All language subtitles for Auschwitz 6 of 6 - Liberation and Revenge

At Auschwitz, by mid January 1945,

the Nazis knew it would be only a matter
of days before the Red Army arrived.

What had been the biggest concentration

and death camp in the whole of the Nazi
empire would shortly be no more.

The SS tried to do what they could to conceal
the details of what had happened here:

files were removed or burnt,
the gas chambers destroyed.

Everyone who had worked at Auschwitz knew

that the time was fast approaching
when the Allies would call them to account.

I was a cog in the machine
and directly after the war,

everybody who had been at Auschwitz,
no matter in what position

in the office or as a guard or as somebody
who threw the Zyklon B into the hatches

everybody had the feeling that it would be
best not to draw too much attention to it.

This is the story of how the SS at Auschwitz
together with the few inmates

who survived fared in the last days
of the war and its aftermath.

And it's a story that is
as unexpected as it is shocking.

Soviet forces liberated Auschwitz
on the 27th of January 1945.

Only a few thousand inmates awaited them.

The vast majority of the prisoners had been
marched away by the Nazis just days before,

westwards, into the Reich.

Those that remained
- most thought too sick to march

were supposed to have been
shot by the SS,

but in the confusion
they'd been left alive.

l realised that they were
prisoners and not workers

so l called out ''You are free, come out! ''

They began rushing towards us,
in a big crowd.

They were weeping,
embracing us and kissing us.

Amongst the prisoners in Auschwitz
main camp were several hundred children,

many of them twins, who had been the subject
of Nazi medical experiments.

including 10 year old Eva Mozes Kor.

We ran up to them and they gave us hugs,
cookies and chocolate.

Being so alone a hug meant more than
anybody could imagine

because that replaced the human worth
that we were starving for.

We were not only starved for food
but we were starved for human kindness.

And the Soviet Army did provide some of that.

Despite the final hurried efforts of the SS,

evidence of the aftermath of mass
extermination lay all around.

It was clear that a terrible crime
had been committed.

l felt a grievance on behalf of mankind

that these fascists had
made such a mockery of us.

It roused me and all the soldiers to go

and quickly destroy them
and send them to hell.

Just 84 days after liberating Auschwitz,
the Red Army was in Berlin.

And on the 30th of April 1945

the man who had presided over
the horror of Auschwitz,

Adolf Hitler, committed suicide in the
Fuehrer-bunker beneath the Reich Chancellery.

A few days later, on 5 May 1945,

the former Commandant of Auschwitz,
Lieutenant Colonel Rudolf H�ss of the SS,

travelled to a meeting that he believed
would determine his own fate.

It was held here at the Murwik Naval Academy
at Flensburg in North Germany

a part of the country still in Nazi hands.

H�ss was about to hear the contingency
plans his own boss,

Heinrich Himmler, had made for his key staff.

H�ss later recorded in his memoirs
what Himmler said.

This was the farewell message from the man
to whom l had looked up to so much,

in whom l had had such firm faith
and whose orders,

whose every word had been gospel to me.

H�ss was clearly disappointed.

He'd been expecting to be told to take part
in some dramatic last act of resistance.

Now, following orders, he dressed up
in the uniform of a Petty Officer,

a ''Bootsmaat'', of the German Navy,

and went to hide amongst the sailors
on the holiday island of Sylt.

As for his boss, Himmler he was captured
by the Allies just days later.

To that house Gestapo Chief Himmler was
taken when captured,

arch criminal he could expect no mercy and
had in his mouth a capsule which he chewed.

They found on him another capsule filled
with Potassium Cyanide.

Almost all member of Himmler's SS had
their blood group tattooed under their arm.

The Allies were able to identify former
SS soldiers by means of this tattoo

but they did not identify all of those
within the SS who had worked at Auschwitz.

People like Oskar Groning.

By the end of the war he was attached
to an SS fighting unit

and was eventually arrested
at the Danish-German border.

l knew of course that my connection
with the concentration camp of Auschwitz

would provoke a negative response.

So l tried not to point my interrogators
to the fact that I'd been at Auschwitz.

