All language subtitles for World at War e31 The Final Solution; Part 2.en

Himmler asked to see
a shooting operation for himself.

On an inspection of the SS Operations
Centre at Minsk in White Russia,

100 prisoners were selected from
the compound for a demonstration.

Wolff, by now a general
and Himmler's liaison officer

at Hitler's headquarters,

was one of the inspection party.

(speaking German)

(translator) As far as I can remember,
it was at the end of August,

so a little more than two months
after the Russian campaign began,

when Hitler ordered me to accompany
Himmler to the occupied territory,

to Minsk in White Russia.

I did this, and during it,

contrary to all my expectations
or any advance knowledge,

I was forced by Himmler
to watch an execution.

He said, “You are fortunate enough
to be in the very closest circle.”

“You're at all meals and so on. You're
at the military planning meetings.”

“You must also learn what we have to
expect from our troops.”

There an open grave had been dug

and they had to jump into this
and lie face downwards,

and sometimes when one or two rows
had already been shot,

they had to lie on top of the people
who had already been shot

and then they were shot
from the edge of the grave.

Himmler had never seen
dead people before

and in his curiosity he stood right up
at the edge of this open grave,

a sort of triangular hole,

and was looking in.

While he was looking in,
Himmler had the deserved bad luck

that from one or other of the people
who had been shot in the head

he got a splash of brains on his coat,

and I think it also splashed
into his face,

and he went very green and pale.

He wasn't actually sick, but he was
heaving, turned round and swayed

and then I had to jump forward
and hold him steady

and then I led him
away from the grave.

(Wolff speaking German)

(translator)
After the shooting was over

Himmler gathered the shooting squad
in a semi-circle around him

and standing up in his car,

so that he would be a little higher
and be able to see the whole unit,

he made a speech.

He had seen for himself
how hard the task

which they had to fulfil for Germany
in the occupied areas was,

but however terrible it all might be,
even for him as a mere spectator,

and how much worse
it must be for them,

the people who had to carry it out,
he could not see any way round it.

He must be hard and stand firm.

He could not relieve them of this duty.
He could not spare them.

In the interests of the Reich,
in this hopefully thousand-year Reich,

in its first decisive great war
after the takeover of power,

they must do their duty,
however hard it might seem.

He appealed to their sense of patriotism

and their readiness to make sacrifices.

Well, yes, and then he drove off.

And he left this… this police unit
to sort out the future for themselves,

to see if and how far they could come
to terms with this within themselves,

because for some it was a shock
which lasted their whole lives.

(narrator) The strain of shooting
defenceless people day after day

told even on specially trained SS men.

But they knew that if they disobeyed
orders, they would be shot too.

So they anaesthetised themselves
with drink

or adjusted, discovering
a perverted pleasure in the work.

They took snapshots of themselves
like hunters with their kill

and relaxed, enjoying high pay,

safety from the front
and extended home leave.

So many photographs
began to circulate

that orders were issued
forbidding them

as a subversion
of decency and discipline.

Himmler needed a cleaner, more
impersonal way of killing people.

His mind went back
to Hitler's euthanasia order.

Since 1939, 50,000 mental defectives
and incurably insane had been killed,

purifying the race of weak genes.

The victims had been brought to the
Hadamar Institute and similar places.

They had been disposed of in
specially constructed gas chambers,

disguised as showers
to allay their suspicions.

This system could be developed
to deal with the Jews.

The eventual outcome

was the Auschwitz combined
crematorium and gas chamber—

a processing unit designed to dispose
of 2,000 bodies per 12-hour shift.

A tall chimney to provide draught
for five three-door furnaces

supplied under contract
by Topf and Company of Erfurt.

Their specification pointed to the
ingenious use of the body fat as fuel.

Corpse cellar equipment,

metal fittings and gas-proof doors
with rubber surround

and observation port of
double 8mm glass, type 100/192,

was by German Armaments
Incorporated.

Architect, Dr Heinz Kammler of the SS
Economic and Administrative Office.

The killing agent was
a commercial pesticide, Zyklon B,

supplied by the German
Vermin Combating Corporation.

The cans contained pellets

which, shaken through a roof grille
into the corpse cellar,

gave off hydrogen cyanide—

prussic acid gas.

Since the start of the war,

concentration camps
modelled on the Dachau camp

had been built
all over occupied Europe.

At the height of his power, Himmler
controlled 20 full concentration camps

and 900 subsidiary labour camps.

They were part of his massive apparatus
for subduing the conquered populations.

They were run by the SS
and shrouded in secrecy and dread—

just what he needed for
an efficient mass-murder programme.

In the east, close to where the largest
concentrations of Jews already lived,

new camps were built
and old ones enlarged

to become extermination plants.

Jews who were fit enough would be
put to work before they died.

The camps were sited
on railway routes.

The largest complex of all was built

in the industrial town
of Osvencim—Auschwitz—

in the part of Poland
incorporated into Germany,

chosen because it was on the main
Cracow-to-Vienna railway line.

“Work sets you free.”

The old Dachau motto
was posted above the gates.

The camp commandant was an SS
major trained at Dachau, Rudolf Höss.

His father had intended him
for the priesthood,

but he had become involved
in the Nazi Party

and gravitated naturally to the SS.

Ordered by Himmler to create

“the greatest extermination centre
of all time”, he asked no questions.

He simply moved his wife and family
to Auschwitz and got on with the job.

3,000 SS men,
mostly unfit for the front,

were posted in as guards and staff.

Himmler twice visited Auschwitz
to push things on.

Höss complained
of late delivery of materials

and the poor quality of the staff.

The problem was disagreement among
the Nazis leadership about priorities.

Which came first, killing the Jews
or winning the war?

The final solution was as big
an undertaking as a major campaign.

The camp system had to be
as self-supporting as possible.

Most of the labour
was done by prisoners.

As to shortages of guards, Himmler
told Höss briskly, “Use more dogs.”

What Himmler was most anxious to
know about was the new killing plant.

There would be six crematorium
buildings away from the main camps.

They would be concealed in woods

or screened from the inmate compounds
by sapling trees.

But these also were behind schedule,
dogged by late delivery of equipment.

However, Höss had carried out
experiments with Zyklon B

in existing buildings

and had squads trained
to burn bodies in open pits.

So although Himmler couldn't watch
the new apparatus in operation,

he did watch a demonstration
of the new killing method.

Höss noted that he seemed unmoved.

