Original subtitles

I know this is hard to believe,

that in such short a time,

are those who are prepared to forget the Holocaust.

And others even prepared to deny it.

I unfortunately,

cannot forget it.

For me, it is yesterday.

I was there,

a young man, just married.

A architect by profession,

a member of a large Jewish family,

looking forward to the future.

Who could imagine that 40 years later,

only my wife and I would be here to talk about it?

89 members of both families wiped out without a trace,

a part of them here.

Listen well, my friends.

What you are about to hear and see,

is a true story.

Believe me,

it can happen again.

And it came to pass,

when they were in the field,

that Cain rose up and slew his brother.

And the Lord said unto Cain,

"Where is Abel, thy brother?"

And he said,

"I know not.

"Am I my brother's keeper?"

100 years ago,

the majority of the world's Jews lived in Europe.

In the Polish provinces of the Russian Empire,

in the Austro-Hungarian Empire,

and in the German Empire.

To be sure, it was a world of poverty and hardship.

But it was also a world of scholars and poets,

of impressionable matchmakers,

and philosophers.

It was a world where each week,

men and women confronted new perils and hazards,

and where each Sabbath,

they sat with their children around a table,

surrounded by song and joy.

It was a world of synagogues and houses of study,

where young and old crowded together by the candlewick,

to study late into the night.

Where mothers and grandmothers rocked their loved ones

to sleep with lullabies of hope and faith.

Where a neighbor's joy was her shtetl's day of rejoicing,

and where his pain was its day of sorrow.

It was a world where the price for respect was good deeds,

but where the right to friendship had no prerequisites.

Such a world were these 10,000 tiny dots on the map.

Belz, where the Hasid hurried to be at his rabbi's table.

Vilna, where the ordinary cobbler conversed in the Talmud.

Pinsk and Lodz,

where vendors rose at the crack of dawn

on Monday and Thursday,

to hurry their wares to the marketplace.

There was Warsaw,

where writers leisurely sipped tea,

and interpreted the life of the times.

Vienna, her parks and broad streets,

bustling with artists,

etching out moments of memory,

and violinists transforming cafes into symphonic halls.

Yet in every century,

the non-Jewish world looked with suspicion,

on this people set apart.

Men who needed scapegoats for their own failure,

turned readily against the Jew.

In the earliest days of Christianity,

St. John Chrysostom,

frustrated by the Jews' refusal to convert,

called them the most miserable of men.

The great theologian, Martin Luther,

encountering the same steadfastness, declared,

"Their synagogues should be set on fire,

"their homes should likewise be broken down and destroyed.

"Let us drive them out of the country for all time."

In every country,

the Jews were the convenient enemy.

To the illiterate,

they were knowledgeable.

To the peasants, wealthy.

To the rich, clever.

The Romans saw them as political rivals.

The inquisitors saw them as Christ killers.

The Cossacks saw them as

squeezing out the wealth of the land.

To them, he was different.

Different in his looks, in his mode of dress,

in his beliefs,

in the observance of his holy days.

Small wonder then that the 9.5 million Jews

who still lived in Europe at the end of the First World War,

looked forward with great hope to the new world.

The world of democratic Europe,

the world President Wilson promised

would be made safe for democracy.

The First World War had been a war to end war.

The 20th century promised to be the century of progress.

Industry and invention would bring new wealth for all.

Science would open up vistas of better life,

of comfort and of ease.

The motor car, the telephone, radio and airplane.

These were to be the instruments of progress and equality.

Art, architecture, music, literature,

which would reflect the advance of culture.

The League of Nations promised

an international forum for grievances,

complete with its own court of law.

The rule of law was to offer protection to every citizen,

whatever his origin or beliefs.

Hopes of security and success

were however swiftly shattered,

as the post-war years advanced,

and economic difficulties grew,

culminating in the early 30's in mass unemployment.

Many focused their resentment on the Jews,

who became a symbol of the forces they sought to oppose.

Nowhere was this more obvious than in Germany,

where extremists sought to overthrow democracy.

"Why We Are Against The Jews",

that was the title one lecturer gave to his talk in 1920.

This man's proposal was he said,

"The removal of the Jews from the midst of our people."

His name?

Adolf Hitler.

"It is the German duty," he declared,

"to arouse, whip up and incite,

"the instinctive repugnance of the Jews,

"to an even higher pitch."

The political party which Hitler took over in Germany,

quickly attracted like-minded followers.

The Nazis were going to cleanse Germany,

by restoring the supremacy of the Aryan race,

and rescuing the German Teutonic people,

from cancerous species of Jews, gypsies, blacks,

and other non-Aryan subcultures.

Many Germans dismissed him at first,

as an Austrian upstart with crazy ideas,

ideas which would never take hold,

in an enlightened society like Germany.

His initial successes were at first ignored,

then not sufficiently resisted.

When the severe economic crisis came to Germany,

it was too late.

With 20 million queuing up for food,

and six million out of work it was tantalizing and exciting,

to be called the master race.

By January 1933, the German people had succumbed.

Adolf Hitler became their Fuhrer.

Hatred was a main feature of Hitler's programs.

Hatred of the Jews,

hatred of the Slavs, hatred of gypsies,

and other so-called inferior people.

Even of the mentally and physically handicapped.