We obviously knew that the things

that had happened there did not necessarily
comply with human rights.

Actions which Oskar Groning refers to as

'not necessarily complying
with human rights' were,

as the British discovered when they liberated
the Camp of Bergen-Belsen in April 1945,

some of the worst crimes in history.

For it was to Belsen that more than
10,000 inmates of Auschwitz had been sent,

ahead of the Soviet advance.

Here they had been denied water
and food and left to die.

The conditions in this camp are
beyond describing.

When you actually see them for yourself
you know what you're fighting for here.

Pictures in the paper
cannot describe it at all.

The things they have committed, well,
nobody would think they were human at all.

Many of the people directly responsible
for the horrors of the Nazi camps

had escaped immediate capture
and were still hiding somewhere in Germany.

The former commandant of Auschwitz,
Rudolf H�ss, was one of them.

He'd been initially detained
but then released by the British.

His disguise had worked,
they thought he was a sailor.

Now he was employed as a farm labourer

At Gottrupel near Flensburg,
answering to the name of Franz Lang.

But after a bad start the British
were back on his trail.

By the time they torched
the camp of Bergen-Belsen,

survivors had begun to tell of their experiences

at another camp further to the East, Auschwitz.

And of the man who ran it - Rudolf H�ss.

Living north of Belsen the British
intelligence Corps discovered H�ss�s family.

They arrested and imprisoned
H�ss�s wife Hedwig.

For 5 days she was repeatedly asked
where her husband was,

but always replied that he was dead.

Then, on the morning of the 6th day,

the soldiers of the intelligence Corps
attempted to trick her into telling more.

Captain William Cross, the Commanding Officer
of 92 Field Security Section,

later revealed how the interrogation went.

Thinking she was saving her son,
Frau H�ss now revealed the truth.

Soldiers of British 92 Field Security Section
moved up to the farm

she'd identified at 11 o'clock that night.

Get him up!

Steh auf! Steh auf!

Franz Lang

They knew the crimes H�ss had committed,
and were not inclined to restrain themselves.

According to one of the British soldiers
who witnessed H�ss�s capture,

'the blows and screams were endless'.

The Medical Officer accompanying them
them shouted to Captain Cross to

'call his men off unless he wanted
to take back a corpse.'

H�ss, Rudolf H�ss

After his arrest H�ss was
interrogated first locally,

and eventually at Nuremberg as
part of the war crime trials.

He struck me as a normal person
that was the horrible thing about it.

lf he had been a monster you know
if he had come in there and said l did this

and this to all these people
and l was happy at it,

he was a cool objective matter of fact,
this is my war duty l did my war duty,

it was like l had to go out
and cut down so many trees.

So l went out and took my saw
and cut the trees down

He was just acting like a normal
unimportant individual,

he ah, simply answered the questions
and as far as l could tell,

told what happened ah,
without emotion. Without emotion.

And without sense of guilt,
without sense of guilt.

Not in the slightest apologetic,
not in the remotest degree was he apologetic.

In a sense he was l think showed
a certain pride in accomplishment

Much of the former Nazi Empire was now
under the control of Stalin's Soviet Union.

And, as the search for the Nazi
perpetrators continued,

thousands of refugees were
trying to return home.

Amongst them many of the former inmates
of Auschwitz, including Helena Citronova.

For her, the Soviet soldiers had
become a new source of terror.

No matter where we hid, they found us
and raped some of my friends.

They did horrible things to them.

It was so terrible, the word terrible is not
even enough to describe it.

They raped all the time.

Helena escaped being raped herself only

because her elder sister Rozinka pretended
she was her mother and protected her.

The rapes continued just feet away from them.

l heard shouting and screaming
and then they became quiet.

They had no more strength left.

There were cases where
they were raped to death.

They strangled them,
they were like wild animals.

We thought that though Germans hadn't
killed us, the Russians now would.

Other former inmates of Auschwitz were
also to suffer

at the hands of the Russians
- ironically Russians themselves.

10,000 Red Army prisoners of war had been
sent to Auschwitz in October 1941

to build the camp here at Birkenau.

