All language subtitles for What.Happened.at.Auschwitz.2025.1080p.WEBRip.x264-CBFM_track3_[und]

This programme contains scenes which
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SINGING

On the 27th of January, 1945,
the Soviet Red Army entered the

gates of the Nazi regime's most
notorious death camp.

With the liberation
of Auschwitz-Birkenau,

the world witnessed the profound
horror of the Holocaust.

This happened 80 years ago,
and you've still got to

tell people about it.

They had whips, they had guns,

and any time you could have been

sent to gas chambers.

How many members of your family
do you think you lost

because of the Holocaust?

I think it must
have been in the hundreds.

80 years since the liberation,

we now live in a world of
misinformation and denial.

If this distortion of our

understanding is allowed to take
root,

we run the risk that history
will be rewritten

and the true horror of the Holocaust
forgotten.

I want to find out what, for someone
like me, not of Jewish heritage

and born nearly half a century
later, it really means for the world

to never forget.

SINGING CONTINUES

NEWSREEL: War.
Precisely at dawn

on September 1st, without warning,
the German Wehrmacht roared

over the Polish border.

This morning, the British Ambassador
in Berlin handed the

German government a final note,

stating that, unless we heard from
them

by 11 o'clock that they were
prepared at once

to withdraw their troops
from Poland,

a state of war
would exist between us.

Since Adolf Hitler's rise to power
in Germany in 1933, the Nazi regime

had fostered a hatred for Jews,
who the party held responsible

for the country's economic
and political instability.

As this anti-Semitism spread, the
German state began systematically

removing the rights of the Jewish
people.

These were the first steps
towards a plan that would become

known as the Final Solution

and see
approximately 6 million Jews die

at the hands of the Nazi regime.

Making documentaries,

you often end up talking about facts
and figures and places, and that's

often how history is taught.

But I think, especially because of
the world of misinformation

and disinformation that, as
a journalist, I see all around us,

the lessons from the Holocaust
have to be remembered.

And this happened -

it wasn't even a century ago.

And for us to forget that
means that we're going to forget

how we got there.

And that's so important,
because this didn't

just happen overnight.

I was deported in

Auschwitz-Birkenau with my mother,
with my three younger sisters,

and they put in one truck

about 70, 80 people.

In 2021, Dov Forman launched a

TikTok account with his
great-grandmother,

Lily Ebert, a survivor of Auschwitz.

Hello, TikTok.

Shabbat Shalom.

Shabbat Shalom, TikTok.
Have a nice weekend.

How did you get your great-granny
on TikTok?

It was just after the Covid
lockdown.

For a few months, she hadn't
been able to go out and

do what she loved for so long,
which was to educate

about her harrowing Holocaust
testimony.

And we started on Twitter,
sharing her story, and eventually

I saw people going viral for dancing
and doing silly things on TikTok.

And so I said to her, "Safta," -

we used to call her Safta,
which is Hebrew for grandma -

"why don't we go on TikTok and start
sharing your important messages?

"I think we can go viral."

And she said, "I'll do it,
but I'm not dancing."

My younger brother and sister

were straight taken

to the gas chamber.

I never saw them again.

When did you start to notice
that there were negative comments

questioning about the Holocaust?

It was almost immediately. Really?

We would get positive
and then we would get negative.

And every day I would wake up,
I would read the comments on my

phone and there would be thousands
of them.

"Hitler missed one."
"The Holocaust is fake."

"We're coming to find you.
We're coming to kill you."

In my work, I'm seeing
much more disinformation -

so people deliberately
spreading things that are untrue.

And misinformation - people
spreading things that's untrue,

but perhaps not deliberately.

Why do you think that, with
the Holocaust, this brings that

out in people so much?

When young children scroll, so many
of the posts they're seeing,

16%, according to a Unesco report
in 2022,

of all Holocaust-related content on
social media platforms -

Instagram, Twitter, Telegram,
TikTok, we can go on -

is Holocaust-denying or distorting.

That's a shocking number, 16%.

We know that over 50% of people
last year got their news

from social media.

So it's clear to me, at least,
that that is the place

where this disinformation
is being spread and where

that misinformation into society
is seeping, is seeping through.

That means that those people
who are scrolling through

are absorbing pure disinformation,
hatred and denial

about the Holocaust.

How do you tell a story
that has the number 6 million?

