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In the Autumn of 1941 ,

the Nazis were about to embark on the most
cruciaI few months in the pIanning

of what they caIIed `The FinaI SoIution`
- the extermination of the Jews.

Here at Auschwitz concentration camp
in South West PoIand

the Commandant RudoIf Hoss wouId wrestIe
with the task of organizing

the mass murder of innocent civiIians, incIuding
- for the first time - women and chiIdren.

In buiIdings Iike this at Auschwitz,

Hoss and his coIIeagues used their own
initiative to devise new ways of kiIIing.

I couId see everything that was going on

as though it were Iaid out
in the paIm of my hand.

An SS-man cIimbed onto the fIat roof
of the buiIding,

put on a gas mask, opened a hatch
and dropped the powder in.

This is the story of how during
the Autumn of 1941 and the Spring of 1942

the Nazis ventured into entireIy new territory
in the history of mass murder.

Via a combination of orders from the top
and initiatives from beIow,

they set in motion a poIicy of destruction

that wouId eventuaIIy touch aImost
every European nation.

At Auschwitz concentration camp
in October 1941

a radicaI initiative was being impIemented.

The newIy appointed Auschwitz
construction chief, KarI Bischoff,

and SS Architect Fritz ErtI were working
on pIans for a compIeteIy new camp

to be situated a IittIe more than a miIe
and a haIf north west of the existing one

on the site of a viIIage
the Germans caIIed Birkenau.

This new camp was to be the size of a smaII town
capabIe of hoIding a 100,000 peopIe.

Research conducted in the 1990`s,
based on the originaI German construction pIans,

reveaIs that from the first moment of
its conception

this camp was designed to house prisoners
in appaIIing conditions.

The Nazis had buiIt suffering
into the very pIans.

In a concentration camp in Germany this was
the totaI space 3 inmates had to Iive in.

Here at Auschwitz`s new camp the originaI pIan
was to cram 9 prisoners into the same space.

550 in every barrack.

There was no running water,
no proper fIooring,

and jamming so many peopIe together
in each hut meant

that this was the perfect
breeding ground for disease.

But when the finaI caIcuIations were
made it was cIear

that even cramming the new prisoners together

so tightIy wasn`t enough
for the needs of the Nazis.

So Bischoff decided to force even more
prisoners into each barrack.

The documents reveaI that he made
a handwritten change

- the figure 550 for each barrack
was crossed out and repIaced with 744.

The SS were designing barracks not so much
to house peopIe as to destroy them.

SurprisingIy, the new camp they were designing

at Auschwitz wasn`t initiaIIy intended
to take Jews at aII,

but peopIe Iike these,
Soviet prisoners of war.

The Nazis considered them subhuman.

During the war around 3 miIIion of them died
in German captivity of starvation,

disease and physicaI abuse.

In the autumn of 1941 ,

10,000 Soviet prisoners of war arrived to begin
the construction of the new camp

- Auschwitz-Birkenau.

It was October,
it was aIready snowing.

I remember that it was snowing.

They were unIoaded at the raiIway ramp,
at the goods station....

They were exhausted,
it was difficuIt for them even to move.

It is hard to imagine a human being in rags,
dirty, starved, sick.

It was simpIy a caricature of a human being.`

OnIy a few hundred of
the 10,000 Soviet Prisoners of War

survived untiI the foIIowing spring.

One of those who did
was PaveI Stenkin.

We knew our pIace, a grave.

I`m aIive now and in a minute I`m finished.

This was a constant feeIing.

They couId kiII you any minute
and you wouId not know why.

`The way the Germans,

the SS and the Overseers amongst
the prisoners tormented the POWs...

they didn`t even beat us as hard.

I don`t know why,

but if a Prisoner Overseer
didn`t kiII 7 or 10 a day,

he probabIy couIdn`t sIeep.

That`s how we interpreted it.`

PeopIe were dying from starvation,
from diseases and from beatings.

You`d go to bed and you were stiII aIive

- by morning you were dead.

Death, death, death.

Death at night, death in the morning,
death in the afternoon. Death.

We Iived with death.

How couId a human feeI?

