Original subtitles

Auschwitz,

the Nazi death camp,

where more than a million people

mainly Jews were murdered.

People with families and friends,

ordinary people robbed of their future.

Each had their own unique story

of how they came to be at Auschwitz.

Only a minority survived

and today, decades later,

and today, decades later,

very few can explain what happened there

as witness to its human terror.

Kitty hart-moxon was 17 years old

when she arrived at Auschwitz-birkenau

in April 1943.

Now, she travels back one last time

to answer the questions of a new generation.

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My name is kitty hart-moxon

and I'm a holocaust survivor.

Designed as a factory of death,

no one was intended to survive.

Let alone describe its inhumanity

to a world not yet ready to listen.

No one wanted to know,

no one wanted to hear what I have to say

but I made a commitment that the people

don't want to hear but I'm going to make sure

don't want to hear but I'm going to make sure

that they will.

I've been here many times

but I really wanted to come with two girls

who are my age when I was here.

I want to show them the struggle for survival.

What were your first impressions of the camp?

There was just the most incredible mud

and then we saw, like, a glow in a distance

and soon when we got there,

we saw ghost-like figures with shaved heads,

we saw ghost-like figures with shaved heads,

staggering in tattered clothes

with great big eyes,

screaming in all languages

and being beaten and we thought,

"my God, is this what's going to happen to us?"

I've known kitty since I was born.

I've known about her story since I was little

so I've grown up with the influence of it.

What did you first see when you got off the train?

Alsatian dogs.

They were barking, trying to get at us.

And I wanted to try

and understand a bit better,

and understand a bit better,

how she held in these conditions

and how she managed to survive for so long.

And we're walking into women's camp now.

I met kitty for the first time

after the school tour she gave us.

And I went up and asked some questions to her.

And I'm just kind of nervous and excited

because I want to see it from a different perceptive.

I may have seen it in class.

And you see these stamps?

These are the chimneys

of the wooden barracks.

What happens to you

when you're in those formative years,

age 13 to 16,

age 13 to 16,

it shapes you and your character

for the whole of your life.

Auschwitz is where my grandma feels she belongs

and it always calls her back.

Kitty hart was one of the first survivors

to tell her story.

She gives us access to that experience

with the power of her words.

You have to treat what kitty says almost like music,

I hear what she says.

And I also try to listen

and I also try to listen

to what she has left unsaid.

And see this crossroad?

The crossroad was the crossroad

to life or death.

The very fact that kitty was an eyewitness

and can say, "this is what I saw,"

actually ensures that it cannot be denied

that the intentionality of the perpetrations is clear

and it is indisputable that what she saw

is what happened.

And as you walked,

you got stuck in this mud,

and all these people were falling around in the mud.

And all these people were falling around in the mud.

You cannot stand there

and simply say, "this is okay."

This should never have happened.

It should never have existed,

and as a human being,

thinking about the experience of others,

you just realize,

"this is no place for anybody to have ever been."

Just prior to invasion,

my father decided we've got to get out.

My father decided we've got to get out.

My brother fled with his friends

to the Russian side.

They were asked to join the army,

the Polish army within a Russian unit.

And eventually was killed

in the battle of stalingrad.

So my father, my mother, and my grandmother,

we got on the last train.

The train just took us to lublin

and that's where everyone was thrown out

and that's where we landed up.

And we were taken to a part of the town

and we were taken to a part of the town

which became the lublin ghetto.

It wasn't possible to survive in Poland

as a Jewish person

without relying on somebody else.

So kitty's mother, in a time of crisis,

what does she do?

She started teaching English to people.

In doing that, she creates a relationship

with a priest.

Priest told my mother,

"if you come to a point where there's no way out,

just come and I'll see what I can do."

The priest then is able to help

and put his life on the line

and put his life on the line

to provide them documents to get them out.

We had to part from my father.

That priest said no way could we survive

all three of us together.

My father was to go and work

in the sawmill somewhere,

we didn't know where.

And my mother and I,

we were to go into the center of lublin.

Why? Because they were rounding up

the Polish population as well.

And when they sorted them out, they took them to work

in factories in Germany

in factories in Germany

and the priest said,

"that's what we've got to do.

We're going to get out of the country."

And makes me this transport

and get into Germany.

And they actually checked documents

but our documents were in order, you see.

And before my mother and I collected our thoughts,

we were in the train.

And landed up far, far inside Germany.

