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This programme contains scenes which some viewers may find upsetting

SINGING

On the 27th of January, 1945, the Soviet Red Army entered the

gates of the Nazi regime's most notorious death camp.

With the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau,

the world witnessed the profound horror of the Holocaust.

This happened 80 years ago, and you've still got to

tell people about it.

They had whips, they had guns,

and any time you could have been

sent to gas chambers.

How many members of your family do you think you lost

because of the Holocaust?

I think it must have been in the hundreds.

80 years since the liberation,

we now live in a world of misinformation and denial.

If this distortion of our

understanding is allowed to take root,

we run the risk that history will be rewritten

and the true horror of the Holocaust forgotten.

I want to find out what, for someone like me, not of Jewish heritage

and born nearly half a century later, it really means for the world

to never forget.

SINGING CONTINUES

NEWSREEL: War. Precisely at dawn

on September 1st, without warning, the German Wehrmacht roared

over the Polish border.

This morning, the British Ambassador in Berlin handed 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.

Since Adolf Hitler's rise to power in Germany in 1933, the Nazi regime

had fostered a hatred for Jews, who the party held responsible

for the country's economic and political instability.

As this anti-Semitism spread, the German state began systematically

removing the rights of the Jewish people.

These were the first steps towards a plan that would become

known as the Final Solution

and see approximately 6 million Jews die

at the hands of the Nazi regime.

Making documentaries,

you often end up talking about facts and figures and places, and that's

often how history is taught.

But I think, especially because of the world of misinformation

and disinformation that, as a journalist, I see all around us,

the lessons from the Holocaust have to be remembered.

And this happened -

it wasn't even a century ago.

And for us to forget that means that we're going to forget

how we got there.

And that's so important, because this didn't

just happen overnight.

I was deported in

Auschwitz-Birkenau with my mother, with my three younger sisters,

and they put in one truck

about 70, 80 people.

In 2021, Dov Forman launched a

TikTok account with his great-grandmother,

Lily Ebert, a survivor of Auschwitz.

Hello, TikTok.

Shabbat Shalom.

Shabbat Shalom, TikTok. Have a nice weekend.

How did you get your great-granny on TikTok?

It was just after the Covid lockdown.

For a few months, she hadn't been able to go out and

do what she loved for so long, which was to educate

about her harrowing Holocaust testimony.

And we started on Twitter, sharing her story, and eventually

I saw people going viral for dancing and doing silly things on TikTok.

And so I said to her, "Safta," -

we used to call her Safta, which is Hebrew for grandma -

"why don't we go on TikTok and start sharing your important messages?

"I think we can go viral."

And she said, "I'll do it, but I'm not dancing."

My younger brother and sister

were straight taken

to the gas chamber.

I never saw them again.

When did you start to notice that there were negative comments

questioning about the Holocaust?

It was almost immediately. Really?

We would get positive and then we would get negative.

And every day I would wake up, I would read the comments on my

phone and there would be thousands of them.

"Hitler missed one." "The Holocaust is fake."

"We're coming to find you. We're coming to kill you."

In my work, I'm seeing much more disinformation -

so people deliberately spreading things that are untrue.

And misinformation - people spreading things that's untrue,

but perhaps not deliberately.

Why do you think that, with the Holocaust, this brings that

out in people so much?

When young children scroll, so many of the posts they're seeing,

16%, according to a Unesco report in 2022,

of all Holocaust-related content on social media platforms -

Instagram, Twitter, Telegram, TikTok, we can go on -

is Holocaust-denying or distorting.

That's a shocking number, 16%.

We know that over 50% of people last year got their news

from social media.

So it's clear to me, at least, that that is the place

where this disinformation is being spread and where

that misinformation into society is seeping, is seeping through.

That means that those people who are scrolling through

are absorbing pure disinformation, hatred and denial

about the Holocaust.

How do you tell a story that has the number 6 million?

6 million deaths. 6 million deaths I don't think is something

that people can fully comprehend.

The horror is just too much.

But people can comprehend a person.

You know, they can comprehend

someone who might be the age of their granny, their grandad.

They Can comprehend the story of loss, of fear and of love.

Renee, thank you very much for

talking to me today... You're very welcome. ..and helping me to hear

about your personal experience and to learn more.

First thing I wanted to do was to find out

more about your childhood in Zdunska Wola.

Zdunska Wola, yes. Did I get that right?

You got it right. Perfect. First time.

My father was a chief accountant at the largest textile firm

in Europe. Oh... He had a very good job.

Very good position.

Would he have been known by people in the town?

Everybody.

You know, people used to bow to him when he went to the street,

yes, with my mother.

Beautifully dressed always, very elegantly dressed.

They gave him so much respect.

And your mum, was she at home looking after you...?

My mother was at home, looking after the house,

after the children. Keeping us all happy.

Renee's family was integrated into Polish society and lived

peacefully alongside Jews and non-Jews alike.

I was born in 1932, in southern Hungary.

I come from a family of, a very religious family.

There was five boys, four girls, my mother and father.

We used to get up in the morning, usually 5 o'clock,

summer and winter,

and go to, go to the school,

to cheder, which are the Jewish studies.

And then the secular and go for lunch,

and then more Jewish studies.

My name is Arek Hersh.

I was born in 1928, in Poland,

in a place called Sieradz.

I enjoyed life very much.

I went out with my friends, played football and hockey, all sorts

of different things what a young person does.

And then the Germans came in and everything changed.

By 1941, the implementation of plans to eliminate Europe's Jewish

population was under way.

Jews who had not managed to emigrate were being stripped

of their businesses and property,

excluded from society and corralled into separate neighbourhoods known

as ghettos, in preparation for forced deportation.

