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Man: You know, 40 years,

40 years I've been
in the classroom...

and there is never
a more poignant question

that a student asked me
about the Holocaust than...

"Why didn't the Jews
resist the Nazis?"

And there's a moment
where you just want

to leave it alone...

and then there's a moment
where you can't let it go.

Man: After a journey of 10 days,
we arrived at Auschwitz

on April 11 to a crematorium.

Freund: Marcel Nadjari--

this is a guy who was shipped
off from Greece in 1944

all the way to Auschwitz.

Man: The Sonderkommando
prisoners were slaves,

compelled to do anything
their masters,

the Germans in Auschwitz,
tell them to do.

Man as Nadjari: Our unit is
called the Special Unit.

I will explain for you the work

that the Almighty
wanted me to do.

It starts by the people
entering naked.

Greif: The humiliation is
a very central factor

in the German crime.

He has to be undressed,
and he has to be humiliated.

Man as Nadjari: After the room
is filled with people,

it is locked...

and they are gassed.

Greif: And I have to emphasize
1,000 times

the killing always was made
by the Germans.

Freund:
We're at Crematorium III,

which was destroyed by the Nazis
as they were leaving in 1945.

What really is the secret
of Crematorium III is this is

where they discovered
Nadjari's letter.

He described
in meticulous detail

what his daily schedule was,

so his letter gives us
a perspective

on what it is
that happened here.

Man: In this horrible world,
finding even a pen

and a piece of paper
without being exposed

what they're doing is
an incredible bravery,

and they probably didn't
see hope

for their own survival.

They wanted the world to know.

Freund: People have this myth
stuck in their heads that

the Jews went
to their deaths like sheep

to the slaughter,

but this is
where the real story begins.

Man as Nadjari:
How could I do this,

burn the bodies
of my brothers in faith,

and why didn't I join them
and put an end to it?

But every time, the thirst
for revenge stopped me.

Man: Each prisoner in every
squad knew exactly what

he was supposed to do
and prepared for it.

Different man: May those
who made an ocean of blood

of my people drown
in an ocean of blood.

Woman: Suddenly,
the sirens began to wail.

What happened?
A revolution?

An uprising at the crematorium?

Freund: This is
where the story begins.

Jews did not go to their death

as sheep to the slaughter.

They fought back.

Woman as Peltel: Father
was calming us,

saying, "Don't be scared.

"Even when the Germans come,
they are not so bad.

"I remember them from
the First World War,

and they are quite human,
you will see."

For him, it was a shock.

Man: What her father
had said was

"I know these people.
I know the Germans.

"We fought in the First
World War together,

and they're basically
decent people,"

and then within
the first couple of days,

he was pretty
badly beaten,

and he was so devastated
that he was unable

after that to leave
the house to go out on the street.

Man: We were
immediately singled out.

We knew something was coming.

Man: So this is one of
the original walls that confined

the Jews into the Warsaw Ghetto,

and on Yom Kippur,
the holiest day

of the Jewish year, in 1940,

the Jewish population finds out
that it's going to be

confined into a ghetto.

Half a million Jews almost
forced into this tiny area.

Man: A few hundred people
crowd every large,

unheated room of a synagogue,

every hall
of a deserted factory.

A whole family often receives
sleeping space for one.

The walls and barbed wire
surrounding the ghetto

completely cut off the Jews
from the outside world.

Patt:
These are starvation rations.

There's no way that people
can live on this.

Man as Edelman:
Children begged everywhere.

6-year-old boys crawled
through the walls

and barbed wire to obtain
food on the other side.

Patt: This was all part
of a plan which was

going to degrade the Jews,
dehumanize them,

force them to live in horrible,
horrible conditions

where you have disease.

The creation of the ghetto
was exactly

to facilitate the spread
of epidemics.

They would bring in film crews
into the ghetto

as part of their propaganda
effort to show

this is how Jews live,

this is how Jews carry disease

and how Jews
will ultimately die.

So people often want to know
why the Jewish population

didn't fight back immediately.

Half a million Jews crowded
into the ghetto.

Why didn't they take up arms
and fight back

against the Germans?

- Collective punishment.
- Collective punishment.

The Jews knew that

you can start
some resistance.

You can aim a pistol
and shoot one person,

two people,
whatever it is,

but the Germans would
then arrest 2,000.

Patt: But the truth is,
from the very beginning, right,

once there crowded
into the ghetto,

they did resist in the ways that
they knew best to do,

resistance that was a type
of spiritual resistance,

resistance that was a way
of standing up

against the German oppressors.

Feeding the hungry
clothing the poor,

taking care of orphans.

These were strategies that
Jews had used for centuries

and which they fell back upon.

Woman: The unarmed resistance is
called in Hebrew Amidah.