While all this had been going on,

Heydrich, in his role
as head of Himmler's security service,

had been told to plan
how to get the Jews

from their homes to the gas chambers.

This was on top of his duties
as Nazi boss of Czechoslovakia.

His task in the final solution

really depended
on getting everyone to cooperate.

Police, Foreign Office,
SS departments,

legal authorities controlling more than
12 countries would be involved

if the millions of Jews were to be
removed in orderly rotation

and transported across Europe to
arrive on schedule at killing centres.

In January 1942
Heydrich called a conference

of representatives
of the various ministries involved

at Wannsee, near Berlin.

He had been put in charge,
he told the meeting,

of preparations for the final solution
of the Jewish problem in Europe.

All central agencies
were to join together

to make parallel their lines of action.

He outlined the new plan.

Totals of Jews in each country
had now been drawn up.

Europe would be systematically
combed from west to east.

The cover to be used in all countries

was the Jews were being resettled
for labour in the east.

The total to be dealt with
was over 11 million.

The permanent administrator
for the plan was Adolf Eichmann.

He kept the minutes.

Divergent views, Eichmann recorded,
were soon reconciled.

Cognac was served.

(translation) Their homeland is Asia…

(narrator) A film, The Eternal Jew,

was distributed in every town
in occupied Western Europe,

where Jews had so far been left
relatively undisturbed.

Only one worry—

what if non-Jews took pity
on their Jewish neighbours

and tried to stop them being deported?
Propaganda could help.

(translation) …as well as Africa
and the Far East.

Wherever rats appear
they bring destruction.

They ruin human goods and food,

thus spreading diseases

like the plague, leprosy,
typhoid, cholera, dysentery.

They are deceitful, cowardly and cruel
and usually appear in big droves.

Amongst animals
they represent the element

of malicious destruction underground,

no different
from the Jews amongst people.

(narrator) The Eternal Jew
portrayed the Eastern Jew as vermin,

as a dangerous parasite.

It was only his dress that made the
assimilated Western Jew seem different.

(translation) …and now
in Western European attire,

ready to sneak
into Western civilisation.

Of course these Ghetto Jews
don't know yet

how to comport themselves
in clean European suits.

(narrator) In 1942
Jews in Western countries

were ordered to sew on
an identifying yellow star.

The Nazis needed to mark the Jews
out from their neighbours.

It would make non-Jews less likely to
interfere when Jews were deported.

In Holland the Germans threatened
six months' imprisonment

for any Jew not wearing the star
within five days.

To speed things up, the Jewish Council
agreed to issue stars themselves.

It was to become a familiar pattern.

Jewish Councils, trying to save
their community from German threats,

themselves administered
the Nazis' anti-Jewish measures.

The pressure was on
to get Jews to come forward

for “resettlement
and labour in the East”.

The Germans took hostages.

The Council had to see that the full
quota reported for the transports.

In Denmark, resistance and people
combined in rescue operations.

In Italy and Bulgaria
officials prevaricated.

But almost everywhere there was
too little concerted opposition

when Jews were made to
report for deportation.

People either didn't care enough

or were effectively intimidated
by Gestapo and SS.

“All roads lead to Westerbork,”

Eichmann's man in Amsterdam told
the Jews he shoved onto transports.

Each country in Western Europe
had a Westerbork—

a transit camp run on the same lines
as the concentration camps.

The trains were met by FK—
flying columns—

squads of inmates whose job was to
sort out the luggage and unloading.

In Westerbork,
as throughout the system,

the SS guarded,
supervised, gave the orders,

but the inmates were made
responsible for day-to-day routine.

Westerbork had a Jewish camp police
force and its own Jewish Council.

Public-spirited Jews felt it better
to take some responsibility

than leave everyone totally
to the mercy of the SS.

In two and a half years, 100,000
people passed through Westerbork alone,

supervised by a minimum
number of Germans.

New arrivals were entered in
the central registry by Jewish clerks.

Then the labour office, also run
by inmates, allotted them jobs.

It might be days or months
before they were sent on

to “the new territories in the East”.

The principal work in Westerbork

was reclaiming the usable metal
from exhausted electric batteries.

In spite of the conditions
in the camps, people dreaded the day

when they would be separated
from their families and moved.

They feared the unknown destination
from which no one returned.

(woman) We stayed together
for four weeks,

then my parents and youngest brother
had to leave us on the transport.

I should have gone with them,

but it was not allowed,
because I had roodvonk.

I don't know.
Scarlet fever, I had that.

That was one of the dirty things
of the Germans.

When you were sick
you couldn't go to the gas chamber.

No, first you had to recover.

They gave you the illusion
nothing happened,

because they don't send you on a
transport when you're sick. I had to…

My brother, he came to say
goodbye to me and I was thinking,

“For heaven's sake, he can't go,
not in these poor clothes.”

He was small, you see.

I gave him one of my jackets

and I was thinking, “It's closing
the other way around, but who cares?”

I gave him a pair of my boots.

And…

I looked at him when he walked away
from the barrack, at his back,

and from the back he looked like me

and I was sure
I'd never see him again.

I was sure.

(narrator) Departure day
from Westerbork was Tuesday.

The camp leaders had to prepare
a list of names

to meet the number the Germans
required, usually about a thousand.

At 7am those selected
for the transport formed up in silence,

under the supervision
of the SS and FK.

If anyone was missing, 50 extra
people were rounded up at random

and shoved onto the transport.

The journey would last
up to a week or more.

To each cattle truck,
some straw and one lavatory bucket.

At 11 o'clock sharp the whistle blew
and the train pulled out.

There were no hitches, no strikes,

no sabotage or Allied bombing.

As Eichmann said,
the trains ran like a dream.

All over Europe the SS and police
rounded up the Jews.

People knew that the alternative
to going quietly was brutal violence.

To be caught in hiding
meant punishment

and also arrest and almost certain
death for anyone who had helped.

Many Jews reasoned that
it was better, more honourable,

to report quietly when their turn came.

At the Wannsee Conference

the representative
of the governor general of Poland

had said
that he had only one favour to ask—

that the Jewish question
within his territory

be solved as rapidly as possible.

There were 2.5 million people
in the Polish ghettos.

Rations were so small
that people were starving.

The Jewish Council
organised soup kitchens,

but thousands continued to die.

Naked corpses, their clothes taken
by others to keep themselves warm,

lay in the streets waiting for
the death cart's morning round.

Rations were lowered still further.