It was very difficult for Jews to be able to hide

within the Polish population

within the Polish population

because of small cultural and linguistic things,

such as accents would--could creep in

and change the perception of you

as being truly a Polish citizen.

Well, what happened was

because they suspected us,

one of them reported us to the authorities

and that was our downfall.

Kitty was arrested for illegal entry into Germany

as leokadia dobrzynska

and sent for interrogation.

The Nazis wanted to know the source

the Nazis wanted to know the source

of their false documents.

The irony with the Nazis

was they could create death camps

and murder Jews with impunity

but if somebody broke a law,

they had to go through the penal system

which was complete nonsense

because they could have simply deported them

to Auschwitz as Jews.

But because the legal system didn't allow it,

they eventually were deported to Auschwitz

with a death penalty for immigration charges.

So we were told we're going to be executed

by firing squad.

There was a brick wall

there was a brick wall

and we had to face the wall

with our arms up like that,

standing, facing the wall.

And then there was a huge explosion

and I thought, "God, I'm--I've been hit."

There was a great laughter.

They said, "oh, no, we're not going to kill you.

"What's going to happen, we're going to commute you

"of death sentence

"to life imprisonment in Auschwitz

"and we're going to hand you over to the camp.

"They'll find out

where these documents came from."

So we're in a train that was specially converted

so we're in a train that was specially converted

to transport prisoners

and we travelled 48 hours standing

before we arrived in Auschwitz.

But we had absolutely no idea where we were,

it was dark.

What did you first see when you got off the train?

Well, the thing opened up and--

Oh, you heard an awful lot of noise.

Were you scared?

Well, we were scared of the dogs.

And then the great big women with whips.

And then the great big women with whips.

And they were whipping everyone

and urging everyone to run, run, run,

everything at running pace.

Suddenly, there was a weird kind of stench

and the closer we got,

the worse the stench became.

My mother--my mother said, "what a curious place there.

"Can you smell?

Can you smell roasting meat?"

I said, "yes, I can."

She said "do you think they're roasting chickens here

this time of the night?"

This time of the night?"

I said, "I don't know."

Kitty and her mother was sent to birkenau,

the largest of the 44 camps

in the Auschwitz system,

where they were processed and sent to quarantine.

When did you first stay in a wooden barrack?

Well, this was a quarantine, okay?

So the first night, we were pushed into here.

Did you find somewhere to sleep?

Well, we squeezed in somewhere here.

I was incredibly cold that night.

I was incredibly cold that night

because we were 48 hours without food

and I slept all night next to a woman.

And she started speaking to me in German,

it turned out, she was a German gypsy.

- Right. - During the early morning,

while she was talking to me,

she looked at my hand, she took my hand,

she said, "give me your hand."

And she said, "you know, you're going to come out."

And the next thing that happened,

whistles blew suddenly,

we're still in dark.

And everybody would say "rouse, rouse, out."

And because this was quarantine,

and because this was quarantine,

we didn't know. Yeah.

And I shook this woman, you know.

Yeah. And she didn't move.

And I said to my mother, "she's cold, she's dead."

And I said, "you know, you're cold, I'm cold.

"We need to strip her

and we need to have everything she's got."

Surviving Auschwitz was virtually impossible

and there was certainly no way you can say,

"if you did this then this would happen."

It was a matter of luck and chance

of being in the right place at the right time

but there were some circumstances

but there were some circumstances

and some strategies that kind of worked.

That came to me that night

that actually that's the way to do it.

That if you do have the people that had died

you got to take everything off of them

because it's not good to them, that was it.

You had to do what you needed to do

to survive and that was taking from the dead,

that's what it meant.

Not in the history of mankind

has there been industrial killing

on this scale.

If something happened once,

there's absolutely no reason why it can't happen again.

There's absolutely no reason why it can't happen again.

In 1943, kitty was assigned to work

on a new rail line into birkenau,

called the ramp.

In 1944, she watched as transports of Jews

from Hungary started to arrive.

What was the importance of the ramp?

People arrived in cattle tracks

and sometimes seven or ten trains

would arrive in same 24 hours.

Would arrive in same 24 hours.

And people were sealed in almost airtight,

just a little bit of air coming through the slats.

Sometimes the trains were sealed here for hours

before they were allowed to unload.

Did people die in the trains?

Yeah, a lot of people died

before they arrived here.

Some people traveled seven days

before they arrived here.

