Original subtitles

Auschwitz -

the most infamous place on earth.

More than a million people were murdered here...

..but, astonishingly, there were some who survived.

This film tells the surprising story

of what happened to them after Auschwitz.

TRANSLATION: I did ask why, what he had in the dream,

and then he says, "It's always the same dream."

A woman is sitting, an old woman, on his chest with very long fingernails

and she's stabbing him into his chest.

TRANSLATION: I can't understand how I'm still alive.

It's a miracle we're still alive and that I've got to 80 years old.

What I tell my children - not to explode at little things.

Anger will drive you out of this world.

It was very dark...

..and the smallest act of kindness appeared like a large spark.

I choose to remember the sparks -

that's my motto.

Hey, you guys. We got Dad a Father's Day present from everybody.

From all of us - that's great. From us too? Uh-huh.

'What I got out of it is, you get through things, horrible things.'

If my father can get through that and come out as cheerful

and as wonderful as he is,

certainly, I can get through whatever struggle I have.

I believe in kindness.

And you got that from Auschwitz?

Strangely, yes.

THEY GREET EACH OTHER

Different people around the world,

of different religious and ethnic origins,

all with different ways of rebuilding a life.

But different people who are all the same in one way -

they were all touched by Auschwitz.

A beach resort on the coast of the Mediterranean...

..distinguished by the fact that Adolf Hitler would have liked to see

virtually every single one of these people dead.

Because this is Israel...

..the place more Holocaust survivors

moved to after the war than anywhere else.

TRANSLATION: They kept on telling us

that we were getting closer and closer.

We just wanted to glimpse out of the porthole,

just for a moment.

And this is Tel Aviv - it's really Tel Aviv.

It was a really magical night, so wonderful, simply a dream.

When Halina Birenbaum arrived in Tel Aviv in 1947,

it was not yet in an independent country.

This place was not called Israel but Palestine.

But the murder of six million Jews by the Nazis gave a new impetus

to the call for a Jewish state to be created in the Middle East.

The solution of the Jewish problem cannot be brought about

unless the Jewish people will be given the right

and will be helped by the United Nations to establish

Palestine once and for all as a Jewish homeland.

In the 1940s, large numbers of Jews

travelled to British controlled Palestine.

Here they joined several hundred thousand Jews who had already

settled here in the 1920s and '30s.

There were strict quotas on the number of Jews allowed in

and many were turned away.

But for those who managed to get to this land,

there was the promise of a new beginning.

Many immigrants started their new lives on a kibbutz...

..a farm, based on collective ideals.

Halina Birenbaum was one of them.

She arrived here in 1947.

A survivor of Auschwitz, she came as an 18-year-old,

without family, full of idealistic dreams about what a place

inhabited by fellow Jews would be like.

But she found that the settlers who were already here did not

welcome her as she'd expected.

TRANSLATION: They didn't want to listen to our stories.

They looked at us with rejection, disrespect, utter disrespect,

because we weren't human beings. We were worth nothing.

"Why didn't you come earlier to build?" they said.

"You came. "Well, now it's already prepared."

Incredibly, the fact that Halina had suffered here in Auschwitz

worked against her.

Many existing members of the Kibbutz hadn't endured the Holocaust -

they'd settled in the Middle East before the war.

And now they made a series of bitter comments to her.

"You just followed like sheep. You didn't defend yourselves.

"Why didn't you defend yourselves?

"What happened to you? You're to blame.

"You didn't do anything. That kind of thing wouldn't happen to us.

"Don't tell us about it - it's a disgrace.

"Don't tell the young people, you'll crush their fighting spirit."

NEWSREEL: In May of 1948, a new Jewish state, Israel,

was born in a bath of blood.

Thus for the first time since the Roman legion destroyed Jerusalem

in the year 70 AD, the Jewish people have a nation of their own.

Her flag became a symbol of hope in a troubled world.

Halina was now a citizen of an independent Israel.

She soon fell in love with another new Israeli -

like her, an immigrant from Poland.

He's got something good in his heart for me.

If anything will happen to me, I can always turn to him

and he will always help me.

TRANSLATION: I thought that amongst the girls that were in the kibbutz,

she was so much more suitable for me.

That's what I thought.

At the age of 21, Halina gave birth to a son,

but she found it hard to be a mother.

I yell at him about everything. I didn't want to hit him.

I thought that instead of hitting, I'll yell at him -

that's how I'll teach him.

I'd give speeches during my yelling.

One of the reasons Halina found parenting difficult was

because of what happened here.

This is Majdanek camp in Poland.

The Nazis sent Halina and her mother

to the camp from the Warsaw Ghetto in 1943.

When they first arrived, Halina was not too worried.

And now they'll take us to a shower and give us different clothes,

and they'll take us to these barracks

and whoever is willing and can work, nothing will happen to you.

The barracks you see over there, there's probably beds

and food and water and everything will be good.

Halina was taken into one of the shower rooms at the camp

and was washed clean...

but suddenly she became anxious.

My mum is not coming in

and everything is turning upside down in my stomach.

"What? Is she not going to come?

"She'll never be here again, my mother?"

Her mother had been led a few yards away towards a small building

at the back of the shower block.

Here were gas chambers.

Almost certainly in one of these, Halina's mother was murdered.

I have no words at all.

I didn't cry.