Amidah is standing, standing up,

or in Yiddish, I would say...

I'm not yielding
to the situation.

Whatever you do that is
against the situation

is resistance.

Whether you sit or lie
or crawl or swim or stand up

makes absolutely no difference.

It's something done.

Woman as Vladka: Life
in the ghetto

was a chain of resistance.

There were illegal schools.

there were illegal
libraries, choirs,

even theaters.

It was an illegal life.

Bauer: The Germans wanted
to destroy any kind

of Jewish existence,
also cultural existence,

and so on,
so when you educated children

in ghettos, if they survived,

for them to develop
after the War,

this was
against the German idea, yeah?

Man as Benjamin: I organized
a school in my building,

and I became the teacher
of that school.

I had never prepared
for being a teacher,

but there were no schools.

All schools were illegal.

Man: And if you always keep
in mind that part

of what the Germans wanted to do
was to kill the body

but also to kill the soul,
to undermine humanity,

the humanity of the individual,

and therefore, if you
never lost your humanity,

then in a very real sense
you're helping

to defeat the Germans.

Woman as Vladka: Although you
see today how the pictures,

mostly from Germans,

pictures of Jews who were
beggars and pitiful,

and this is taken because
the Germans would like us

only to be seen this way.

This was only one part
of the ghetto.

It was true there were beggars,

but there was another kind
of life full of activities

and spiritual resistance.

Man as Ringelblum:
With a little peace,

we may succeed in making sure

that not a single fact
about Jewish life at this time

and place
will be kept from the world.

Freund: They were documenting
the entire life

of the Warsaw Ghetto,

and then they buried it,
and they buried it

because they wanted to
make sure it survived.

It's the equivalent
of seeing for the first time

the Dead Sea Scrolls.

The difference is this is
so close to our own era,

and to know that Jews
have been documenting

and preserved it like
a message in a bottle

for future generations.

"What we couldn't scream
out to the world

"we buried in the ground.

"I would like to live to see
the moment

"when it will be possible to
unearth this great treasure

"and shout out the truth.

"May this treasure fall
into good hands.

"May it survive
until better times.

"May it alarm the world
to what happened

"in the 20th century.

"Now we can die in peace.

"Our mission
has been accomplished.

Let history bear
witness to that."

Patt: So Warsaw is occupied,

and the goal for the Jews
is to survive,

to live to see another day,

to live until the war is
gonna be over.

They have no idea that
the endpoint

of the Germans' occupation
is extermination.

Man: This is one of the main
recreation spots in Kaunas.

It sits up on a hill.
It's windy, it's breezy.

People come here
for picnics, to walk their dog.

I've seen
wedding ceremonies here,

but what people don't know
is underneath

where we're standing,
this is where 50,000 Jews

were buried in 14 trenches.

Woman: That -24.

Bauman: This is where
the GeoSLAM is going to be.

And--and even if they were to
try to memorialize this,

they don't know
where the trenches are,

and that's what...

Freund: They thought they were
going to a labor camp,

they were gonna be doing work,

and that's what
the artifacts tell us.

Passports, watches,
personal items,

every type of button because
everyone thought

they were coming to go to work.

Man:
Everyone is very smart today.

How didn't they realize?
How didn't they know?

But you never believe.

I mean,
you can't believe that you

will be mistreated
and beaten and humiliated.

You cannot imagine that
you will be simply taken...

led to the forest,
and killed there.

When we take a look
at sites like this--

and we're looking at many
Holocaust sites--

and what's important is that
survivors have told their story

and we believe their stories.

What we're trying to do is bring
scientific methodology

and scientific tools to verify
those stories.

Freund, voice-over:
We really are hoping--

and I'm not naive--
we're really hoping

that we can diminish genocide

when perpetrators know
they can never get away

with their crime.

Man: The most horrific statistic
I think of

is that only 11%
of European Jewish children

who were alive in 1939
were still alive in 1945.

My name is Dana Pomerants-
Mazurkevich--Mazurkevich.

I'm originally from Lithuania.

I was born in Kovno Ghetto.

My father was
a very famous violinist.

My mother and father
decided that somehow,

by a miracle, somehow
they have to smuggle me

out of ghetto.

My mother got in touch
with Elena Zalinkevicaite.

Was a very beautiful
drama theater artist,

who had her own 3 children.

My mother, she said, "I have
girl who have

"beautiful blond hair
and has blue eyes.

She's Jewish child.
Could you save her?"

And that Lithuanian woman,
having her own children,

she said, "Bring that child.
I will take her."

They gave me a big amount
of sleeping pills

and put me in a sack of potato,

and it was one Lithuanian guy.

He took me in some kind
of carriage,

and then we passed that border,

and German soldier
was staying there.

