(tense, sombre music)
Downloaded from YTS.MX
NARRATOR: Auschwitz. A place where humanity was extinguished,
Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX
and the unimaginable became reality.
A symbol of suffering, cruelty, and loss.
In the shadow of Auschwitz, the echoes of anguish still persist.
- Sorry to tell you,
but your parents and your sister are burning right now.
- (via translator) I don't remember smelling anything,
because I was already living in that smoke.
(gunshot)
- (via translator) You start asking yourself, why, why, why?
NARRATOR: This place witnessed the unthinkable,
absorbing the pain of millions.
- (via translator) Many people did not live to see the liberation.
They died of hunger, of exhaustion, from the cold.
- (via translator) They had no strength to laugh
or to enjoy the fact that some other army had come in.
These were people in apathy.
NARRATOR: 80 years ago, the gates of Auschwitz opened,
revealing the darkest depths of human cruelty.
But what really happened in those final months before liberation?
Did the prisoners, already trapped in a nightmare,
sense a shift in the air, a glimmer of distant freedom?
What did they feel when the gates of Auschwitz opened to freedom?
And what about the people living nearby?
What did the liberators witness?
We will hear the testimonies of those who were present on the day
of the Liberation of Auschwitz.
- They were after the Germans. They couldn't care less about us.
- (via translator) I only remember how those corpses were laying there.
NARRATOR: Where were the perpetrators?
- (via translator) My hatred towards the Jews is too great.
- (via translator) I still suffer from it today.
I can't forget it. I think about it every day.
NARRATOR: We will uncover what happened in the months
leading up to January 27th, 1945.
The day of the Liberation of Auschwitz.
With the help of witness testimonies and unique archives,
we will shed new light on the story of how Auschwitz was liberated.
Counting down to that moment of freedom.
Step by step,
we will uncover the final moments of the darkest chapter in history.
- When the Soviets arrive at Birkenau,
they get there almost by chance.
- (via translator) We had no idea at that time what it was really like,
what kind of camp it was.
NARRATOR: Among the many survivor testimonies,
we will also hear from those still with us today.
Through their living voices,
we will learn about the days before the camp's liberation.
This is not just a story of suffering.
It is a story of strength.
A story of those who fought to survive
and those who fought to end the terror.
This is a story of liberation.
(low, sombre music)
NARRATOR: May 15th, 1944.
257 days until the Liberation.
This date marks the beginning of one of the most dramatic
and swift extermination campaigns carried out by the Nazis,
with Auschwitz at its heart.
In 1944, over 700,000 Jews lived in Hungary.
Fearing a possible surrender to the Allies,
Hitler ordered the occupation of the country on March 19th.
Adolf Eichmann, a key architect of the "Final Solution"
initiated in 1942,
was sent to oversee the deportations.
(tense, sombre music)
From May to July, around 440,000 Jews were sent to Auschwitz,
where most were murdered in gas chambers.
Auschwitz's capacity was pushed to its limit.
Every day, trains arrived from Hungary,
filled with women, men, children, and the elderly.
The SS worked tirelessly to process the new prisoners.
(speaking in German)
(low, tense music)
- "We executed about 400,000 Hungarian Jews alone
at Auschwitz in the summer of 1944."
That is all true, witness?
- (via translator) What was horrible was precisely the fact
that they took all these achievements of human culture...
..to produce death.
(whistle hoots)
- (via translator) They told us they were resettling us.
Our turn came and they piled us into the railroad cars.
The train was packed.
80 or 90 people in a single railroad car.
NARRATOR: This process of death had been going on continuously
for years.
(low, tense music)
- (via translator) I don't know if you know the ramp at Birkenau,
but there is a gate there, through which the train enters.
- (via translator) This is the topographical plan of Birkenau.
I made it 80 years ago.
This is the ramp.
This is 900 metres and here are the crematoria.
NARRATOR: 226 days until the Liberation of the camp.
The Nazis continued their vile work of death...
..while for the prisoners, only faint hopes of survival remained.
- (via translator) We looked out from these four little windows,
we had to see outside.
We saw barbed wire and barracks,
then we heard about a hundred Germans arriving,
accompanied by these shepherd dogs,
barking precise, barbaric orders in German.
- When we got to Auschwitz and the train doors opened.
The German soldiers, shouting, Raus, Raus, and schnell, schnell.
- Schnell.
- (via translator) Raus, Schnelle, Verfluchte.
They flung open the sealed doors of the boxcars.
They threw us down like sacks of potatoes.
- Thousands of people were standing there, pushing, shoving, crying.
It was the most confusing place that I can remember.
- There were dogs barking, and it was a sea of humanity, really.
- (via translator) It was Hell.
NARRATOR: This is the infamous selection process.
With a simple movement of the hand,
SS officers decided the life and death of the deportees.
- Everybody's in total shock.
We absolutely no idea what's going to happen to us,
hardly have time to say goodbye to my mother and two sisters
because they are separating the women from the men.
- (via translator) That's where our selection was.
Some sort of officer who was showing here, here, here.
- (via translator) Then came the order:
"Women on one side, and men on the other side."
My father, who raised this beautiful girl,
but what will they do to this daughter of mine,
whom I raised, who is like a flower.
He keeps her.
Three of them, three Germans came to tear her from his hands;
they beat him mercilessly.
This man. How can I forget this?
- They had no idea that most of the people are going to be ending up
in a gas chamber the same day.
(low, tense music)
- (via translator) Those who were fit for work, went to work,
while those who were not fit, were immediately sent to the gas.
(tense, dramatic music)
NARRATOR: On one side, an atrocious temporary survival;
on the other side, immediate death.
For the weakest: children, the elderly, pregnant women,
there was no hope.
- And we are lined up five in a row and start marching toward this line
of SS officers, who are basically playing God.
And my question was: how come that my father went to one side.
- I realised that my father and my two older sisters were not with us.
They disappeared in the crowd.
Never ever did I see them again.