It was beyond tears. It's all over.

There is nothing any more.

There is no sky, no more earth,

as if they took and broke my legs and hands.

So I started to go round the shower.

"Mother is gone.

"Mother is gone. Mother is gone."

At the age of just 13,

Halina had to fight to survive in Majdanek,

then Auschwitz and a series of other Nazi camps,

all without her mother by her side.

After the war was over, when she was in Israel,

Halina once again missed her mother's love and help

as she struggled with her new baby.

At night he used to cry and I didn't know how to handle it.

Everything was so different, so new.

When a child is born, there are so many sleepless nights

and I just wasn't ready for these kind of things.

And once her son could talk, Halina also had to decide how best

to explain the number the Nazis had tattooed on her arm.

When the child was small and he saw the number on my arm,

he asked, "Why did you draw on your hand?"

So I said, "I didn't draw it. There was a war and people were bad."

"Who were the people?" "They were the Germans."

Soon Halina was telling her son about all the horrors

she had experienced during the war.

At the age of five he knew what happened to you?

Yes, and he was scared.

TRANSLATION: Mum told me horrifying stories.

Horrible.

Things that were completely aggravating,

that extract so much rage and anger and even violence,

like internal, that I never knew what to do with them.

There isn't a day when she doesn't speak of what happened,

from different aspects, and I have to listen.

I'm there to absorb and listen, until at the end

I can't cut her off and say, "Mother, you already said that.

"Mother, I already know this story.

"This you already told me a long time ago." I can't.

I don't want to hurt her.

I also want to give her a chance to let it out.

I feel I've got some sort of role

and have had from a young age.

A child doesn't need this role at a young age -

he needs to be a child.

It didn't allow me to be a child.

HE SPEAKS OWN LANGUAGE

Yakov has a very successful career in the music industry in Israel,

but it's proved difficult for him to escape the events of his childhood.

I went to therapy,

with breaks here and there from one therapist to another.

Overall, 40 years of therapy.

It took me a long time to peel it away

and get to the places where I could, for instance, be mad at my mother.

In Israel, the problems faced by children

of Holocaust survivors are well-known.

Here in Jerusalem is the headquarters of an organisation

that offers support, not just to Holocaust survivors

but their children as well - the so called "second generation".

Very often, all kinds of expectations

that were put on the second generation,

like, you know, "You didn't suffer what we went through

"so you can achieve."

You were also named after somebody who is dead, so you have to fulfil

not only your own life but also the life of the person who is dead.

THEY SPEAK OWN LANGUAGE

At AMHA, one of the counsellors with experience of the problems

faced by children of Holocaust survivors is Dr Giselle Cycowicz.

'It's terrible.

'It's a terrible load for a child to grow up under this kind of misery,'

to live with constant reminder of horror...

..both as a Jew...

..and as a child.

You are a teenager.

You want to break out, as this is the nature of a teenager,

but you always have on your back that load.

Dr Cycowicz also believes that it's important to

remember that none of this is the parents' fault.

It's not a question of blame.

It's just a question of being inflicted,

like somebody's inflicted with cancer.

You cannot blame the mother that she has cancer,

but what it does to the child is it puts on a burden to be

the caretaker of somebody who should be his caretaker,

you know, a reversal of roles.

Dr Cycowicz has a special empathy with Holocaust survivors

because she is a Holocaust survivor herself,

having been sent to Auschwitz in 1944.

Today, here in West Jerusalem,

she is on a visit to counsel another survivor.

Dr Cycowicz's patient is a woman who's plagued by bad dreams.

For Dr Cycowicz,

conversations like this aren't just of benefit to her patients.

Well, I get part of... SHE LAUGHS

..of her therapy, when I treat her.

'It helps me.'

I think it helps me.

It helps me. I don't need to be distant from it.

I don't believe that you chase away thoughts and you don't think of it.

But with her own children,

Dr Cycowicz was careful how she talked about her traumatic past.

Though she didn't hide that she'd been in Auschwitz from them,

she never went into detail about how she'd suffered.

You know, my mother is

very strong and she made a life for herself,

and she continued and we grew up in a positive environment.

In other words, she was...

She wasn't someone who the Holocaust broke her

and we were in this home, this dysfunctional home.

I think we had a very normal home and, like my sister said,

there were stories here and there about things, but...

it wasn't part of our consciousness - "Our mother's a survivor."

Dr Cycowicz has a PhD in psychology and knows how valuable

science can be in helping families deal with a difficult past...

..but she also believes in the power of a non-scientific force.

I never stopped believing in God.

I know that my faith was never shaken.

I believe that if something doesn't go well, there is a reason for it,

there must be a reason to it,

and in time I find out what the reason is.

Do you think in time you'll find out what the reason for Auschwitz was?

I will not find it out,

but people who live a hundred years from now will know.

Some cataclysm will happen in the world.

But couldn't the reason Auschwitz happened just be

that the Nazis wanted to kill people?

That's a reason.

These were the tools of God to carry out this awful thing.

He picked a Hitler and he picked...

SHE CLEARS HER THROAT

It was part of the instruments...

..that carried this out.

There are also many survivors of Auschwitz

who don't possess a religious faith,

like Halina Birenbaum,

seen here at an Israeli school on Holocaust Memorial Day.

TRANSLATION: 'There is no God.