Somehow, I probably didn't
have enough air,

and I started to make
that noise.

And that German asked,
"What is that? What is this?"

And that Lithuanian guy,
he said,

"This is kleine Schweine,"
little piglet.

Somehow, they let us pass.

It required
unbelievable courage,

unbelievable, that they
could give me away

and not knowing
if they will survive

and not knowing if
I will survive.

I think it was a big,
big act of resistance

because I will not let
to take my child,

and my mother had to--oy--
had to give me away.

This is--it--it took so much
courage for her to do that.

I have a beautiful daughter
Milana.

Sometimes, I think
would I be able to do?

I don't know.

Man: Vilna was called
the Jerusalem of Lithuania.

Vilna was probably the most
Jewish city in the world.

We consider New York
to be very Jewish.

New York's got--15%
of the population's Jewish,

but Vilna at its peak had 40%
of the population was Jewish.

Man: As a child in Vilna,
I lived with a sense

of living in paradise.

Fishman: It was a great center
of Jewish learning.

It was a city of the spirit,

and that's why it got
the name Jerusalem.

The Germans attacked
Vilna on June 22, 1941.

That's almost two years later
than when they attacked Warsaw,

so the Germans came late,
but they acted fast,

and the Germans started looting

Jewish cultural treasures
in Vilna.

In July 1941, they realized that
there were just

too many Jewish books and papers

and documents and treasures
in this city.

They couldn't handle it,

and that's why they established
this slave labor brigade of Jews

that would sort the material
called the Paper Brigade.

Right here, right behind me,
is where the gate

to the Vilna Ghetto stood.

The members of the Paper Brigade
had to pass

through this gate daily.

They had books packed
underneath their clothing,

under their shirts,
under their pants,

under their--in their shoes,

and they had to pass
through body searches

of ghetto guards.

If they were found to be
carrying books on them--

it didn't matter if you
were carrying

books or food or anything.

The penalty was the same,
death...

and many of those books,
once they were smuggled

into the ghetto successfully,

they brought here
to the building

that was probably
the central address

in the Vilna Ghetto,
the Vilna Ghetto Library.

Reading was a kind
of moral, cultural,

spiritual resistance.

"You're not gonna break
my humanity.

"I'm a human being,
and reading books is

"integral to being
a human being,

and I'm gonna do that."

Bak: It was--absolutely it was
a resistance,

and it was
as indispensable as bread,

I would say.

As they say in Hebrew,

"Not only on bread can
man live."

He needs also something
for the spirit.

In the ghetto, where art
and writing and poetry

were created, where people
could express themselves,

there was a sense of dignity,

and I think this was
a very important factor

that kept the psyche of
the people more or less alive.

My name is Michael Kovner.

My parents were Abba Kovner
and Vitka Kovner--

Kempner-Kovner.

My father wanted to be
a painter,

and he accepted to
the Vilna Academic of Painting.

He was accepted to this,
but he couldn't, you know--

the war would come,
so he couldn't

fulfill this dream,

but I think he always was
kind of a poet, you know.

My mother, she--she walked
on the pavement,

which Jewish in Poland
after Nazi occupation

weren't allowed to walk
on the pavement...

and she went to the pavement,

and then the officer
or soldiers, Nazi,

came to her,
and she--

and he asked her,
"You are Jewish?"

And she said yes.

"So why you are going
on the pavement?"

She said, "Why not?"

He said, "You are not allowed,"

and she gave him
splash on his face

and continued to walk.

So that's her type.

Porat: The youth movement
played a role in the life

of the youngsters at the time.

They felt belonging.

It wasn't just a place
to which you go to be

entertained
once or twice a week.

You lived your life
with the members,

you lived through them.

It's a collective identity
of being Jewish,

and this explains to you
the way they handled

themselves during the war.

Man as Abba: We had formed
our group,

starting
from a precise ideology.

Our fight was not
for self-preservation.

It was not to save myself,
to save you,

to save a neighbor.

It was to fight the Germans.

Fishman: In half a year,
the Jewish population of Vilna

went down from 70,000
to 20,000 Jews.

More than 2/3
of the Jews of Vilna

were killed in half a year,

and that's in 1941, well
before there were deportations

to the death camps from Warsaw
and other cities in Poland.

Man as Abba: One day I was
called and told to go

to the hospital of the ghetto,

that there was
a young girl injured

who wanted to talk to me
and only to me.

From her, I got
the first direct evidence

about what was happening.

There were 119 women.

They were told to line up.

Behind them there were ditches.

The Lithuanians started firing
on the whole line of women...

and all the women fell
into the ditch...

dead.

This is the burial pit.