(low, tense music)
- (via translator) And at one point, I saw a signpost.
"zur Sauna"
meaning to bathe, to sauna.
- I remember myself...
..going to the showers and having to...
..to stand outside naked in the cold.
So it was always a question of, would I be coming back?
NARRATOR: The deportees were led into the gas chambers
in groups of up to 2,000 people at a time.
The doors of the gas chambers were sealed,
while Zyklon B was dropped from above.
On contact with the air, the chemicals evaporated,
turning into a deadly poisonous gas.
NARRATOR: Occasionally someone would still be breathing,
but the SS would finish off these innocents with a gunshot.
(gunshot)
(low, sombre music)
NARRATOR: There are still 202 days until the Liberation of the camp.
Far too distant to ignite any hope among the prisoners.
In Auschwitz, the atmosphere of terror and madness,
perpetuated by the Nazis, still reigned.
- We arrived at Auschwitz and we were taken to one of the barracks
and tattooed, got numbers.
NARRATOR: Those who survived the selection
were taken to overcrowded barracks and forced to live
in inhuman conditions,
with the constant fear of death looming over them.
- (via translator) These little diagrams,
each one is a barrack.
There are 19 in a row.
In each barrack were a minimum of 350 prisoners,
up to a maximum of 700.
NARRATOR: We should not think of Auschwitz
as a single concentration camp,
but rather as a vast complex of about 50 camps
spread over a large area.
The three main camps were Auschwitz I,
Auschwitz II (Birkenau)
and Auschwitz III (Monowitz).
Established by the Germans in spring 1940,
the camp initially targeted Polish political prisoners
and intellectuals.
By 1942,
it became also a central site for the extermination of European Jews.
Other groups from many nations, including Romani communities,
and Soviet prisoners of war, were also held there.
Many prisoners arrived at the camp without adequate clothing
and were often forced to wear the infamous striped uniforms
after being stripped of their personal belongings.
The conditions of these garments further contributed
to their dehumanisation
and the harsh living conditions they had to endure.
- There was a pile of jackets, blue and white striped jackets,
then pile of pants,
there was some rope and wire to hold up your pants,
a pair of wooden shoes, a little blue and white cap,
one dish, one cup and a spoon
and this was your worldly belongings now.
- These two girls, they tried to tell us
what on earth this place was.
And I said, well, what are they burning so late at night?
They said, well I told you, they are burning Jews.
Sorry to tell you,
but your parents and your sisters are burning right now.
(low, sombre music)
NARRATOR: At Auschwitz, prisoners had their heads shaved.
An act of dehumanisation...
..disguised as hygiene.
This process erased their identity...
..and even their hair was exploited by the Germans
for industrial purposes.
- (via translator) My mother came back from somewhere,
where they had herded them.
She was naked and had no hair on her head.
I asked her: And where are your scythes?
That means braids, that's what they were called.
But mom didn't answer anything, she just cried.
NARRATOR: Many of the prisoners would die from exhaustion,
starvation, or disease.
To the Nazis, they were nothing more than a mass of slaves
to be exploited until the last drop of life was drained from them.
- (via translator) The deaths of prisoners are not only condoned,
but it is actually part of the system...
..be it through malnutrition,
be it through the exposure to wind and weather
with inadequate clothing...
..or inhuman labour,
which also leads to complete exhaustion.
NARRATOR: The SS at Auschwitz held absolute power
over the lives of prisoners,
deciding who would live or die.
They conducted selections for the gas chambers,
carried out summary executions,
subjected prisoners to brutal medical experiments,
and used psychological terror to maintain control.
This authority enforced a constant and dehumanising regime of fear.
- (via translator) It was an entire process
which led one to regard the other not as a person,
but as a number.
(low, tense music)
- (via translator) An SS man could basically do whatever he wanted.
He could take a prisoner's cap, throw it further away,
tell him to go for it,
and when the prisoner moved away to take that cap,
shoot him under the pretext that he was trying to escape.
- I remember the guards hitting people.
- Some prisoners were taken out of the group...
..and lined up against a ditch...
..and shot.
- (via translator) The main camp of Auschwitz was like a small town
with its gossiping and chatting.
There was a canteen, there was a cinema,
there was a theatre with regular performances.
There was a sports club of which I was a member.
It was all fun and entertainment, just like a small town.
Alcohol played a big role at meals.
Throughout Auschwitz, there was no discipline.
We went to bed completely wasted.
It was like a partisan camp, there were no guards posted in Birkenau.
Going to bed with a pistol,
if someone was too lazy to turn off the light...
..we just shot it out.
Nobody said anything about the bullet holes in the walls.
(glass shatters)
- When you look at Auschwitz,
when you look all those concentration camps,
it's no exaggeration to say they were real hells on Earth.
- (via translator) You are left with anxiety and fear.
And from then on, it just stays with you,
but it is necessary to experience it yourself to believe it.
(low, sombre music)
NARRATOR: There is one word
that appears in numerous survivors' testimonies.
Apathy.
- (via translator) On the second day when you enter Auschwitz,
you begin to suffer from apathy.
And you don't give a damn about everything that happens around you.
Especially what happens to those close to you.
- (via translator) That hope was seen as something necessary
to still have the will to fight death at all.
So as not to fall completely into apathy.
NARRATOR: One of the most haunting images we have of the prisoners
in all Nazi concentration camps is that of the so-called 'Muselmanner.'
These are men, reduced to living shells,
completely apathetic and unresponsive to the world
around them.
Many of them no longer even remember their own names.
But it was hunger that represented the most horrific condition
at Auschwitz.
Italian survivor Primo Levi described it with these words:
"The Lager is hunger; we ourselves are hunger,
living hunger."
- (via translator) She was so weak, so sick.
Mom weighed 28 kilos in all, when she came out of the camp,
it was inhumane.
NARRATOR: August 1st, 1944.
180 days remain until the Liberation.
Warsaw rose up against the German occupation,
while the vanguard of the Soviet army stopped just a few kilometres
from the city.