'There's no need to fast any more.'

Halina believes passionately that it's important people hear

and understand her story.

She's written a book about her life and often talks in schools.

But she also recognised in recent years that her own previous

suffering might have led her to make mistakes

in her dealings with her son.

I said, "I ask for your forgiveness."

And I hugged him and I kissed him and he kissed me,

and since then it's OK.

To hear that apology, it was worth it all, really.

Since then, a new phase was created in my relationship

with my mother that continues to this day.

FAMILY CONVERSATION

Even though the relationship between Halina and Yakov has entered

this new phase, the subject of the Holocaust remains a contentious one.

ALL SING A FOLK SONG

As for Giselle Cycowicz,

she has one piece of advice for the next generation.

'What I tell my children,'

and this is what I would like to really bring across,

not to explode at little things.

Anger.

And there is a saying in the books -

anger will drive you out of this world.

I am not big enough to revenge six million Jews

and I don't have the wish.

I cannot do it.

BIG BAND JAZZ PLAYS

Auschwitz survivors didn't just flock to Israel after the war -

many of them came here, to America.

This is Highland Park in the state of Illinois,

the home of Max Epstein,

a retired university professor with a wife,

three children and five grandchildren.

'There are some, I don't know about schools specifically, but...'

And, as his son and daughter-in-law tell him via the internet,

another grandchild due to arrive soon.

'Yeah, we're really excited.'

You are really excited? 'Really. Really.'

Because the baby is going to be the next generation?

Yeah. As my father said to me,

he said, "So you're carrying, in your tummy,

"Max's victory over Hitler."

Oh, my goodness! Oh, my goodness! That is...

That's hitting it right on the nose.

THEY LAUGH

Victory over Hitler because Max suffered in Auschwitz,

but despite his own treatment by the Nazis, Max has lived a happy life.

He is another Auschwitz survivor who has not let anger drive him

out of this world.

You already made that.

'I cannot make myself judge people.'

I believe in kindness.

And you got that from Auschwitz?

Strangely, yes.

As a philosophy, yes, that's true.

Yeah, that's true.

But when Max first arrived at Auschwitz,

what he sensed was an atmosphere of horror.

They took us down from the train.

Waiting...

with...I and my mother.

Max and his mother, as Polish Jews,

were sent to Auschwitz from a ghetto in 1944.

This was the period of the most frenzied killing at Auschwitz,

as hundreds of thousands of Hungarian Jews,

like those pictured here, arrived at the camp.

Er...

It didn't take more than about 20 minutes.

The smell, you know, it was like burning hair, you know, organic.

So it was crystal clear -

four crematoria going full blast.

Big Hungarian liquidation, 400,000, came in.

On arrival at Auschwitz, Max and his mother were separated.

Max was now on his own.

Auschwitz-Birkenau was divided into many sub camps,

and once or twice Max's mother was able to come near to the wire

between her camp and the section of Auschwitz where he was imprisoned.

So she actually came and we talked and we screamed to each other.

And I remember, you remember of course,

being a young punk.

She cried...

And I said, "Why are you crying? What you crying?

"We are going to be dead anyway, so what's the point?"

You know, smartass kind of kid.

Max was sent to work at a factory in the countryside

less than a mile from the camp.

Here, one German soldier picked him out from the other prisoners.

So I started walking with him, he says to me,

"Listen, I don't give a damn what you do.

"I don't like seeing small boys being beaten."

Max only worked at the factory for a few weeks,

but the compassionate way in which this German soldier treated him -

by trying to protect him from the appalling brutality

that was all around - has affected Max ever since.

It was very dark...

..and the smallest act of kindness appeared like a large spark.

I choose to remember the sparks -

that's my motto - and that's what I live by.

Kindness...because there is always kindness.

NEWSREEL: General Eisenhower comes to see with his own eyes

the atrocities in Nazi prison camps captured by the Allied armies.

Once the Nazi concentration camps were liberated,

the world discovered the full horror of Hitler's regime.

As for the horror he himself had suffered,

Max was doing his best to forget it.

'to summon members of Congress and high-ranking... '

I decided I'm going to erase the goddamned thing...

..from my conscience and from everything that I do.

Erase, erase, erase it.

I mean completely erase it. Why?

It's an important part of your life.

Because I was amazed and... elated that I survived

and I can now go after what I want.

The chief thing he now wanted was his mother.

After many weeks of searching, he managed to find her.

She came out, pleasantly surprised.

More than that. More than that.

Much more than that.

What was her reaction? Well, it's...

I presume it must have been profound.

Now, I am a family man.

I belong to a family.

I'm not alone.

In 1948, Max and his mother were living in the new state of Israel,

having first moved to Palestine after the war ended.

Unlike some Holocaust survivors,

Max experienced no prejudice against him.

I spoke Hebrew freely.

I immediately integrated into society,

my best friend was an Israeli-born.

I had no problems at all.

There was no question, even in the kibbutz already.

MUSIC: Hava Naglia by Andre Rieu

It was a beautiful time. It was gorgeous.

From a...

It was really pastoral.

When the new state of Israel was attacked by neighbouring Arabs,

Max fought in the Israeli armed forces.

This turned out to offer him

another way of putting his experience in Auschwitz behind him.

The best thing they could have done for me.

That was the best catharsis that one could offer.