There would be no trouble
getting volunteers for resettlement

when the schedule called
for the ghettos to be cleared.

(translator) There was no strength left
for suffering.

We couldn't continue like that.

Whatever it would be, we imagined
that it couldn't be a worse place,

it couldn't be worse.

Everyone who volunteered,
that is came of his own free will

to be sent out of the ghetto,
wherever it might be,

got bread.

He also got a little margarine
and drink and also some jam.

We decided to show up
of our own free will.

(narrator)
Lured by the promise of food,

people scrambled
for the chance to get out.

They even paid
their own railway fares.

From the Warsaw ghetto alone in
ten weeks from July to October 1942,

310,000 people left.

They were loaded onto guarded,
sealed trains,

up to 6,000 people to a trainload,

100 to a truck.

(man speaking Yiddish)

(translator) The minute we got in
and they closed it on us with a bolt,

terrible cries began inside.

In Polish, Yiddish, German,
pleading requests.

“There's no air and we're suffocating,
suffocating, suffocating.”

It was a winding route with long stops

and unfortunately the train stopped,
when it stopped,

very far from any source of water,

so that after about 24 hours
there was not one drop of water.

Now, the children started to be thirsty.

People had to, so to say, perform
the normal physiological functions

like voiding and things like that.

Now, the whole wagon
became suddenly a mess.

There was a fight
for the one and only bucket,

which was not allowed to be emptied.

The parents were suddenly obsessed
by quietening down the children.

“Just through the journey.
Somehow we'll survive the journey.”

“The children
shouldn't suffer too much.”

“The old people
shouldn't suffer too much.”

People stopped to be preoccupied
either with the past or with the future,

but with surviving the journey.

Here suddenly
you had a hell on wheels.

(man speaking Yiddish)

(translator) The first to faint were
children, old men and women.

They all fell down like flies,
exactly like flies.

Father was standing next to me.

All of a sudden
I see that he is falling,

he's collapsed.

I cried, “Father, Father!”

He no longer heard me. He'd fainted.

He had fainted and I, with all my
strength, as much strength as I had,

tried to lift him up and bring him to.

But I didn't succeed.

Then I found a piece of wood
on the floor of the wagon.

I got up and began to beat people
with the piece of wood.

It was a club or something.

I began to beat the people who were
standing round me in the wagon

so that they'd make room for Father,
so that Father could get up.

I didn't care about the suffering
of others, their cries, their threats,

only that Father should get up
so that I shouldn't be left alone.

(narrator) The trains were chartered
from the state railways by the SS

and operated by ordinary railway men.

Auschwitz was a busy junction.

It handled normal goods,
military and passenger trains

as well as the Jewish transports.

Willi Hilse was a clerk
in the state railways,

a protected occupation which
exempted him from military service.

In 1942 he was ordered to take over

as deputy manager of
the goods depot at Auschwitz.

(speaking German)

(translator) As a result of
the increasing traffic

the man in charge down there
at the time

could no longer keep up
with all the work that was involved.

He first of all asked me a question,

whether I knew that there was
a concentration camp here.

I had to answer his question in
the negative, because I had no idea.

Now, in the course of conversation
he said to me,

“Now look in front of you, look behind
you, look to your right, to your left.”

“You are standing in the middle of
the concentration camp Auschwitz.”

Then I asked him a question,

because I noticed a sweetish smell
about the place.

What was it?

And he gave me the answer,

“Those are the dead
who are burned here in Auschwitz.”

(speaking German)

(translator) Whether they were
ordinary trains or transports,

they all had to come through
the station Auschwitz.

The trains were just uncoupled
in Auschwitz. They got another engine.

Now they had to do some shunting
through the station to a terminal point.

Then they came onto the points
connecting with the branch line

to the extermination camp.

For a while I had the job
of receiving the waybills.

The bills of freight went to
an accounts department

in the German state railway so they
could settle up with the Waffen SS.

These were the two things

by which we could immediately see
that this was a horror train.

(narrator) The men could see and hear
the passengers in the transports.

(speaking German)

(translator) The train was by the depot
and I saw a young woman

was holding a small child in her arms
and kept on crying out for water.

So I filled a jug with water,
and as I had my uniform on

and was recognisable
as a railway man, I went over

and was going to hand the woman
the jug through the ventilation flap.

I hadn't even got to the wagon,
I was standing on the next track,

but already an SS man came up
to me and asked me what I wanted.

So I said to him I wanted to give
the water to the woman and child.

His answer was, “If you don't get out
of here immediately I'll shoot you.”

So I threw the jug of water
at the SS man's feet

and said, “May the Lord God
punish you for this!”

If we, as railway men in Auschwitz,

had undertaken anything at all
against the Waffen SS or the camp,

then I can tell you now,
100 per cent certain,

that in no time at all we should have
landed up in the camp ourselves.

(man speaking Polish)

(translator) I looked out
through the lattice.

I pulled myself up and looked out.

All of a sudden I saw strange people
standing there in strange clothes.

Their clothes were like
pyjamas with stripes.

They were speaking
in lots of different languages.

They shouted.
They didn't speak, they shouted.

Among other languages
they also shouted in Polish.

When I heard them speaking Polish
I was happy.

I shouted through the lattice of the
wagon—the wagon was still closed—

“Hello? Hello?” in Polish.

“Hello? Hello, sirs!”

“What is it here? What is it here?”

I remember that no one
even paid any attention to me.

There were hundreds of
thousands of people there.

But I noticed the whole time that
they were laughing, those people.

I didn't know what they were, what
that uniform was, what their job was.

I knew nothing.

(narrator) The strange people
in striped uniform

were prisoners of the baggage squad.

They made sure there was
no evidence of the previous transport

when the next one arrived.

At Auschwitz and the other camps,

Jewish prisoners were forced to work
on every stage of the process.

Rudolf Vrba was put into
one of these baggage squads.

I was in the squad of the prisoners
who cleared up the mess

which remained
when the people were liquidated.

It had to be spot clean.

The transports were sometimes coming
and going at one- or two-hour intervals,

and the new transport was always
coming to a spot-clean platform,

without any trace of
there ever being transport before.

These transports were coming
for two years to Auschwitz,

sometimes five a day,
sometimes two a day,

sometimes one a day,
sometimes a day without transport,

sometimes 16 a day,

and an average transport
contained 3,000 people.

(speaking Yiddish)

(translator) The wagon was opened.
They undid the bolt.

The moment it was open there was
a gust of fresh air. It was good.

