether or not, of course, 292 00:29:55,093 --> 00:29:56,720 it would have ever been possible to destroy 293 00:29:56,895 --> 00:29:59,796 ith a precision attack the crematoria and gas chambers, 294 00:30:00,131 --> 00:30:02,361 clearly visible here, and whether 295 00:30:02,534 --> 00:30:05,560 that would have made the Nazis stop committing murder at Auschwitz, 296 00:30:06,371 --> 00:30:08,862 is one of the great unanswered questions of history. 297 00:30:15,680 --> 00:30:18,342 What is certain is that back in Budapest the protests 298 00:30:18,516 --> 00:30:21,508 about the deportations made by several foreign governments 299 00:30:22,153 --> 00:30:25,520 - including the British and Americans - did have an effect. 300 00:30:31,162 --> 00:30:33,255 The pressure reached a peak in early July 301 00:30:33,498 --> 00:30:37,662 when the Hungarians intercepted cables demanding those involved be punished. 302 00:30:39,871 --> 00:30:43,705 The Hungarian Prime Minister, Dome Sztojay and Edmund Veesenmayer, 303 00:30:43,875 --> 00:30:47,333 Hitler's representative in Hungary, met to discuss the intercepts. 304 00:30:48,546 --> 00:30:52,243 We know what was said from a detailed report Veesenmayer sent the next day to Berlin. 305 00:31:39,130 --> 00:31:42,531 But such protests and threats from the international community did influence 306 00:31:42,700 --> 00:31:45,601 the Hungarian head of State, Admiral Horthy. 307 00:31:47,238 --> 00:31:50,401 With the war clearly going against the Nazis he decided 308 00:31:50,575 --> 00:31:53,908 that the time had come to distance himself from his erstwhile ally. 309 00:31:55,313 --> 00:31:57,747 Horthy informed the Germans on the 7th July 310 00:31:58,016 --> 00:32:00,678 that the deportations of the Jews must cease. 311 00:32:01,386 --> 00:32:04,150 The Hungarian authorities would no longer co-operate. 312 00:32:10,361 --> 00:32:13,194 After the official halt of the Hungarian transports, 313 00:32:13,765 --> 00:32:16,928 the Nazis at Auschwitz focussed greater attention on inmates 314 00:32:17,101 --> 00:32:21,697 who had been imprisoned here at Birkenau for some time - the Gypsies. 315 00:32:24,909 --> 00:32:29,278 They lived in family groups in some of the worst conditions in the camp. 316 00:32:34,819 --> 00:32:36,252 The atmosphere was terrible, 317 00:32:36,421 --> 00:32:39,219 because many of the small children and people in the blocks, 318 00:32:40,591 --> 00:32:42,252 everyone was mixed up together. 319 00:32:43,027 --> 00:32:43,686 The children were screaming: 320 00:32:43,861 --> 00:32:46,762 'Mum I'm hungry, give me something to eat or something to drink. 321 00:32:47,332 --> 00:32:50,199 But they weren't allowed to drink the water due to typhus. 322 00:32:51,636 --> 00:32:53,263 Franz Rosenbach survived only 323 00:32:53,438 --> 00:32:56,669 because he was eventually transferred elsewhere as slave labour. 324 00:32:57,709 --> 00:33:03,978 But his mother died at Auschwitz along with 21,000 of the 23,000 gypsies sent there. 325 00:33:08,886 --> 00:33:12,754 You see there were moments, moments which one really prefers not to think about. 326 00:33:13,091 --> 00:33:17,050 Such moments. The things that were done to us left you wondering why. 327 00:33:17,895 --> 00:33:21,058 We were beaten, kicked, degraded, but you didn't know why. 328 00:33:21,232 --> 00:33:25,225 You had no idea why. Simply because we were different. 329 00:33:34,579 --> 00:33:38,208 Under Nazi rule the Gypsies suffered proportionately more than 330 00:33:38,383 --> 00:33:40,317 any other group apart from the Jews. 331 00:33:48,760 --> 00:33:52,856 The Nazis considered them anti-social, despised their way of life, 332 00:33:53,765 --> 00:33:55,596 and thought them racially dangerous. 333 00:34:03,641 --> 00:34:06,235 On the evening of the 2nd of August 1944, 334 00:34:06,644 --> 00:34:09,238 the Nazis moved to liquidate the Gypsy camp. 335 00:34:17,055 --> 00:34:20,684 It was to be one of the most appalling single nights in the history of Auschwitz. 