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In April 1945, camera crews with the
British and American armies entered the

Nazi death camps.

and filmed the horror they found there.

For decades, that film was stored in the
archives of the Imperial War Museum in

London.

The documentary was unfinished, with
missing soundtracks.

But the directors, including Alfred
Hitchcock, had developed a script to go

the pictures.

Tonight, Frontline presents that film
unedited, as close as possible to what

producers intended over a half century
ago.

They made it as a document to serve our
collective memory.

Eleven million people died in Nazi
Germany's death camps.

Six million were Jews.

In March 1933, 17 ,264

,296 Germans voted for the National
Socialist Party.

20 ,680 ,000 others cast their vote for
Democrats,

Communists, Christians, Socialists,
People's Party, etc., etc.

Lack of unity among these parties,
supposing the Nazis proved fatal.

The National Socialist Party was in
power.

They made many claims.

and many promises.

The German people had embarked on that
long, incredible journey that led

seemingly out of chaos to unprecedented
triumph.

Promise after promise had been
fulfilled.

Austria, 1938.

Czechoslovakia, 1938.

Poland, 1939.

Norway, Denmark, and France in quick
succession.

A place in the sun at last.

True, they had lost their trade unions
and a lot of books had been burned, but

it seemed a good sort of bargain.

One got to like being told what to do.

Having one's views prescribed,
especially if it meant a vista bright

promise of grandeur and conquest.

In the spring of 1945, the Allies
advancing into the heart of Germany came

Bergen -Belsen.

Neat and tidy orchards, well -stocked
farms lined the wayside, and the British

soldier did not fail to admire the place
and its inhabitants.

At least...

until he began to feel a smell.

It came from a concentration camp, a
waste ringed with barbed wire

and overlooked by watchtowers.

Coming in from the flowering
countryside, in spite of the frightful

things didn't seem so bad at first.

Children smiled through the barbed wire,
and women laughed.

and waved their hands.

But Belsen camp was vast, and inside was
a different story.

They had not eaten for six days, and
every soldier's stock of food was called

into use.

Water, too, had been cut off, and so the
water cart was the most important thing

to arrive.

Most of the people seemed to be listless
beyond hope and astonishment.

Hunger had probably affected them that
way.

We discovered that among this stench of
disease and decay was something

a bit worse than hunger.

Moving vaguely on rickety skeleton legs,
they were too ill.

To eat.

How grateful they were for a kindly word
or gesture.

What misery to live amongst such
unmentionable filth,

with scarcely the strength to pick the
lice which inevitably swarmed over them.

They seemed accustomed to the smell and
the horror.

They had seen all there was to see.

Huts were almost impossible to go near.

They were full of tangled masses of
people who had died slowly and painfully

starvation and disease, writhing in
agony, helpless in puddles of

excrement.

It was difficult to imagine those
orchards now, those rich fields where

stolid cattle cropped the juicy grass.

For here, a few minutes away inside the
barbed wire, was nothing

but filth and death.

Dead prisoners hurled out and stacked in
twisted heaps.

Dead women like marble statues in the
mire.

This was what these inmates had to live
among and die among.

The dead which lay there were not
numbered in hundreds, but in thousands.

Not one or two thousands, but thirty
thousands.

Here is a pit where the inmates, in
order to earn

food, had to drag the bodies of their
comrades.

But they were too weak to keep up.

with the rate at which they were dying.

So the pit remains only half filled.

The SS guards in charge of the camp were
captured and lined up for examination.

Their papers were gone through to
confirm their status, their authority.

each with his death's head badge, each
justified by German law.

They were unashamed, well -fed, well
-dressed and cheerful.

There were women also on guard in
Belsen, volunteers who came of their own

will to do their bit.

Not sickly pale with hollow faces and
hungry eyes, but well -fed.

and well kept with a strutting
arrogance.

The commandant of the camp, Josef
Kramer, was removed for trial as a war

criminal by an Allied military court.

There was an urgent need to get rid of
as many bodies as possible as quickly as

possible, so all the SS were set to
work.

Five hundred Hungarian troops captured
with the SS were started on a grave

-digging operation.

The SS themselves were made to do the
unpleasant job they had forced the

to do.

This, after all, was nothing to these
men.

They, the master race, had been taught
to be hard.

They could kill in cold blood, and it
seemed to the British soldier fit and

proper that the killers should bury the
nameless, hopeless creatures they had

starved to death.