The handful who survived this horror were,

after their liberation,
about to be persecuted again.

They invented that at Auschwitz,
this Camp of Death, they were training spies.

So somebody got this idea in his head
- what if they had turned me into a spy?

Pavel Stenkin was sent into internal exile
in the closed city of Perm in the Urals.

A victim of Stalin's policy
that all Red Army soldiers

who'd been captured should be
treated as suspected traitors.

When l arrived in Perm to work
l was called in every 2nd night

''admit this, agree to that,
we know everything,

we only don't know the purpose
you were sent here for.

But we will find out with
or without your help.

Come on, admit that you are a spy. ''

And l would say - ''l am not a spy,
I'm an honest Soviet man.''

And the interrogator smiled
ironically - ''Soviet man''.

And he smiled again.

''Just confess and it'll all be over.''

They were tormenting and tormenting me.

And then they decided to get rid of me.

They sent me to prison.

And the details of my sentence

do you think l heard anything
or l read anything about it?

l heard nothing and read nothing.

Judges were in rush they had theatre tickets
so they were in hurry to leave the court.

Pavel Stenkin was sent to a labour camp
within the Soviet Gulag system.

Captured by the Germans in 1941,

he was finally released only
after Stalin's death in 1953.

l was always feeling hungry.

It was not until l was released from prison,
in 1953 that l started to eat my fill.

While the former inmates of Auschwitz
struggled to rebuild their lives,

some of the Germans who had worked
at the camp arrived in Britain,

along with other members of
the German armed forces.

lf you're talking about England,

we were very soon no longer prisoners of
war but German workers.

The fence around our camp was removed

and theatre groups were formed
in the camps and well,

we were working, we had sufficient food,
in fact good food.

We were able to earn extra money
by helping the farmers, we got cigarettes,

and had a relatively good,
comfortable life in the camps.

Oskar Groning, whose connection with
Auschwitz had still not been discovered,

joined a choir made up of other
German Prisoners of War, and went on tour.

For one and a half months

l travelled through the Midlands
and Scotland with this choir.

And the hospitality, especially in
the Christian Parishes, was enormous.

Although we were supposed to sleep
in the POW camps,

we often didn't because people
put us up in their houses.

Everybody wanted to have
a singer stay with them,

so we had a good night's sleep
and got a good breakfast

and the next morning we were taken back
to our gathering point

and off we went to the next place.
It was great.

While Oskar Groning experienced
life in Britain,

his former boss endured a less comfortable
captivity in the Polish town of Cracow.

Rudolf H�ss passed the time
before his trial recording

his experiences as commandant of Auschwitz
and his service in the SS.

It's a remarkable document,
of great historical importance,

offering us an insight into his mentality.

He reveals how he watched women and children

being taken to the early improvised
gas chambers in cottages at Birkenau.

One woman approached me as she walked past
and pointed to her 4 children

who were manfully helping the smallest ones
over the rough ground and whispered,

''how can you bring yourself to kill such
beautiful darling children,

have you no heart at all? ''

H�ss recorded that he would ride his horse
to clear his mind after such incidents,

but he had no regrets.

The reasons behind the extermination
programme seemed to me to be right.

All the time H�ss was killing women
and children at Auschwitz,

he was also living with his own family
just yards from the main camp.

When l saw my children happily playing
the thought would often come to me

how long will our happiness last?

In the summer they splashed in the Sola,

their greatest joy was
when Daddy bathed with them.

He had however so little time
for all these childish pleasures.

l always felt that l had to be
on duty the whole time.

Again and again my wife reproached me

and said you must think not only of
the service always, but of your family too.

Rudolf H�ss, the man who'd been in charge
of the site of the greatest

mass murder in the history of the world,

never in his memoirs expressed
any real remorse for his crimes.

Instead, looking back there was just one thing
above all he wished he'd done differently.

Today l deeply regret that l did not
devote more time to my family

After a trial lasting three weeks,
H�ss was sentenced to death,

to be hanged on a specially constructed gallows
on the site of his crimes at Auschwitz

During the execution, when they were leading
him to the gallows, H�ss looked calm.