336 00:34:23,494 --> 00:34:27,157 The Gypsy camp was very close to our barrack 337 00:34:27,799 --> 00:34:33,260 and we could hear it and the night was unbelievable. 338 00:34:33,738 --> 00:34:41,838 Full of screaming and crying and smoke and horrendous sounds. 339 00:34:42,580 --> 00:34:47,643 They took the Gypsies and the Gypsies were crying 340 00:34:47,819 --> 00:34:49,684 they knew where they are taking them. 341 00:35:00,198 --> 00:35:04,191 Everybody defended themselves, defended themselves to the last. 342 00:35:04,969 --> 00:35:06,800 They bit, they scratched. 343 00:35:07,672 --> 00:35:09,833 The Germans had driven in in trucks. 344 00:35:10,741 --> 00:35:13,710 They threw the children in them, and if one of them jumped out, 345 00:35:13,978 --> 00:35:16,503 they would hit him on the leg or the arm with a wooden club, 346 00:35:16,681 --> 00:35:19,809 break it and throw him back in, so that he couldn'tjump out again, 347 00:35:19,984 --> 00:35:22,919 couldn't get out because his limb was just hanging there. 348 00:35:26,457 --> 00:35:28,891 When I saw this, I started yelling... 349 00:35:29,660 --> 00:35:32,527 And people grabbed me - Poles - as they were afraid 350 00:35:32,697 --> 00:35:35,632 that the Germans would come and throw a hand grenade in or something. 351 00:35:36,667 --> 00:35:40,763 They rolled me in a blanket to keep me quiet and sat with me. 352 00:35:43,641 --> 00:35:48,305 The Gypsies were taken to the crematoria, many here to crematorium 5 353 00:35:49,347 --> 00:35:51,747 - and killed within its network of gas chambers. 354 00:35:54,018 --> 00:35:55,645 By the autumn of 1944, 355 00:35:55,887 --> 00:35:57,855 after the Gypsies had been murdered here, 356 00:35:58,256 --> 00:36:00,315 and the massive transports of Jews from Hungary 357 00:36:00,491 --> 00:36:02,891 and then the Lodz ghetto in Poland had ceased, 358 00:36:03,528 --> 00:36:06,088 the number of people killed at Auschwitz dropped to fewer than 359 00:36:06,264 --> 00:36:09,927 1,000 a day from a peak of 10,000 in May. 360 00:36:11,836 --> 00:36:14,361 The Sonderkommando who worked in these gas chambers now 361 00:36:14,539 --> 00:36:16,507 began to fear for their own lives. 362 00:36:17,942 --> 00:36:19,239 They were changing us. 363 00:36:20,278 --> 00:36:24,305 You know, we, we knew that our days were always numbered 364 00:36:24,482 --> 00:36:26,609 and we didn't know when the end would be. 365 00:36:27,318 --> 00:36:30,481 Here in crematorium 4 at around 1.30 pm on Saturday, 366 00:36:30,655 --> 00:36:35,456 the 7th of October 1944, the Sonderkommando fought back 367 00:36:37,295 --> 00:36:40,196 They set fire to the crematorium and armed with pickaxes 368 00:36:40,364 --> 00:36:42,924 and rocks they attacked their SS guards. 369 00:36:45,503 --> 00:36:48,836 Meanwhile the Sonderkommando in crematorium 2 also rose up. 370 00:36:50,141 --> 00:36:52,735 After a few minutes of hand-to-hand fighting with the SS, 371 00:36:53,277 --> 00:36:56,269 some Sonderkommando managed to escape into the nearby woods, 372 00:36:56,981 --> 00:36:59,006 but all of them were later captured and shot. 373 00:37:00,251 --> 00:37:03,414 And the SS even sought revenge against those Sonderkommando 374 00:37:03,588 --> 00:37:05,647 who had not taken part in the revolt. 375 00:37:08,960 --> 00:37:10,791 They didn't know what to do with us. 376 00:37:11,596 --> 00:37:16,727 So they had a kind of discussion and then they told us to lie face down on the ground 377 00:37:16,968 --> 00:37:22,065 holding our hands behind our backs and every 3rd person was shot. 378 00:37:23,708 --> 00:37:26,973 Some of my friends in the Sonderkommando lost their lives 379 00:37:27,144 --> 00:37:29,635 and the rest of us had to go back to work. 380 00:37:31,949 --> 00:37:33,678 There was never much hope for us. 381 00:37:34,852 --> 00:37:36,479 I'm telling it like it is. 382 00:37:44,262 --> 00:37:49,199 They didn't kill us because there were 4,000 cadavers you know 383 00:37:49,367 --> 00:37:53,428 that would have to go into the ovens and we are the only ones 384 00:37:53,604 --> 00:37:57,802 that could do it and that's why they save us. 385 00:37:58,175 --> 00:38:02,134 But after that day they took most of us. 386 00:38:02,380 --> 00:38:07,044 They left only 92 of us, all the others they took and they killed them all around 387 00:38:11,122 --> 00:38:14,853 The same month as the Sonderkommando revolt, there was a coup in Hungary. 