The faces of the bystanders showed just
a little of the hate that Germany has

inspired, and some of the anguish, too.

Meanwhile, back at the camp, those who
were still living were being attended

Supplies of hot soup were prepared and
those who could eat unaided were fed as

quickly as possible.

There had been no water supply for six
days.

The Germans pleaded it had been cut.

We laid on water in a few hours, and
before twelve hours had passed, had

sufficient to enable them to wash.

Soap was provided, the first they had
seen for months, and an

orgy of washing ensued.

A mobile bath unit was set up and
provided hot water for baths.

Inmates thought there was a stag at
first, expected to be beaten for going

it, probably.

But when they learned that the dream was
true, hot water.

And these are the people the Nazis said
delighted in being dirty.

But the job of clearing up Belson was a
big one.

The Burgermeisters and civil officials
of the neighborhood were brought to

witness the scenes that had been caused
as part of the Nazi scheme of things.

This is not what they expected.

It had been happening for years.

But they shrugged their shoulders and
beat their brows and tried to say it had

been none of their business.

But they were mostly silent.

The SS men are not so spick and span
now.

Seven days of being shouted and cursed
at and handling corpses by the hundred

are beginning to tell.

After seven dreadful days, the funerals
still go on.

There seems to be no end.

They were given an address by a British
officer through a loudspeaker van.

Einige der Söhne und Töchter, die einen
kleinen Teil der direkten

Verantwortlichkeit für diese Verbrechen
tragen.

Ein kleiner Teil nur, und doch schwerer
zu ertragen, als es der Menschenseele

möglich ist.

Aber wer trägt die wirkliche
Verantwortung?

Sie, die sie ihrem Führer erlaubt haben.

diesen himmelschreienden Wahnsinn
auszuführen.

Sie, die sie sich über diese entarteten
Triumphe nicht genug tun konnten.

Sie, die von diesen Lagen gehört hatten.

One might ask why all the inmates
surviving were not removed out of the

altogether to a large town, for example,
where there would be feeding and

housing facilities.

The answer is simply the dread word,
typhus.

A mobile bacteriological unit and all
medical aid possible, together with 90

medical students from London hospitals,
were rushed to the spot to deal with it.

Lack of soap.

and water brought lice to the inmates.

And lice carry typhus.

To get rid of typhus, one must first get
rid of lice.

So contaminated patients were removed
from their huts and put through a

process.

DDT was dusted over them, and they were
washed clean, wrapped in blankets,

and removed in clean ambulances by teams
working in relays in a miracle of

relief work.

Two miles away from the camp was found a
large SS Panzer training school and

hospital, well stocked with medical
supplies.

Strange that these should not have been
used by the Germans for the inmates.

Scores still died every day.

They were too far gone, many of them, to
digest any food, and there was a

desperate shortage of nursing staff.

Still, one could be thankful that they
were not simply being left to rot away

with neglect.

There were children, too, in Belsenkamp,
though what crime they had committed

was difficult to imagine.

Most of them had been saved by the women
inmates who gave up what little food

they could get to the children.

Meals for these children had always been
few and far between.

So they ate what food we gave them with
infinite care.

Nothing could be more dreadful now than
to lose a piece of potato or a drop of

soup.

Clothes was another urgent problem,

fitting department was set up and
clothes gathered from shops in the

towns were soon being tried on and
gossiped over, as women love to do.

There was something symbolic about new
clothes.

New clothes meant

renewed hope.

They donned them with pride.

Now he can look forward to growing up to
useful manhood.

There were more than 200 children under
12 years old found still alive in Belsen

Camp.

To these children, clean, dry clothes
and kind words from a stranger were

strange, undreamed -of, mysterious
things.

Some had been born behind the barbed
wire.

In what circumstances one dare not try
to imagine.

Where are their parents?

Here, perhaps?

Or here?

or down here in this pit.

Today is the 24th of April, 1945.

My name is Gunnar Lingworth, and I live
at Cheshire.

I'm a present in Belsen Camp doing guard
duty over the SS men.

The things in this camp are beyond
describing.

When you actually see them for
yourselves, you know what you're

here. Pictured in the paper, cannot
describe it at all.

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

We actually know now what has been going
on in these camps.

I know personally what I am fighting
for.