We began to throw out
the corpses of the dead.

But all of a sudden there were voices.

“Juden, raus, raus, raus!”

“Schnell, schnell, schnell!”

“Quick, quick! Out, out, out!”

But I was afraid then
for the first time.

You know why? There were flames
until the sky ended.

A strange smell,

a smell I remember from home when
my mother burns on Friday a chicken.

The SS knew how many transports
were coming this day.

Now, when there was
only one transport,

they knew they had got all the time.

It was much more interesting there
than to sit in the barracks,

when they were in service
and there was no free.

So they might grant to you
the gentle technique with humour.

“Ladies and gentlemen,
we are sorry for the inconvenience

which was caused by some idiot
who organised this journey.”

“We had already one case like this.
We are awfully sorry.”

“Look at this mess.
How do they treat people?”

“Would you get out? Please don't get
in touch with those criminals.”

“They are here
only for taking your luggage,

and if you have got
unmarked luggage

and you are afraid that it might
get lost, just take it with you.”

“But if you have got names on it,

your labels on your luggage
and so on, just don't worry.”

“We are keeping a good eye

that none of those criminals
can take anything away,

and our German honesty,

about which I hope
you have got no doubt,

is a guarantee that all your property
will be given to you.”

“Now, the whole thing is
to make the whole procedure…”

“Please don't make us any troubles,
so that we can give you water

and allow the basic
sanitary conditions

to be restored
after this dismal journey,”

looking around the excrements and
urine and blood around the wagon,

and pretending
that they don't realise, quite,

but a sort of human understanding.

There's a lot of humour, you know,

and, “Please just come out.”

Well, the gentle technique or the
brutal technique had one objective.

It was not a question of
gentle technique or brutal technique.

It was a question
that the people who arrived

had to arrive into the gas chamber
as soon as possible

and without a hitch.

(narrator) The next step
was to sort the arrivals out.

(translator) They lined up
in two lines.

Multitudes of men
and older children on one side

and women and small children
on the other.

(narrator) The aim was to select
who would be gassed immediately

and who would be
kept for a while to work.

The selection was done by teams of
SS doctors and medical orderlies.

The number who survived depended
on how many people were needed

for the camp's labour battalions.

The doctors made a cursory check.

All those judged healthy enough
for use for work they sent to one side.

The rest they sent to the other.

The arrivals,
dazed from the hideous journey,

didn't understand what was going on.

In any case
they were in no state to argue.

Any potential troublemaker was
quickly taken out of sight and shot.

While most people were unaware
what was happening,

some sensed that something
was ominously wrong.

(woman) I was scared like a dog
was scared in a burning house.

I simply…
A very primitive scared feeling I had.

They said… I remember
there was a man from Holland

and he said between his teeth,
“No, no sick people, no sick people.”

(narrator) The sick, the old, the lame,

pregnant women, mothers and small
children, they were sent to the left.

They had been chosen for gassing.

(speaking Yiddish)

(translator) I saw two people
walking towards me speaking Polish.

I was very happy.

As far as I remember
I ran out of the line, out of my line,

and walked over to one of them
and said to him in Polish, “Hello, sir.”

“Tell me, what is it here?
Where have I come to?”

His answer was that
he broke out laughing.

He patted my shoulder
and said to me in Polish,

“My son, my son, you have come
to the heaven commando.”

That's how he said it, in Polish.

I didn't know what it was.

So he said to me, “Turn round.
I'll show you something.”

I turned round.

He pointed to the far distance
where the smoke was rising,

thick smoke, very far away.

He said to me, “See, see that smoke?”

“There's a chimney there and you
will go out through that chimney.”

That's all. I wasn't particularly
impressed by the things he told me,

because I thought… I felt sure
he was kidding. A joke.

(narrator) A lorry took the people
to wait their turn in the woods

outside the gas chamber.

They'd been told
that before entering the camp

they had to be de-loused
and take a shower.

They may have been reassured to see
an ambulance standing there.

They couldn't know that
it contained tins of Zyklon B.

SS Corporal Richard Böck was in
the transport section at Auschwitz.

His friend Höblinger
was a driver on the roster

for the ambulance that carried
the tins of Zyklon B.

One evening Böck was taken
to watch one of the actions.

(speaking German)

(translator) He parked his ambulance.

I sat in it pretending to be
the co-driver.

Then they drove them all off
in a lorry to bunker one,

and there were four big halls.

The halls didn't have any proper roof,
just a sloping top.

We got out of the ambulance.

At first Höblinger
didn't have anything to do.

Then we went into the hall and the
so-called prisoners, the new arrivals,

had to get undressed.

Then the order came,
“Prepare for disinfection.”

There were enormous
piles of clothing in there.

There was a board running round
so that the piles didn't all collapse.

The new arrivals, Dutch people,

they had to stand on top of this great
heap of clothes and get undressed.

Lots of them hid their children under
the clothes and covered them up.

Some stood with the clothes pulled up
round their legs. It was very cold.

It was the beginning of winter.

Well, then they shouted, “Get ready!”
and they all went out.

Then they had to run, naked,

approximately 20 yards
from the hall across to bunker one.

There were two doors there
standing open.

They went in. When a certain number
had gone inside they shut the doors.

That happened about three times.

Every time Höblinger
had to go out to his ambulance

and one of the SS leaders took out a
sort of tin and climbed up the ladder.

Then at the top
there was a round hole

and he opened a little iron door
and held the tin there

and shook it and then he shut
the little door again.

Then a fearful screaming started up.

Approximately, I would reckon after
about ten minutes it slowly went quiet.

I said to Höblinger, “Can we get
nearer when they take them out?”

So we went over a bit closer.

They opened the door. That was
the prisoner squad who did that.

Then a blue haze came out,

and I looked in and I saw a pyramid.

They'd all climbed up
on top of each other

until the last one stood on the very
top, all one on top of the other.

It was a pointed heap.
It all came up to a point.

Then the prisoners had to go in and
tear it apart. I tell you, all tangled.

One had his arm down by another's
foot and round it and back up again

and his fingers were sticking
in someone else's eyes, so deep.

They were all so tangled.

They had to tug and pull very hard
to disentangle all these people.

We went back to the hall and now it
was the turn of the last lot to undress,

the ones who'd managed
to hang back a bit all the time.

One woman said something
meaning that it was cold, perhaps.