Just like that.

Out of victimhood, out of talking about it,

not speaking about the fact that you're participating in an event

that happens 1-2,000 years.

After just a few years in Israel, Max decided on a dramatic change.

Max's father had always had great ambitions for him.

And even though he'd died in the ghetto,

his influence on Max was still strong.

You know, it's a very interesting thing.

A dead father still controls your life.

Did you know that?

I wanted the opportunity to succeed.

Look, I'm satisfying my father's wish.

That's what he wanted.

MUSIC: Sing, Sing, Sing by The Wynford Big Band

To further his career, Max moved to America with his mother in 1953.

They soon settled here in Chicago.

Max pursued his academic studies at Northwestern University,

eventually becoming a professor of electrical engineering.

He remained a bachelor, living with his mother until his late 30s.

Then, he met the woman who was to become his wife.

Having been a bachelor for so long,

what was it that attracted you about...?

Well, first of all, she was very beautiful.

What do you mean, "was"?

I'm sorry.

50 years and still an error.

Yeah, but she was beautiful

and my mother was very impressed with her

because she had an extremely neat purse.

My mother says, "She's so neat."

So, instead of asking for the purse,

I ask for the hand.

HE CHUCKLES

Max and Judy eventually settled in Highland Park, a suburb of Chicago,

and over the next few years, raised three children.

On a special anniversary,

Max's daughter Deborah and her family arrive for a visit.

Oh. Hi, guys! Hi. Hi!

Hey, you guys.

We got Dad a Father's Day present from everybody.

From us too? Uh-huh. Happy Father's Day.

Max didn't keep his background a total secret

from his children and grandchildren,

but he did spare them the details of his wartime experience.

It's at the start of the next zone. Mm?

It starts at the start of the next zone.

I don't think... This is worse. Try by itself. Try by itself.

He made a point of never... talking about the horrors

and the atrocities.

It's going the other way.

'I think the way he's dealt with his background has been a help.

'Not what he went through, but how he has chosen to talk about it,'

and focus on it, and relay the experiences to us.

In Auschwitz, the Nazis tattooed a number on Max's arm,

but to his children, he made it into a joke.

They just wanted to know what this is.

So, I said this is a number.

If I lose my arm,

they will know where to return it.

What I got out of it is you get through things, horrible things.

There's a resilience that can carry you

so, I mean I've never gone through anything that horrible in my life,

of course, but if I've gone through hard times

and I've been depressed, I would say it's...

In the back of my mind, I've always felt, you know,

if my father can get through that

and come out as cheerful and as wonderful as he is,

certainly, I can get through whatever struggle I have.

CLAMOUR

But in the 1970s,

Max's policy of not speaking openly about the Holocaust was tested.

This is a real white victory for our people today

and it's something that they'll remember for the future.

The National Socialist Party of America,

a racist group wearing the swastika,

wanted to march through various areas of Chicago,

including Skokie, a Jewish suburb.

They lied as usual, see, Pop just told me

that we'd be in front of the trees and not behind them.

Not surprisingly, there were widespread protests.

CROWD CLAMOURS

In the wake of the controversy,

the local community decided to establish a Holocaust museum.

The newest version of the museum is on this site,

northwest of the city.

When Max was approached to help

and speak about his own wartime experiences,

he just didn't think he could say no.

My attempt to erase the Holocaust from my memory and just

continue to live as if it didn't exist has become a complete failure.

I just wanted to forget it, but it's impossible to do that.

It is a responsibility, it really is.

It answers the same question -

for decent men to do nothing is what causes evil to triumph.

So, I think that I, as a survivor, am supposed to what?

Move away or disappear?

That would be nothing but desertion of what I think,

what I believe, is an obligation.

For Max, there is one final victory.

I am 150% winner.

I have very successful children and grandchildren.

They are all hard-working, committed to raise children

and making it the most important thing in their life.

That means not only did I do it,

but the next generation is carrying it.

Most people who were sent to Auschwitz were like Max -

they were Jewish.

MAN SPEAKS OVER LOUDSPEAKER

But many thousands of non-Jews also suffered in Auschwitz.

Here at a commemoration ceremony at Auschwitz-Birkenau

is someone who experienced life in the camp at the age of nine.

His name is Hermann Hollenreiner.

SPEECH CONTINUES

FEMALE SPEAKER INTRODUCES GUESTS

Hermann Hollenreiner, known as Mano to his family and friends,

was born and bred in Germany.

He comes from a Sinti background.

The Germans called him a Zigeuner or Gypsy.

One whole section of Auschwitz-Birkenau was designated

by the Nazis the Zigeunerlager - the Gypsy camp.

Unusually for Auschwitz, the Nazis allowed those imprisoned

in the Zigeunerlager to stay together in family groups.

Here, at any one time,

up to 15,000 men, women and children were crammed together.

Several hundred thousand Sinti and Roma

were murdered during the Second World War by the Nazis.

19,000 died in Auschwitz alone.

Mano was sent with his family to the Gypsy camp in 1943.

TRANSLATION: We would pull out the grass like rabbits

so that we could just eat it

and if an SS caught us, we would get beaten.

That was also bad.

But then everything that happened in Birkenau was bad.

We had to get up early, then work, sweep the floor.

We had to work in the forest, that was over there,

and then the crematorium, we had to bring the dead there,

the small children, we had to put them in a wheelbarrow.