While millions cheered Hitler,

as he offered to make Germany great again,

to rebuild the German army,

to end unemployment, to win back German territory,

and extend the German orbit of power

over the whole continent,

they also cheered,

when he promised to drive the Jews,

and others from German life.

Hitler and his Nazi followers,

lost no time in carrying out their anti-Semitic program.

Starting in April 1933,

anyone with Jewish parents,

or even with a single Jewish grandparent,

was defined as a non-Aryan.

German doctors, dentists, lawyers, architects,

professors, actors and musicians,

who happened to be Jews,

could no longer work with their fellow Aryans.

Worse, concentration camps were set up.

As early as March 1933 the Nazis opened

Dachau concentration camp a few miles from Munich,

and immediately filled it with their German opponents.

Social democrats, communists, Jehovah's Witnesses,

homosexuals, prominent Jews,

and those who opposed the regime.

Special notices declared,

"Whoever buys from a Jew is a traitor to his people."

Yet those same Jews had fought bravely

in the First World War,

in the ranks of the German army,

and been a part of German life for more than 1000 years.

They had contributed immensely,

to the development of German science, German technology,

above all, German medicine.

Books were burned.

Some of the finest German music was banned.

"Intellect rots the character."

Himmler told the Germans.

Goering said,

"When I hear the word culture,

"I reach for my gun."

Throughout Germany,

schoolchildren were taught

that the Jewish people in their midst

were the worst of all enemies.

All the power of the state lent itself to this test.

Schoolbooks were published,

filled with crude anti-Jewish cartoons.

A special children's board game was produced, entitled,

"Juden Raus!"

"Jews Out!"

The instructions read,

"If you manage to kick out six Jews,

"you are the winner without question."

What children played adults acted,

boycotts, beatings, warnings not to buy Jewish goods,

punishments for having a Jewish boyfriend or girlfriend,

led in 1935 to a competition among towns and villages,

to drive out their Jews altogether,

to declare themselves;

Jew-free.

The success of this campaign was witnessed

by a Dutch motorcyclist who driving across Germany,

recorded with his camera,

the seemingly endless placards on town signs.

Briefly, these signs were taken down in 1936,

so that visitors to the Olympic Games held in Berlin,

would not be shocked.

Hitler hoped that the games would be a triumph,

for his so-called Aryan master race.

A black American runner, Jesse Owens,

upset his dream.

Now they're away and Jesse Owens

comes down there with Ralph Metcalfe, Frank Wykoff...

Jesse Owens starts moving,

he's a yard or two out in front,

Metcalfe is coming second up on him.

It's Owens, Metcalfe and Osendarp.

Hitler left the stadium in a fury,

to avoid having to hand Owens his gold medals.

Only 10 years earlier he had written in "Mein Kampf",

"The Jews were responsible for bringing

"the negros into the Rhineland,

"with the ultimate idea of bastardizing the white race."

In March 1938,

Hitler entered Vienna,

declaring Austria to be a part of the greater German Reich.

Eichmann, the head of the Jewish section of the SS,

established his office in the city

together with a number of Austrian collaborators.

In July 1938, at an international conference held at Evian,

on the shores of Lake Geneva,

32 nations, including Britain and the United States,

discussed the problem of those who were trying

to escape from Nazi persecution.

Most delegates expressed their country's sympathy

for the would-be refugees,

but none of the major powers was prepared

to increase its immigration quota,

or to find the money needed,

to help finance so large an exodus.

On the day the conference ended,

a German newspaper declared in triumph,

"Jews for sale, who wants them?

"No one."

As if to drive that point home,

Hitler told the German people,

"We on our part are ready to put all these criminals

"at the disposal of these countries for all I care,

"even on luxury liners."

The settlement of the Czechoslovakian problem,

which has now been achieved,

is only the prelude to a larger settlement,

in which all Europe may find peace.

This morning,

I had another talk with the German chancellor, Herr Hitler.

And here is the paper,

which bears his name upon it, as well as mine.

We regard the agreement signed last night,

and the Anglo-German naval agreement,

as symbolic of the desire of our two peoples,

never to go to war with one another again.

The Mercury Theatre on the Air,

in "The War of the Worlds" by HG Wells.

In the 39th year of the 20th century

came the great disillusionment.

Near the end of October,

business was better,

war scare was over,

more men were back at work,

sales were picking up.

This from foreign correspondent,

C. Brooks Peters at the Berlin bureau,

reporting to The New York Times office in New York City.

Here in Berlin it is 9:30 am,

November 10th, 1938.

I have just spent eight and a half horrendous hours,

following Nazi stormtroopers on what probably will

turn out to be the worst pogrom in Western history.

I have just come from the Fasanenstrasse,

where one of the most revered synagogues in Germany,

is totally engulfed in flames.

The fire was started by the Nazis shortly before dawn.

The deliberate firing of the synagogue and the pogrom,

were in retaliation for the assassination in Paris

of a German diplomat, Ernst Vom Rath,

by a 17-year-old Polish Jew, Herschel Grynszpan.

Similar looting, vandalism,

and burning in synagogues have taken place,

Jewish men have been murdered and Jewish women raped.

As the leading German rabbi, Dr. Leo Baeck,

has just said to me on the phone,

"After this, the future is grim.