- I was walking in a Warsaw street.
I can see a friend of mine.
He says: "Bolek, would you join the underground army?
(tense, dramatic music)
63 days we were fighting.
NARRATOR: The uprising is a cornerstone of Polish history,
symbolising the fight for freedom as insurgents bravely resisted
Nazi oppression for 63 days.
Ultimately, German forces prevailed, reducing Warsaw to rubble.
15,000 insurgents and 200,000 civilians perished,
while 13,000 inhabitants of the city were deported to Auschwitz.
The Polish population never surrendered to the Germans;
even in Auschwitz, an underground resistance network remained active.
- (via translator) In the beginning,
it was obviously a Polish resistance movement.
Because the majority were Polish prisoners, often,
moreover, with some military experience.
- When you look at the last period of the camp's existence,
there's this far greater cooperation
between the different resistance cells.
NARRATOR: Their task was mainly to provide medicine and food
and to exchange information with the outside word.
- (via translator) My brother, who was an electrician...
..worked in a company to Germans
and it was they who took the medicine for these prisoners.
And this medicine was again smuggled in by the Silesian priests.
- (via translator) And there it was just passed around amidst food.
My mother, mom's sister, my grandmother,
everyone took part in helping the prisoners of the camp.
There were SS guards who turned a blind eye,
when there was someone who delivered something under the fence,
food in particular.
NARRATOR: There was only so much the Polish resistance
and the population of Oswiecim could do to help,
but it was certainly instrumental in saving thousands of lives.
But above all,
the prisoners knew they were not alone in facing this hell.
NARRATOR: On the evening of August 2nd 1944,
179 days still separated the prisoners from liberation.
That night, the Nazis moved to liquidate the Roma camp.
(tense sombre music)
NARRATOR: The Romani people, also known as Roma or Sinti,
are a historically nomadic group who arrived in Europe centuries ago.
Long marginalised and misunderstood,
they endured generations of prejudice and persecution.
Under Nazi rule, this hatred turned deadly,
as the Roma were marked for extermination
alongside other targeted groups.
This night is tragically remembered
as the "Night of the Extermination of the Roma."
Almost all prisoners in the "Zigeunerlager,"
the section designated for the Roma, were taken to the gas chambers.
- The Gipsy camp was very close to our barrack,
and we could hear it. And the night was unbelievable.
(low, tense music)
- (via translator) The Germans had driven in with trucks.
They threw the children in them.
And if one of them jumped out,
they would hit him on the leg or the arm with a wooden club,
break it and throw him back in so that he couldn't jump out again.
he couldn't get out because his limb was just hanging there.
- They took the Gypsies.
And the gypsies were crying. They knew where they are taking them.
Full of screaming and crying.
- (via translator) Everybody defended themselves.
They bit, they scratched...
Defended themselves to the last.
NARRATOR: On that fateful night alone...
..approximately 4,200 lost their lives.
In total, around 23,000 Romani prisoners were held at Auschwitz,
with 21,000 perishing as a result of Nazi madness.
On August 19th, 1944...
..162 days still separated the prisoners
from the day of Liberation.
An Allied reconnaissance mission flew over occupied southern Poland.
The targets were the huge German industrial complexes
in the vicinity of Oswiecim,
the town which the Germans had renamed Auschwitz.
- The whole region, the whole complex of Auschwitz,
attracts many factories and many industries
and the bosses there thought these places were great
because they've got these railway lines leading to them.
NARRATOR: IG Farben, a large factory complex at Monowitz,
where forced labour from Auschwitz prisoners was exploited
under brutal conditions.
Krupp Steel Company used forced labour.
Siemens utilised concentration camp prisoners for the production
of electrical equipment.
Deutsche Ausrustungswerke.
This SS-run company produced furniture and other goods.
Topf & Sohne.
Responsible for supplying the crematoria and gas chamber
ventilation systems.
- There's lots of coal and other important raw materials around.
And better still, you've got this big supply of labour.
And that labour, of course, comes in the form of prisoners.
(low, tense music)
These people, make no mistake, are slaves,
and they're slaves being worked to death.
NARRATOR: For just a few marks a day,
these factories could exploit Auschwitz prisoners,
forcing them to work in their facilities.
The Nazi mindset was brutal and without conscience.
Prisoners were not seen as human beings.
- (via translator) Why should we use horses to pull ploughs
when we have enough women in the camp
who can pull the ploughs instead.
Besides, we have children in the camp.
We will use these children and we will use their strength.
- (via translator) So it's like a slave market.
As a consequence, we went to work and ended up for some time
at the carriage factory in Czechowice-Dziedzice,
to sort out the oil refinery.
It was owned by the Vacuum Oil Company,
but the workers were in the records of Auschwitz.
And so it is with the name, enrolment and registration.
- (via translator) They were building the factory
of IG Farben Industry.
And they were coming back carrying the corpses of their colleagues
who didn't survive it on their backs.
- There's this huge pile of steel rails.
Your shoulders are just totally, totally painful,
they start bleeding,
people are falling under the weight of the steel rails.
(low, sombre music)
You start seeing prisoners die
and this is terrible because I'm looking at the dead body
and I'm thinking this is somebody's father,
somebody's son, somebody's husband.
NARRATOR: On that clear August day,
the reconnaissance plane flew over the area around Oswiecim,
intent on carrying out its mission:
capturing sharp images of the industrial zone below.
(low, sombre music)
- But when that plane gets back, what's revealed is something
very new and very different...
..because there's this other complex,
and it's about seven kilometres away.
And what those photos reveal
is the presence of the most sinister Nazi death camp of them all.
NARRATOR: Barracks, barbed wire fences,
buildings with huge chimneys.
- (via translator) Then there was the bombing of those chemical plants
in Blachownia, in Oswiecim.
(tense, dramatic music)
The planes that flew were preceded by reconnaissance planes,
which were throwing these so-called "zlotkys".
This was aluminium which simply interfered with radar pulses.