Soon, I can't talk about this any more. Seriously.

I can't understand how I'm still alive.

It's a miracle we're still alive and that I've got to 80 years old.

The Gypsy camp was liquidated by the Nazis on 2nd August, 1944.

Nearly 3,000 were murdered.

But Mano and his family had been transferred

to another concentration camp just weeks before.

By the time the camps were finally liberated,

in the spring of 1945,

Mano had become separated from his mother, father and sister.

There were now millions of displaced people in Europe.

Mano was just one of them.

He was lost and sick...

..and just 11 years old.

TRANSLATION: I got so ill, I was unconscious.

I didn't know anything any more.

And the French, they took me with them.

And then I came to France.

All of the others who were with me, and who'd also been in the camps,

were picked up, and I was just standing there all alone.

And such a language I'd never heard before in my life.

I had no idea where I was.

He was here, in Paris,

with no way of finding his parents.

Suddenly, Madame Fouquet came.

She was from Alsace, she knew German.

She approached me and just took me with her to her flat.

Madame Fouquet brought Mano to this building on the outskirts of Paris.

She lived here in a two-roomed flat on the second floor

with her family including her 16-year-old son Paul.

TRANSLATION: My mother explained to us

that she'd taken in a young deportee for a few days.

He arrived in our lives like that and we supported him.

We did what we could to help him.

They were like parents to me.

They would give me their last food.

They were really there for me. They bathed me. Everything.

And with Paul, he was three years older than me, or four years.

He would, like, grab my hand and go for a walk with me and stuff.

We tried to calm him, explain to him.

He was nervous, he moved a lot. He shook all the time.

I only wanted to sleep on the plain floor

and I ate with my hands.

What did I know from a knife and fork?

Mano appeared so emotionally disturbed

that he was admitted to this hospital in Paris for treatment.

He found the experience terrifying.

In the mental hospital,

there were 10 or 15 ill children

and everything was messy and they ate their own faeces.

And they screamed and stuff.

But it was to get worse.

Mano was subjected to a new experimental form of treatment -

electric shocks to the brain.

That was horrible, the electric shock.

They gave me 10 or 15.

That was horrible.

That was horrible.

Then came this professor who got me out of there.

He had a good look at me and questioned me a little bit

and then I was sent to a children's home,

a good children's home.

It was maybe 100km from Paris.

Meanwhile Mano's parents, who'd survived the war,

had been looking for him.

And in 1947, he was finally traced.

At long last, Mano could return home.

MUSIC: Im Munchen Steht Ein Hofbrauhaus by Alfons Bauer

I saw my sister again and my father.

My mum hugged me, everyone cried,

and all the Sinti who were my relatives came and they hugged me.

I couldn't speak a word of German, only French.

One was back with one's parents.

One would feel good again.

I did love my parents.

Mano and his family travelled around various towns

and villages in Bavaria, selling door-to-door

and putting on prize boxing matches, challenging local youths.

They also lived part of the time in Munich,

and it was here in a dancehall that Mano met a young woman called Else.

What did you find attractive about her?

She was very sexy. It's true.

There was something about her that I liked.

Else soon discovered

that her new boyfriend was not only of Sinti origin,

he was also illiterate.

Else's mother seemed to find it all rather amusing.

TRANSLATION: She jokingly said to my father,

"Well, Else will bring us a son-in-law now,

"a Gypsy who can't read and write."

She didn't know how serious it was already

cos I was already pregnant with the first child.

You have only yourself to blame.

Yes, and that's how it continued, everything went really fast.

What I learnt very quickly was that he was insecure in a way.

He'd always pick a quarrel.

I felt like someone who had to protect him.

Mano and Else married in 1957 and had three children.

Their daughter Carol still lives with them.

And Mano also lives with the legacy of the war.

Well, I am nervous. Feelings of anxiety still.

I still get feelings of anxiety.

If I see a movie with SS in it, I switch over because I get so angry.

Yeah.

TRANSLATION: I think a child takes a father as he is.

As a child, I just thought, "That's how he is."

But now I know where it comes from.

He's very nervous. Super nervous.

And that, for me, is a direct result of the concentration camps.

The nightmare which he has is the one I've always known about,

even as a child. He's always dreamt this.

He expresses himself by screaming, like an animal.

First of all, you don't think this is a human who's screaming.

And the next day, he would tell me that he's had this dream

and it's always the same dream.

I did ask why... about what he had in the dream

and then he says it's always the same dream.

A woman is sitting, an old woman, on his chest

with very long fingernails,

and she's stabbing him into his chest.

I do think that it affects me.

I think...

Well, I think children of Holocaust survivors,

they somehow inherit their anxiety.

I do think that one is more distrustful towards other people...

..because one never knows what's behind what they're saying.

THEY TALK IN GERMAN

Several years into their marriage,

Mano embarked on a new career as an antiques dealer.

He and his wife would travel around southern Germany and Austria

searching for furniture they could buy and sell.

And even though money was tight,

Mano always believed in enjoying himself.

TRANSLATION: I drove expensive cars.

I spent money like it was going out of fashion.

I mean we didn't have money, but still I'd buy them on credit.

Yes, at the time, I didn't have a winter coat,

but I had a big nice car.

My life insurance was worth a car.