"We have no place to go.

"Nobody wants us."

In March 1939, the Germans occupied Prague.

10s of thousands of Czech Jews were caught in the Nazi trap,

as well as many Jews who had earlier fled

from Germany and Austria.

At the same time,

the barriers against Jews seeking to escape

were all strengthened.

The Swiss government had already asked the Germans

to stamp the letter J in all Jewish passports.

Now the British asked the Yugoslav government

to do likewise,

in order to enable these refugees to be prevented

from proceeding to Palestine.

Now was the new world more hospitable?

In May 1939, more than 900 refugees bound for Cuba,

were refused entry there.

And rebuffed also by the United States and Latin America,

they were forced to return to Europe.

This ship,

the St. Louis,

was not the only ship of refugees,

that could not find a haven.

In the United States,

during the first 10 years of Nazi Germany,

there were to be over 400,000 unfulfilled places,

within US immigration quotas.

Each place unfilled,

was a sentence of death for a European Jew.

Germany has invaded Poland,

and has bombed many towns.

On September 1st, 1939,

the German armies invaded Poland,

replacing threats and bombast,

with tanks and bombs.

The German advance into Poland was swift,

Poles and Jews alike,

brutal.

Warsaw was bombed from the air,

and thousands of civilians were killed.

Within 24 hours,

the first anti-Jewish atrocities took place.

I am speaking to you from the cabinet room

at 10 Downing Street.

This morning, the British ambassador in Berlin,

tended the German government a final note,

stating that unless we heard from them by 11 o'clock,

that they were prepared at once,

to withdraw their troops from Poland,

a state of war would exist between us.

I have to tell you now,

that no such undertaking has been received.

And that consequence is,

this country is at war with Germany.

In Lodz,

before setting torch to the famous Wolynska synagogue,

the Nazis forced its revered rabbi, Segal,

to put on his prayer shawl,

and then ordered him to burn the holy Torahs,

in the presence of his congregates.

In Mielec, the Jews were locked inside their synagogue,

which was then set on fire.

Those who managed to break out were shot,

by the surrounding ring of German soldiers.

Polish doctors and professors were arrested and murdered,

villagers were shot dead on the slightest pretext.

Himmler issued orders to close all schools.

In explaining his action, he declared,

"A Pole is a slave.

"It is enough for him to write his name,

"and count up to 10."

In daylight raids,

between 350 and 400 enemy aircraft were launched,

in two attacks against London and South East England.

Never in the field of human conflict,

was so much owed by so many,

to so few.

In October the first ghetto was established

in Nazi-occupied Poland, at Piotrkow.

From all over Poland,

Jews were forced to move into the ghettos.

Totally isolated from the rest of the population,

the Jews of the ghettos,

were forced to live under terrible conditions.

Allowed only a minimum of food,

forced to do punitive labor,

they existed as prisoners,

totally at the mercy of their Nazi captives.

There is no pen wielded by man,

which can write even the 1000th part,

of the horror that is Lublin.

In the early days of the Nazi occupation,

stormtrooper, Commander Globocnik,

forced a group of pious Jews to line up,

and watch the burning of the books,

of the great Yeshiva of Lublin.

"Sing, Jews.

"Sing a Hasidic ditty."

He shrieked, as the army band began playing.

The Jews remained silent.

"Attack them!

"Force them up against the wall.

"Gunners, aim your machine guns.

"Sing, you dirty Jews, or you will die."

A cracking, melancholy voice broke the silence.

It was the voice of a man singing a Hasidic folk song.

"Let us be reconciled, our heavenly Father.

"Let us be reconciled."

But nobody would join him.

The singing stopped.

Then after what seemed hours,

the same tune broke forth once again.

Somebody else was singing.

It was the same melody,

but the words were different.

"We shall outlive them, heavenly Father.

"We shall outlive them."

Then,

a sea of voices bellowed forth,

joining together in what seemed an impossible wild dream.

Feet stamping,

arms locked,

the Jews of Lublin danced.

At first,

Globocnik delighted.

But as he witnessed their enthusiasm,

he stumbled upon their secret.

But the Jews of Lublin went on singing.

They were terribly beaten.

But they had defied their oppressors.

, they sang.

"We shall outlive them."

From the ghettos,

the Germans took able-bodied men and boys,

for forced labor.

Those in the ghettos were forced to wear

a white armband with a blue Star of David on it.

To leave the ghetto was declared a crime,

to smuggle bread into the ghetto was a crime,

and the punishment for these so-called crimes,

was nearly always death.

The Jews, of course, were not the Nazis' only victims.

Beginning in October 1939, and continuing throughout 1940,

the Nazis has already killed more than

70,000 Germans and Austrians,

judged unfit to live.

Such as the chronically sick and mentally retarded,

they were gassed in six special euthanasia institutions.

The euthanasia program became the training ground

for the SS personnel,

who would later use their newly-acquired skills,

in managing the Nazi death camps.

In May 1940,

without a declaration of war,

the German armies attacked three neutral countries,

Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg,

and invaded France.

A further 500,000 troops,

now came under Nazi rule.

The news from France,

is very bad.

And I grieve for the gallant French people,

who have fallen into

this terrible misfortune.