388 00:38:18,229 --> 00:38:20,424 On the 15th of October 1944, 389 00:38:20,731 --> 00:38:25,691 Horthy's non-compliant regime was overthrown by the Nazi backed Arrow Cross militia. 390 00:38:28,773 --> 00:38:31,640 Eichmann immediately called Rudolf Kasztner in for a meeting. 391 00:38:32,943 --> 00:38:35,468 Kasztner later wrote a report about what was discussed. 392 00:39:02,173 --> 00:39:03,401 The Jews at Budapest, 393 00:39:03,574 --> 00:39:07,840 who had up to now largely escaped deportation, were now Eichmann's target. 394 00:39:13,918 --> 00:39:15,351 They were not to be sent to Auschwitz, 395 00:39:15,519 --> 00:39:18,716 but to Austria, where they would be used as slave labour. 396 00:39:19,857 --> 00:39:23,486 And because of the shortage of trains, they were to walk there. 397 00:39:27,231 --> 00:39:29,165 So during November tens of thousands of Jews 398 00:39:29,333 --> 00:39:32,564 from Budapest were forced out of the city and made to trek west. 399 00:39:33,938 --> 00:39:35,838 Many thousands died en route. 400 00:39:41,245 --> 00:39:44,772 But Eichmann incurred the displeasure of senior figures of the SS, 401 00:39:45,316 --> 00:39:48,251 concerned, in the light of how badly the war was going for them, 402 00:39:48,619 --> 00:39:51,679 that so much potential forced labour was being squandered. 403 00:39:55,559 --> 00:39:59,859 And so Himmler summoned Eichmann to a special meeting in December 1944 404 00:40:00,431 --> 00:40:01,830 On his private train. 405 00:40:12,910 --> 00:40:15,208 Another SS Officer, Lt Col Becher, 406 00:40:15,379 --> 00:40:17,813 who also worked in Hungary was present as well. 407 00:40:22,019 --> 00:40:24,749 After the war Becher testified as to what was said. 408 00:40:50,781 --> 00:40:54,012 Himmler knew the German Army were struggling to hold back the Allies 409 00:40:55,853 --> 00:40:57,548 And by January 1945 410 00:40:57,721 --> 00:41:01,418 the SS here at Auschwitz were also well aware that the end was near. 411 00:41:15,039 --> 00:41:19,169 All reference to this place as a site of mass murder was to be eliminated. 412 00:41:23,380 --> 00:41:27,544 We woke up in the middle of the night with the sound of explosion, 413 00:41:27,985 --> 00:41:31,352 they were blowing up the gas chambers, the crematorium. 414 00:41:33,023 --> 00:41:37,016 Outside the SS were waiting for us and ordered us to march, 415 00:41:37,194 --> 00:41:41,460 anybody who could not march fast enough was shot on the spot. 416 00:41:42,500 --> 00:41:47,904 We arrived in Auschwitz 1, which is about an hour walk, at 1am. 417 00:41:49,573 --> 00:41:53,771 The Nazis again disappeared as if the earth swallowed them up 418 00:41:55,179 --> 00:42:00,139 Eva Mozes Kor, and 1200 other prisoners thought too weak to evacuate from the area, 419 00:42:00,751 --> 00:42:04,778 were now left for a few days to fend for themselves at Auschwitz main camp. 420 00:42:07,992 --> 00:42:09,482 Most of the guards had gone 421 00:42:10,361 --> 00:42:13,797 - but another SS unit had been ordered to come to the camp and shoot them. 422 00:42:14,899 --> 00:42:19,302 No prisoners were supposed to be left alive to testify to just what had happened here. 423 00:42:31,882 --> 00:42:34,715 Meanwhile, more than 50,000 other inmates of Auschwitz, 424 00:42:34,885 --> 00:42:37,353 thought fit enough to become slave labourers, 425 00:42:37,588 --> 00:42:40,853 were marched in sub zero temperatures to railway junctions, 426 00:42:41,725 --> 00:42:44,091 where they were to be put on trains and sent West. 427 00:42:54,204 --> 00:42:58,834 If anyone even dared to bend down to get muddy snow off their shoes they were shot, 428 00:42:59,743 --> 00:43:03,144 that was the end. We weren't allowed to bend over, 429 00:43:03,314 --> 00:43:06,977 we could only walk quickly, quickly, quickly. 