I got 120,000 for that

and I instantly bought the car in cash in Karlsruhe.

I even got it a little bit cheaper for cash.

Then I got two Mercedes SLs. I paid in cash for them too.

And my wife almost cried because we bought these cars

and she'd have preferred to have bought another house.

But you know what women are like.

MUSIC: Fountains Of Rome: The Villa Medici Fountain by London Symphony Orchestra and Lamberto Gardelli

Mano never forgot the generosity of the French family

who'd offered him a home in the months after the war.

But he lost touch with them.

Until a few years ago, he learnt that one of his oldest friends

now lived here in Ceillac, high in the French Alps.

This is the home of Paul who first befriended Mano back in 1945.

THEY GREET EACH OTHER

THEY TALK IN FRENCH

Paul retired to Ceillac with his wife.

And they now live in the village close to their children,

grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

Paul had always told them about Mano,

his friend who had suffered in the Gypsy camp at Auschwitz,

but had lost hope of ever seeing him again.

TRANSLATION: It's just sad that we met so late.

That was my parent's fault.

They were happy that we were travelling, on a journey,

like it used to be for the Sinti.

But I would always think of Auntie Fifine, of Paul, and of Felix.

I would always think of being with them.

They all cared for me a lot otherwise I just wouldn't be here.

After a time, he was like a brother to me.

And Auntie Fifine...

For me, they were like angels.

The most important thing, he says,

is that you found each other again.

Yes, it's true.

Mano, like all those imprisoned in the Gypsy camp,

experienced life in Auschwitz-Birkenau,

but there was also another Auschwitz.

This is Auschwitz main camp,

a mile-and-a-half away from Auschwitz-Birkenau.

It's the original Auschwitz,

opened in 1940 by the Nazis

in order to terrorise the local Polish population.

It was also a place of murder.

Over half of the Poles first sent to Auschwitz in 1940

were dead within 20 months.

Tadeusz Smreczynski arrived here in 1944 at the age of 19.

Whilst in the hands of the Nazis,

he would experience a life-changing moment of great insight.

But before that could happen,

he had to survive his first day in Auschwitz.

TRANSLATION: We were all sitting quietly,

thinking about our fate and our families

because we knew that this was the last day of our lives.

He was taken to the most feared place inside Auschwitz main camp.

Block 11.

A prison within a prison.

Tadeusz was charged, in part,

with helping others to escape from the Germans.

In this room he was subjected to a parody of a trial -

one that lasted just a few minutes.

When my turn came I went into the room...

..and was asked to provide my personal details...

..but the sentence was not passed.

Tadeusz didn't know it yet, but he'd been lucky.

Most people who were tried in Block 11 that day

were taken from Auschwitz main camp

and murdered in the gas chambers of Birkenau.

But for reasons he was never told, Tadeusz was not one of them.

We were supplied with striped uniforms

and we became the prisoners of Auschwitz.

It was positively surprising to us,

because it meant a chance for life.

Tadeusz endured around six weeks in Auschwitz main camp.

Then he was selected to go on a journey.

He was taken 350 miles away,

through the Alps.

An area of exceptional beauty

where people were facing their tragic fate.

Eventually he reached the city of Linz in Austria.

Tadeusz was now imprisoned in a new concentration camp -

one that in 1944 used to be on this spot.

Here he had an insight

that was to change the rest of his life.

Looking at it all, I felt that life could only regain sense

if you try and do good to other people.

I decided that if I survive,

I would become a doctor.

I was inspired by prisoners who were doctors

who were helping others in the camp.

MUSIC: Russian National Anthem

The war ended,

and Tadeusz returned to a different Poland -

one no longer occupied by the Nazis,

but, instead, dominated by Communists,

backed by Stalin.

Tadeusz went to Krakow in southern Poland.

Here he began his studies to become a doctor.

By now, he'd fallen in love.

TRANSLATION: He was really good looking,

which you can see on the photos.

I invited him to a couple of big parties.

After the war we started to have some fun.

All seemed to be going well for Tadeusz.

Not only was he in love,

but he'd gained a place at the prestigious Jagiellonian University

here in Krakow -

one of the most famous universities in the whole of Europe.

He did well in his studies,

and seemed set on a hugely successful career...

..until one day he was taken aside

and asked to join the Communist Party.

Sticking to his principles, he refused.

I totally rejected Communism in the form it existed.

After he qualified as a doctor,

the Communist authorities refused to allow him to work in a clinic

and pursue medical research.

Instead he was forced to join the army

and sent to the opposite end of Poland from his wife and child.

I asked a lieutenant why they were taking me to the army

at this point in time, when I stood a chance of an academic career.

He said, "Because you are an enemy by class."

After six years, he was able to leave the army,

and he set up as a doctor in the coal mining town

where his wife came from, in the south of Poland.

There was only one problem.

His house and surgery

were only a ten-minute drive away from Auschwitz.

So close, that the road they lived on

was subsequently renamed Victims of Auschwitz Street.

Living this near to Auschwitz was not easy for Tadeusz.

The stress was really present when passing by the camp.

Nearly every bit of the camp reminded me of something.

So it was upsetting.

Then there was another legacy of the camp -

the number the Nazis had tattooed on his arm.

HE SPEAKS IN POLISH

TRANSLATION: I had it cut out by a friend of mine.