Nothing will alter our feelings towards them,

or our faith,

that the genius of France will rise again.

Despite decades of equality

enjoyed by Jews in these countries,

within months their rights were taken away.

These new measures were often supported and encouraged

by extremist elements in the local population.

Small fascist groups,

who now emerged as the bully boys and tyrants,

under Nazi protection,

and who were quickly to prove themselves,

among the cruelest of oppressors.

Other non-Jews, though few in number,

refused to stand idly by,

while Jews were being tormented.

In Belgium,

on Simchat Torah,

Cardinal van Roey ordered the chimes of Antwerp Cathedral,

to play the "Hatikvah".

In Holland,

a schoolteacher asked his students to help the Jews,

by wearing the Star of David.

On June 22nd, 1941,

the Germans invaded the Soviet Union.

Their ally for the past two years.

Special commando units known as Einsatzgruppen,

followed closely behind the armies,

murdering the Jews of every town and village.

For six months the German armies advanced.

We were driven,

we were already undressed,

the clothes were removed and taken away, Father was beaten.

We prayed,

we begged with my father to undress,

but he would not undress.

He did not want to stand naked.

Then they tore off the clothing of the old man,

and he was shot.

I saw it with my own eyes.

And then they took my mother,

and we said, "Let us go before her."

But they shot her too.

And then there was my grandmother.

She was 80 years old,

and she had two children in her arms.

Then my father's sister,

she also had children in her arms,

and was shot on the spot.

My younger sister,

she prayed with the Germans, she asked to run.

Naked, she went up to the Germans with one of her friends.

They were embracing each other,

and she asked to be spared.

He looked into their eyes,

and he shot the two of them.

They fell together in their embrace,

my sister and her young friend.

And then my turn did come.

"Whom shall I shoot first?"

The German asked, "Whom do you want me to shoot first?"

I did not answer.

I felt him take the child from my arms.

The child cried out and was shot immediately.

And then he shot at me.

Then I fell to the ground,

into the pit amongst the bodies.

I thought I was dead,

that this was the feeling which comes after death.

Then I felt that I was choking, people falling over me.

Bodies pulling at me with their hands,

biting at my legs, pulling me down, down.

And yet with the last of my strength,

I came up at the top of the grave, and when I did,

I wanted to see the end of this stretch of dead bodies,

but I could not!

It was impossible, they were lying, not all of them dead,

but in their last sufferings, naked shock, but not dead.

Children crying,

"Mother!

"Father!"

People often ask,

"Why did the Jews go like sheep to the slaughter?"

Sheep to the slaughter?

How can they know what it was like?

Crowded together in a way that even animals are not treated,

weakened by months of hardship and hunger,

locked up in sealed wagons without food, weapons,

without friends.

Knowing that even if one escaped the Nazis,

who was there that would welcome them who cared?

Who would lift a finger?

And yet despite all this,

there was not a single ghetto without its Jewish partisans,

and not a single forest that did not harbor

Jewish resistance fighters.

"Sheep to the slaughter."

What do those who use the phrase know about honor?

About the thousands of parents,

who would not desert their little ones?

Who stayed behind to embrace them, cuddle them?

To exchange glances with them just one more time?

What do they know about reverence?

About those who gave up their daily ration of food,

so that a father, a grandmother, a rabbi,

might live another day?

What do they know of a people who refused

to believe in the death of mankind?

Who in the forsaken places called hell,

organized schools,

prayed and studied Talmud.

Wrote poems,

composed lyrics,

sang songs of today,

of eternity,

of tomorrow.

Even,

when there was to be no tomorrow.

My dear Moshela,

on July 25th, a terrible slaughter took place here,

as in all of the cities.

A mass murder.

Only 350 persons remained.

850 perished.

Like pups, they were thrown into cesspools,

live children thrown into ditches.

I shall not write much.

I think that someone may survive accidentally,

and that he would tell of our tortures,

and of our bloody end.

We await death daily,

and we mourn our dear ones.

Moshela,

no one is left of your people.

But I envy them.

I am finishing.

But it's impossible to write.

I cannot convey our suffering.

Be well.

The only thing you can do for us,

is to wreak revenge upon our murderers.

We cry out to you.

Avenge.

I kiss you all.

I'm saying goodbye to you before our death.

Zlata.

The Einsatzgruppen murdered as many as

a million Jews in 15 months.

But the Nazis knew that these methods could not be used

to kill Jews elsewhere in Europe,

where anti-Semitism was not as deeply rooted.

They therefore decided to set up centers for mass killing,

to which the Jews from all over Europe could be deported.

By the end of 1941,

the first death camp,

situated at Chelmno,

a small village in German-occupied Poland, was opened.

Yesterday,

December 7th,

1941,

a date which will live,

in infamy.

United States of America,

was suddenly and deliberately attacked,

by naval and air forces,

of the empire of Japan.

Four days after the Japanese attack

on Pearl Harbor,

Germany declared war on the United States.

The Jews of Poland felt that they were no longer alone.

First Churchill and Stalin,

and now Roosevelt-- A state of war.

Were committed to the defeat of Hitler.

Has existed-- The destruction of Nazism.

But in the whole history

of false dawns. Between the United States,

and the Japanese Empire. The news that

the United States was now at war was perhaps,

the falsest dawn of all.