I am the Reverend T .J. Stretch,
attached as Padre.

to the formation controlling this camp.

My home is at Fishguard.

My parish was at Holy Trinity Church,
Aberystwyth.

I've been here eight days, and never in
my life have I seen such damnable

ghastliness.

This morning we buried over 5 ,000
bodies. We don't know who they are.

Behind me you can see a pit which will
contain another 5 ,000.

There are two others like it in
preparation.

All these deaths have been caused by...

Systematic starvation and typhus and
disease have been spread because of the

treatment meted out to these poor people
by their SS guards and their SS chief.

We shall never know who they were or
from what homes they were torn,

whether they were Catholics, Lutherans,
or Jews.

We only know they were born, they
suffered, and died in agony

in Belsen camp.

And so they lie, Jews, Lutherans and
Catholics, indistinguishable,

cheek to cheek, in a common grave.

The living have been taken to a cleaner
place.

The typhus -infected huts are set afire.

Soon the fire will die.

The smoke and ashes will drift away.

and grass will cover the place.

The barbed wire goes down.

The striped livery goes with it.

Do not imagine this was the only black
spot that was uncovered in Germany.

There were over 300 others.

No German can say he did not know about
them.

The whole world...

had heard of Dachau, for it was
publicized by the Nazis as a model camp

since its inception way back in 1933.

On the 28th of February of that year,
the presidential emergency decree

suspended the basic civil rights of the
German people.

for an indeterminate period and so
eliminated legal safeguards against

imprisonment.

Here were 32 ,000 men of every European
nationality.

including 5 ,660 Germans.

From the outside, one might, at a casual
glance, have seen nothing remarkable or

horrifying, but Dachau was crammed with
three or four times the number it was

designed for.

Here, as at Belsen, men knew hunger.

Men became weak.

Men fell sick until they died where they
lay on the floor.

In Hut 30 alone there is recorded, for
example, 72 deaths

within 24 hours.

Every day the dead were taken from the
huts.

Here, as at Belsen, there were many who
were too weak to be saved, too

sick to eat.

Typhus was taking its toll, and
truckloads of wretchedness had to be

dealt with in the already overflowing
hospitals.

Dachau had its own brothel for the use
of guards and favoured prisoners.

As the women died, they were replaced by
a fresh contingent from the women's

camp at Ravensbruck.

This was not used as a bathhouse, but as
a death chamber.

Batches of prisoners were marched in
here to die.

When the chamber was full, the doors
were shut and sealed.

A man at the controls let in the poison
gas, and another batch of helpless

victims screamed their lives out beyond
the grill.

The gas chamber was conveniently placed.

next to the mortuary.

And next to that was the crematorium.

These great ovens were constructed
exclusively for the burning of large

of corpses.

In the last three months, official
records show that 10 ,615 people were

disposed of here.

Their clothes were turned over to the
Deutsche Textil - und Bekleidungswerke,

GmbH, a private corporation whose
stockholders were SS officials, which

reclaimed and repaired the garments with
the use of unpaid prison labor, and

then resold them to the camp clothing
depot for the use of new prisoners.

The prisoners arrived often in railway
trucks, but there had been no hurry to

unload this one.

They went away, leaving the prisoners to
die of hunger and cold and typhus.

We found them like this, frozen stiff in
the snow alongside a public road.

By some miracle, 17 men were still
alive.

All the rest...

About 3 ,000 were dead.

Germans knew about Dachau, but did not
care.

In Buchenwald, there were about 80 ,000,
of whom 34 ,000

were employed outside the camp in an
armaments factory.

During the first week of April, 25 ,000
were removed by the Germans to

other camps because of the approach of
the Allied forces.

When the camp was liberated on April
13th, 20 ,000 inmates remained.

African Negroes, Albanians, Austrians,
Belgians.

Brazilians, Bulgarians, Canadians,
Chinese, Croats, Czechs, Danes, French,

Germans, British, Greeks, Dutch,
Italians, Yugoslavs, Latvians, Lets,

Norwegians, Mexicans, Poles, Romanians,
Spaniards, Swiss, Americans, and

Russians.

Fifty -five thousand of them died
because of this place.

People were tattooed across the belly
with slave numbers and forced to work on

starvation diet.

People were coldly and systematically
tortured.

Here, Shoker, the camp commandant, said,
I want at least 600 Jewish deaths

reported in the camp office every day.