There's a dot left, and a scar,

which is practically invisible.

I was convinced that its absence would make it easier for me

to forget those times.

But none of this changed my memory.

It's all so deeply fixed in my memory

that it can't be removed by any scalpel.

Tadeusz had always dreamed of living in Krakow.

When he retired, he and his wife moved to a flat

in the suburbs of the city.

The rest of his family are full of admiration

for the way he has coped with the past.

TRANSLATION: It was a generation that received no care whatsoever,

and they had to deal with their own psychological issues by themselves.

THEY SPEAK IN POLISH

As a family man, he's very warm and caring.

He was enormously loaded with work, but he was there for us

as much as he could be.

And Tadeusz was careful not to burden others

with the horrors he had experienced.

Only exceptionally I would talk of it,

if someone started on the topic.

Otherwise I thought it too drastic a subject of conversation

for those who did not share the experience.

Tadeusz's former house and surgery near Auschwitz

is now the home of his son Piotr and his family.

He's also a doctor,

and sees patients in the house just as his father did.

Their first son, Pawel, was born with serious brain damage,

and Tadeusz, true to his belief

that life can only have meaning if you help others,

cared for him as much as he could.

TRANSLATION: Grandfather loved Pawel more than anything,

and spent a lot of time with him.

He would sit beside him, stroke his back

or march across the room and sing, because Pawel loved it.

I know that, unfortunately, life can sometimes contain surprises,

and that whatever cheerful and positive future

you imagine for yourself

can suddenly be changed into something very different.

Tadeusz's life, of course, changed forever because of Auschwitz.

He's still kept awake at night

by the memories he has of the place.

But, more than anything,

he's affected by one piece of music

that he always associates with the camp.

Once in Auschwitz, when on the way to the kitchen,

where we were paving the floor,

I suddenly heard someone singing an aria from Tosca.

# E lucevan le stelle

# Ed olezzava la terra

# Stridea l'uscio dell'orto... #

The last part of Cavaradossi's before his death.

# E un passo sfiorava la rena... #

Still, today, I get incredibly emotional about it.

It was another prisoner, hidden from view,

who was singing the aria.

# Mi cadea fra le braccia... #

The SS men ran over and the singing suddenly stopped.

ARIA FADES

And I asked what happened.

He was killed.

# L'ora e fuggita

# E muoio disperato!

# E muoio disperato! #

If I come across that aria from Tosca on radio or TV...

everything comes back -

the emotional experiences and the wickedness of this world.

DOORBELL RINGS

THEY GREET EACH OTHER

SHE CHUCKLES

Tadeusz stays as close as he can to his family.

Arriving for this family gathering are his sister,

together with his grandson Piotr and his girlfriend.

TRANSLATION: Grandad's got strong principles,

and he always stands by them.

There are no circumstances

under which he'd depart from his principles.

At the same time, he's a man full of empathy

who always gives priority to the family.

That's why now I can say that I would like to live my life

the way Grandad has lived his.

Tadeusz chose to live his life in his original homeland

after the war,

but many other survivors moved across Europe and made a new start.

One French survivor of the camp

ended up in London.

Her name is Freda Wineman.

Well, it was a very nice district.

Green, and it was lovely.

It was exciting, you know.

It was a...

It was a lovely city,

and I liked this suburb,

and I found relations, so it was nice.

NEWSREEL JINGLE

Freda didn't know it, when she arrived in Britain in 1948,

but as she adapted to this new country,

she was going to face a number of problems.

One of them would be not only unexpected

but also hugely traumatic.

But to start with,

she just had the minor difficulty of coming to terms

with the British character.

They always say everything is fine, you know.

The weather is fine.

"How are you?" "I'm fine." So you were not used to it.

If you ask a French person how they are,

they give you a whole medical list.

And they were not as warm, I thought, the British.

They were not so outgoing, they were very reserved.

Too reserved for my liking. It was difficult.

NEWSREEL: Now we're going up the street -

summer 1950,

no workers standing idle and the shops open again.

When she first came to Britain,

Freda tried to talk about what had happened to her.

People didn't want to hear.

I had the impression that everybody wanted to start a new life.

You know, make a life for themselves again.

And trying to bury whatever they went through.

But nobody wanted to know.

It was difficult.

It was especially difficult for Freda,

because the memory of what she had experienced at Auschwitz

haunted her as she slept.

I already had nightmares all the time.

I was in the enclosure of the crematorium...

..and I heard the door were going to close...

and then I woke up. Can you imagine what state I was?

This is the past that Freda had to deal with.

When she'd arrived at Auschwitz, on a Jewish transport from France,

she'd been separated from her mother and younger brother.

They were taken to one of the four

crematoria/gas chamber complexes in the camp.

One was here...

..the gas chamber in the semi-basement of the building

next to an undressing room.

It was in one of these factories of death in Auschwitz

that Freda's mother and younger brother Marcel were murdered.

Freda was sent to the women's camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Here women were crammed together in conditions

that were appalling even for Auschwitz.

And the inmates were still subjected to regular selections for death.

Directly in front of them was one of the killing factories.

Our barracks were so near the crematoriums,

and we could see the smoke and smell the fire.

Not just smoke, fire.

I couldn't believe that anybody could inflict such horror

on another person.

But, despite the horrors of Auschwitz-Birkenau,

Freda did not give up hope.