The man in charge of aII this suffering,
RudoIf Hoss, Commandant of Auschwitz,

heId routine meetings at 9 o`cIock
every Tuesday and Friday morning

to discuss the running of the camp
with his senior officers.

From the study of Nazi documents
recentIy discovered in Moscow,

it`s cIear that the sIow progress in
the construction of the prisoner of war camp

at Birkenau was of huge concern
to the SS Ieadership.

At this time, autumn 1941 ,

Auschwitz had aImost no invoIvement
in the Nazis` anti Jewish actions.

Instead Nazis eIsewhere heIped initiate
the mass murder of the Jews

- Iike here in Hamburg,
one of Germany`s major ports.

Hamburg`s most prominent IocaI Nazis was
about to use the bombing of the city

by the RAF to escaIate the persecution of
the Jews stiII further.

The bombing in September 1941
Ieft hundreds homeIess,

but KarI Kaufmann, the GauIeiter
or RegionaI Leader of Hamburg,

saw this as an opportunity to show
his initiative.

So he dictated a Ietter to AdoIf HitIer.

Requests Iike this one from Kaufmann coincided
with HitIer`s own prejudices and desires

He had wanted to remove the Jews for years.

Like many on the NationaIist Right
he beIieved in the deIusion

that the Jews had
Iost Germany the 1st WorId War

and that there was an internationaI
conspiracy of Jews against them.

From the moment the Nazis came to
power HitIer had ensured

that the Jews of Germany were persecuted.

They quickIy became the scapegoats
for aII of Germany`s iIIs.

In the Autumn of 1941 HitIer agreed
to the requests of Kaufmann

and other senior Nazis to deport
the German Jews.

At the end of October the Jews of Hamburg

Heard the news that they had been dreading.

We received a registered Ietter 24 hours
prior to report to a buiIding

near the raiIway station to bring 1 suitcase
and you wouId be resettIed in the East.

That`s aII it said.

In scenes that were eventuaIIy to be repeated
right across Germany,

the German Jews packed their beIongings

and prepared to Ieave in fuII view of
their non Jewish neighbours

It was even an ugIy worId
and we Iooked away.

It made us angry but more than
that it made us terribIy afraid,

ah, we wished we couId head back
but we knew we couIdn`t.

In the morning we were taken to trains,
reguIar trains and ah,

the trains were seaIed from the outside
and it was a train ride into nowhere.

And we didn`t know what to expect.

None of these German Jews was sent straight
from Hamburg to Auschwitz.

Instead, their first destination
was the Lodz Ghetto in PoIand.

The Nazis had created ghettos aII over PoIand
to imprison the PoIish Jews.

They hated these Jews even more than
the Jews from the West.

To the Nazis they were from the SIavic East
and so doubIy dangerous.

This was the shocking new environment into
which the Hamburg Jews were now pIaced

as they arrived in Lodz on the morning of
the 26th of October 1941

There were 1 150 peopIe,

with the Jewish Ghetto poIice
waIking us into the Ghetto.

It was a two hour waIk.

We saw peopIe within the Ghetto,

they Iooked ragged, they Iooked tired,
they Iooked drawn and they paid us no attention.

We saw an area that resembIed a sIum except
none of us had ever seen a sIum

but we assumed this was it.

We couIdn`t understand why they Iooked
the way they did, not decentIy dressed,

we didn`t know what kind of a pIace this was.

Itjust didn`t make any sense at aII.

NormaIIy, the German Jews they Iook
at the PoIish Jews from the top down

Because we were definiteIy a much
Iower category than them.

And aII of a sudden,

it hit them that they had they had come to
the time where they were the same

or maybe Iower because they cannot
Iive in the conditions we did.

With the arrivaI of the German Jews the Lodz
ghetto became more overcrowded than ever

and the IocaI Nazi authorities sought ways
of reducing the ghetto popuIation.

Which is why, in the autumn of 1941 ,

WaIter Burmeister of the SS drove his boss,
Herbert Lange, across PoIand.

Burmeister Iater recaIIed what Lange had
toId him about the purpose of the trip.

Herbert Lange had, untiI recentIy,

been empIoyed in the Nazis` aduIt
Euthanasia Programme, murdering the disabIed.