Then I did understand a word, that
she wasn't used to this sort of thing,

and I thought, “Dear lady, I believe
you're not used to this sort of thing.”

One girl with beautiful black hair,
a beautiful girl,

she was crouching there
and didn't want to get undressed.

An SS man came and said, “I suppose
you don't want to get undressed.”

She tossed her hair back
and laughed a little.

He went away and came back
with two prisoners

and they literally
tore her clothes off her,

then they each grabbed an arm and
they dragged her across to bunker one

and pushed her in there.

Then the prisoners had to check
where small children had been hidden.

They pulled them out,
opened the doors quickly again

and boof, they threw all the children in
and slammed the doors.

“I'm going to be sick,” I said.
“Oh, my,” I said,

“Karl, I've never seen anything like it
in my life. It's absolutely terrible.”

Imagine, when they threw the children
in, how the people inside screamed,

because then they realised
what was happening.

I said, “Karl, can we leave soon?
I can't stand it any more.”

He said, “Yes, I feel like that too,
but I must stay

until they have collected
all the empty tins

and put them in the ambulance.
I have to take them back.”

Höblinger said he didn't like doing
this duty at all and he didn't enjoy it.

But he preferred
being in the transport section

to being in the guard company.

“But,” he said, “you do get used
to anything in time.”

(narrator) Those selected to work
before gassing

were reprieved
on average only three months,

the normal survival time in Auschwitz.

They too were made to undress and
hand over their clothes and belongings.

Then they were taken
into a shower—a real one.

They were de-loused,
their heads shaved

and numbers tattooed on their arms.

(speaking Yiddish)

(translator) They tattooed the number.
There was no longer Shmuel Gogol.

There was only a number: 81491.

The end. I changed into a number.

(speaking Yiddish)

(translator) From that moment on
I became a number.

I no longer had a name or a surname.

I became B. B8095.

That's how I was known. They told me
if my number is called out,

“Know that it is you.”

They marked us. They gave us a mark
in our arm, that was what they did.

I remember that I was thinking…
I was trying to get the blood away,

and that was the reason…
I took a little ink away,

and that's the reason it's a little…
not too good to see.

(narrator) Men and women were
separated and issued with uniforms.

Auschwitz had three main camps
and 30 subsidiary labour camps.

Up to 100,000 slave labourers,
Poles as well as Jews,

worked in them till they died.

Crammed 300 to a block,

fed only a few ounces of
coarse bread and thin gruel,

first they had to learn to fight
for their own survival.

I saw for the first time real hunger,

because when they gave bread,

the other prisoners,
who were a long time already there,

were like lions.

It was an unwritten law.
If you are caught red-handed

stealing another prisoner's bread,

he's entitled to kill you on the spot.

Many times he can't kill you
on the spot,

but it was considered murder.

It was murder, actually,

because the bread which was issued

was the minimum
necessary for survival.

Who didn't have the bread,
his chances for survival

were diminished grossly
for the next day.

So there was, you know,
there was no court,

accusations, lawyers and so on.

The case was usually clear.

Usually the case was that one chap
was holding on to his jacket

and the other chap was pulling on it,

and the one chap said, shouted,
“He's stealing my bread,”

and that was it.

People from midnight
jumped out from their beds

and in no time there was a dead body.

(speaking Polish)

(translator) The worst moments
were when one of the trusties boasted

that with one blow
he could knock out a man's brains.

It was a dreadful moment.

A second of silence
and then the order fell,

“Put your heads out of the bunks.”

And then the thought,
“Will he take a liking my head?”

A moment later on the timbers,

blood, fragments of brain.

And again we immediately
fell into deep sleep.

For after all, we,

we could go to sleep.

(narrator) Prisoners slept
four and more to a bunk

in huts that had originally been
designed for horses.

They were of less consequence
than animals

their bodies to be used
for the diversion of guards

or as raw material
for the benefit of the state.

Some were used
exactly like laboratory animals.

To test the effects of high-altitude
flying they were put in a simulator,

starved of oxygen and put through
extremes of decompression.

Himmler boasted his doctors were not
“inhibited by Christian prejudices”.

To find out about survival
for aircrews shot down in the sea,

they immersed prisoners in freezing
water until they were past reviving.

Gypsies were used to test
the results of drinking sea water.

Jews were used for testing
the mass sterilisation techniques

needed by the Nazis

if they were to keep down
the population of subject races.

At the same time
they did tests on twins.

Himmler hoped that increasing the number
of twin births to German women

was a way of making good the loss of
pure racial stock caused by the war.

Doctors also analysed the skull and
brains of Jews, Gypsies and Slavs

to try to find physical support
for Nazi race theory.

What was left after the people
were liquidated wasn't wasted either.

Bones could be ground down
for fertiliser,

artificial limbs and spectacle lenses
recycled, gold teeth melted down

and human hair packed in bales,
used in protective clothing.

Morning and evening, prisoners
were made to stand for hours

while the SS checked
that they were all there.

During the day they worked
in factories or as construction gangs.

Auschwitz was continually expanding.

They built armament factories
and a synthetic rubber plant.

Their work was not organised
for productivity,

but to inflict the greatest suffering
on the prisoners.

They were made to work
at the double, propelled by whips.

In the heavy labour gangs, prisoners
were dead after only a few days

from exhaustion and beatings.

The camp was supposed
to be self-supporting.

At any one time up to 8,000 prisoners
were engaged on maintenance.

To survive for any length of time
a prisoner had to get a good indoor job,

in the workshops, offices
or best, the kitchens.

For this you needed more than luck.
You needed a useful skill

or influence with the prisoners who
worked in the job allocation office.

A whole subterranean inmate lifestyle
developed, based on barter.

(speaking Yiddish)

(translator) I saw a mouth organ
in the hands of another prisoner.

I asked him for it. He of course
didn't want to give it to me.

He himself didn't play, so he said,

“OK, I can make an agreement
with you, buy it.”

The purchase was
of course for bread.

He wanted three weeks' ration and
I agreed to two weeks' bread ration

and he gave me the mouth organ.

Apart from the regular work
they set up an orchestra

and I was put into the orchestra.

(narrator) They had to play
at roll calls and public hangings.

Sometimes on Sundays they gave concerts
of the accepted German classics.

Miraculously people still managed
to play their own music in secret,

to hold services, even to sing.

(speaking Yiddish)

(translator) In the camp we sang
all kinds of songs. It's interesting.

Dutch, Greek,

Hungarian, Czech,

Yiddish.