My brother and I were hiding

by the old cemetery,

next to the gravel pit.

Suddenly we were startled awake.

In the distance,

we could hear the rumble of field wagons approaching,

and the voices of a great number of people.

Some seemed to be crying,

and some were shouting orders.

And over all this were shots,

and screaming and more screaming.

The sounds came from the roadway leading to the cemetery.

The terrible procession was coming here.

The woman and children of Eisiskes,

were being herded along the road by the Lithuanian police.

Whipped and beaten to move faster.

Farm wagons were loaded with children,

and with the dead and dying bodies of women,

who had rebelled at their captivity.

Then began a day,

I can never forget.

Over the cries and moans,

of this mass of defenseless creatures,

police barked orders,

then pushed and prodded,

to separate the women from their children.

Benjamin and I desperately scanned the lines of women

to find our mother, grandmother, and sister,

but we couldn't see them.

There was my aunt,

and my cousin,

and that neighbor lady,

but we couldn't see our own family.

The women were taken in groups of 100 or so.

Down the path, into the gravel pit.

They were made to strip naked,

and pile their clothing nearby.

The young were separated from the others,

and dragged into the bushes,

to be raped, and raped again, by soldier,

after soldier,

and policeman, after policeman.

Then they were dragged off,

marched to the bottom of the gravel pit,

lined up and coldly shot to death.

I clung to the edge of the cemetery wall.

I wanted to hide,

to run screaming,

to make this hideous thing end,

didn't they know what they were doing?

These were human lives, these were people,

not animals to be slaughtered.

My mouth opened to scream but I could not.

I wanted to close my eyes, but they would not close.

I didn't want to look,

but I couldn't stop looking.

I saw the Lithuanians shoot the breasts off

some of the women,

and shoot others in the genitals.

Saw them leave others with arms and legs mutilated,

to die in agony.

And some to smother,

as the next load of bodies fell upon them.

I saw my aunt die in a volley of gunfire.

I saw my beautiful cousin,

raped and raped,

until death must have been the only thing she longed for.

I heard hopeless screams for mercy,

shrieks of terror, and agony and gunfire.

I felt

each bullet

enter my brain.

My fingers slipped from the wall,

and I fell beside my brother, retching in sorrow.

"Don't watch anymore, Leon," he pleaded.

"Stay here."

I wanted to but I couldn't.

Weeping, Benjamin sat on me, trying to hold me down.

"No." I whispered, and fought to get up.

"I've got to, I've got to."

And I returned to the wall.

On July 31st, 1941,

Goering had ordered Heydrich to begin the preparations

for the Final Solution of the Jewish Question.

Six months later, on January 20th, 1942,

15 high-ranking German officials met

in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee to implement it.

Eight of them were PhDs.

It was Heydrich who addressed them.

"The Jews," he said,

"should first be separated by sex.

"So that no more Jewish children would be born.

"Once separated,

"they should be put to work in labor columns.

"Where," he explained,

"doubtless a large part will fall away

"through natural reduction.

"The survivors," he said,

"the inevitable final remainder,

"would have to be dealt with appropriately,

"to prevent them from becoming," what he called,

"the germ cell of a new Jewish development.

"The arrangements," he explained,

"would be coordinated by Eichmann."

Eichmann would say about the meeting,

"I can't remember in detail,

"but they spoke about methods of killing,

"about liquidation, about extermination."

In the second part, everyone spoke out of turn.

People would go around, butler's attitudes,

and give out liquor.

The Wannsee Conference over,

plans went ahead with the establishment of

a massive concentration camp complex at Auschwitz-Birkenau,

to which Jews from all over Europe would be sent.

At Treblinka the commandant had a facade

of a railway station erected to deceive the victims.

At Auschwitz, arrivals were greeted by an orchestra.

A completely new use of the German language

was devised to create a sense of security.

Deportation had become resettlement.

Selection for death had become special treatment.

Gas chambers,

had become showers.

The Nazi program was intensified with the murder

by Czech resistance fighters,

of SS General Reinhard Heydrich.

Not only were more Jews seized, deported and murdered,

including 3000 men, women and children,

from Theresienstadt,

but in the Czech village of Lidice,

all 1800 Czech males,

were murdered.

And the village burnt to the ground.

The last,

the very last.

So richly, brightly, dazzlingly yellow.

Perhaps if the sun's tears would sing,

against a white stone,

such,

such a yellow,

is carried lightly,

way up high.

It went away,

I'm sure because it wished to kiss the world goodbye.

For seven weeks I've lived in here.

Penned up inside this ghetto.

But I have found my people here.

The dandelions call to me,

and the white chestnut candles in the court.

Only I never saw another butterfly.

That butterfly,

was the last one.

Butterflies don't live in here,

in the ghetto.

Whole Jewish communities were told

that they were being sent to new regions to become farmers,

and to work on some project essential for Germany.

Some were made to pay for their tickets.

Others had the price of their tickets

deducted from the value of their confiscated property.

Everything was done to lull them into a sense of security.

Or at least of hope.

The deportations to Auschwitz,

began three weeks after those to Belzec.

From as far west as France,

from as far north as Norway,

from as far south as Greece,

the trains bearing their human cargo,

converged on Auschwitz.