6 million deaths. 6 million
deaths I don't think is something

that people can fully comprehend.

The horror is just too much.

But people can comprehend a person.

You know, they can comprehend

someone who might be the age
of their granny, their grandad.

They Can comprehend the story
of loss, of fear and of love.

Renee, thank you very much for

talking to me today... You're very
welcome. ..and helping me to hear

about your personal experience
and to learn more.

First thing I wanted to do
was to find out

more about your childhood
in Zdunska Wola.

Zdunska Wola, yes. Did I get that
right?

You got it right.
Perfect. First time.

My father was a chief accountant
at the largest textile firm

in Europe. Oh...
He had a very good job.

Very good position.

Would he have been known
by people in the town?

Everybody.

You know, people used to bow to him
when he went to the street,

yes, with my mother.

Beautifully dressed always,
very elegantly dressed.

They gave him so much respect.

And your mum, was she at home
looking after you...?

My mother was at home,
looking after the house,

after the children.
Keeping us all happy.

Renee's family was integrated
into Polish society and lived

peacefully alongside Jews
and non-Jews alike.

I was born in 1932,
in southern Hungary.

I come from a family of,
a very religious family.

There was five boys, four
girls, my mother and father.

We used to get up in the morning,
usually 5 o'clock,

summer and winter,

and go to, go to the school,

to cheder, which are the Jewish
studies.

And then the secular and go for
lunch,

and then more Jewish studies.

My name is Arek Hersh.

I was born in 1928, in Poland,

in a place called Sieradz.

I enjoyed life very much.

I went out with my friends, played
football and hockey, all sorts

of different things
what a young person does.

And then the Germans came in
and everything changed.

By 1941, the implementation of plans
to eliminate Europe's Jewish

population was under way.

Jews who had not managed
to emigrate were being stripped

of their businesses and property,

excluded from society and corralled
into separate neighbourhoods known

as ghettos, in preparation
for forced deportation.

All the schools were burnt down.

All the synagogues were burnt
down or dynamited.

It... Absolutely terrible.

And most of the Jewish people
were thrown away

out of their houses.

They took everything - all the
silver, all the best china,

all the linens.

Everything was taken.

We didn't have a change
of underwear.

But ghettos were only ever going to
be a temporary solution.

And it wasn't long before
the SS began rounding up the Jews

and forcing them onto trains.

We were packed very tightly.

They shut and bolted the doors.

Without any food.

They didn't give us any food -
no bread, no water, nothing.

Not even any air. No windows.

They only have a few slats on top.

Death happened on the train.
Illness happened.

And...

And I can't describe it

because I can't see any point
in describing the...

..the dehumanisation that we lived

for the few days
that we were onboard.

Unknown to them, the trains that
Renee, Arek and Ivor were on

were destined for
Auschwitz-Birkenau,

which would become the most infamous
and largest

of the Nazi regime's
extermination camps.

The camp, in southern Poland,

had started life
as an old army barracks,

originally used by the Germans to
hold Polish political prisoners.

But as plans for
the Final Solution were rolled out,

Auschwitz was transformed
into a death camp.

By the time the first large
transport of Jews arrived

in March 1942,

it was ready to become the regime's

primary killing ground.

The train slowed down
and came to a stop.

Immediately, we heard dogs barking.

They unlocked, unlocked the doors,
opened them up,

and they're screaming and bellowing,

"Get off the train!
Be quick! Get a move on!"

My father jumped off first

and I jumped after him.

When I jumped off,
I didn't see him any more.

He disappeared, like into thin air.

They took him away.

We didn't know where to...

Without a kiss, without a goodbye,

he disappeared, like into thin air,

and I never saw him again.

Guards were walking around

and they said,

"You are here now in
Auschwitz-Birkenau."

We didn't know what
Auschwitz-Birkenau meant.

But they said, here, they take
us straight to the gas cha...

They take us straight
to the gas chambers.

We were so frightened.

The absolute endless

scale of the place makes it...

..so horrifying.

It's just so uniform - it is like
a machine, like a factory.

It's so still and quiet today...

..but the barking of dogs,
the screaming of soldiers,

of people all getting off here

and then being selected,
as they called it,

to be murdered.

Imagine standing here
and your mum

just being taken away, and
I don't know where she's going

and I don't know if
I'm going to see her again.

As a child, to try and understand
what was happening here.

Not only terrifying, but confusing,
all at the same time.