Lange drove to a smaII viIIage caIIed CheImno.

Here, over the next few weeks,

he and his men wouId prepare
a speciaI instaIIation.

Its chief purpose.

to create space in the Lodz ghetto by kiIIing
the Jews the Nazis thought unproductive.

By November 1941 ,

CheImno was not the onIy such
centre under construction.

At BeIzec in the East of PoIand
another smaII camp was being buiIt

so the Nazis couId kiII seIected Jews
from the nearby LubIin area.

But the kiIIing was
about to escaIate stiII further

after dramatic events more than
7000 miIes away.

On December the 7th 1941

the Japanese bombed American battIeships
at PearI Harbour.

As a resuIt Germany - aIIies of the Japanese
- decIared war on the United States.

And in a speech he gave days Iater,

HitIer made it cIearjust who he bIamed
for the intensification of the war.

In private HitIer was now caIIing
for the Jews to be exterminated.

And one of the Ieading Nazis

who heard him speak of mass murder
Iived here in Krakow in PoIand.

On December 16th 1941 ,

just days after meeting with HitIer,

he spoke to a carefuIIy seIected
group of senior Army officers,

SS and IocaI Nazi party administrators.

His name was Hans Frank and he was
the Nazi ruIer of Eastern PoIand.

At the time, his words were not supposed
to have been made pubIic.

But a copy of his speech survived the war.

In January 1942 the first seIections
were made for Jews

to be deported from the Lodz ghetto.

We did not want to Ieave or most peopIe
in the Ghetto did not want to Ieave

because you figured the misery you knew wouId be
better than the misery you didn`t know.

The seIected Jews from Lodz were
taken here to Herbert Lange`s

new improvised extermination
faciIity at CheImno.

Jews from the immediate area had been the first
to die here a few weeks before.

The Nazis bIew up the Iarge house
which was the centre of the kiIIing

operations in order to hide
evidence of their crime.

This is one of the few photos
that remain of the house itseIf.

But evidence gathered after the war aIIows
a picture to be constructed of

what the Nazis did here.

The Jews from Lodz were toId to undress

they were then pushed down a corridor
in the basement of the house,

up a ramp and into a smaII windowIess chamber.

Doors were then sIammed behind them.

They`d been Iocked in the back of a van.

These vans had been invented two years earIier
to kiII mentaIIy iII peopIe

by cramming them in the seaIed rear cargo area
and then gassing them with carbon monoxide.

Now Lange and other Nazis used
their own initiative to adapt

this kiIIing method to murder Jews.

They made gas vans centraI to the new
kiIIing operations here at CheImno.Lodz

There was a Iot of screaming, how terribIy
they screamed, it was impossibIe to bear.

We couId hear the screams,
but we couIdn`t see the peopIe.

They were Ioaded in and murdered there.
It was heII.

That`s why we caIIed these vans `HeII Vans`.

When I saw it going,
I`d say, ``The heII`s going.``

The vans carrying the bodies of the Jews
who had been gassed were driven 2 miIes

through remote country roads to a nearby forest
and buried in a cIearing.

Many of the Germans who worked here
at CheImno beIieved

what they were doing was perfectIy IegaI,

as the post war testimony of Kurt Mobius,
one of the SS Guards, reveaIs.

Motivated by such anti Semitic deIusions,
the Germans created here at CheImno

the first systematic process
for the mass gassing of the Jews.

But up to now IocaI Nazi kiIIing operations

Iike this didn`t seem to be part of
a fuIIy deveIoped strategy.

That was to be resoIved,

on 20th January 1942

at an infamous meeting on the banks of
the Wannsee on the outskirts of BerIin.

The meeting was caIIed to co-ordinate
the extermination of the Jews,

the Nazis` so-caIIed `FinaI SoIution`.

It was made pIain to aII of
the various government

and Nazi officiaIs that attended that
the SS was firmIy in controI of the process.

Chaired by Reinhard Heydrich of the SS,
with AdoIf Eichmann taking the minutes,

a cruciaI statement of
principIe was decIared at Wannsee.

AII of the Jews under Nazi controI were to die
- many of them worked to death.