The sad song, which was very much
loved by other people as well,

not only Jews, for after all,
we all suffered there, all of us,

this was really My Yiddishe Momme.

(♪ “My Yiddishe Momme”)

(narrator) Those who could
take no more committed suicide

by running onto the electrified barbed
wire that surrounded the compounds.

Others went to the prisoner clerks

and asked to have their names
put on the list for the gas chambers.

The SS regularly weeded out

people too weak or ill
for further use as labour.

Wandra Marossanyi
worked in the camp labour office.

She shared a billet
with other roll call clerks.

It was their job to copy the names
of prisoners selected for gassing.

(speaking Polish)

(translator) The selection was
carried out by the whole camp team

and the roll call clerk,
a Slovak woman, assisted.

She wrote down the numbers. In the
evening—she lived in our barrack—

there were processions of people
to see her.

“Save my mother, sister, cousin,
friend and so on.”

She tried, in a human way,
according to age

and their ability to survive the camp,
to change over these people.

But it was a difficult decision, to send
one person to the gas chamber

and to save someone else.

So at that moment,
guided only by instinct—

it might have appeared cruel—

we saved those
who stood a chance of surviving

and not emotionally because someone
was the daughter of someone's mother.

I remember a case when
the senior prisoner from barrack 25

helped her own mother onto the lorry
to take her to the gas chamber,

for she had no chance of saving her.

Moshe Sonnenshein
was a rabbi's son

who was very deeply educated
in religious belief,

into the belief that
there are things in this world

which are beyond
the understanding and will of God.

I remember when we passed 10,000
naked women in a frosty morning,

who were already sorted out,
you see, and put on the lorries.

They knew,
they were all prisoners already,

and they knew they are now going to
the gas chamber, and they were quiet.

Somehow people were accustomed
to living in the moment,

with the knowledge
that death will come.

But when the motor started,

you know, this noise created a panic
among the women.

A terrible noise went up
from those lorries, you see,

the death cry of thousands
of young women

who were already
reduced to skeletons,

and their futile attempts, which they
knew by any logic couldn't succeed,

to jump out from the lorries
which took them to the gas chambers

which were only perhaps
less than a mile away,

and which were already stoked
and the…

…fire was coming out
from the chimneys.

This meant everything was prepared.

This was the moment
when he spoke to his God.

“God, show them your power.”

“This is against you.”

And nothing happened.

Then he said, “There is no God.”

(narrator) The vast majority of
the people consumed in the crematoria

were new arrivals.

Exhausted though they were
after their journey,

might they have tried
to interrupt the process

if they knew
what was about to happen to them?

(translator) We wondered whether
to tell them where they were going.

The Slovak woman in particular
wondered about this,

if they should raise a revolt
or something.

After discussions we came to
the conclusion that this would not help,

as these people were
in no fit state to oppose their fate.

They had to go where they were going

and it was better
that they went uninformed.

If somebody went there and said,

“Look, you are going to be gassed,”
or something,

the idea of a mother
being told by a gangster,

after this terrible journey, that
her children are going to be gassed,

was an utterly outrageous idea
in her mind,

because after all that she suffered,

here comes a gangster
who wants to increase her suffering.

So she is tempted
to go immediately to the next officer

and say, “This man says, sir, that
my children are going to be gassed.”

And he says, “Madam,
do you think we are barbarians?”

(speaking Yiddish)

(translator) We used to say,
“Where is the whole world?”

“Where's the United States?
Where's Russia?”

“Where are all those countries
that could do something to help?”

“Do they know what's happening here
in the extermination camps at all?”

(narrator) People did know
what was going on.

An industrial complex of camps
containing up to 100,000 people,

built on the outskirts of
an existing town, cannot be a secret.

In wet weather
the odour of burnt human flesh

hung like a pall over the whole area.

Passengers going through the station
crowded to look

at the bright lights
and blazing chimneys.

Rumours were carried
all over Germany.

But what could ordinary people do,
even if they cared?

A few, the brave ones, hid Jews.

But even they couldn't overthrow the
system. Anyhow, there was a war on.

People had enough problems
without worrying about the Jews.

Then what about the Allies
who were fighting Nazi tyranny?

Lord Avon, then Anthony Eden,

was foreign secretary
in Churchill's cabinet.

There had been only too much
evidence of persecution of the Jews

before the war began
in Hitlerite Germany.

Then as the war progressed

some horrifying reports
began to come out.

At first it was very difficult,
naturally, to assess their accuracy

and they were so horrible that it was
hard to believe they could be true.

However, by 1942,
certainly the latter half of 1942,

the evidence was so extensive
one could hardly fail to give it credit.

As a result of that we did get in touch
with other governments,

with the United States in particular,
and the Russians,

to exchange such information as we'd
got and to discuss what we could do.

We decided that one of the things we
must do was make a joint statement

in each of our capitals
at the same time,

declaring what our information was

and what this horror was
that was being perpetrated,

and also making plain
our detestation of it

and our determination
that those responsible for it

should be punished
when the war was over.

And that we got agreement upon
after some negotiation,

and it was near the end of 1942

when I made this statement
in the House of Commons

with, I must say, a dramatic effect far
exceeding anything that I'd expected.

(narrator) But the people in
the extermination camps needed action,

now, before it was too late.

The resistance group in Auschwitz
couldn't wait until the end of the war.

They got out a letter asking for
a camera and film to be smuggled in.

If the Allies knew the full extent
of the horror, they must act.

In the Sobibor and Treblinka
extermination camps

resistance groups
had organised uprisings,

but most prisoners had been killed
before they could escape.

The Auschwitz group aimed to wait,

keeping as many people alive
in the camp as possible,

until the Allies
could help their escape.

From a doorway a prisoner
working on building maintenance

managed to take pictures of a squad
burning bodies in open pits

in the woods close to one of
the smaller gas chambers.

With his camera under his coat,

he tried to take snaps
through a buttonhole

of women entering a gas chamber.

He shot mostly trees and sky,
but careful processing of one corner

shows naked women walking toward
what they believed to be a shower.

Resistance groups appealed
over and over again

for air raids on railways,
camps and gas chambers.

Now, a difficulty about Auschwitz
amongst others

was it was very long range
so far as we were concerned,

and certainly until the later stages of
the war I should imagine out of range,

certainly for anything
in the nature of accurate bombing.

I think there are some Jewish
organisations who feel to this day

that it would have been good
if we could have bombed Auschwitz.