I felt, even then, I was only 19, 20,

I felt I really had no teenage years, nothing,

because we lived under the occupation,

and now I'm here, I haven't even lived yet, you know.

So there was still a little light in me that wanted to live, you know.

Back in London, in 1949,

Freda's life was transformed.

She fell in love and was soon married.

He was an exceptionally nice person.

He had all the qualities I thought would be lovely for me.

Her husband, David Wineman, came from a wealthy family.

So wealthy that he lived with his parents

in a huge house in North London.

And straight after she was married, Freda lived there with him.

This is the house.

They're taking it to pieces.

Unfortunately we can't see anything.

It's been sold.

I can't recognise it.

It's not there any more.

Well, it was very big.

It had a lot of land, it had a rose garden,

it had a vegetable garden, it had an orchard,

it had two big lawns,

and then it had six or seven bedrooms.

After the birth of their first daughter,

Freda and David even discussed buying their own huge house

in North London.

This one. This is the house.

It's also a nice house!

I liked the house, you know,

it was up for sale, so we considered it, but...

For us, it would have been just right.

Do you ever drive by it and think of what might have been?

Sure. SHE CHUCKLES

But...

..everything collapsed.

Well, he looked so well, nobody thought he was ill,

but he had, unfortunately, hepatitis.

And in a matter of three months he wasn't here any more.

I was often quite down. It wasn't easy.

It was very, very hard to overcome, to live with it.

And I think for ten years I lived like...

in a nightmare, you know.

I couldn't believe that he had gone.

I still spoke in "we" not "I", you know.

So...

But I had to come to terms with what had happened.

Freda's husband hadn't made a will,

so now she had to bring up her two daughters

in real financial hardship.

Instead of living in a grand house,

they lived here in a small flat, with no central heating.

We didn't have an awful lot of money,

when we was children, to throw around.

I think we were self-conscious about asking for things,

because times had been tough,

and times before had been even tougher.

Are these small enough, Sandra?

I'm sure it's fine.

They'll be very nice.

'She would tell us things about people's bravery,

'or her escape attempts,

'to try not to traumatise us too much.

'It did have some effect.'

I, particularly, was always scared of the dark.

You know, never knew which nasty was hiding

round a dark doorway or a corner.

I must say, I must get the same knife as you have here.

All these things might be an effect,

or it might just have been me and not liking the dark,

of being a scaredy-cat, but who knows?

It's the advantage of having a little bit of home grown food.

'We were aware that Mum had bad dreams,

'because we'd wake up and hear it.

'With hindsight, there is stuff.

'She couldn't bear to have the fridge or the cupboard empty,'

because, the thought was,

she was not going to be hungry again,

like they were hungry in the camps.

For Freda herself, there's another abiding legacy.

'Cleanliness.

'Cleanliness - I think we are over-clean...

'..because we have been so dirty.'

Are they good enough for compote? Or are they too...

No, they're all right for compote.

'I think we are obsessed by cleanliness.'

Because we are pleased that we are so clean now.

Come and play with Kitty.

Here.

She likes it.

Even now, so many years after the end of the war,

one of Freda's granddaughters

thinks she can still detect the influence of the past.

'Oh, it certainly defines her, very much so.'

I suspect it's probably brought out character traits

that were there anyway,

but it's certainly brought them to the fore.

No?

No? Had enough of that?

I suppose the determination, stubbornness,

very much single-minded about getting something done.

Equally, the kind of putting on the right image,

so always wanting to be well-presented,

do well, look well.

I know I have a remarkable grandmother,

not only because of her agility, her sprightliness for her age,

but kind of her personal experiences,

her life story.

At the age of 91...

I do not tell you my story in bitterness...

..Freda still regularly talks to schoolchildren

about her experience during the war,

and the lessons that she thinks should be taken from it.

Your children, and their children,

need to understand that these kind of things happened

and, most importantly, you and they need to counter this intolerance,

prejudice and hatred.

Yes, we hope that by conveying our personal experiences first-hand

we can help to put across real stories to you, who are the future.

There's been an unexpected benefit for Freda

as a result of talking in public about her past.

She no longer suffers nightmares.

No longer dreams of being trapped in one of the crematoria of Auschwitz.

And those who have heard her stories,

not least her own grandchildren, have benefited as well.

This appalling thing happened to her,

and she, being a normal person just like we are,

managed to find extraordinary strength and perseverance.

And it's the strength and the determination

and the willpower which is extraordinary.

That she survived - there is now 12 of us,

grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

THEY CHAT

We realise how close we were

to not being here.

So, yeah, it makes us appreciate

our grandmother quite a lot.

What's this one? SHE GASPS

Oh!

Oh! Ah!

For her own grandchildren and great-grandchildren,

Freda has one final message.

I would say, personally, they should have a happy life.

And they should be tolerant.

And they should make sure

that if anything like that should happen again,

you know, they should watch out.

They should remember who they are.

They should live up to it.

Survivors like Freda endured their time in Auschwitz,

were liberated, and then tried to build a new life after the war.

But the vast majority of the people the Nazis sent here

were touched by Auschwitz in a different way.

Around 1,100,000 people never left here alive.

These innocent men, women and children

suffered the more usual fate of those sent to Auschwitz.

They were murdered by the Nazis.