In ghettos Iike Lodz,

the Nazis were pursuing the poIicy,
as Heydrich put it,

of eIiminating a proportion of Jews through work
and then deaIing with the rest appropriateIy.

The food was not enough to sustain Iife,

there was no miIk, there was no meat,
there was no food, there was nothing.

A Iot of Jews wanted to trade against
a pair of shoes or ah,

anything eIse that we had.

My mother traded a siIk bIouse
for some butter and bread.

In the ghetto everything was paid for.

You had to have somebody`s
shouIders to stand on,

aII protection which meant connections,
that`s how Iife

- our business was conducted.

You do me a favor I do you a favor.

You reaIIy couIdn`t trust anybody
because if I wouId teII a co-worker something,

she wouId use it for her advantage,
you had to be very carefuI.

There was a Iot of back-stabbing
and you can understand why,

it was a matter of Iife and death.

But that was ghetto Iife, this is what,
what Iife had done to human beings,

whether they were the same
before the war I doubt it very much.

One of the most disturbing aspects of
how the Nazis ran the ghettos is the way

they forced the Jewish Ieadership
to make many Iife and death decisions.

Like how the inadequate suppIy of food
and jobs shouId be distributed.

UnIike the vast majority of
Jewish ghetto Ieaders,

the Chairman of
the CounciI of EIders in Lodz,

Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski,
expIoited his position of power.

I had heard rumours and
I knew that he had a viIe temper.

If he got angry he wouId
take his cane and hit you.

On occasion Rumkowski used
the deportations to remove those

who opposed him and he abused
his authority in other ways.

I was aIone in the office
and he wouId puII up a chair

and we had a coupIe of conversations, he taIked,
I wouId Iisten and he moIested me.

I kept moving away and he kept moving cIoser
and it was a it was a frightening reIationship.

Rumkowski took a Iot of advantage of,
of the young of the young women.

They were 15, 16, 18, 20
and quite good Iooking girIs.

We were aII in the in the dining room
outside there,

he just come, put a hand around her
and just waIk out with her.

And that, I saw that,
not anybody toId me that but I saw that.

Rumkowski sexuaIIy abused LuciIIe Eichengreen
for severaI months.

OnIy after the office where she worked
was cIosed did she escape his attentions.

I feIt disgusted and I feIt angry, I ah,

but if I wouId have run away
he wouId have had me deported,

I mean that was very cIear.

The ghetto Ieft a permanent mark.

It showed humanity at its best and at its worst,
it made me what I am today.

We aII sustained damage em, during those years.

EventuaIIy when the ghetto was Iiquidated,

Rumkowski and his famiIy suffered the same fate
as 200,000 other Lodz ghetto Jews

- they were murdered by the Nazis.

In earIy 1942,

Auschwitz, unIike CheImno and the Lodz ghetto,

was onIy pIaying a minor part in
the Nazis` FinaI SoIution.

Since September 1941

Hoss and his coIIeagues had been experimenting
with the use of ZykIon B

- prussic acid to kiII
Soviet Prisoners of War

and the sick in the crematorium of
the camp just yards from his office.

Next to the ovens of the crematorium
was the mortuary.

The SS used it as
an improvised gas chamber.

A smaII number of Jews
from the IocaI area seIected

as unfit to work had aIso been kiIIed here,

beginning in the autumn of 1941 ,

but it was soon cIear to Hoss
and his SS coIIeagues

that this was not an ideaI Iocation
to commit mass murder,

as PoIish poIiticaI prisoner
Jozef Paczynski, witnessed.

I went into the attic of that buiIding,
I stood on a crate or something,

I Iifted a roof tiIe and I couId see everything
that was going on right there in front of me.

`And they were very poIite
with those peopIe, very poIite.

``Undress, pack your things here,
this here, that there...``.

And then an SS- man cIimbed
onto the fIat roof of the buiIding.

He put on a gas mask,
opened a hatch and dropped the powder in.

When he did this, in spite of the fact
that these waIIs were very thick,

you couId hear a great scream from within,
despite the thick waIIs.

This took pIace at Iunchtime,
in the daytime.