I don't really know
how it could have helped anybody,

even if we could've done it.

You couldn't bomb
with that accuracy.

It certainly would have killed
a lot of the people in Auschwitz.

Then, of course, it was in enemy
territory, in German territory,

and if as a result of our bombing
we'd cut communications, say,

and some people had got out
although others had been killed,

they would've been in hostile country.
Where could they go?

Was there any real hope
that they could have escaped?

I hardly can think so.

At any rate we decided against it,
and we didn't, as far as I remember,

we didn't even ask Bomber Harris
to consider the project.

(narrator) When it was discovered

that there were armaments factories
near Auschwitz, a raid was mounted.

It was not a great success.

The railway routes
were still not bombed.

One comes back to what after all was
the main thing we could do—

to win the war, not disperse our effort
more than we absolutely had to.

Only by winning the war

could we hope to save the lives
of any unfortunate Jews

who were still survivors from
the terrible, unforgivable treatment

to which they were subjected.

(narrator) What about
the Jews' own leaders,

the Jewish Councils who selected
the people for the transports?

Some resisted.

Some committed suicide.

Some kept on cooperating.

Siegmund Weltlinger
worked for the Jewish Council in Berlin

until the last big round-up there
in 1943.

Then he went into hiding.

(speaking German)

(translator) If they had not done it,

the Gestapo would've picked up people
like a rat catcher and sent them away.

Things would not have been so ordered.

This way they knew about it
a few days beforehand,

could settle up their affairs,
take the bare necessities with them

and could, as far as they were able,
also escape or go underground.

We negotiated continuously,

but it wasn't really negotiation,
it was an acceptance of orders.

We were told 500
for the next transport.

Then we could select
500 from our lists.

We got many postcards at first,
which were censored, of course.

They all had to write,
“Things are going well,

we have work here
and the surroundings are pleasant.”

Some of us believed this.

(narrator) The Nazis used all sorts
of tricks to reinforce the story

of resettlement in the East.

As late as 1944
they completed a film

called
Hitler Has Given the Jews a City.

It was intended to check the rumours
about extermination camps

and to satisfy the increasing curiosity

of bodies like
the International Red Cross.

(♪ “Pastoral Symphony”—Beethoven)

By the time the film was released,
most of the people seen in it

were dead in the gas chambers
at Auschwitz.

But this purported to be life
in Theresienstadt,

the camp for privileged Jews—

those who had fought for Germany
in the First World War,

people of influence, elderly Jews

and members of the Jewish Councils.

As long as Jewish Councils could believe

the resettlement areas were like this,
they would encourage people

to turn up for the transports
without causing trouble.

(speaking German)

(translator) We said,
“Here it is not good either.”

“All sorts of things
are happening to you here.”

“There you will not have an easy life,
but you can work, you will be fed.”

“They are beautiful territories,
above all, Theresienstadt.”

To the old people who were being
sent to Theresienstadt I said,

“It was formerly a first-class spa.
Fantastic surroundings.”

One old lady said to me, “For all
my money which I am handing over,

will I at least get a room
with central heating?”

I said, “If they have central heating
there, you will certainly get it.”

(narrator) People justifying
their own lack of action

have said that the Jews who went
docilely to the gas chambers

gassed themselves.

But what could they do?

Friendless in Nazi-occupied Europe,

they boarded the train
hoping for the best.

At Auschwitz, it was too late.

To resist they had to be armed,
organised, led.

If they were to fight
it had to be before the journey,

on their home ground.

The most outstanding act of Jewish
resistance was in the Warsaw ghetto.

When early in 1943,

the Nazis tried to deport
the 60,000 people who remained there,

the ghetto fought back.

They had heard the stories about
extermination and believed them.

SS Major General Stroop
ordered photographs to be taken

as his men burned the Jews out
building by building.

Armed only with a few pistols
and homemade grenades,

they had opposed the Germans
for five weeks.

As they were marched away, Stroop
completed his report for Himmler.

“We succeeded in catching
56,065 Jews,

whose extermination can be proved.”

The National Committee
for Jewish Resistance in Poland said,

“In the final moment
before their destruction

the last survivors
of the Jewish people in Poland

appealed to the whole world for help.”

“They were not heard.”

“May this last voice from the abyss
reach the ears of all humanity.”

By 1944 the largest single
untouched pocket of Jews

was the 700,000 in Hungary.

Hitler had complained more than once

that nothing had been done
about liquidating them.

So when German troops
took over the country in March,

despite the fact the Nazi war machine
was at full stretch

and Germany in danger
of losing the war,

plans to remove Hungarian Jews
got high priority.

By this time everyone knew
what “resettlement” meant.

Crowds of Jews besieged
the Swiss legation in Budapest

in the forlorn hope they might
be able to get out of the country.

Jewish leaders negotiated with the SS,
buying time

in the hope that the advancing
Russian armies might rescue them.

At the same time,
to keep the Germans sweet,

they continued to instruct people to
report in an orderly way for the trains.

Again requests to the Allies
to bomb the railways were ignored.

Transport after transport
rolled smoothly towards Auschwitz.

With the war going against them,
the Nazis knew they had to hurry.

Auschwitz had been made ready to
handle the Hungarian Jews extra fast.

The railway line had been extended
into the camp

almost to the crematoria themselves.

Pits had been dug to burn the bodies
the furnaces couldn't handle.

Dov Paisokowic,
a Jewish butcher's son,

was on one of the Hungarian
transports in 1944.

(speaking Yiddish)

(translator) We arrived
at Auschwitz in the morning.

I don't remember the exact day.

They chose 250 of the strongest
from the thousand who were there,

those with sufficient strength
for work.

250 men were chosen.

Among the 250 were my father and I.

We were given all sorts of work tools
and we were taken out of the camp.

The camp had electrified wire
around it.

Outside the camp there were SS
with dogs and machine guns.

They took us
to crematoria three and four.

150 of us were left there. I didn't
know then that it was a crematorium.

It was inside a forest.

We didn't see anything.

We didn't yet know that such a thing
existed in the world.

Several minutes later
Hauptscharführer Hamol arrived.

He was the head of all the crematoria.

He received us very nicely.

He said,
“Here you'll have enough to eat,

but you'll have to work very hard.”

The doors suddenly opened
to the gas chambers.

People, naked people,
started falling out.

We were all frightened.

No one dared to ask what it all was.

We were immediately taken
to the other side of this house.

There we saw hell on this earth.