Thugs were appointed as overseers or
block leaders.

There was no efficient distribution of
food.

One prisoner collected the rations for
10 or 15 men.

Hunger and hopelessness turned some of
them into beasts.

Sometimes a prisoner carrying rations
back to the hut was waylaid and robbed

other prisoners.

Sometimes he ate the best part of the
food himself.

Sometimes he sold it.

Corruption was fostered, for it gave
another excuse for killing.

seemed so remote from humanity, so far
beyond the behaviour of man.

British members of Parliament came and
saw and were sick at heart.

It had to be seen to be believed.

German citizens were brought in from
Weimar.

They had to see, too, to see what they
had been fighting for and

we had been fighting against.

They came cheerfully, like sightseers to
a chamber of horrors, for

here indeed were some real horrors.

If a prisoner had a curiously tattooed
skin, it was taken from him.

We can only hope he was dead when it was
done.

The skin was tanned and made into
lampshades, etc.

These shrunken heads belonged to two
Polish prisoners.

who had escaped and been recaptured.

Some of the visitors did not care for
the site and were assisted by ex

-prisoners.

Ebensee is a holiday resort in the
mountains.

The air is clean and pure.

It cures sickness, and there is a
sweetness about the place, a gentle

In this place, the Luftwaffe, or SS
Panzer Officer, or Leave, relaxes, eats

well, breathes deeply, finds romance.

Everything is charming and picturesque.

But the concentration camp had become an
integral part of the German economic

system, so it was here too.

They were able to see the mountains, but
what use are mountains without food?

Prisoners of Dachau and Buchenwald
dreaded being sent here.

To them, this place did not mean
recuperation, only starvation,

through slavery in an underground
factory, and finally, left to cough

life out, unaided and crowded in the
filth and stench of a hut, unfit for

but for some reason called a hospital.

The daily collection of corpses was
disposed of through this chimney.

Mauthausen.

First used in 1938, this camp was the
center of a group of subsidiary camps.

40 ,000 people had died here since the
beginning of the year.

Here, the gas chamber held 200 at a
time, and the crematorium

dealt with 300 per day, every day.

Ludwig Schlust.

In the north of Germany, it was the same
story.

The few who remained alive were
staggering on the verge of death.

They were the survivors, and these were
the rest, hurriedly murdered lest they

be set free to live a normal life.

The authorities in the camps took
special measures to make sure that a man

neither live normally nor die normally.

Neither should he sleep normally.

He was surrounded by barbed wire, and he
had to sleep on barbed wire.

Here was carnage and desolation.

Prisoners had been dragged from the
sacks of straw in the hovels called

hospitals. Shot!

and hastily disposed of by the first
means to hand.

There must have been some feeling of
guilt, or presumably there would not

been an attempt to destroy the evidence.

In the outskirts of Leipzig, an effort
was made to prevent 300 forced workers

a factory from being set free by
advancing Allied troops.

300 were locked in a mess, hut, and
burned.

This is where it stood.

Some of the desperate, screaming
prisoners broke out.

Flamethrowers and machine guns were
waiting to receive them.

This was a woman.

Some almost reached the barbed wire.

Some got there and stayed there, for it
was electrified.

This was a Polish engineer.

Gardelegen. American troops advancing
did not know that in this barn the

had locked 1 ,800 prisoners and set
burning straw alight to suffocate them.

In the morning before retreating, they
had poured petrol on the bodies in an

attempt to burn what remained.

It still smouldered when the American
troops arrived.

This man was shot because he gasped for
air, trying to escape while the rest of

him burned in the barn.

Auschwitz.

The most up -to -date institution was
better equipped for killing.

Transports of prisoners from all over
occupied Europe were sent for

extermination in one of the special
Wernickstunschlager.

Here, four million people were murdered.

As many men, women, and children as you
could pack into a great city.

The dead have been buried.

It remains for us to care for these, the
living.

It remains for us to hope that Germans
may help to mend what they have broken

and cleanse what they have befouled.

Thousands of German people were made to
see for themselves, to bury the dead, to

file past the victims.

This was the end of the journey they had
so confidently begun in 1933.

Twelve years?

No, in terms of barbarity and brutality,
they had travelled backwards for 12

,000 years.

Unless the world learns the lesson these
pictures teach, night will fall.

But by God's grace, we who live will
learn.

To find out more about the making of
this

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