There were a lot of these zlotkys, these were the only toys we had.
- There are many people today who are wondering
why was Auschwitz never bombed?
Why couldn't you bomb the railway line?
NARRATOR: These questions echo in the history of Auschwitz.
For already at that time,
there were reports on the crimes being committed at Auschwitz;
written and published by prisoners who had escaped from Auschwitz.
- (via translator) How effective would that have been?
We know that the war industry, the service-related industry
and the entire industrial or logistical front line
was a pretty well-functioning German machine.
So here I have some doubts
as to how effective these raids would have been.
NARRATOR: There may have been other strategic priorities,
political pressures,
or even a lack of coordination with the Soviets.
Perhaps the intelligence was incomplete.
But one thing remains undeniable,
no one at the time could have fully grasped the scale
of the unimaginable tragedy unfolding at Auschwitz.
- Nothing in Auschwitz ever reminded me
of human existence...
..but that pilot flying over there,
was the one hope I had to hang onto.
NARRATOR: These photos, archived and forgotten,
would later resurface as evidence of what the world failed
to recognise at the time.
They captured Auschwitz at the height of its deadly efficiency:
visible from the air, but tragically misunderstood.
NARRATOR: On October 7th, 1944.
113 days remained until the camp's liberation.
At Auschwitz, the Sonderkommando prisoners rose up
in a desperate act of rebellion against SS men.
(tense, dramatic music)
They were the prisoners forced to work in the gas chambers
and crematoria, eyewitnesses to the Nazi extermination,
who feared they would be murdered to hide the evidence of the atrocities.
(low, sombre music)
- (via translator) One girl came, I don't know where from,
and she started talking German to me:
"I know I'm being taken, here is the end of my life".
I said : "That's not true, you take a shower and get out to work.
I didn't tell her the truth. What could I say?
You are going to die?
- The Nazis think is that they've just completely subjugated
the prisoner's will
and they really don't think that all these deportees,
all these prisoners, have the strength,
both physically and morally, to organise a revolt.
NARRATOR: But the Sonderkommandos still have the strength
to rebel against their fate.
- (via translator) There was already some discussion
within the Sonderkommando.
How to carry out such an action?
- (via translator) They were mainly young men,
almost all Jews from different transports,
primarily strong, young men.
- (via translator) And those members who came from Poland
made it a goal to escape.
Whereas those who came from Hungary or Yugoslavia, for example,
for them, the purpose of the uprising
was to destroy the extermination machine.
NARRATOR: Four women were fundamental
in the Sonderkommando uprising,
their names are: Roza Robota, Ala Gertner,
Estera Wajcblum and Regina Safirsztajn.
- It took them maybe 12 months.
Little by little, they smuggled the dynamite powder,
to the men.
Powder by powder. It took them a long time.
NARRATOR: On 7th of October, the uprising began.
The Sonderkommandos, armed only with poor tools,
attacked the guards.
- (via translator) One called Isack,
he was hitting the German with the hammer on the back of his head
and the Germans started shooting.
NARRATOR: Using stolen gunpowder,
the Sonderkommandos set fire to Crematorium 4,
destroying one of the death machines forever.
- At 3 in the morning one day,
we see flames coming from the Crematorium...
..and we didn't know what it was.
The only thing we knew is, in that morning, you know,
you try to get out
and maybe get rid of the camp and go.
And they couldn't do it, because the SS were there.
- (via translator) The Germans came,
and they caught us immediately.
We didn't manage to do anything.
- (via translator) It could not have been otherwise,
after all the Sonderkommando prisoners
had practically no weapons except for their work tools.
Several hundred Sonderkommando prisoners were shot
after the uprising.
- (via translator) I saw the SS men with my own eyes,
they put a bullet in their heads.
- And they killed 600 of them...
..and the morning we had to put them in the oven ourselves.
- (via translator) Well, at least we had a feeling that we did something,
anyway we had nothing to lose.
NARRATOR: The Sonderkommando uprising ended in bloodshed,
but hope still lingered in the hearts of the prisoners,
fuelled by the Red Army cannons that were unleashing the offensive.
(German broadcast)
(tense, dramatic sting)
On November 25th, 1944,
63 days remained until liberation.
The SS, under the direct orders from Himmler,
began the dismantling of the gas chambers.
In Poland, the Soviets had stalled,
but were advancing on other parts of the Eastern Front.
The Nazis knew that time was running out
and they had to eliminate the evidence of their crimes
at Auschwitz.
At the height of the deportations,
around 10,000 Jews a day were murdered in Auschwitz.
Where did all this madness originate?
How did the Nazi extermination methods evolve?
To understand this,
we must go back in time, to the origin of evil.
(dark music)
- (via translator) The persecution and murder of the Jews
by National Socialist Germany took place in several stages.
A basic prerequisite was of course rampant and radical anti-Semitism,
whose roots go back at least to the 19th century
and which, of course, can be found in Hitler's book Mein Kampf.
- (via translator) We were convinced by our worldview
that we had been betrayed by the entire world
and that there was a great conspiracy of the Jews against us.
NARRATOR: A few years after the publication of Mein Kampf...
..Hitler was able to put his murderous follies into practice.
The climax of this hatred occurred...
..on the 30th of January 1939,
when Hitler delivered a solemn speech in front of the Reichstag,
announcing the destruction of the Jewish race.
NARRATOR: During the course of the war,
the Nazis began to realise the murderous plans of their Fuhrer.
- (via translator) The first means were the police task forces
that carried the mass shootings of the Polish and Jewish population.
- (via translator) Try to imagine there is a ditch
with people on one side and behind them, soldiers.
I only thought, aim carefully so that you hit properly.
That was my thought.
That was us, standing behind, the soldiers, and we were shooting.
And those who were hit fell down into the ditch.
My hatred towards the Jews was too great.
My thinking on this point is unjust. I admit this.
NARRATOR: For many SS troops,
the psychological burden of shooting hundreds, thousands of men,
women and children was too great.