When you go to your death,
you're normally not calm.

l know that because more than once we had
experienced such moments ourselves.

When death had been close by.

When he had been master of life and death.

l thought - as he climbed
to the gallows, up the steps

knowing him to be a Nazi,
a hardened party member

that he would say something.

Like make a statement to the glory
of the Nazi ideology that he was dying for.

But no. He didn't say a word.

And during the execution l thought:

one life for so many millions of people,
is that not too little?

H�ss was executed on 16 April 1947.

But for many of the former
prisoners of Auschwitz

this was only part of
the justice they sought.

As they came home, many here to Slovakia,

they expected to be able to return
to the lives they had led before the war.

But they faced a problem

in this part of Europe there was now
little respect for pre-war property rights.

Something Libusa Breder,
a former prisoner at Auschwitz,

discovered when she returned
to her home town, Stropkov.

l finally found myself in front of my house.

l knocked on the big gate
and a man opened it,

he said - ''what do you want? ''

l said that l came back home.

When he heard this he said to me
''why don't you go back where you've come from'',

and he slammed the door.

l was so shocked. l walked down
the main street and realized

that all houses which had previously
belonged to my relatives,

were now occupied by others.

Libusa Breder had spent
nearly 3 years at Auschwitz

forced to work in the area of the camp

where the belongings stolen
from new arrivals were sorted.

An SS photographer took this picture of
her ordering that she smile for the camera.

In her time at Auschwitz Libusa Breder
endured much suffering

but she was sustained by a dream

that she might be able one day to return home;
a dream that now lay in pieces.

l regretted that l had come back.

Everybody was keeping their distance
it was as if l was poisonous.

They probably were afraid that
they would have to return confiscated property.

l left the next day and never went back.

To return home was my worst experience.

Other than the gravestones
in the cemeteries,

there was now little evidence

that there had ever been
thriving Jewish communities here.

After the war few survivors of
the Nazi camps recovered either all

their money or all their property.

It was a huge injustice
one compounded by the fact

that leading members of the SS were
given assistance to leave Europe and escape.

Dr Joseph Mengele had conducted a series of
medical experiments at Auschwitz,

many of them on children.

With the help of a corrupt
Italian immigration official,

he managed to obtain passage to Argentina.

He was not alone.

Adolf Eichmann who had helped organise
the extermination of the Jews

also managed to escape to South America.

But in the face of the atrocities committed
by these and other Nazis

there were those who sought to take
justice into their own hands.

Some of them were members
of the Jewish Brigade,

a unit of the British Army
created in 1944.

They fought against the Germans in Italy,

and as they did they learnt more

and more about the nature of
the crimes the Nazis had committed.

And soldiers like Moshe Tavor resolved
to do something about it.

We got angrier and angrier.

Many of us felt that it wasn't enough
that we just participated in the war.

A few of us gathered together

and we decided we had to try to take
revenge on the people who had done this.

We had no illusions
that we could get all of them,

but maybe we could
get a few of them, at least.

Using whatever sources they could,

they tried to trace any Nazi
who they believed had been active

in the destruction of the Jews.

Then they paid him a visit
and took him away,

saying they wanted to conduct
an interrogation.

We drove to a place
we had selected before.

Like a forest or some place
that was inhabited.

And there we put him on trial,
and we read him all the charges.

They were based on everything
we knew from the underground.

Sometimes he had a chance to say
a few words to defend himself.

And then we would finish him off.

Usually one of us would strangle him.

Did you ever strangle someone like that?

Yes not that l was happy to do it,
but l did it.

l was completely aware of what l did.

l didn't have to drink
beforehand to lift my moral,

l was always enthusiastic enough.

l knew that my uncles and my grandparents
and other relatives

tens of them were annihilated.

But you killed a person
without a proper trial.

How do you feel about that?
How can you possibly explain that?

Look, in my life until then I�d already
done quite a few things

which were not exactly straight.

But to say that l feel guilty for
what l did to them,

on the contrary, completely the opposite.

l feel guilty for what we didn't do to them.