For two, three, four, five days,

sometimes for as long as two weeks,

these trains crossed Europe,

on their way to the gas chambers.

A young German engineer, Kurt Gerstein,

who witnessed the gassing at Belzec,

later described the actions of the SS commandant,

Christian Wirth,

and his victims.

As the Jews were driven from the trains,

they went through a portal,

inscribed with the Hebrew inscription,

"This is the gate of the Lord,

"into which the righteous shall enter."

Gerstein wrote of what he saw.

"A Jewess of about 40,

"with eyes like fire,

"curses the murderers.

"Wirth an SS officer himself,

"strikes her across the face several times with a whip,

"as she disappears into the gas chamber.

"Many pray.

"The SS men squeeze people into the chambers.

"Fill them up well, orders Wirth.

"About seven to 800 people,

"in an area of 93 square meters,

"the doors close,

"but the diesel engine is not functioning.

"50 minutes pass by.

"70 minutes.

"The people in the death chambers remain standing.

"Their weeping is heard.

"SS Sturmbannführer, Dr. Pfannenstiel,

"lecturer in hygiene at Marburg University remarks;

"Just like a synagogue."

In the meantime,

knowledge of the death camps had reached the West.

But this news was treated almost as if it was insignificant.

Thus on July 2nd, 1942,

The New York Times carried on page six,

a report stating that more than one million Jews

had been exterminated.

While on page one of the same issue,

the Times' story gave greater coverage

of Governor Lehman's tennis shoe,

which was given to the scrap rubber drive.

In October 1943,

during the deportations from Rome to Auschwitz,

the German ambassador, Baron von Weizsacker,

cabled the German Foreign Ministry,

"Although under pressure from all sides,

"the Pope has not let himself be drawn

"into any demonstrative censure,

"of the deportation of Jews from Rome."

Supreme Commander,

General Dwight D. Eisenhower.

People of Western Europe,

a landing was made this morning on the coast of France,

by troops of the Allied Expeditionary Force.

This landing is part of the concerted United Nations plan,

for the liberation of Europe.

The Hungarian deportations began in May 1944,

on the eve of the Normandy landings.

Despite urgent demands for trains and transport,

the Germans continued systematically to uproot

and destroy the Jewish communities of Europe.

From Slovakia,

Rabbi Weissmandl wrote to Jewish organizations

in Switzerland,

"We cannot understand how you can eat and drink,

"how you can sleep in your beds at night,

"how you can go for walks,

"and I have the impression you do these things.

"And this responsibility rests on your shoulders.

"And we've been screaming for months.

"And you still have not done anything."

Several appeals were made of the British and Americans,

to disrupt the traffic, to bomb the gas chambers themselves,

but no such bombing took place.

Even though factories on the very outskirts of Auschwitz,

and throughout the Auschwitz region,

were bombed repeatedly.

Specific help for the Jews,

was very low on the priority scale.

It all seemed futile.

Nobody cared about us.

We were the world's extra baggage.

We had given hope until one day,

we heard this fantastic story

about a prominent Swedish diplomat, Raoul Wallenberg,

who had come to Hungary on a mission to save the Jews.

Soon this man became our Moses.

Every day, at great personal risk,

he delivered people from the hands of the Nazis.

He talked to us,

and showed that there was one human being who cared,

one angel in this hell.

"I came to save a nation," he said.

He would print his own Swedish passports,

then run off to the train depots,

the trains that were leaving for Auschwitz,

and he would reach out to the desperate group

of outstretched arms,

giving them their tickets to life.

He saved 30,000 people.

One man.

And then after the liberation of Budapest,

the Russians kidnapped him.

That is the irony of it all.

This noble human being,

who did so much for others,

may be rotting there somewhere,

all alone.

Meanwhile, as each train of Hungarian Jews

arrived at Auschwitz,

the so-called selection took place.

One survivor has described it thus.

"We walk forward slowly.

"An SS man stood a few dozen meters in front of us.

"As we passed in front of him,

"he made a sign with his stick,

"to some to go to the left,

"and to others to go to the right.

"To the left, he directed all the old people.

"All the children who were without parents,

"sometimes he directed a mother to the right,

"and her child to the left.

"If the mother refused to leave her child,

"both of them were sent to the left.

"To the left was the road to the gas chambers."

At Auschwitz, medical experiments were carried out on Jews,

and non-Jews,

against all the rules of medical ethics.

German doctors, such as Dr. Josef Mengele,

a product of the world's finest university system,

carried out barbaric experiments.

Women had their breasts and thighs removed.

They also took women for artificial insemination.

Gypsies were forced to drink sea water.

Brutal experiments were carried out on twins,

attempts were made to change the color of their eyes,

in order to find ways of increasing the pure racial stock

of the German people.

The diary of professor Johann Kremer,

an SS doctor at Auschwitz,

contained the following entries.

"September 2nd.

"After what I've seen today,

"Dante's Inferno seems almost a comedy.

"September 5th.

"Horror of horrors.

"Thilo was right when he told me that

"we were at the world's anus.

"September 6th.

"Had an excellent lunch today,

"tomato soup, half a chicken and roast potatoes,

"cake and delicious vanilla ice cream.

"Himmler taught them well.