Did anyone have any idea what was happening

when they got off the train?

People had not the foggiest idea

what was going to happen.

Of course there were people

coming from the ghettos.

So they didn't expect anything,

so they didn't expect anything,

you know, good, obviously.

Everything was very nice and quiet

because they didn't want people to panic,

so loud speakers were here,

telling people,

"well, there's a lot of typhus here

"and so we are all going to be disinfected

"and we've got to split,

"went from women and women with children.

"Leave your luggage, leave your luggage,

you're going to get your luggage later."

And then soldiers came, "right, left,

"men this way, women this way,

"women with children on one side,

"women with children on one side,

"younger people or younger,

"you can go that way.

"Oh, you're older,

"you take your child with you, it'll be fine.

You take your child, we're not going to split you up."

It was shocking to see

that you stood in the exact same place

as those people did once.

At the ramp, women with children

and the elderly were sent directly to their death

and if you were young and able-bodied

and if at that period of time

they needed workers,

then you were chosen for slave labor

then you were chosen for slave labor

which essentially meant

that you were chosen to die slowly,

not to die immediately in the gas chambers.

Let me tell you, at this point,

families were split,

never ever saw one another again.

So, some of the men were taken this way.

Uh-hmm. - Okay?

Some of the girls that were selected

to go into the camp were taken through there.

We were just told to go that way,

we were just told to go that way,

and you know the road there,

- where does that go? - The gas chambers.

That's it.

What happened when you arrived at camp?

Well, we were taken to a building like this

which we didn't know what it was

but it was called the sauna,

not like you and I understand it,

the processing place.

And the first thing that happened to you,

you were stripped.

Everything was taken from you,

you were smeared with a green fluid,

your hair was shaved everywhere.

Your hair was shaved everywhere.

That was then packaged

and shipped off for processing.

Hair was used both to create cloth

and to line submarines and its detonators.

And then you were tattooed and believe me,

that was when you felt you were no longer...

It was painful. ...The same person.

When that tattoo was placed on your arm,

you weren't what your parents

had given you as your name,

you became that number

and that was your identification completely taken away.

Not only is it a disgusting thing to do.

Not only is it a disgusting thing to do

to human beings but that's my grandma

and they wanted to turn her into an animal.

Without your hair and without your clothing,

you lose something very distinctive about you.

And there are people who remember at that point

that they looked ridiculous.

It was hard to imagine how she survived.

Every corner she turned,

there was something trying to stop her from living.

First of all, survival depended.

First of all, survival depended

on the place of work.

If you were working outside

and, you know, the commandos which are work parties,

you hadn't had the prayer to survive for long.

The other thing you couldn't survive

was without a pair of shoes.

Well, the problem was that you were issued wooden clogs.

Your clogs would get stuck in the muds.

Your feet would rank,

they would get infected, you were dead.

If you didn't have your bowl, you were dead.

If you didn't have your bowl, you were dead.

Because nobody would give you their bowl.

So survival depended on

if you could not think about anything,

just have a tunnel vision

and think like an animal.

Just picture yourself, what does an animal do?

What does an animal need?

Well, it doesn't need very much just to live

but the first thing it needs is to get away

from the predators.

Get away from all these people

that are trying to kill you.

That are trying to kill you.

There were capos who were prison foremen

and they became more cruel

than the German masters themselves.

But how do you get away from these people?

Any of the ruling.

Could come up to you and kill you.

And consequently you couldn't figure out

a strategy for survival.

In Auschwitz, there was no why,

it was done by whim.

Did you know that the wooden sheds.

Did you know that the wooden sheds

were actually meant for 52 horses

and so they put these bunk things up there.

And there were a thousand people in there?

And a thousand people inside, that's right.

What happened? Did--first thing in the morning

when you woke up?

You were woken up

with the sound of whistles

roughly around about 4:00 in the morning.

So roll calls took place twice a day

and roll calls was one of the greatest terrors

of the camp.

Whistles blew and everybody screams

"out, out, out, schnell, rouse, rouse."

Total chaos, a thousand people

had to rush out of this door.

And you see the grounds, you're looking at grass,

but you must look at mud,

the whole thing was just one sea of mud.

I've always said, "if you found a blade of grass,

what would you do with it?"

You'd eat it. Oh.

So people were just staggering around the mud

so people were just staggering around the mud

but of course you had to stand to attention.