- (via translator) I will not forget it for the rest of my life.
The faces are still in front of me.
This is the big crime.
And from then on, the SS was no longer an elite unit for me.
The next day I had to go to the SS commissioner and I said:
'Be careful, I joined the Waffen SS because it was an elite force.
I'm not a murderer who kills women and children'.
And he says: 'Take it easy.
We know it too, it is an unpleasant task,
but it must be done. The world has to be rid of the Jews.
NARRATOR: During Barbarossa, 1941, the Germans started to murder
thousands of Jews in executions.
So they wanted to find a more effective, cheaper alternative.
This is why they thought of using gas.
- It's much easier, psychologically, to gas them.
And one of the ways in which that done initially
was actually to make big vans or small lorries
into these very basic, rudimentary gas chambers.
NARRATOR: These were vehicles equipped with a hermetically sealed
compartment, where exhaust gases were channelled inside
when the vehicle was in motion.
But where to throw the innocent bodies of the executed?
NARRATOR: The next step in German engineering was the gas chambers.
Topf & Sohne was one of the main companies involved
in the construction of crematoria throughout the Reich.
To optimise efficiency,
gas chambers and crematoria were often interconnected.
- (via translator) I don't remember smelling anything,
because I was already living in that smoke.
- (via translator) So many people died in the war, not only Jews.
So many things happened. So many were shot. So many burned.
If I thought about that, I wouldn't have wanted to live a minute longer.
- (via translator) I still have nightmares about it to this day.
I see those women, the men and everything,
and how they ran around there until they died.
(low, sombre music)
- (via translator) So contradictory that the ideals that people had...
..that they imagined for Germany, for its future...
..were completely turned into the opposite.
Unfortunately, I still suffer from it today.
I can't forget it.
I think about it every day. Every day.
NARRATOR: In December, 1944...
..56 days remain until liberation,
the tide had turned against Nazi Germany.
Facing an Allied victory and the Soviet advance,
the regime took desperate measures to cover up Holocaust atrocities,
especially in the camps.
- (via translator) They were perhaps aware
that this would be used against them.
As very specific individuals who were steeped
in this greatest murder in history.
- (via translator) They knew that what they did in Auschwitz
was wrong, that they had to hide this crime.
NARRATOR: Despite their efforts,
the Nazis could not fully erase the evidence.
Soviet forces found overwhelming proof of genocide in the camps,
including remains, personal belongings,
and survivor testimonies.
- (via translator) That's what mom said,
the Germans burned the barracks and all the documents.
- (via translator) Perhaps only 5, 7, 8%
of what the camp chancellery had created remained.
- (via translator) Only one page was found.
Historians handed me just a sheet of paper
and there is a list of children.
And there just before the last name, is my camp number and my surname.
(soft sombre music)
NARRATOR: January 12th, 1945...
..just 15 days until liberation.
The Red Army launched its unstoppable offensive
on the Vistula River,
a crucial strategic manoeuvre designed to drive the Nazis
out of Western Poland and advance into Germany.
The Soviets had an overwhelming force, three times that of Germany.
- You have the Soviets carrying out this major offensive
and that's gonna take them as far as the river Vistula.
(distant explosion) (low, tense music)
Actually right into the heart of the whole area,
the whole region of Auschwitz.
- (via translator) The Vistula-Oder Offensive
was supposed to take place there.
We found out that on the way there were concentration camps.
- (via translator) They were firing cannons across the sky at Auschwitz.
Through the upper windows you could always see the stretch
of the Katyusha at night.
NARRATOR: Thousands of Soviet tanks pierced the German defences,
advancing tens of kilometres a day.
All that remained for the Nazis was to escape.
January 17th, 1945.
Only 10 days before the liberation.
Auschwitz entered one of its most harrowing chapters:
the camp's evacuation.
With Soviet forces advancing,
the Nazis sought to erase evidence of their genocide,
but tens of thousands of prisoners remained,
the most damning proof of these crimes.
- (via translator) The Liberation is now approaching,
but we don't hope for it.
I didn't expect to see this liberation.
- (via translator) Firstly, they did not want to leave
the approaching Soviets with witnesses
who could testify against the camp personnel.
There was also the calculation of using the prisoners as hostages
if the Americans or Soviets were confronted.
NARRATOR: At that time, over 55,000 prisoners remained in Auschwitz.
The Nazis conducted one final, brutal selection.
On one side, those too weak to walk
marked for death, to eliminate any witnesses.
On the other,
prisoners still able to walk who were forced to take part in
what became known as the Death Marches.
(tense, dramatic music)
- (via translator) Then, all of a sudden,
one day there was an assembly.
A sudden roll call.
- And then all of a sudden, at one point,
we were asked to...
..to line up.
- We didn't know what's going to happen?
Are we going to be freed? Are we going to be shot?
- I remember the feeling because it was probably
the first time I really felt fear,
an instinct to fear,
like an animal knows when it's going to die.
There's something about this action that terrified me.
(low, sombre music)
- (via translator) Then they decide to put me on the death march.
They line us up in rows of five and make us move forward.
I'm staggering now,
barely able to keep myself upright.
My mind isn't working, and if it does,
I go on only for a few metres,
a few kilometres, freezing to death, frigid, 25 below zero.
How can you go on at only 23 kilos?
I manage two and a half kilometres.
I fall to the ground and wait for the final blow.
Yes, because at the back there are these killers with precise orders
to deliver the last shot,
so you don't survive to testify to the Russians about everything
they had created at the death factory in Birkenau.
I had fallen. I was waiting for my final blow.
- Every time somebody fell down, another one was shot.
- (via translator) Anyone who stopped for a moment,
they shot him in the head.
(low, sombre music)
- It was a very cold night, and we had to keep marching.
Anybody that stopped or fell out of line was shot, and that was it.
We just kept going.
- And then there were motorcycles came around
who picked up the dead ones.
NARRATOR: Death Marches,
there is no other term to describe this atrocity.