It was a burial pit in 1941,

and in this forest,

both Nazis and their
collaborators from Lithuania

systematically shot

about 100,000 people
in these pits.

Man as Abba: One thing
is clear to me.

Vilna is not just Vilna.

Ponari is not just an episode.

There is a system,
whose inner workings are,

for the meantime,
hidden from us.

Kovner: My father said,
"Nobody can escape.

"The Jewish people
cannot escape from this,

"so what the Jewish
people can do,

they can fight for their honor."

That's it.
To fight for the honor.

Man as Abba:
They shall not take us

like sheep to the slaughter.

All those who were taken
away from the ghetto

never came back.

Porat: It is a call
to the population that was left

not to foster illusions.

"Those who went out of the gates
of the ghetto

will not come back."

Man as Abba: All the roads
of the Gestapo lead

to Ponari,
and Ponari is death.

Porat:
He said, "Hitler has a plot.

"He's planning to murder
all the Jews of Europe.

If everyone out
of the ghetto was killed"...

"and if there is a plan
to kill the rest, as well"...

"then there is no other
choice left but to resist."

Man as Abba: It is true we are
weak and defenseless,

but resistance is
the only reply.

Brothers, it is better to
fall as free fighters

than to live by the grace
of the murderers.

Resist to the last breath.

Bauer: Nobody wanted to resist
because they said,

"If we try to resist,
they will kill everyone,"

and the youth movement said,

"They're going to kill
everyone anyway,"

and we must resist.

Woman as Korchak:
The soul was enlightened.

The ghetto nightmare dissipated.

Martyrdom, helplessness,
and slavery are over,

and now the one goal
before us is rebellion.

Woman as Vitka:
We were not soldiers.

We'd never shot a gun before.

We took a pipe,
and another boy

got the dynamite.

It was very primitive.

Kovner: My mother, she went
with 2 other guys for 3 days

outside the ghetto because
they have to go very far

from the ghetto
that the Germans won't know

that the Jewish people did it.

That was the most
important thing,

so she found the best place.

The patrol of the Germans
is not there

when the train is there
at that hour.

She found the best place.

Woman as Vitka:
1:30 in the morning,

we planted the bomb.

We took it, and we put it
under the rail tracks.

We escaped very quickly.

When the train passed over
it at 2:00, it exploded...

and from far away,
we heard the explosion.

Kovner: Heh. She was the hero
of the oldest story.

Like, she was the first one
who went outside the ghetto

and bombed a German train.

Man: One should never believe
that Warsaw and Vilna were

the only ghettos that rose.

Ghettos large and small
rose in resistance.

Lensky: If we discuss how
the Nazis reacted to resistance,

they thought of Jews being
so inferior to them

that they are unable to resist,

that will actually go

as the cattle to the slaughter,

So we have to understand
that when we use

this phrase
"cattle to the slaughter,"

we use the Nazi lens.

We look at you
through Nazi eyes.

Man: When my mother
became a courier,

the first task was to move
into Grodno.

In Grodno, she was supposed to
see what's going on

with the Jewish community

because there were
no connections.

You have to understand
there was no telephones.

All telephones were cut.

There was no mail service,
there was no Internet.

Woman as Hazan: Each one of us
preferred to fall

in combat than to be led

as sheep to the slaughter.

The movement's
leadership sought out girls

with a Gentile appearance,
who would serve

as liaison couriers between
the different locations.

This role was unsuitable
for boys, who already

from the age of 8 days
had their Jewishness marked

on their flesh.

I volunteered for the role
because I'd already gained

experience and self-confidence
in impersonating

a Gentile and going
outside the ghetto.

Yaari: They smuggled weapons,

guns and grenades and so on.

This was
a very dangerous mission.

They also smuggled people
out of the ghetto

to put them in hiding places.

My mother, she was
sent to Grodno.

I must remind you again
that she was 19 years old.

Woman as Hazan: I went to
the labor bureau in town.

The clerk asked me whether
I knew German,

and I answered him
in poor Yiddish.

For "vos," I said, "was,"
and so on.

After a few sentences from me,
he declared,

"You speak German very well.

"You can take a position
with us as an interpreter

at the Gestapo."

Yaari: So when she worked
in that office,

she managed to steal
from the desk all kinds

of papers and stamps,
and she brought them to Vilna,

and they were used to make
false identities

for--for--for other people,

traveling documents and so on.

She was several months,
almost half a year, in Grodno.

Her two friends,
who were also couriers,

Tema Sznajderman,
and Lonka Korzybrodska,

came to her room.

This was Christmas Eve,

and my mother was invited
by the Gestapo.

There was one officer
who was--I think was

in love with her,

and he invited her
to the Christmas party

of the Gestapo,

and she said, "I'm sorry,
I cannot come

because I have two girlfriends,"

and he said,
"Bring them also with you."