Selection didn't just take place

on arrival at Auschwitz,

it was a daily occurrence.

In fact, anytime the prisoners were together,

if anybody at any point in time

tipped over into that place

where they were no longer useful to the Nazis,

they could simply be selected

and sent them to the gas chamber.

People just collapsed and died.

Yeah. Died of tiredness,

of exhaustion, of shock.

Did you ever have to collect the corpses after roll call?

Yes, yes. Yes, you did?

Yes, yes. Yes, you did?

Oh, yes. At that--when I was in the liechenkommando,

this is what we did.

Well, I don't know if people realize

but when you are hungry,

hunger is a total obsession.

You're just thinking hunger, hunger,

I must have something to eat,

I must--if I don't eat something, I'll die.

It depended where you were in line

as to how much nutrition you got.

As to how much nutrition you got.

If you're at the beginning of the line,

you got pure water.

If you're at the end of the line,

you had a problem because they might run out of food.

And if you knew the person who was ladling out the food,

then in one sense they dug deep

and they got the stuff in the soup

that landed at the bottom,

whether it's a potato or a carrot or something.

Hunger is the worst thing.

Hunger is the worst thing

that anybody can experience, I think.

Did you stay in a bunk like this?

If you were lucky, there was one straw mattress.

And one blanket for eight people.

How did eight people sleep here?

Like sardines, next to each other.

- That's it, you got it. - Yeah.

Head to feet. So, you had somebody's feet

in your face. Yeah.

Did people die in the night then?

Did you have any experience with that?

Yes. People died in the night. That's right.

Yes. People died in the night. That's right.

If somebody died next to you,

all of a sudden, you found your own body heat going out.

You needed the warmth of the other body

in order to stay--

I wouldn't say warm but to stay less cold

during the frigid nights.

Suppose you need to go to the toilet at night.

There's no toilets in here.

( Well, a ) There are no toilets,

( b ) You were not allowed out.

The barracks had buckets.

Now, a veteran prisoner would try to judge

when to go to the bathroom at night

when to go to the bathroom at night

by such a way as listening very carefully

to what happened to the prisoner before you

to make sure that you weren't the last

to fill the bucket

because if you were last to fill the bucket,

you had to take it out and empty it.

You look at that.

- Yes. - You see what this is?

Yeah, it's mud.

That's just mud. That's right.

And very often there was a mess here as well

because you couldn't get to the bucket.

You had to permission to even during the night

you had to permission to even during the night

to use the bucket.

So, those were your living quarters.

It was just so horrific to think that anybody

could stuff all these people in this tiny space.

I have a place to go to the toilet

and I have a place to sleep

and I have place to have food

and I know that I will get it.

The Nazis made sure in every way possible

you didn't get what you needed.

Something to eat,

somewhere to sleep,

and I'm afraid if you don't mind the language,

somewhere to shit.

Now, what I'm going to show you is the latrines.

Okay? Now, see that entrance? Uh-hmm.

Thousands, thousands had to get through

this entrance and of course

there was a functionary prisoner in charge

and wouldn't let you in, but did you know,

I worked there at one stage.

So, let's just show you what it was like.

How did you get the job to work here?

Well, I had to buy myself to work.

I thought it'd be a good place.

At least I have access to the lavatory.

Yeah. And it was horrible.

Yeah. And it was horrible.

There's nothing further

from what a 16-year-old girl

would want to be doing with her life

than having her arms in shit.

And yet, for her that was a privilege

because when she was in the scheisskommando,

it meant that she wasn't digging a ditch.

She didn't have somebody flogging her to death

because she couldn't dig fast enough.

She wasn't actually freezing to death

because she was inside

and what's more, the Nazis were nowhere near that place.

So, being in this scheisskommando

was a 16-year-old's dream in Auschwitz.

Was a 16-year-old's dream in Auschwitz.

So, that was an open sewer.

Thousands of women going in there,

you had, like, two or three people to a hole

because you didn't have it to yourself

and then when people were finishing,

you had to dig all that stuff out,

so everything had to come out.

Think of the idea that you have 35,000 people

using these latrines.

Using these latrines.

So it was designed again to dehumanize the people,

to degrade them to make them live in their own filth.

Why dehumanize these people

if they're gonna kill them anyhow?

Because if people look like a lump of feces,

then it's easy to flush it down the toilet.

And what would happen if you couldn't get in,

how would you go to the toilet?

You had your bowl.