The prisoners were forced to march to Gliwice and Wodzislaw
from where trains departed and some of the prisoners were taken
to concentration camps such as Gross-Rosen,
Buchenwald, Theresienstadt, Sachsenhausen.
Packed into overcrowded wagons with no food, water or sanitation,
many died from starvation or suffocation.
Damage to rail lines often forced prisoners off trains
to continue on foot,
with those who died left along the way.
The Nazis were brutal and merciless.
Any trace of humanity had long vanished,
and during the march, there was no pity for the prisoners.
- (via translator) I just remember how those corpses were laying there.
They did not have the strength to go further,
so they started falling over.
So here, these areas are soaked in the blood of these martyrs.
- (via translator) Two prisoners...
..did something unimaginable.
I didn't expect any help.
In those conditions,
they barely have the strength to help themselves.
They spotted a corner with a pile of bodies,
left me there and moved on.
Then I dragged myself along.
There were steps leading into one of those brick buildings at Auschwitz.
I went inside that brick building to find some shelter.
Then, there, I lost consciousness.
NARRATOR: Such cruelty is unimaginable.
Thousands upon thousands of exhausted human beings
dragged themselves through the snow like automatons.
The roads were littered with the bodies of women, men,
and children, victims of Nazi brutality.
- (via translator) But the prisoners were so bowed down,
they were bowing forward with the remnants of their strength.
- (via translator) My mother also left then with that Death March.
For 60 kilometres, they walked in very difficult winter conditions.
And things, such as cannibalism, were happening there.
And I ask her: "And you?"
And she replied: "You see I'm alive. Don't ask me about it".
NARRATOR: We have no firm estimates,
but for scholars, between 9,000 and 15,000 people died
during the Death Marches.
A humanity lost because of a hatred that cannot be understood.
At the same time as the prisoners,
many Nazis also began evacuating Auschwitz
to avoid capture by the Soviets.
Richard Baer, the last commandant of Auschwitz,
along with numerous SS officers,
fled the camp comfortably seated in their cars.
Among them was Josef Mengele,
the man responsible for horrific experiments on prisoners.
Especially children and twins.
Mengele today is the symbol of how medical science can be used
as a method of horror.
But Mengele was only one of many, many criminal doctors at Auschwitz.
- You've got other names, you've got Kramer, you've got Hirt,
you've got Kaschub, you've got Entress,
you've got Vetter, you've got Wirths,
you've got Klein, Rode, Konig, Capesius, Weber, Fischer, Thilo.
NARRATOR: Not only were the officers fleeing Auschwitz...
..but the entire Nazi network was in retreat.
Non-commissioned officers, soldiers, guards,
and civilian personnel were dispersing.
Among them were the young supervisors of the women's barracks,
Irma Grese and Elisabeth Volkenrath,
responsible for unspeakable atrocities.
January 20th, 1945...
..just one week before liberation.
The skies above Auschwitz were shattered by the deafening
roar of explosions.
The Nazis blew up crematoria II and III.
After which they continued to try and erase the evidence
of their crimes.
It was a fight against time, because the Soviets were coming.
- (via translator) And we hear the rumble of the crematoria
and gas chambers being blown up,
the remnants of which are there today.
(sinister music)
- (via translator) First of all,
it is a very moving object that shows everything
that went on in the gas chambers.
We see the peephole that the guards used to look through
to see whether everyone was already dead.
It is the hard evidence that there were gas chambers.
- (via translator) They blew up the biggest extermination machines.
They burned the camp archives.
- (via translator) They blew up those crematoria and gas chambers.
They tried to obliterate the traces of their criminal activities...
..but they didn't manage to destroy everything,
there were corpses next to each barrack.
There was a mass grave, but they didn't even have time
to throw them in.
NARRATOR: 21st January, just six days before liberation.
(tense, dramatic music)
Prisoners observed a change that increases their hope.
The guard posts were abandoned.
Only a few SS patrols remained.
Most of the Auschwitz personnel had fled,
along with the Death March convoys.
The remaining prisoners were utterly devoid of energy.
Left with no other option than to wait for the Soviets to arrive.
About 40 kilometres separate the Soviets from Auschwitz,
with their advance almost unimpeded.
- (via translator) The Germans, afraid of being encircled,
began their retreat southeast, towards Silesia.
After that we were ordered to continue moving forward.
NARRATOR: 23rd January 1945.
Four days before the Liberation.
The Soviet troops were advancing westward toward Oswiecim.
At the same time, flames engulfed Auschwitz,
as the Nazis burnt "Kanada",
the warehouse complex for items confiscated from prisoners,
clothes, shoes, valuables, and other personal belongings.
Hundreds of thousands of these items have came into our possession,
and bear witness to the murderous madness of Nazism.
On that same day,
the Red Army finally reached the outskirts of Oswiecim.
Now, only a few kilometres separated the Soviets from the town
and the Auschwitz camps.
- (via translator) I come to my house and on the threshold
sits a soldier, who has a rifle.
He shows me a seat next to him.
So I sit down, but you know, he pulls out a bayonet, a knife...
..pulls out some bread and pulls out some piece of pork fat.
- (via translator) There were these white figures
walking around in hoods.
And the fact that they were white made me curious
and their weapons were pointed either downwards or forwards,
they weren't pointing upwards as with the Germans.
- (via translator) We don't know the full composition
of those brigades which passed through Oswiecim, Auschwitz,
through Birkenau...
..but we do know the composition of that army which marched
more or less from Krakow towards Wroclaw.
(dramatic music)
And there just over 40%,
something like 41% were Russians, and about 39% were Ukrainians.
And that gives this dramatic context to what we are seeing today.
(low, tense music)
NARRATOR: 26th January, 1945.
One day to go until the liberation of Auschwitz.
The SS blew up crematorium V.
It was the Nazis' last desperate attempt to erase the evidence
of the extermination perpetrated.
But they were running out of time.
We are now on the eve of the camp's Liberation
and thousands of prisoners are desperately waiting.