He came to pick her up,
and the 3 of them,

they dressed in the best clothes
that they had.

They went on Christmas Eve,
December 1941,

to this Christmas party,

and this Gestapo officer
took a picture

of the 3 of them.

June 1942, Lonka Korzybrodska
was sent to Warsaw.

She was sent on a mission.

She had to deliver
two guns to the underground

and information,
and she was on the train

in the middle
between Bialystok and Warsaw,

and her luck didn't hold,

and she was captured
by the Gestapo.

So when Lonka did not
come back to Bialystok,

my mother volunteered
to follow her steps

and to look for her,

so she went on the train
from Bialystok to Warsaw,

and when the train got
to Malkinia,

the gendarmes who were
on the train told her

"We are waiting for you.

Come, come with us."

And why were they
waiting for her?

Because Lonka, she was
very courageous

and very self-assured.

She carried with her
the picture of the 3 couriers,

and this fell into
the hands of the Gestapo.

Woman as Hazan: People
in the station looked at me

with pitying expressions.

Soldiers asked me,
"Little girl, what did you do

that they're taking
you like this?"

I tried my best to hold
my head up so that no one

could know what was
going on in my heart.

I knew that my chances
were gone,

that at any moment the Germans
were likely to kill me.

Yaari: And after 3 days of
severe tortures, broken bones,

and a tooth was broken,
and after 3 days, they threw

her into an isolation cell.

For 6 weeks,
she was in darkness all alone...

but she kept
her Polish identity.

The Gestapo did not
suspect that she's a Jew.

Patt: The Germans
were masters of deceit.

They told the Jews they
were being sent to work camps

in the East, where
conditions would be better,

but here at the Umschlagplatz,

the Jews were loaded
onto trains,

deported to the death camp
of Treblinka.

Man as Edelman: They promised
and actually gave 3 kilograms

of bread and 1 kilogram
of marmalade to everyone

who voluntarily registered
for deportation.

Do you have any idea what
bread meant

at that time in the ghetto?

Because if you don't,
you will never understand

how thousands of people
would voluntarily come

for the bread and go on
to camp at Treblinka.

Woman: There is this diary that
someone is meeting a father

who is walking toward
the Umschlagplatz

with his children,
and he's asking,

"Why are you doing that?

Why are you obeying
the Germans' orders?"

And the man says, "Well,
they took my wife already.

"I have nothing to give
the kids to eat.

"They will starve to death here
in the ghetto.

"What can I do?

"I prefer going there and hoping
I'll be able to work

and provide my children.

So it's really
choiceless choices.

Steven: The Nazis were
single-minded about killing off

children with as much
cruelty as possible

as early as possible.

Berenbaum: Janusz Korczak,
the leader of an orphanage

who went with his orphans
to Treblinka.

He was offered
the opportunity to survive.

Korczak was the equivalent
of Mr. Rogers.

Non-Jews flocked to hear
his radio broadcast.

Are we gonna say
that he went like

sheep to the slaughter?

Gonna say the teachers that
stayed with their students,

the doctors that stayed
with their patients,

the mothers that
stayed with their children

and didn't abandon them--

did they go like sheep
to the slaughter,

or did they take care of those
they were responsible to

unto their last breath?

Dreifuss: Those children didn't
have anybody else

to take care of them.

The Jewish children during
the Holocaust

were maybe
the most miserable victims

if one can even class within
this horrible victimhood,

and the fact that somebody
is walking with them

until the end, even
when it's a bitter end,

this is something that has
its importance.

Steven: When it started
to go bad,

it was moving incredibly fast.

The deportations were
so overwhelming

that of those
330,000 people

who had been
in the ghetto,

only 60,000 were left.

Patt: The ghetto is sealed.

Anyone caught leaving
or entering is shot on sight.

The walls are porous,
and the underground finds

ways to sneak fighters
in and out to obtain weapons

one or two at a time.

Vladka is one of those sent
across to the Aryan side

to try to find weapons.

Rita: I think
she would have said

if you asked her directly

that she was afraid
all the time,

but it didn't make
a difference.

She always did what
was needed to be done.

Woman as Vladka: It was
a great event for me

when I managed to procure
my first revolver,

bought from our landlord's
nephew for 2,000 zlotys.

Man as Edelman:
At the end of December 1942,

we received our first
transport of weapons

from the Polish Home Army.

It was not much.

There were only 10 pistols
in the whole transport,

but it enabled us to prepare
for our first major action.

Rita: It was
the eve of Passover.

That's one of the things
I remember her talking about

is standing by the window
that saw into the ghetto.

She spoke of watching
and of wanting to be in there

and of feeling like
she had been ordered not to.