Yeah. And your bowl

was virtually your food or your toilet.

Was virtually your food or your toilet.

Uh-hmm. Yeah.

The problem was washing it out, right?

Yeah. There was no water. How did you wash it out?

No water.

In the winter you had snow,

you can wipe it out.

In the summer, it wasn't so.

And you couldn't do anything on the ground

because if somebody-- They could see you...

And they're in trouble.

Well, not only they're in trouble,

you got killed. Yeah.

Full stop.

And we haven't got the words to describe the intense cold.

Well, I was thinking of penguins actually,

how did penguins survive in the antarctic?

How did penguins survive in the antarctic?

Well, if you look at them, they huddle together

and try to have body heat from each other.

Well, that's exactly what it was.

So that was trying to overcome the cold.

It must have been horrific

to have to stand still in the cold with no shoes,

hours and hours on end, when she was hungry,

starving, tired,

and there was nothing she could do about that.

During selection, that was most feared,

because then you knew, at random,

you could be selected to die.

So fear, that was the greatest fear,

selections.

What's this block here with the bars?

Well, this is called block 25.

You see the number here and you see the bars

- on the windows? - Yeah.

Well, that's the only block that had the bars.

It's called the death block.

Block 25 was the place

where inmates once they had been selected

where inmates once they had been selected

were sent to await death.

The Nazis, of course, because they were operating

the campus efficiently as possible,

wouldn't simply select two or three inmates

and then send them to the gas chamber

because it wasn't worth turning the gas chamber on.

So what would happen is they would collect

several hundreds of these prisons

who are at the end of their usefulness

and then dispatch them to the gas chamber

when it was convenient.

I'm going to explain to you what's inside here.

I'm going to explain to you what's inside here.

Everybody kept away from here

because once selections were taking place

in all these blocks,

people would have to undress

and turn around in front of the ss doctor.

And if they didn't like your skin

or if you are too thin or if you couldn't walk,

they would take a mark,

and mark up your number.

Did anyone survive once in there?

No, no, nobody survived. No.

No, you could never get anyone out.

Once they were here, that was the end.

You are very taken aback by it.

Kitty told me that they had no clothes

kitty told me that they had no clothes

and you could see that their hands

were through the window begging for food

or water or anything.

The reason block 25 is such a prominent place

in her memory is of course because

all of the inmates

in the women's camp could see it.

It was right alongside their own barracks.

They could hear the desperation

of the women that were in there,

knowing that there was literally no way out.

Of course, everybody kept away from me

and when they opened up the doors...

It smelled. The stench went right

it smelled. The stench went right

through the camp.

Well, language was a big, big problem

because the camp had its own language.

And it was actually a combined German and Polish sort of slang.

For instance, the woman who was in charge of the block

was called the...

So okay, so if you didn't know the German word,

you wouldn't have known what it was.

Her helpers were called...

...is a room in German

...is a room in German

but was kind of made into Polish.

It was a slang that you had to understand.

And that was the problem with the greeks, the Italians,

the Hungarians, they just couldn't understand.

If you didn't, again, you couldn't survive.

I lost my friends all the time

and that was the worst of it

that you've had your friends,

you established the contact,

you established the contact,

you already had someone that was--

Had access and you could get this

and you could get that and you could get a bit of food

and then all of a sudden, they were gone.

Just having somebody that you knew

that could help you in a given moment in time

could be the difference between life and death.

Everybody needed the friendship

or the sense of "I need you,"

to be able to mediate

a situation that wasn't designed

to allow you to live.

To allow you to live.

What were the white things on these fences?

Now, if you look at these white things,

that's high-tension electric fencing.

You were very, very cautious not to go too close.

Because if you did, you committed suicide.

People commit suicide often?

That was the easiest way out.

You just touched a fence and you were dead.

And if you touched this person, you were dead as well

because electricity would pass through your body

to the next person.

To the next person.

Or you were shot from the watch towers if you came too close.

So yes, people went on the fence, yes.

There was universal word which was called "organizing."

And that amounts to getting hold of.

Didn't matter what it was, whether you bought it,

whether it was stolen, whether you found it,

it was all one word and it was called "organizing."

I organized some bread. I organized a pair of shoes.

I organized something to wear.

I organized something to wear.

So what did women do?

They always tried to get two or three together.

Four was the best.