- You have around 7,000 prisoners waiting to be released
and the conditions they're in are absolutely terrible.
- I was really in bad shape.
I had all sort of scabs and boils on my body.
- (via translator) And us, the children in that barracks,
were left alone.
NARRATOR: Only the weakest and sickest were left in Auschwitz.
And their condition worsened day by day.
- (via translator) For the last ten days or so,
they basically had no food left.
Many people did not live to see the Liberation.
They died of hunger and exhaustion, and from the cold too.
- (via translator) I had reached January 1945,
practically giving up my soul.
I weighed 23 kilos; I was a skeleton.
Striped pyjamas, a striped hat,
a pair of wooden clogs is all that's covering your body,
just a skeleton, skin and bones.
You stand up, you hold on, and say,
"Samy, you have to make it."
But how? How can you?
NARRATOR: Whole parts of Auschwitz were left unguarded
and the prisoners who still had the strength to move,
began to desperately search for food.
- There were storage facilities in Auschwitz that were robbed
or basically opened up by the prisoners.
- I think a lot of people got themselves very ill and died
as a result of over eating, eating on such empty stomachs.
NARRATOR: Hunger had haunted the prisoners from their first day
in Auschwitz,
and now, by an atrocious twist of fate,
food was finally proving to be a fatal poison
in the hands of the prisoners.
- (via translator) We raided the warehouses etc.,
I found a notebook and titled it diary.
Oleg Mandic's diary.
And that's it. The writing.
The notebook.
The value of this diary is that it comes from Auschwitz.
NARRATOR: Saturday 27th of January, 1945.
It is a cold day and snow covers the Auschwitz camps.
Some prisoners trudge between the barracks in search of food,
blankets and medicine.
Many others lie helpless in their straw beds and await death
because they are too weak and sick.
The few remaining Germans no longer care about the prisoners.
Some leave the camp with the very last convoys...
..and others are forced to stay and fight.
The Soviets advance cautiously through the snow...
..following the railway line.
- What the soviets do next is to send scouts to examine the camp.
And once they've done that,
you then have all these troops from the 100th Infantry Division
liberating Auschwitz 3. Just before noon.
And after they liberated the town and then make a way to the outskirt
of Auschwitz II, Birkenau.
(low, sombre music)
NARRATOR: The Soviets do not know what they are about to discover.
For the soldiers, who quickly advance through the snow,
that endless expanse of barracks, fences and watchtowers...
..it is nothing more than another Nazi prison camp.
- (via translator) We received an order to be careful,
not to shoot, not to open fire
because there were people imprisoned in those camps.
But we were still ready for combat.
So we took Auschwitz almost without fighting.
We saw that barbed wire that the Germans made electric.
- (via translator) We had no idea at that time what it was really like.
What kind of camp it was?
- (via translator) We saw barracks
and the smell of the dead still lingered in the air.
NARRATOR: At Birkenau,
the Soviet forces met minimal resistance from the Germans..
Following brief exchanges of gunfire between 3 and 5 PM
on the afternoon of January 27th, 1945,
Red Army soldiers reached the entrance of Auschwitz I,
now recognised as the iconic gate.
- (via translator) Until the end of the war,
I worked as a film cameraman.
We were given the task of filming the camp
by the head of our film crew.
What I saw and filmed there was the most horrible thing
I ever saw.
NARRATOR: In front of them stand 'living ghosts':
individuals devoid of strength...
..devoid of a smile...
..their dull eyes staring into emptiness...
..and their protruding bones barely covered by fragile skin.
- I remember standing at the wires
and watching the Russian army coming in.
And we couldn't believe it. No more Nazis over us.
And my feelings were, now what?
What's going to be now?
- (via translator) It's clear that someone wanted someone else
to stay alive.
I have always wondered, why me?
It's a question you ask yourself, but never find an answer to.
- Was I there? Was it truth?
Was I really there in that time, in such places
and lived through all these things.
It can't be. It can't be, but it is.
(sombre dramatic music)
- When I was liberated, I didn't have a stone,
a grave to go to talk to my mother,
to cry, to tell her what happened.
- And although the Germans were able to take away all my physical,
almost everything, except my life.
They left me alive.
You know, but whatever could be removed from my body,
they removed from my body.
They couldn't remove my soul.
NARRATOR: These historic images were filmed several days after
January 27th, 1945,
by cameraman and Red Army officer Alexander Vorontsov.
The footage captures a moment of liberation,
but does not fully represent the deep and complex emotions felt
by the prisoners.
While Vorontsov's film evokes an image of unbridled joy,
survivors' testimonies reveal a far more nuanced reality.
A mosaic of fear, numbness...
..hope, and, finally, joy.
Over time,
Vorontsov's footage would be widely used as Red Army propaganda,
shaping the narrative of liberation.
- (via translator) They were all standing there.
All in uniforms.
Just eyes, just eyes.
It was very, very terrible.
- (via translator) I don't think even our army command
had an idea of the scale of the crimes committed
in this largest of concentration camps.
These memories will be with me for the rest of my life.
- (via translator) We saw a huge pile of human waste,
clothes, shoes, braids, hair,
remains of human bones.
I have a feeling of hatred when I think about Auschwitz.
- (via translator) They were practically skeletons,
covered with skin, their eyes staring blankly.
- (via translator) I realised they were prisoners and not workers.
So I called out: You are free, come out!
- (via translator) I only remember that they had a star on the cap.
- (via translator) There was joy, such joy, seemingly simple,
as if they didn't believe it yet.
There was freedom outside the gate, and they didn't believe it yet.
- These people had lacked any emotion, at that point.
- I did understand the joy that something good had happened.
However, by that time, I myself was quite ill,
and I had been just lying on the floor.
I could not even get up, at that point.
NARRATOR: When we listen to all these testimonies,
we can truly grasp the wide range of experiences
the prisoners went through.
Some were able to celebrate, while others had no strength left,
and still others were consumed by complete apathy.