Woman as Vladka: Sporadic
gunfire erupted in the ghetto.

Powerful detonations
made the earth tremble.

The battle had begun.

Schudrich:
The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

was the first day of Passover.

Think about it.

They went to fight the Germans

with a taste of matzah
still in their mouths,

and there was matzah
made in the ghetto.

Man as Edelman: Battle groups
barricaded at the 4 corners

of the street opened
concentric fire on them.

German dead
soon littered the street.

The glorious SS therefore
called tanks into action.

The first was burned out by one
of our incendiary bottles.

The rest did not approach
our positions.

Not a single German
left this area alive.

Man: Something has happened
beyond our wildest dreams.

The Germans had to flee
from the ghetto twice.

The dream of my life
has become a reality.

I have lived to see Jewish
self-defense in the ghetto

in all of its greatness
and splendor.

Woman as Vladka: Couriers
crisscrossed the ghetto

to warn the Jews "Do not allow
yourselves to be taken.

"Everyone is to hide
in their bunkers.

We must all resist!"

Bauer: The vast majority
of the population

had no access to arms.

but they identified
with the resistance,

and they refused to hand
themselves over to the Germans.

It was not a passive resistance.

It was an active,
unarmed resistance,

and that is, after all, a matter
of some 55,000 or 60,000 people.

The Jews are hiding.
The Jews are hiding,

and the Germans don't
succeed in finding Jews.

It's actually unbelievable.

They are entering
a house after house.

There are those houses
in which hundreds of Jews

are living there,
and they cannot find even one.

Woman as Vladka: I reflect.

There are so many forms
of resistance--

the courageous ghetto fighters
firing their pistols,

the mother trying to save
her baby,

the father refusing to allow
his son to be separated,

the family remaining in hiding
under the ghetto.

These, too, are part
of the uprising.

These, too,
are forms of resistance.

Very soon, the Germans
understand that

the major problem that they
have is of those Jews

who are staying in their houses
and bunkers

despite everything,

and this is when
the Germans decide to fight

the Jews
with the weapon of fire,

and they start to set
the ghetto on fire.

Berenbaum: The Warsaw Ghetto
held out longer than the armies

of France and Belgium
and Netherlands.

What an achievement.

On the other hand, as an action,
it was the end.

It was the last act,

but as an act of moral
resistance to it all,

it's a matter of...

screaming, shouting, fighting,

deciding that I will take
the enemy down with me...

and not go quietly
into the dark night.

Patt: This stone, taken
from the rubble at Mila 18,

marks the final resting place
of the brave fighters

who died here,
and it reads,

"Here they rest,
buried where they fell,

to remind us that the whole
Earth is their grave."

Man as Abba:
The Germans' Tactics changed

on September 23rd.

At 1 p.m., the ghetto was
suddenly surrounded.

They knew we were there.

We had every reason to
believe that they'd take out

the remaining Jews
and then shell with artillery.

We decided to make our way out.

The only way out was
through the sewers.

Porat: So that's the end of it.

They went out to the forest
with nothing,

just the shirt on their back.

That's it.
What do they do?

The forest is rain and snow

and wild animals
and nothing to eat,

and it's a horrible
place to live in.

Woman as Vitka:
It was a forest,

a forest without Nazis.

We lived there
under the sky for two months.

It was raining,
and it was cold,

but it is what we had
in the beginning.

Kovner: It was tough life.

It's very cold,
and there was not a lot of food,

but they were free people.

They have honor.

Man: Around April 1943,

a decision was made to escape.

The decision
in the end was a tunnel.

They would take turns.

People who finished
their work would come dig.

Some people would pretend
to be sick

so they could dig all day,

and there was a group
of diggers, tough people.

Man as Jack: When I came out
from the tunnel, it was dark.

There was shooting,
which I could see

lots of flashes of fire.

I could see people being killed.

Woman: This took place
on September 26.

It's already cold.
There were drenched.

Pitch black.
Didn't know where to go.

Kagan: My father--
I remember him telling me

that when he first arrived
in the camp

in the middle of the forest

and there was this man

on a big white horse
with a gun on his shoulder.

My father's like, "Who is that?"
Ha ha ha!

And that was Tuvia Bielski.

Like, just as
in the film, right?

In the film, he has a gun
slung over his shoulder,

and he's a warrior.

My father wrote in his book
that when he got

to the forests how did he feel,

and he said,
and here I quote,

"I'd come from a camp where
thousands of Jewish people

"were being killed
by the Germans,

"and now there were all
these fighters with guns.

"I felt very, very proud.

"There was great camaraderie
at the camp.

"We were unhappy because
so many members

"of our families
had been massacred,

"but we were happy because
we were free

and we were fighting back."