One working in one place,

one working perhaps had access to the toilet,

like I did at one time,

one had access to water,

one perhaps had access to some clothes,

to the sauna, and that's how you exchanged

and that was the mutual support

that was absolutely vital to survival.

If you didn't have that, you couldn't survive.

We're going to block 12.

We're going to block 12

because all that was part of sick bay.

Did you come here a lot then?

I tried to hide there

just to conserve my energy.

My mother sometimes would hide me somewhere.

Kitty's mother was a very highly educated

and cultured woman.

Once she got into the holocaust,

her knowledge of German

was gonna be really important to her.

She had both the physical attributes

and the mental attributes

to be able to work away

through very difficult circumstances.

And my mother worked right throughout the time.

And my mother worked right throughout the time.

She was working there.

She was supposed to be a nurse

but because you couldn't nurse anyone,

my mother psychologically tried to keep people alive

by simply begging them to live another day.

Working in the hospital meant that her mother

was able to help kitty.

Between the two of them, they could work together to enable--

Just increasing the chances of survival a little.

My mother was working in an infirmary,

an infectious block.

If someone that had typhus, I was on my mother's block.

If someone that had typhus, I was on my mother's block.

And I was lucky enough to be told I'd be able to stay

and work within the,

you know, within the infirmary.

So, I was a glorified cleaner

but really my function

was to bring the bodies out

that died, you know, people died during the night

and some of the bodies were up there.

So, two of us had to climb up there

and get the--get the corpses down,

dragged them all the way

and stack them up outside.

And I actually hid some of my friends here.

And I actually hid some of my friends here.

I managed to bring them in here

because I had access

but I told them it was the most

dangerous place to be

because nearly every day,

the ss doctors would come in

and carry out selections.

They would sit people up,

sometimes they had to jump.

If they couldn't jump over this heating channel

they'd be killed.

Of course the sick couldn't get down

so the ss doctors would just,

with a chalk, mark up a bunk.

Well, of course we know what happened.

Well, of course we know what happened.

Dr. Mengele came and said,

"today, we're emptying this block,"

which meant, today they're all going to die.

Did they know what was happening?

Well, they already knew what was happening.

So, we had to stand like this.

So, in a circle, holding.

And that's when I lost most of my friends

and that broke me.

I never got over that.

My mother realized what was going on

and from somewhere she appeared

and from somewhere she appeared

and she just grabbed me

and then pulled me away.

And at that point, you know,

we thought what was going to happen next.

It's all empty.

They were gone and I was on my own.

There was a place called kanada

named after the country Canada

which was the place in which

they confiscated all of the valuables.

They sorted it. They inventoried it.

They then shipped it back to Germany for use.

They then shipped it back to Germany for use.

They came and said

"we're going to ask you to join the kanada."

My mother said, "there'll be food there.

"You must do it. There will be food.

You'll find it among the clothes."

And so I said, "yes, okay."

And that's how I got to the kanada.

I'm going to tell you

why I brought you here.

Thousands upon thousands of people were brought in

- with all their belongings. - Yeah.

Kitty really wanted to tell the story of kanada.

For her, it's about evidence.

Each one of those suitcases

belonged to a human being

and each one of those clothes

was worn by one of those human beings.

What she's trying to get across to is--

I think is just the scale of the killing

based on the scale of that side.

There were 30 sheds here.

There were 30 sheds here

all full of people's belongings.

And we were here to do

the sorting of the belongings.

How long were you working here for?

I was here eight months.

There were two passways.

That passway at the bottom

had a huge heap like three-storey high.

Everybody's things jumbled up.

All the suitcases were emptied there.

Documents, children's clothes, prams,

everything was jumbled up down the bottom there

and then it was taken to individual sheds

and there, it was sorted.

And there, it was sorted.

My particular job was sorting

nothing but men's jackets.

So I had to find these men's jackets

and I couldn't always find them,

because I had a certain quota that I had to make.

What happened if you didn't make the quota?

Oh, you got punished if you didn't make the quota.

And in the shed was a long table

like a trestle

and you put the jackets on the trestle

and you put the jackets on the trestle

and you opened up all these things.

What do you think was in these jackets?

Lots of jewelry and... Lots of jewelry.

Diamonds, jewelry, money of all

different denominations.

Did you always give everything in

or did you, sometimes, hide it and then...

No. If you kept one single item

of any value, that was the end

because there was constant inspections.

So you couldn't keep it.

And, you know, we found a lot of paper money.