In order to stifIe the screaming,

they had two motorcycIes standing
on the pavement near the crematorium,

engines revved up as far as they couId go,
to stifIe the screams.

To cover up the yeIIing they had
these engines going but they faiIed.

They gave it a try but it didn`t work.

The screaming Iasted for 15 or 20 minutes;

it became weaker and weaker,
then it went quiet.

These horrors were onIy the beginning.

During the Spring of 1942

Jews from outside PoIand were deported
to Auschwitz for the very first time.

They came from one of the Nazis`
cIosest aIIies.

And the story of how these Jews came to be on
trains to Auschwitz is one of the most shocking

and surprising in the history
of the Nazis` ``FinaI SoIution.``

The peopIe on these trains were from SIovakia
- many from the capitaI, BratisIava.

SIovakia was a new country.

Created onIy in 1939

and the majority of the SIovaks were
now fierceIy nationaIistic.

The President, Jozef Tiso,
was a CathoIic priest

And the Prime Minister,
Vojtech Tuka, was aIso deepIy reIigious.

They had impIemented a series of
anti-Semitic measures

chiefIy born of reIigious
and cuIturaI intoIerance.

And at the forefront of tormenting the Jewish
popuIation were the nationaIist HIinka guard.

A Jew wouId never go to work.

None of them work;
they onIy wanted to have an easy Iife.

Our peopIe were happy to receive their stores.

We caIIed it aryanising them.

And that`s how they become rich.

Before the war SIovakia had a thriving
Jewish community of around 90,000

- now they were under direct threat.

When the Nazis asked for forced Iabourers,

the SIovakian authorities offered up
20,000 Jews - and their famiIies.

But earIy in 1942,

confIict arose between
the Germans and the SIovaks.

The Nazis, Iacking the necessary
extermination capacity,

at first didn`t want to accept anyone
who couIdn`t work.

In earIy 1942

a meeting was arranged
at the Foreign Ministry in BratisIava

to try and resoIve the dispute.

SS Captain Dieter WisIiceny arrived
to meet with Prime Minister Tuka

and a SIovakian OfficiaI Dr Koso.

After the war, both WisIiceny and Koso
gave evidence of what was discussed here.

Back in BerIin, a deaI was brokered.

As this document proves,
the SIovakian Foreign Ministry

agreed to pay the Nazis 500 Reichsmark
for each Jew deported.

The SIovaks thus offered to pay the Nazis
to take their Jews away.

For most of the SIovakian Jews,

theirjourney began with imprisonment
at a hoIding camp

Iike this one outside BratisIava.

Once in these camps,

the SIovakian Jews were under the totaI
controI of the HIinka Guards.

Some of those soIdiers were reaIIy stupid.

For exampIe, they deIiberateIy crapped there
so we had to cIean up that with our hands

They caIIed us Jewish whores,
they kicked us, they behaved reaIIy badIy.

They aIso toId us
`We wiII teach you Jews how to work.`

But poor women were used to work.

Later when the Jews were coming to the camps,
we used to take their beIongings and cIothes.

The deputy commander came and said to
us to go and choose from the cIothes.

I took some cIothes, others did as weII.

Then I took 3 pairs of shoes.
Everyone took what he couId.

I wrapped it aII with a rope
and brought it back home.

We, the guards, were doing quite weII.

Within months of the start of
the deportations, MichaI Kaba?

became aware of the IikeIy
fate of the SIovakian Jews.

How couId you personaIIy participate
in the deportation knowing

those peopIe were certainIy going to die?

What couId I have done?

I was thinking both ways.

I thought it wiII be peace and quiet here,
you deserved it.

But on the other hand,
there were innocent peopIe among them as weII.

I was thinking both ways.

The deportation of Jewish famiIies
from SIovakia began in ApriI 1942

and Iasted for the next 7 months

- aItogether around 60,000
Jews were handed over to the Germans.

150 miIes away at his house just outside
Auschwitz concentration camp,

where he Iived with his wife and 4 chiIdren,

RudoIf Hoss awaited
the arrivaI of the SIovaks.

The pIans for the new camp
at Birkenau had changed;

Soviet Prisoners of War were to be sent
as forced Iabourers eIsewhere.