"To have stuck it out, he told his SS officers,

"and at the same time to have remained decent men.

"That is what made it hard.

"This is a page of glory in our history,

"which has never been written,

"and never is to be written."

As the crematoria were being kept busy around the clock,

other forms of barbarism continued relentlessly,

not only against Jews, but against non-Jews.

In France, in July 1944,

more than 600 inhabitants of the French village of Oradour,

were seized, locked in the church,

and the church set on fire.

Throughout Europe,

the Germans deported gypsies to the death camps.

More than 200,000 of Europe's 700,000 gypsies were murdered.

But it was against Jews,

and Jews alone,

that the full fury of Nazi hatred was focused.

For it was the Jews as a people,

not only Jewish lives, but Jewish life,

that they were determined to destroy for all time.

In my heart I was still convinced,

that the only refuge for us,

was to join the partisans in the forest.

"I've got to go," I told Papa,

who I knew, deep down, shared my view.

"Okay," he finally said.

"We'll leave Radun."

Then if there's no other way,

we'll go to the forest.

They went to tell Mother.

I believe she'd always known it would one day come to this.

But we were not prepared for her answer.

"No," she said.

You'll have to go without me.

"Grandmother could never make the journey.

"I must stay here to look after her."

We begged her to change her mind,

but she remained adamant.

"You go and save yourselves," she said.

"This is my decision.

"You are not responsible.

"You must go and live.

"But please understand,

"Grandmother has no one but me.

"My obligation is to stay with her.

For four days we argued.

But we could not sway her.

She wanted to come,

but nothing could deter her from the obligation she felt.

Our parting will remain,

forever on my mind,

and conscience.

We hugged and kissed goodbye, again and again.

And at the door, I turned to look back,

to take one last mental picture of my dear mother.

I can still see her,

her dark wavy hair now prematurely gray,

but her beautiful, strong features unchanged.

I was torn between my fear of dying,

and my conviction that I was betraying her.

Letting her down when she needed me.

100 times I told myself to stay,

100 times my terror forced me to leave my adored mother.

The one to whom I had turned with my troubles,

ever since I was a tiny child.

And who with a single kiss,

made me whole again.

To this day,

I still wonder if we had insisted more,

or begged just a little longer,

maybe she would have relented.

My only comfort is the prayer that in those last moments,

before she and grandmother were led into the gas chamber,

she found consolation in the thought that her husband,

and children were still alive.

Alive to carry on the tradition and commitment,

for which she gave her life.

A year earlier, in the spring of 1943,

the remnants of the Warsaw ghetto

had themselves risen in revolt.

Poorly armed, but strong in spirit,

their commander,

24-year-old Mordechai Anielewicz proclaimed--

"I don't know what to tell you.

"Something has happened that is beyond

"our most daring dream.

"The Germans have been driven out of the ghetto twice.

"For three days,

"the Germans have been trapped in the flames.

"Tonight we are changing to guerrilla warfare.

"I can't describe our present conditions,

"only a few will survive.

"Everybody else will perish sooner or later.

"Our fate is sealed.

"In all the bunkers you can't light a candle,

"as they might be near.

"Goodbye,

"dear friend.

"The last wish of my life has been fulfilled.

"I have been privileged to see Jewish defense in the ghetto,

"in all its greatness and glory.

In many other ghettos,

men and women, often unarmed,

also revealed the highest achievement of the human spirit.

There were revolts even in the death camps.

Revolts against overwhelming odds.

Individuals showed extraordinary bravery.

Rosa Robata was 21,

as she watched her family taken to the gas chambers,

in a selection at Birkenau, November, 1942.

Her opportunity to avenge,

came two years later.

She and a group of girls,

working with her at the Krupp munitions plant at Auschwitz,

arranged that they smuggle out dynamite,

to the resistance organization in the camp.

Then on October 7th, 1944,

everyone at Auschwitz heard and saw something unbelievable.

One of the crematoria,

in which the bodies of so many of their mothers, fathers,

and young had been burned,

was blown to pieces.

Five SS men were killed.

600 people escaped.

Most were hunted down and shot in a few days.

In an investigation that led to the arrest of Rosa,

the SS used all their sadistic methods of torture on her.

She betrayed no one.

Her last words,

scribbled on a piece of paper just before she was hanged,

in front of the assembled inmates of Auschwitz, were,

"Be strong,

"and brave."

By the end of 1944,

a further four million had perished at Chelmno,

Auschwitz,

Sobibor,

Belzec,

Treblinka,

and Majdanek.

No country wanted them.

Even the countries of which they were citizens,

would not protect them.

Their only crime,

they were Jews.

There was no state of Israel then.

More than one third of the Jewish people were murdered.

As the Red Army approached Auschwitz,

at the end of January 1945,

the camp was evacuated.

Among the emaciated people sent westwards,

was Anne Frank,

who was taken to Belsen.

There she perished at the age of 16.

The first camp to be reached by the Western allies,

Ohrdruf, was liberated on the 4th of April 1945,

by the United States 4th Armored Division.

General Eisenhower was so shocked by what he saw,

that he sent photographs of the camp to Churchill,

and asked for a dozen leaders of Congress,

and a dozen prominent newspaper editors,

to fly at once to Europe,

to see the camps for themselves.