As each train was off-loaded,
the old, sick

and those too young to work were
taken straight to the gas chambers.

Despite their young ages,
Renee, Arek and Ivor

all managed to go unnoticed
by the guards.

The officer asked me,
"How old are you?"

I said, "14,"
so he sent me to the right side.

I was selected to go into the camp.

The people which were selected

to be, go in the gas chamber

were sent to the left side.

We started marching and my mother
was holding the youngest brother,

the youngest sister
and two other sisters.

I said, "I want to come with you."

She said,
"No, go back to your brother."

So I went back to my brother.

Of course, that's the last time
I saw my family alive.

Those who got through this
first selection were stripped of

their personal possessions
and had their heads shaved.

In the eyes of the SS guards
who worked in the camp,

they were no longer human beings.

I noticed some men
that had a tattoo,

so I said, "Do I need to?"

They said, "Yes.
Oh, very much so. Yes."

Erm, so I went there
and they did mine. Uh...

..I had B7608.

B7608.

I lost my name altogether.

The prisoners were housed
in wooden or brick barracks,

surrounded by
electrified barbed wire.

Though many of the barracks
were designed to only hold

300 or 400 people,
as the war continued,

they could be crammed with up to
1,000 men, women or children.

Few managed to survive
the inhumane conditions.

Twice a day, we used to be counted.

Sometimes, we had to stand
for four hours, six hours,

even later than that.

Occasionally, someone would
drop dead at these roll calls.

What gave you hope?

What were you able to hold on to?
My mother.

I was holding her hands
all the time in Auschwitz.

My mother. If it wouldn't be for
her, I wouldn't have lasted a day.

She kept me going,

and I kept her going sort of thing.

Very poignant. Yeah. Yes.

If it wouldn't be for my mother,
I wouldn't have been alive.

The situation was horrendous.

All I can say is that, eventually,
when you used to go to bed,

you hoped that the person
you lived next to died overnight.

Why?

You could pinch his shoes
or his clothes.

We were not human beings any more.

Violence and brutal punishments from
the SS guards were a daily event,

and the threat of the gas chambers
and crematoria was ever-present.

From the very beginning,
the SS believed that

only one crematorium
would be sufficient,

with an overall capacity of about
100 bodies a day. But, gradually,

they added the second oven,
then the third.

And finally, they built four
huge crematoria in Birkenau,

with a total capacity of almost

5,000 bodies a day.

5,000 people could be burnt,

their bodies could be burnt,
every day? Yes. Theoretically, yes.

But, as we know
from the testimonies of survivors,

sometimes this number
was even higher.

A type of gas called Zyklon B
was used in the gas chambers.

It had originally been marketed
as an insecticide,

but as the Nazis sought ever more
efficient methods for mass murder

its potential as a chemical weapon
was exploited.

In humans, suffocation was swift

if inhaled or absorbed
through the skin.

Most of the guards have no contact
with the victims,

but everybody here knew
what happened in gas chambers

and crematoria because they could
see the flames

and the clouds of smoke,

they could smell this awful odour
of burning human flesh,

so they had to know
what was going on.

However much horror
you thought about,

you'd never imagine
what was happening.

Whoever imagines something about
gassing people and burning them?

You know, it never,
never came into the mind.

Each day, prisoners could be
singled out for the gas chambers.

Some would be given towels

and told they were being
taken to the showers to bathe.

They would wait their turn,
then undress

and enter a chamber
similar to this one at Dachau.

Zyklon B would be released

and, within minutes,
everyone would be dead.

Other prisoners would
drag the bodies out

and then the bodies would be burned.

These photographs, taken secretly

by an inmate forced to work

the crematoria, are the only ones

known to exist of the atrocities

that took place at Auschwitz.

So, you can't film in there
out of respect for the victims,

because along one side of the wall
there's a huge display case

and it is full of human hair
that has been shaved

from the bodies of people
after they'd been gassed.

And it's those details

that I had no idea.

It really...will stay with me.

Even the ashes of the burned bodies
at Auschwitz would be put to use.

Arek was one of the inmates
forced to work in the fields.

They used to bring, from the
crematorium, ashes and we put

it on the soil.

Sometimes I used to feel some bones
in my hand,

but you couldn't help it.

It's...

You know, you had to do
what you had to do.

How many members of your family
do you think you lost

because of the Holocaust?

I think it must
have been in the hundreds.