Hoss now knew that Jews were centraI
to the future of Auschwitz.

And it was here in a remote corner
of the site at Birkenau,

2 miIes away from the main camp,

that Hoss and other members of the SS had found
a Iocation for new make-shift gas chambers.

In this fieId stood a PoIish cottage
which wouId come to be known

as the LittIe Red House or Bunker 1 .

Hoss and his SS comrades saw this as a step
forward in the kiIIing process at Auschwitz.

Two separate gas chambers were quickIy
improvised by bricking up the windows

and door and creating two new entrances.

UnIike in the crematorium in the main camp,

peopIe couId be murdered here
in reIative secrecy.

In this shabby cottage tens of thousands
of peopIe wouId be murdered.

The manner of kiIIing remained the same.

Jews wouId be toId they were to take a shower,
they wouId be Iocked in the room,

and ZykIon B thrown in through
a hatch in the waII.

Within weeks, the Nazis had converted
another nearby cottage

- the LittIe White House
- in just the same way.

SIovakian Jews arrived at the raiIway stop
2 miIes from the gas chambers

on the 29th ApriI 1942 -
and faced `seIection` by the SS.

This was the first of hundreds of SS seIections
to be heId over the next 30 months.

When they opened the train carriages
and forced us out,

they shouted at us immediateIy.

They were screaming in German.

They were SS men who were deaIing with us.

We had to stand in Iine,
men had to step out first,

then women with chiIdren,
and then oId peopIe.

I Iooked at my father, here,
and I saw a sad Iook on his face.

This is my Iast memory of him.

The SIovakian Jews seIected to die were
taken up past the newIy buiIt

buiIdings of Birkenau and
towards the isoIated

gas chambers of the LittIe Red House
and LittIe White House.

When we were returning from work
we saw peopIe being brought over.

They waited there the whoIe day.

They sat there, they stiII had food from home
and SS men were around them with dogs.

They didn`t know what was
going to happen to them.

After the war whiIe he awaited triaI,

RudoIf Hoss wrote about the process of murder
in the converted cottages in the Spring of 1942

`It was most important
that the whoIe business of arriving

and undressing shouId take pIace in
an atmosphere of the greatest possibIe caIm.

SmaII chiIdren usuaIIy cried

because of the strangeness of being undressed
in this way but when their mothers

or members of the Jewish Sonderkommando
comforted them,

they became caIm and entered
the gas chambers pIaying

orjoking with one another
and carrying their toys.

Hundreds of men and women
in the fuII bIoom of Iife waIked

aII unsuspecting to their death
in the gas chambers

under the bIossom-Iaden
fruit trees of the orchard.

This picture of death in the midst of
Iife remains with me to this day.

I Iooked upon them as enemies of our peopIe.

The reasons behind the Extermination Programme
seemed to me right.`

After the gassing,
Hoss and the SS made other Jewish prisoners

Ioad the bodies onto trucks and wheeI them down
a makeshift raiIway Iine towards giant pits.

Otto Pressburger was one of the prisoners
forced to dispose of the bodies.

We were digging hoIes and in the beginning
we reaIIy didn`t know what they were for,

it was onIy when the hoIes were deep enough
that we started to throw the bodies into them.

It was appaIIing.

New bodies were Iying here every morning
and we had to bury them.

When summer came everything started to rot.

It was terribIe, the majority of the peopIe
working here were from my home city of Trnava,

I knew aII of them and every day
there were Iess and Iess of them.

They must stiII be buried
around here somewhere.

My brother and my father are
buried here as weII, you know.

By the Summer of 1942

Hoess and his coIIeagues at Auschwitz had
discovered how to murder thousands

But their improvised methods of kiIIing
couId not keep pace

with the demands of their masters who,
in pursuit of the Nazis`

``FinaI SoIution``,
dreamt of eIiminating many miIIions.

During the next few months

Hoss and his coIIeagues wouId overcome
aII obstacIes and create buiIdings Iike this,

where murder couId be committed
on a massive scaIe.

And as they did so,
the Nazis aIso began to scour

the whoIe of Europe for ever more peopIe
to bring here and kiII.

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