And, you know, we found a lot of paper money.

Yeah. As you can imagine.

What do you think we did with this paper money?

Because it wasn't any good to you,

you couldn't buy anything.

What did we do with it?

You did insulation?

No. We made that... Toilet paper.

...toilet paper. Toilet paper.

All kind of dollars, kronas,

whatever currency there was,

was used as toilet paper.

One of the ss who took us to the kanada

made a speech and he said,

"because you are here,

"you're never going to be back in the main camp.

"Because what you see, we cannot allow it.

"Because what you see, we cannot allow it.

"There's only one way out of here,

and that's through the chimney."

What is this place?

Well, you see these ruins.

That's all we can see.

That was known as the white house.

This was a place where the commander

and the people who were working inside the gas chambers,

they were working here.

We were not supposed to be here.

You see where the sauna is?

You see where the sauna is?

That's how close we are to the sauna.

We're not allowed to come here.

However, on about four or five occasions,

I managed to pass this place.

And the circumstances were that we took some clothes

in hand carts and we were told to take those hand carts

back to the main camp.

Now, the ss woman who accompanied us,

she didn't like going in between the fences

because she was afraid that she was gonna get electrocuted.

So she decided to take us this way.

So she decided to take us this way.

So what happens, we walked along here

and we passed this place here which was the white house.

People were lined up, mostly men

were lined up here, all a line of men.

Each one of them was sort of going in

as we were passing by and you could hear a shot.

And we were told by the men by the commander

being shot in the neck.

Could you hear it?

You could hear the shot, yes.

You could hear a shot.

Now, the other thing is she said,

"you mustn't look around. You walk and you keep your head down."

"You mustn't look around. You walk and you keep your head down."

But we did see. So what did we see?

We saw some men throwing in bodies into pits

and smoke coming out and fire coming out of the pits,

and also some of the bodies

that they couldn't burn in the ovens.

They were bringing them in here and burning them in pits.

And this is a pit there where you're seeing all this vegetation.

And I actually found one pit some years ago

and found human remains,

and I think it was that pit over there.

And I passed this about four or five times

and I passed this about four or five times

within the eight months that I was working here.

How did it make you feel when you passed?

It was a horrific-- Horrific sight.

And we didn't even want to look, but of course we did.

You know, it was forbidden.

But it was just horrific because you were just seeing

bodies being burned and the fire coming out of the pits

and smoke all over the place.

There were several. We passed several pits.

There was one here, there was another one down there.

There were many, many pits here.

But I recall that one particularly,

but I recall that one particularly,

very close to the sauna.

This is where people died,

the killing part of Auschwitz.

I know you can't see anything.

Everything was burnt in that area

to erase all traces of murder.

In 1944, five gas chambers

were working at full capacity.

Were working at full capacity.

Kitty hart-moxon was placed in the kanada section

at Auschwitz-birkenau, right alongside

crematorium number four,

where Jews were being gassed every day.

Right at the back of the fence

was the gas chamber and crematorium number four.

And we had a direct view

into that gas chamber.

See this wood there? Yeah.

That's where groups of people were sitting,

small children running around.

Small children running around.

They had no idea what was going to happen.

They were herded into the crematoria.

There was an undressing room.

And people were told, "remember where you hung your clothes

because you're gonna get it back."

We had no contact because we were behind the wire

and also, it was very dangerous.

You were not allowed to communicate.

It wouldn't have helped.

If we just tell these people

if we just tell these people

"well, you know, you're now going to die,"

is that the help? It isn't.

We felt it's better they don't know.

And as they were herded into the gas chamber,

the gas chamber was sealed.

One of the ss personnel

would put on a gas mask

and he would climb up on a ladder,

with a tin in his hand

and he would throw in some powder.

That was gas

and then, all of a sudden,

you just heard the scream.

You just heard the scream.

The crematorium gas chambers had huge thick walls.

You could hear people

actually suffocating there and screaming

and eventually, after 20 minutes,

it was quiet.

The sonderkommando worked in the gas chamber

reported that people climbed up

on top of each other

and they sort of were in a sculptural pyramid.

The gas was evacuated

and then they were taken to the ovens

and there was a dissecting table.

They opened them up to make sure

that people did not die

with something valuable inside themselves.

What birkenau essentially did

was to reduce the human being

to consumable by product

of the killing process.