Oh, dear, dear, dear, dear, dear.

I would say, definitely say
my mother.

And my youngest brother and sister.

I mean, I'm sure, I'm sure
they died at Auschwitz.

Painful.

Painful.

By the autumn of 1944, with the end
of the war in sight, the authorities

at Auschwitz had begun transferring
prisoners to other camps

and systematically destroying
evidence of the atrocities

that had taken place.

I don't think I've ever come
across a physical embodiment

of hatred like this.

If you've not been here
and you've not experienced it,

then I don't think you are as afraid
as you should be

of where hatred can go.

And this is unthinkable, right?

This is unthinkable for most
people in their normal lives.

This is unthinkable.

But it happened.

When the Soviet Red Army

entered Auschwitz on the
27th January 1945,

they found the last
remaining prisoners.

Thousands of starving men,
women and children.

They found the burned remains
of thousands more,

several tons of human hair

and the last remnants
of the lives of those killed.

In less than five years
in Auschwitz alone,

around 1 million Jews were killed,

approximately 70,000 Poles...

By the time Auschwitz-Birkenau
was liberated, Renee, Arek and Ivor

had all been moved on
to other camps.

Renee was freed from Bergen-Belsen
and eventually managed

to make her way to Paris,
where she fell in love

with a British military policeman.

They later married
and had two children.

Instead of hate, I learned to love

life and people,

and I hope that
everybody should live in peace.

After liberation,

Ivor and his brother, who had also
survived the war, were sent

to a displaced persons camp.

I was hungry for life.

I was more looking for the
good things

and forgetting about the bad things.

Both Arek and Harry, who had spent
the war incarcerated in forced

labour camps working for
the German war effort,

were rescued from Theresienstadt.

When did you think,
"I'm finally safe"?

On the last day of the war,
the 8th of May, 1945.

The whole camp was taken over
by the Red Cross

and the nurse said the
British government allowed to

take 1,000 orphans to be
taken to England.

So I went to England.

Ivor, Harry and Arek were all
selected for the British government

scheme designed to help
survivors recover.

Ivor was brought to Southampton
before being moved on to Ascot.

Arek, along with Harry, was offered
a new beginning at Lake Windermere.

We sat on the floor, 15 on one side.

That was me.

AREK LAUGHS

Yeah.

They took off and we
eventually arrived

in the Lake District

and we were taken
to the encampment there,

and we were put so many children
into a barrack.

We each had a little room and a bed

and a little chest of drawers.

And we all had our own door

and it was marvellous.

Windermere was a different
place altogether.

We arrived there at the dining hall,

with plates and tablecloths
and bread,

white bread, on the table.

We hadn't seen bread for a
long...for years!

What was it like when you first saw
the lakes and when you

got off the coach?

It's unbelievable.
You just can't imagine it.

We had clothes to wear,
but it was...

We were human again for the
first time in years and years.

We were human.

Today, Harry and Arek are revisiting

the place where they were given
the chance to live again.

We're getting on in life.

Getting on...
But you haven't changed a bit.

Except your hairs are grey.

We are... We're the dinosaurs.

AREK LAUGHS

I used to swim in this lake.

Yeah, so did I. Yeah?

I was in one of the barracks.

Had my own little room -

a bed and a wardrobe
and that was it!

Yeah, I know, but what number?
What number block were you?

I think it was number six.

Remember what block you were here?

In block E. E. I think block E.

Yeah. I think so.

Those, those were the days.

We were brought up here
for holidays,

not quite knowing what
our father had been through.

And it was always a happy...

..positive place for him
and seeing him so happy here.

He still seems to come alive
when he arrives here -

when he sees that lake
and when he arrives here.

He said they had such fun
times here.

They were family to each other
because they'd lost everybody

and it was somewhere to belong
and somewhere to start again.

For them to have gone from such
horror to such a beautiful place,

and learning to just be boys
again, learning to be human

after everything they've been
through, I didn't think

that I would get to hear
that in this story.

That demonisation,
that dehumanisation

and that disinformation
that the Nazis used

against the Jewish people,

well, it's not just in books,
in the cinema and radio

like it was back then.
Now we get it direct.

We all get it direct to our phones.

I think we owe it to the people that
have been through that to really

ask, where are we getting
this information from?

Who's giving this
information and why?

Because that hatred that
we have seen, it still exists

in different forms, even today.