430 00:43:10,821 --> 00:43:13,346 On both sides of the roads there were ditches, 431 00:43:13,891 --> 00:43:17,657 big ditches and the ditches were full of bodies. 432 00:43:26,303 --> 00:43:29,568 Also on the march amidst the chaos of this retreat were prisoners 433 00:43:29,740 --> 00:43:34,734 who had never thought they could possibly leave the camp alive, the Sonderkommando. 434 00:43:36,280 --> 00:43:42,651 We survived that because the Russians were coming from Krakow and down 435 00:43:42,820 --> 00:43:49,589 and the Germans had got panicky and every place we went the Germans 436 00:43:49,760 --> 00:43:55,630 one by one where asking us if you work in the Sonderkommando we were shot. 437 00:44:03,040 --> 00:44:04,371 Once they reached the railhead, 438 00:44:04,541 --> 00:44:08,671 the Auschwitz prisoners were crammed into open wagons to continue the journey West, 439 00:44:09,380 --> 00:44:12,406 in temperatures that could reach as low as minus 20 degrees. 440 00:44:14,885 --> 00:44:20,824 Oh, the wagon was very packed, one guy was up and he was German, 441 00:44:20,991 --> 00:44:24,757 he told us he was German, who knows maybe a convict who knows. 442 00:44:26,497 --> 00:44:29,364 And he wanted to sit down, he couldn't stand no more this guy. 443 00:44:30,601 --> 00:44:35,629 So, and he told me, 'I've got some cigarettes would you let me sit down?' 444 00:44:36,040 --> 00:44:39,203 When I have cigarette you know ah, when I have some cigarettes, 445 00:44:39,376 --> 00:44:43,005 so he gave me 2-3 cigarettes, I got up and he sit. 446 00:44:43,814 --> 00:44:50,982 So the cigarettes in 5-10 minutes were gone, I told him, 'Get up. Get up. Stand up!' 447 00:44:51,789 --> 00:44:52,756 He wouldn't stand up. 448 00:44:53,557 --> 00:45:01,692 So what I did was me and a couple of my friends would sit on him and about 30 minutes, 449 00:45:01,865 --> 00:45:07,132 1 hour he was suffocated, that guy, and was thrown, thrown out of the wagon. 450 00:45:13,744 --> 00:45:16,269 I was happy. How did I feel? 451 00:45:17,381 --> 00:45:22,614 They killed all my family, about 30, 40 people of my family and I killed 1 German? 452 00:45:23,554 --> 00:45:24,452 That was nothing! 453 00:45:35,999 --> 00:45:39,526 It was a murder, wasn't it, you did murder a fellow prisoner? 454 00:45:42,106 --> 00:45:45,075 I was happy at the time, I told you because he was a German. 455 00:45:47,311 --> 00:45:48,300 I wouldn't do that to, 456 00:45:48,479 --> 00:45:52,108 I wouldn't do that to one of, of ours 457 00:45:52,382 --> 00:45:55,681 but anyway I wanted to be seated too over there because I got tired too. 458 00:45:57,387 --> 00:45:59,878 Why should he live, because he gave me 2, 3 cigarettes? 459 00:46:02,493 --> 00:46:08,830 That's why he didn't want to get up, so we sit on him and he passed away. Easy. 460 00:46:16,240 --> 00:46:19,209 The Germans who were actually complicit in the murders at Auschwitz 461 00:46:19,376 --> 00:46:23,745 knew they were even more at risk from retribution as the war neared its end. 462 00:46:28,952 --> 00:46:32,752 Members of the SS, like Rudolf Hoss, the former Commandant of Auschwitz, 463 00:46:32,990 --> 00:46:34,582 now tried to escape capture. 464 00:46:38,428 --> 00:46:41,955 And the story of Hoss and his colleagues' attempt to evade justice 465 00:46:43,100 --> 00:46:45,193 and the Allied attempt to prosecute them 466 00:46:46,069 --> 00:46:48,594 is one of the most troubling in this entire history. 44570

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