Cohen: Tuvia Bielski
was responsible

for saving 1,200 people's lives.

He accepted everybody--

small children,
old men and women,

solitary women who couldn't
fight like my mother, everybody,

and Tuvia said he would
rather save one Jew

than kill 100 Germans.

Kagan: Bielski did something
completely different,

a completely
different philosophy

of "We're all Jews.
We need to survive.

That's our resistance."

Berenbaum: Treblinka had
approximately somewhere

in the neighborhood
of 925,000 Jews being killed.

Some 300 people revolted
in Treblinka and escaped.

In the end, there were
less than 100 survivors,

but unless they had tried
to escape,

there would not have been
100 survivors,

and then we would have
never known anything

about Treblinka or at least not
from the perspective

of the victims.

We would only know
the statistics

from the perspective
of the perpetrators.

Henry: There were 7 rebellions
in the death camps.

6 of them were led by Jews,
1 by the Russians,

so actually, even if you
only consider

violent resistance,
the Jews look pretty good.

Freund: You can imagine that
everyone who came

up this way,
maybe 180,000 people,

thought they were going
to showers.

Where they went is
the gas chambers.

Woman as Raab: And all that
built up in me

such anger
and the feeling of revenge.

I came to the camp with a pair
of brown leather boots,

which not everybody had,
and I said to the group--

we slept together--
"With these boots,

"I'm going to
escape from Sobibor.

"Don't ask me why.
Don't ask me how,

"and maybe it's not--
doesn't even make sense,

but I'm going to
escape with these boots."

Berenbaum: Alexander Pechersky
came with a military background.

He joined with a Jewish
prisoner from Poland,

who in a very real sense
was his liaison

with the other prisoners, who
didn't quite trust a Soviet POW

even if he was Jewish,

and they formed
a formidable team

to plan for how to conquer,
how to escape.

Woman as Raab:
And that evening, we cried.

We cried very, very much,

and everybody said goodbye
because we figured

in our wildest dreams we didn't
think one of us

is going to survive,

and as I cried myself
to sleep, I dozed off,

and I saw my mother coming
in through the camp,

through the main gate,
the way I left her.

That's how she looked,

and I said, "Mom,
you know that we're

going to escape tomorrow,"

and she said, "Yes.
That's why I came."

Berenbaum: They lured Nazi
commanders and Nazi officials

who were working in the camp
into a place

where they could be slaughtered
one by one.

Woman as Raab:
The plan was at 4:00.

The electric wire was cut,

the telephone wire was cut.

Everybody has to kill
his SS man and his guard

at his place of work...

and it started working.

Berenbaum: They then stormed
the gates,

and then they went
into the woods.

Woman as Raab: This was
before decided--

in case anything goes wrong,
everybody on his own.

Maybe one will survive

and will be able to tell
the world.

Woman as Hazan: When I would go
out to the threshold

of the block, I could see
the smoke

rising from the chimneys.

It clouded the skies
and choked the air

of the entire camp.

I cast glances toward
the smoke-shrouded heavens,

where it seemed I could see
the souls of Jewish children,

their mouths gaping to scream.

Yaari: The stories that she told
are quite difficult

to tell because she faced
such atrocities.

Like...I would start crying
if I tell this, so...

I cannot tell that really.

Berenbaum: Why were the Germans
so intent on killing

the Jews at that point?

Let's put it very clearly.

The Germans fought two wars,

the World War...

and the war against the Jews.

When push came to shove,
they wanted to succeed

in the war against the Jews,
even if it took

resources away
from the World War.

Sawicki: Despite
the Nazi regime knows that it

is coming to an end,

the one group that
is supposed to pay

the ultimate price
will be the Jews.

They're losing,

but "What can
we do before we lose?

We will kill more Jews."

Berenbaum: When you go to
Birkenau, you see that there are

3 railroad tracks that go
into the innermost nature

of the camp.

Those 3 tracks were
built in anticipation

of the murder of Hungarian Jews.

Hungarian Jews constituted
about 45% of the number

of people who were killed
in Auschwitz.

That occurred not over
4 years but over 3 months.

There was an entire
underground that

distributed these passes,
that created these passes.

How important was forging?

It was the difference
between life and death.

Yaari: During the transports
of Hungarian Jews,

which came thousands every day.

Every day, 10,000 people were
sent to the gas chambers,

and the camp of the women
bordered with the train ramp,

and when the people
from the train were sent

to Crematorium Number II,

which was 50 meters away
from the women's camp.

So all these years that she
was in Auschwitz,

she was just 50 meters away
from 1 of the 4 crematoria

in Birkenau.

Woman as Hazan: I suggested
digging a trench

under the barbed wire fence
during the nights

through which we would bring
young Jewish women into the camp

and save them
from the crematory ovens.