- (via translator) And these were people who were
very, very emaciated.
And some of these people couldn't-
they didn't have the strength to laugh or to enjoy the fact
that some other army had come in.
They were people in apathy.
- They've been totally dehumanised.
- (via translator) When I opened my eyes,
I saw a Russian woman soldier massaging me,
covering me with a blanket.
And then I would drift back into my journey toward death.
- (via translator) They looked at our soldiers with fear in their eyes
because they didn't know that these were Soviet soldiers...
..liberators,
and so they were expecting the worst, death.
We explained to them who we were and why we came here
because they did not understand who we were and why we came.
- (via translator) Two women came up to me,
one of them started clapping her hands and the other was just happy.
One of them gave me a kiss.
- (via translator) A person who lived many months,
sometimes more than a year, in constant anxiety...
..these were dramatic moments for these survivors.
It was only slowly coming to them that they were really free.
- (via translator) Both women and men would cry.
Some began to smile, a little, through the tears.
- (via translator) We entered one of the barracks, it was for women.
We saw excrement and blood on the floor,
and there was a terrible fetid smell.
It turned out there were decomposing corpses in the corner.
NARRATOR: The Red Army soldiers were not prepared for this hell.
With the limited means they had, they tried to help the prisoners,
but how do you help those returning from hell?
- The tragedy of it was that even when we were liberated,
we were not suddenly fed of the food we needed.
- (via translator) There was total atrophy,
just bone and skin from all the hunger.
Many had tuberculosis, many were starved beyond recognition.
Every other one had a stomach ulcer, rather multiple ulcers.
It's because they hadn't eaten anything. Total avitaminosis.
NARRATOR: The local population of Oswiecim had also rushed to help
the prisoners and this contribution would be essential
for the survival of many.
- (via translator) Later on, hospitals were established for sick.
A lot of people took children from Auschwitz into their homes.
- A Polish lady who actually came into the camp, picked me up,
put me on her shoulders, and took me to her home.
- (via translator) A woman came up to me.
I hugged her and felt such warmth.
And she asked me: "Will you come with me?"
I will.
And I would go with anyone who reached out to me.
NARRATOR: 27th January, 1945 was Liberation Day at Auschwitz,
but unfortunately this date did not end the suffering of the prisoners.
About 20 percent of them did not survive.
This is Auschwitz's final atrocious blow.
- (via translator) They were so exhausted that many of them
were dying within a few months or a short period after the liberation.
(soft music)
NARRATOR: Over the following months, those prisoners left Auschwitz,
and the last child to leave the camp was Oleg Mandic.
- (via translator) For so long, for so many years,
I have accumulated 91 of them.
I introduce myself as Oleg Mandic,
the last child of Auschwitz.
NARRATOR: After Oleg's departure, no prisoners remained at Auschwitz.
Over time, Auschwitz transformed into a site of remembrance,
where the emblematic gates of the camp remain open to knowledge
and the preservation of memory.
Remembrance and awareness are duties we have,
so that the terrible tragedy of Auschwitz is never repeated.
We and future generations ought to preserve this memory
that we did not experience, but which we cannot forget.
(tense, dramatic music)
- (via translator) This number, when I hold it tight,
I feel: hang on, Sami.
- (via translator) I would rather talk about
how to help memory develop in the new generation.
How to help these new people,
who have their new means of communication...
their new problems,
just to transform this knowledge from the past
into such living memory.
- (via translator) The young people need me.
They need me.
They must know.
When I am no longer here, they will be,
and they will make sure this never happens again.
NARRATOR: What became of the Nazis who perpetrated these atrocities?
Did they pay the price they deserved?
Did they ever comprehend that they had committed
the greatest crime against humanity?
There is another word forever linked to Auschwitz:
Justice.
But has justice truly been served?
LAWYER: "I received all orders for carrying out these mass executions
directly from RSHA."
Are those statements true and correct, witness?
NARRATOR: Commandant Hoss was executed in Poland
shortly after the liberation.
The first group of Auschwitz perpetrators was tried in Poland
in the 1940s.
But in Germany, only on December 20th, 1963,
the Frankfurt trial against Auschwitz criminals began,
bringing the Western public face-to-face
with the horrors of the Holocaust at Auschwitz.
Until today, many perpetrators went unpunished
or received very light sentences.
- The defendants stand accused of having implemented
the Nazi mass extermination programme
at Auschwitz concentration camp
in Poland, between 1940 and 1945.
They are charged with having participated in countless selections
on the Birkenau ramp,
having sent prisoners deemed sick or unfit for work
to the gas chambers...
..and having killed them with the deadly Zyklon B gas,
then burning their bodies.
Having killed an untold number of prisoners,
including many elderly people and children,
in the most horrific and unspeakable ways.
Having murdered newborns, killed children, and raped women.
Having shot prisoners of war,
94 men and 8 women were executed at the Black Wall
between Blocks 10 and 11.
Around 4,000 people were transported and killed in the gas chambers.
Having tortured some prisoners' genitals until death,
and having forced prisoners to engage in
relentless physical exercises until they died of heart failure.
Having hanged children and forced other prisoners to watch,
administered corporal punishments, whipped prisoners to death,
and compelled some prisoners to torture others.
The defendants are charged with having conducted
pseudo-scientific experiments on countless prisoners;
having drained prisoners' blood, forced them to test new drugs,
sterilised women through sadistic procedures,
and forced prisoners to drink poison just to observe how long it took
for them to die.
(testimony fades) (low, sombre music)
(music fades, ends)
- (via translator) My name is Stefania Wernik.
I was born in Auschwitz-Birkenau.
My mother told me that she was less than two months pregnant at the time
and she hid the pregnancy because if she had admitted to being pregnant,
the Germans would have simply sent her to the gas chambers immediately.
I am a child born in the very heart of hell,
but even from the darkness of hell, life and hope can emerge.
Today, I am a great-grandmother to 14 great-grandchildren.
Love always wins.
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