Large piles of dead people and people
dragging these dead to a long pit,

about 30 metres in length
and 10 metres in width.

There was a huge fire there
made with trees.

On the other side fat was being taken
out of this pit with a bucket.

We had to begin working immediately.

We had been used to paying
our full respects to the dead.

It was a little difficult for us.

Four people would take hold
of one dead person,

but the SS came and said,
“No, each one of you will take one.”

He showed us how
with a simple walking stick.

One was to take it under the chin,

to put the stick on the neck
and to drag him to the pit

as one would drag a rag
or a piece of wood.

At the pit there were other people
who pushed the dead into the pit.

This had to go quickly.

There were those of us who threw
themselves, jumped into the pit, alive.

It seemed they thought it
better to be burned

instead of working at such a job.

After a week they suddenly took me
one night to crematorium one.

I didn't know that there was
also a crematorium one.

The conditions in crematorium one
were better.

There were places to sleep there,
near the ovens.

It was also bigger there.

The whole job was more mechanical.

The gas chamber was very large.

All around there were water
installations, as if for showers.

Everyone crowded
around these showers.

They still didn't know.

Some who did refused to believe that
they were going to be gassed there.

They would put about 2,000,
2,500 people in there.

If there wasn't enough room

the small children would be thrown
on top of the people's heads.

They would put them in so tightly,
one on top of the other,

that even a needle
wouldn't have fallen down

but would have remained
on top of the people.

The door would be
hermetically sealed.

Above the ground, from above, they would
put in two to three tins of Zyklon B.

This was always done by an SS man.

There was always a doctor present
at the time of the poisoning.

There was a doctor present.

The doctor would decide
when the door could be opened

and the poisonous gases
removed from the room.

He would look through
a hole in the door

and would see whether
there was any movement or shouts.

According to this he would decide.

There were those who started to pray.

Most of the Jews there were Orthodox.

They didn't believe
that such a thing could be.

They were willing to die
in the name of God,

but revolt was impossible there.

We even told them,
“Do something. You're going to die.”

But they didn't believe it.

There were all sorts of reactions
from all sorts of people.

There were disabled people. They would
take out their war service cards,

showing that they had fought
in the First World War,

with all kinds of distinctions and
medals which they had from that time.

They shouted, “What's this?
We fought for Germany.”

“Now they're going to burn us,
kill us? This is impossible.”

“We protest against such a thing!”

But everyone just laughed at them.

They didn't take it seriously,
these SS men.

They laughed at the whole thing.

There were invalids whom I helped to
undress as they couldn't do it alone.

There were many of us who helped.

I would talk to these people.

There were cases
where I saw acquaintances.

My heart wouldn't let me walk over
to them to let them recognise me.

No one who hasn't
undergone such a thing

can imagine what the will to live is,
what a moment of life is.

Every person, without exception,
is capable of doing the worst thing

just to live another minute.

Many women miscarried during
the poisoning. People hit each other.

People scratched with their nails.
There were fingernail marks on people.

Everyone wanted to survive,
but it was impossible there.

When the doors opened they took out
the poisoned air with an electric fan.

Within a quarter of an hour,
it was clear of all poison

and we went in
to take out all the corpses.

We took them up by lifts to the ovens.

Near the ovens, upstairs,

there was a man
who removed gold teeth and false teeth.

They would shave the women's hair

and look for all sorts of valuables
in the most intimate places,

especially on the women.

In the oven
it took 15 minutes to burn them.

Only a few ashes were left
from all these corpses.

(cheering)

(narrator) On 24 July, 1944,

the Russians liberated Lublin
in Eastern Poland.

Just outside the city they found
Majdanek concentration camp.

The SS had tried to kill all the inmates

and destroy all trace of
the extermination plant.

But a Polish resistance group
seized the camp

before they could
complete their work.

The gas chambers, disguised
as bath and disinfection rooms,

were captured intact.

The crematoria, still strewn
with smoking human ashes,

were only slightly damaged.

Close by they found cabbage fields

strewn with human bone-meal fertiliser.

Auschwitz was now
less than 170 miles away,

but still the Russians did nothing
about bombing it.

Its ovens were busier than ever.

(speaking Yiddish)

(translator)
There were two shifts at work

from six in the morning to six at night.

I was present when they brought
the Gypsies for burning, for gassing.

It was a terrible sight.

There were cries to the sky.

The cries in the bunker,

in the crematorium,
in the gas chamber,

were horrible.

I still wonder today

how God didn't hear these cries.

It's a wonder to me
that he didn't hear such a thing.

They were horrible,

the cries to the sky.

(narrator) But now it was ending. The
Germans were retreating on all fronts,

trying to destroy the evidence
as they went.

The Russians reached Auschwitz
on 26 January, 1945.

They found just 2,819 people,

too old or sick to be moved,

people the SS thought
would die anyway.

Everyone else had been hurriedly
marched back into Germany.

Among the survivors there was
a group of children, mostly twins,

pathetic survivors of Himmler's
experiments on fertility.

They found store rooms piled high

with things the SS hadn't had time
to send back to Germany.

In April 1945

the British and Americans overran
the camps in Western Germany.

Of the millions of people who'd been
in concentration camps all over Europe,

the Allies arrived in time
to save only the last 500,000.

Tens of thousands of these
would soon be dead too

of the effects of hunger and disease.

We will never know
precisely how many people

the SS and their supporters murdered.

Quarter of a million Gypsies.

Three million Poles.

Over five million Jews
and millions more Slavs.

At least 14 million human beings
done to death

as a direct result of a racial theory.

Auschwitz has been left
as the Russians found it,

a decaying memorial to its victims.

Nobody really knows
how many died here.

A million?

Perhaps twice that.

The camp, half destroyed,

the ruined crematoria
hurriedly blown up by the SS

and the open hole,
once a gas chamber

into which 2,500
were crammed at a time,

all these remain as they were in 1945.

The woods behind the camp

where so many waited their turn to go
to the gas chamber are undisturbed,

in deference to their memory.

This land was once a marsh.

But then the SS used it
to dump their ashes.

Touch the ground almost anywhere
here, as far as the eye can see,

and the hand comes up covered
in a fine loam of human bone meal.

The loam goes down
to a depth of ten feet.

The ruins of Auschwitz
are more than a memorial.

As long as there is
political intolerance,

religious bigotry, racial prejudice,

they are a warning, a warning
that we all have a responsibility

to see that no one builds
another Auschwitz.