Alongside the Jews,

had died other victims of Nazi atrocities.

Gypsies, homosexuals,

political prisoners from every nation in Europe,

including 60,000 Germans.

The Nazis made strenuous efforts to conceal their crimes.

But there were too many suitcases, shoes,

shaving brushes, wedding rings, spectacles,

children's clothes,

dolls,

and prayer shawls.

This is what the Germans did.

Let there be no mistake about it,

did deliberately and slowly,

to doctors, authors, lawyers, musicians,

to professional people of every kind,

whom they'd turned into animals,

behind the line of their people.

This day at Belsen, was the most horrible of my life.

I saw it all.

The furnace where thousands of people

have been burned alive.

Only stunned before they were packed

three at a time into the flames.

The pit, 15 feet deep and as big as a tennis court,

piled to the top at one end with naked bodies.

The British bulldozer digging a new pit

for the hundreds of bodies lying all over the camp.

Days after death,

untouched and unburied.

What could a Christian understand

by such terrible sights?

It was the German Protestant theologian pastor,

Martin Niemoller, who said as a Christian,

"When they came for the Jews, I was not a Jew,

"so I did not protest.

"When they came for trade unionists,

"I did not belong to the trade union.

"When they came for Catholics, I was not a Catholic.

"When they came for me,

"there was no one left to protest."

It was 10 o'clock in the morning,

with a bright sun shining down,

to help us to celebrate the moment of liberation.

The American tanks entered the camp,

and every prisoner struggled to get to them.

I was about 150 yards from the first tank.

The soldiers who had come with it,

were surrounded by prisoners sinking into their arms,

crying and laughing at the same time,

exalted beyond the ordinary feeling.

I covered the first 100 yards,

but then I collapsed on the ground.

I was lying there trying to get up again,

panting and staring,

fascinated at the American flag fluttering on the tank.

I could not take my eyes from the stars of the flag.

A symbol, not only of the state of the union,

but of all the things we had lost in the Nazi Holocaust.

Every star had acquired a meaning of its own.

One was the star of hope,

one that of justice, of tolerance,

of friendship, of brotherly love,

of understanding and so on.

A little later,

we saw prisoners from other blocks marching by,

carrying their national flags,

Czechs, Poles, Italians and many others,

they had secretly prepared them for the day of liberation.

I looked around me.

"If we are all Jews," I asked,

"Why don't have we a flag?"

I was longing for such symbol of liberty,

and national dignity for us Jews.

One of us had a blue shirt,

I had one which had once been white,

we took them off,

another prisoner managed to make them into something like

a blue and white flag.

We were much too weak to attempt a parade,

like the other nationalities,

and so we just sat there in the sun,

holding up and waving our makeshift flag.

Jews from other blocks came over to us and cried.

Some of them kissed the flag,

a symbol of hope amidst the dead and the dying.

On the 8th of May 1945, Germany surrendered.

In all our long history,

we have never seen a greater day than this.

God bless you all.

♪ Wider still and wider ♪

♪ Shall thy bounds be set ♪

♪ God, who made thee mighty ♪

We may allow ourselves,

a brief period of rejoicing.

Today is victory in Europe's day.

♪ How shall we extol thee ♪

♪ Who are born of thee ♪

As the bells of victory rang out

over liberated Europe, thousands of Nazis were arrested.

Trials began of those accused of crimes against humanity.

Most of those accused denied their guilt.

Hermann Wilhelm Goering.

Rudolf Hess.

That will be entered as a plea of not guilty.

Joachim von Ribbentrop.

Wilhelm Keitel.

Alfred Rosenberg.

Hans Frank.

Wilhelm Frick.

Julius Streicher.

"We did not know.

"We were following orders,

"we were only small cogs.

"Bureaucrats doing our jobs."

Eichmann said that when he was tried and hanged in 1961.

Three of those responsible for the deportations

from France to Auschwitz argued the same,

when they were brought to trial in Cologne,

in the autumn of 1979.

Surely Dr. Josef Mengele,

the infamous Angel of Death,

responsible for the death and torture of 400,000 people,

would say no less if he were found?

No one?

This was possible?

Not those who perpetrated it?

Not those who kept silent?

Not the heads of state?

And church leaders,

who lacked the moral courage to stop it?

It just happened?

A freak accident,

along the road of history?

We washed our bodies,

and we grew clean.

We purified our souls,

and we grew quiet.

Death does not terrify us,

we go out to meet him.

We served God while we were alive,

and now we can best serve our people,

by refusing to be taken alive.

We made a covenant in our hearts,

all the 93.

Together we learned,

and together we will meet our end.

As I write these words, the hour is upon us.

Barely enough time to write this prayer.

Brethren,

wherever you are,

honor the Torah we lived by,

and the psalms we loved.

Read them for us,

as well as you.

And some day when the beast has hunted his last prey,

we hope that somebody will say the Qaddish for us.

93

daughters,

of Israel.

Oh, there are voices of the past.

Links of a broken chain,

wings,

that can bear me back to times which cannot come again.

Yet God forbid,

that I should lose the echoes,

that remain.

Here between the cracks of this sacred wall,

a wall soaked with the tears of my ancestors,

I do place the last testament.

Final message of the victims to the whole of mankind.

I have never forgotten you.