Only a handful of those allegedly involved
in the Nazi extermination policy

were ever killed by the Jewish Brigade,

plenty more made good lives for themselves
in post war Germany.

These were the years of the so-called
German 'economic miracle'.

But some of the people walking these streets
had pasts they wanted to hide.

Oskar Groning had worked at Auschwitz
for nearly 2 years.

Now he was a committed family man and working
in a glass factory in the personnel department.

And it wasn't advisable to bring up
the subject of Auschwitz in his presence.

l remember when l was staying with my father
and my step-mother's parents.

At dinner the grandmother made a stupid
remark about Auschwitz and implied,

''You're a potential or even a real murderer,

and yet you are allowed to sit
with us at the table.

You are here only on sufferance. ''

l exploded and banged my fist
on the table and said:

''Now listen well

this word and this connection are
never ever mentioned again in my presence.

Or I�ll move out! ''

But the hunt was intensifying for some
of the most notorious members

of the SS implicated
in the murder of the Jews.

Like SS Lieutenant Colonel Adolf Eichmann,

who had visited Auschwitz several times
to check on the progress of the murders.

After the war it seemed as
if he had disappeared.

Then these photos were secretly
taken in Argentina in 1960

of a man calling himself Ricardo Klement.

Ricardo Klement was none
other than Adolf Eichmann.

He soon became the target of
an Israeli snatch squad.

One of them: Moshe Tavor.

l closed the bonnet
and Tzvika jumped on him.

At the side of the road was a ditch
and they both rolled into it.

l took hold of Eichmann's feet and Tzvika
got hold of him and then Rafi came.

We dragged him to the car
and we stuffed up his mouth.

Then we prepared glasses for him
so that he couldn't see anything.

Now after 15 years in hiding
and 1 year after his sensational abduction

from Argentina Adolf Eichmann is indicted
on 15 counts of crimes against

the Jewish people and crimes against humanity

The 3 judges who will decide his fate enter

lf it was up to me l wouldn't
have gone to all

that trouble l would have strangled him
in the ditch and be done with it.

After a trial lasting 4 months
Adolf Eichmann was sentenced to death.

l wrote an official letter
volunteering to be the executioner.

Moshe Tavor's boss politely declined his
offer saying that he'd done enough already.

The trial and execution of Adolf Eichmann
was certainly highly publicized

but it obscured a lesser known truth.

That a total of around 8,000 members of the SS
had worked at Auschwitz at one time or another;

an estimated 7,000 of them had survived the war.

The question was how many of them
would be held to account?

At a trial in Frankfurt starting
in December 1963,

22 people were accused
of crimes at Auschwitz.

17 were convicted with 6 receiving
the maximum penalty of life imprisonment.

Prosecutors were tracing as
many members of the SS

who had connections with
the camp as they could.

Eventually they even traced Oskar Groning
but decided not prosecute him.

You were a part of the largest
killing factory in history,

you were working there,
you personally contributed

to the killing of around one million people

don't you think you should've stood trial?

No, l don't think so.

You imply with your question that just
being a member of a large group of people

who lived in a garrison
where the destruction of the Jews

took place is enough to make you a criminal.

Oskar Groning did much more than simply

'live in a garrison where the destruction
of the Jews took place'.

Like every one of the SS at Auschwitz

he actively participated
in the running of the camp.

Oskar Groning counted the foreign
currency stolen from the Jews

and transported it to Berlin,

and he guarded the belongings of the Jews
in the immediate aftermath of their arrival.

But others did have a much more intimate
connection with the killing process.

And many of them were not even Nazis.

Because a crematorium like
this was normally operated

by no more than 4 members of the SS

and a hundred
prisoners of the Sonderkommando.

They were forced to do this,

if they didn't do this then they would be
immediately taken to the gas chambers.

So in order to have a chance of a little bit
more life they did the function.

The Sonderkommandos was
not made of volunteers

they were they were themselves victims
and they were in turn ah,

put into the gas chamber
when their time was up.

It was always the Nazis themselves
who committed the actual act of murder

throwing the pellets of Zyklon B
in through the hatches of the gas chambers.