And the very next thing you saw

was the man with wheelbarrows taking ash

was the man with wheelbarrows taking ash

and dumping it in the pond at the back.

And do you think I could actually believe it?

Did you and your friends talk about what you saw?

We tried not to talk about it.

We knew it was happening but, you know,

we decided, we mustn't talk about it.

Don't look, don't look.

We know it's going on.

But don't look at it.

Little did the Nazis know that for months,

Jewish prisoners that had been forced

to operate the crematorium

were planning an insurrection

on October 7, 1944.

Kitty was witness to the uprising that day.

There was just a loud noise.

And when this noise happened, we thought that was it.

My friends and I, we threw ourselves down

just like that.

We bow our heads, lie flat on the ground.

We bow our heads, lie flat on the ground.

Armed resistance

was not a decision whether to live,

but most often, a decision how to die.

We do know that there were resistant movements.

The Polish had the resistant movement.

The Jews had the resistance movement.

But we didn't--never knew who these people were

because it was so incredibly dangerous.

We didn't know it was uprising

until we saw the man

actually come over.

They seemed to have cut part of the fencing

they seemed to have cut part of the fencing

because that was electrified fence.

So they seemed to have cut the fence

and run over and they tried to escape somewhere--

Yeah, I don't know where but they tried.

They were running all over.

And we were just lying down, spread-eagled,

because that was the safest thing to do.

There was a general shootout,

they came in on motorcycles with machine guns

and I think they got most of the men.

Kitty was also a witness to the fact that Jews

did not go like lambs to the slaughter.

But they were thinking about what they could do

but they were thinking about what they could do

to overcome the Nazis,

and with absolutely no chance, whatsoever,

to get a hold of the explosives

to be able to overcome the tight strictures on them.

These Jewish people did that.

Following uprising

was a huge was inquiry

like a whole roll call with an inquiry.

And during that inquiry,

one of the ss women came

and called my number,

39934,

39934,

and I was transferred back to the main camp

and I had no idea why.

I found out later, it was my mother

who managed to speak to one of the commandants

and told him I've been working eight months there

and that she was being evacuated

and asked him if I could be evacuated,

and that's what happened.

So why do you think that he let you go?

We don't know. We don't know.

I think my mother spoke this perfect German

and she didn't beg, she didn't crawl,

she just got up there and spoke,

she just got up there and spoke,

asked to speak to him in a proper manner.

And I think he took it on board

and then uncalled my number.

Well, I was transferred to the main camp.

We were on this list to be evacuated

and my mother looked around and she says,

"oh, my goodness. We are all with these functionary prisoners,

I wonder if they'll kill us."

And we were put into a cattle truck.

And my mother made a speech.

"Just remember, we are leaving here.

"We are all equal from now on.

"We are all equal from now on.

"We no longer have your functions.

"And remember, we may need one another's help.

"So from now on,

you're all going to be friends."

And that's what happened.

After leaving Auschwitz-birkenau

in November 1944,

kitty and her mother went through further six camps

and several death marches

before finally being liberated

in salzwedel, Germany.

April 14th, 1945.

April 14th, 1945.

Liberation was at best bittersweet.

It meant that for the first time,

they had to confront loss,

loss of parents,

loss of spouses,

loss of children,

loss of entire communities,

loss of entire worlds.

And for years they had guarded themselves

from feeling anything

from feeling anything

and once they felt,

the feeling of vacuum of emptiness

sometimes shattered them.

We had tried not be emotional about anything.

If you did, your emotions would just take over

and you couldn't go on.

That a civilized nation

would take people on a train,

bring them to gassing, annihilate them,

confiscate and recycle the elements of their body

confiscate and recycle the elements of their body

and do that systematically,

day in and day out.

It's inconceivable.

How could this happen?

I felt very ashamed at the world

and very--just upset

that this could ever take place.

Some people see it as just a time in history.

But they don't understand

how it relates to us today.

We are the ultimate proof

of her survival.

Of her survival.

If she hadn't found the hope to keep on going,

I wouldn't be sitting here.

Now, what I want to show you

is what's this water.

It's incredibly important to tell you about this water.

Women, men, children, old,

that's a final resting place.

That's a cemetery.

Kitty hart-moxon is saying "I was here.

"This is what they did to me.

"This is how it was set up.

But I prevailed."

There are people that simply don't believe

that this place existed.

We know it happened to the Jews

but the Jews weren't the first then they weren't the last.

So who's going to be next?

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