Now, today, when you go
to Birkenau,

everything is green and nice,

but at that time it was all
mud and ditches,

so they made some space
under the fence.

Woman as Hazan: Our objective
was to smuggle into our camp

some individuals
from within this human mass.

When the girls came through,
we were overcome with joy.

Yaari: And they bought in
from the line

to the gas chambers
into the camp

about 14 young girls
on several occasions

They brought them into the camp,
and they gave them

the dressing
of other women who died,

and they hid them for some time.

Woman as Hazan: We didn't
succeed in bringing many souls

into our camp.

There were so few
opportunities to do so.

However, the little that
we did gave us

great satisfaction.

We began to feel
a power rising in us,

awakening our will to live.

Man as Nadjari: Now we must
disappear

from the face of the Earth

because we know so much
about the unimaginable methods

of their abuses and reprisals.

The dramas my eyes have seen
are indescribable.

Hundreds of thousands
of Jews from Hungary

have passed by my eyes,

and why didn't I join them
and put an end to it?

But every time, the thirst
for revenge stopped me.

Man: Nadjari--we don't
really know what motivates

what he puts into his letter

other than he wants to
tell the story,

he wants to see revenge,

and that becomes a more
compelling notion

than giving up and getting out
of the fight.

Man: Each prisoner

in every squad knew exactly
what he

was supposed to do
and prepared for it.

My job was to set fire
to the crematorium building,

where I worked.

Man as Eisenschmidt: The Jews
had brought knives to the camp

to make kiddush.

Their original purpose
was to slice the challah.

They had the words
Le-shabbat kodesh,

for the Holy Sabbath,
engraved on them.

They were long
and had white handles.

My job was to make them
into bayonets

by honing them on all 4 sides.

We produced homemade mines
and hand grenades.

We took metal cans of food,

filled them with explosives,
and put in fuses.

Greif: Between Auschwitz
and Birkenau,

there was a big munition factory
called Union-Metallwerke,

which many Jewish
prisoners worked.

and one brave, Jewish, young
prisoner Róza Robota

was 19 years old,
had many girlfriends

inside that factory,
and when she was asked to

recruit some of the girls
to smuggle out

on a daily basis a small amount
of gunpowder,

she did not hesitate
for a second.

My mother was born in Poland.

Her name was Ada,
maiden name Neufeld.

She was one of the slave
laborers at the factory.

Smuggling itself wasn't easy
because they had

the body searched on exit
from the factory

and then on entry to the camp.

My mother told me that she
hid it inside her shoe,

and once in camp, she would
hand it over to someone else,

and they bring it to Robota.

Róza Robota would then take
it and deliver it

to her friend
from the Sonderkommando.

Man as Leon: On October 7, 1944,

they informed us that
the Germans intended to remove

the Sonderkommando men
from Crematorium IV.

We knew what that meant.

They were going to murder them.

We figured that it
was time for action.

Woman: In the distance, we now
see billows of smoke burning.

The second
crematorium is burning.

Greif: The destruction
of Crematoria Number IV,

this is a big achievement.

It never functioned
anymore again.

Woman: The sirens began to wail,
aggravating the commotion.

What happened?

A revolution?
An uprising at the crematorium?

Freund: This is perhaps
the single most important site

for the understanding
of Jewish resistance

during the Holocaust.

In the most improbable place
at Auschwitz,

the Sonderkommandos
destroyed a combination

crematorium and gas chambers.

Henry: It was a defiant
and wonderful act that

probably saved
many thousand lives

because they did, in fact,
destroy one of the crematoria.

Greif: The uprising came
to its tragic end

with the killing, murdering
of 452 young, Jewish,

courageous, brave men.

Yaari: On the night
of the 18th of January,

the camp was given
the order to be evacuated.

Woman as Hazan:
We marched at a cadence,

practically running
on winding paths.

We didn't know exactly
where they were leading us.

We did understand
that we were fleeing

from the Russians,
heading for Germany.

After the first kilometer,
women began to fall.

Whoever found it hard to
walk at that quick pace

or who stood to rest
was shot right away.

There were moments
of despair when I thought

of asking those escorting us
to kill me,

but at those same moments,
I would see flashes

of rocket barrages in the sky
and hear the roar of aircraft,

and these inspired me
with the will to live.

So I'm talking now
about the 18th of April.

The Americans was in the process
of capturing Leipzig.

My mother stayed behind
with the sick prisoners.

The SS are on the way
to kill them...

and they decided to escape
with the sick people,

who could not walk,

and then when it became dark,
they actually carried

them by hand.

This was the night
between 18th and 19th of April.

They saved the lives
of about 140 prisoners,

sick prisoners,

and this was my
mother's liberation day.