But the prisoners of the Sonderkommando were
forced to do many of the other tasks

needed to make this killing factory work

including removing and burning the bodies.

This meant that after the war,

the majority of the SS at Auschwitz
could maintain they,

themselves, had never worked
in the crematoria and gas chambers.

For others who operated ah,

who had tasks in the concentration camp system
they kept the system going that's true but,

probably their offences were
not sufficiently severe

that any nation would want to prosecute

Of the 7,000 members of the SS who worked
at Auschwitz and who survived the war,

fewer than 800 were ever put on trial.

Nearly 90% of those involved
were never prosecuted.

The Ministry of Trade and Industry in Hanover
appointed me an honorary judge.

And for 12 years,
alongside my regular job,

l acted as an honorary judge
in industrial tribunals.

Isn't it unfair that those who suffered
continue to have a hard time whereas somebody

like you who was involved in the annihilation
machinery now has a good life?

It�s always like that in this world.

Should l wear a hair shirt for the rest of
my life and live off roots and charity,

like in the opera Tannhauser,
because l belonged to that organisation?

Unless you think that's an option,

then all that's left is for each
person to have the freedom

to make the best of the situation he's in.

For many former prisoners
of Nazi death camps,

life since the war has been
rather more troubled.

In places like Izbica in Poland,

much of the property that was once lived
in by Jews, is still occupied by others.

In the 1990s,

after the fall of the Berlin Wall,
one survivor of a Nazi death camp,

Thomas Blatt returned to visit the house he
and his parents had lived in

and had a surprising encounter
with the man now living there.

He let me in. I�ve seen the chair.

My old chair from a long time ago.

And l say - oh, l recognise this chair!

My father used to sit on it.

'No, no, no, l bought it!'

So l took the chair, turn it over,
and there was our name on the other side.

Anyway...

He looked around.

He said Mr Blatt
- why the whole comedy with the chair,

l know why you are here.

You have hidden money here,

your parents had some money
and he was so angry ah,

look around, ok, nothing is touched. Goodbye.

He said, Mr Blatt, wait a minute you could
take it out and we divide even the money.

Give him 50% and 50% me.
l just left.

A few years later,

Thomas Blatt returned to Izbica and
this was the sight that greeted him.

The house his family had
lived in was now uninhabitable.

So l went to neighbours and asked
the neighbour what's happened here so she said,

oh, Mr Blatt when you left
we were unable to sleep

because day and night he was looking for
the treasure that you were supposed to leave.

He took the floor apart,
the walls apart everything.

And later he find himself in the position
where he couldn't fix it,

too much money so he left it,
take a look it's a ruin.

This ruined house symbolizes

how long is the shadow cast by the Nazis'
persecution and murder of the Jews.

And how real still today
is the prejudice of anti-Semitism.

There are even those who deny the reality
of what took place here.

And it was to confront them
that Oskar Groning finally broke his silence

about this own personal history.

l see it as my task, now at my age,
to face up to these things that l experienced

and to oppose the Holocaust deniers
who claim that Auschwitz never happened.

And that's why l am here today.

Because l want to tell those deniers:

l have seen the crematoria,

l have seen the burning pits

and l want you to believe me
that these atrocities happened.

l was there.

1 million 300,000 people were
sent to Auschwitz during the 4

and a 1/2 years of its existence.

1 million 100,000 of them died here.

Hundreds of Jehovah's witnesses, homosexuals,
and other minorities were murdered.

15,000 Soviet Prisoners of war,

21,000 Gypsies,
70,000 Polish political prisoners,

and 1 million Jews,
at least 200,000 of them children.

In this photograph l recognise my aunt
her name is Yolanda Wolstein

and her 4 little children Ervin 8 years old,

Dory 10 years old, Judith 6 years old
and Naomi the little baby 2 years old.

It's such an incredible shattering feeling
to recognise somebody you love to see

how they looked minutes
before they entered the crematorium

Evidence of what the Nazis did
lies all around here.

Waiting to be rediscovered
by future generations.

A reminder of just what human
beings are capable of creating.