All the schools were burnt down.

All the synagogues were burnt down or dynamited.

It... Absolutely terrible.

And most of the Jewish people were thrown away

out of their houses.

They took everything - all the silver, all the best china,

all the linens.

Everything was taken.

We didn't have a change of underwear.

But ghettos were only ever going to be a temporary solution.

And it wasn't long before the SS began rounding up the Jews

and forcing them onto trains.

We were packed very tightly.

They shut and bolted the doors.

Without any food.

They didn't give us any food - no bread, no water, nothing.

Not even any air. No windows.

They only have a few slats on top.

Death happened on the train. Illness happened.

And...

And I can't describe it

because I can't see any point in describing the...

..the dehumanisation that we lived

for the few days that we were onboard.

Unknown to them, the trains that Renee, Arek and Ivor were on

were destined for Auschwitz-Birkenau,

which would become the most infamous and largest

of the Nazi regime's extermination camps.

The camp, in southern Poland,

had started life as an old army barracks,

originally used by the Germans to hold Polish political prisoners.

But as plans for the Final Solution were rolled out,

Auschwitz was transformed into a death camp.

By the time the first large transport of Jews arrived

in March 1942,

it was ready to become the regime's

primary killing ground.

The train slowed down and came to a stop.

Immediately, we heard dogs barking.

They unlocked, unlocked the doors, opened them up,

and they're screaming and bellowing,

"Get off the train! Be quick! Get a move on!"

My father jumped off first

and I jumped after him.

When I jumped off, I didn't see him any more.

He disappeared, like into thin air.

They took him away.

We didn't know where to...

Without a kiss, without a goodbye,

he disappeared, like into thin air,

and I never saw him again.

Guards were walking around

and they said,

"You are here now in Auschwitz-Birkenau."

We didn't know what Auschwitz-Birkenau meant.

But they said, here, they take us straight to the gas cha...

They take us straight to the gas chambers.

We were so frightened.

The absolute endless

scale of the place makes it...

..so horrifying.

It's just so uniform - it is like a machine, like a factory.

It's so still and quiet today...

..but the barking of dogs, the screaming of soldiers,

of people all getting off here

and then being selected, as they called it,

to be murdered.

Imagine standing here and your mum

just being taken away, and I don't know where she's going

and I don't know if I'm going to see her again.

As a child, to try and understand what was happening here.

Not only terrifying, but confusing, all at the same time.

As each train was off-loaded, the old, sick

and those too young to work were taken straight to the gas chambers.

Despite their young ages, Renee, Arek and Ivor

all managed to go unnoticed by the guards.

The officer asked me, "How old are you?"

I said, "14," so he sent me to the right side.

I was selected to go into the camp.

The people which were selected

to be, go in the gas chamber

were sent to the left side.

We started marching and my mother was holding the youngest brother,

the youngest sister and two other sisters.

I said, "I want to come with you."

She said, "No, go back to your brother."

So I went back to my brother.

Of course, that's the last time I saw my family alive.

Those who got through this first selection were stripped of

their personal possessions and had their heads shaved.

In the eyes of the SS guards who worked in the camp,

they were no longer human beings.

I noticed some men that had a tattoo,

so I said, "Do I need to?"

They said, "Yes. Oh, very much so. Yes."

Erm, so I went there and they did mine. Uh...

..I had B7608.

B7608.

I lost my name altogether.

The prisoners were housed in wooden or brick barracks,

surrounded by electrified barbed wire.

Though many of the barracks were designed to only hold

300 or 400 people, as the war continued,

they could be crammed with up to 1,000 men, women or children.

Few managed to survive the inhumane conditions.

Twice a day, we used to be counted.

Sometimes, we had to stand for four hours, six hours,

even later than that.

Occasionally, someone would drop dead at these roll calls.

What gave you hope?

What were you able to hold on to? My mother.

I was holding her hands all the time in Auschwitz.

My mother. If it wouldn't be for her, I wouldn't have lasted a day.

She kept me going,

and I kept her going sort of thing.

Very poignant. Yeah. Yes.

If it wouldn't be for my mother, I wouldn't have been alive.

The situation was horrendous.

All I can say is that, eventually, when you used to go to bed,

you hoped that the person you lived next to died overnight.

Why?

You could pinch his shoes or his clothes.

We were not human beings any more.

Violence and brutal punishments from the SS guards were a daily event,

and the threat of the gas chambers and crematoria was ever-present.

From the very beginning, the SS believed that

only one crematorium would be sufficient,

with an overall capacity of about 100 bodies a day. But, gradually,

they added the second oven, then the third.

And finally, they built four huge crematoria in Birkenau,

with a total capacity of almost

5,000 bodies a day.

5,000 people could be burnt,

their bodies could be burnt, every day? Yes. Theoretically, yes.

But, as we know from the testimonies of survivors,

sometimes this number was even higher.

A type of gas called Zyklon B was used in the gas chambers.

It had originally been marketed as an insecticide,

but as the Nazis sought ever more efficient methods for mass murder

its potential as a chemical weapon was exploited.

In humans, suffocation was swift

if inhaled or absorbed through the skin.

Most of the guards have no contact with the victims,

but everybody here knew what happened in gas chambers

and crematoria because they could see the flames

and the clouds of smoke,

they could smell this awful odour of burning human flesh,

so they had to know what was going on.

However much horror you thought about,

you'd never imagine what was happening.

Whoever imagines something about gassing people and burning them?

You know, it never, never came into the mind.

Each day, prisoners could be singled out for the gas chambers.

Some would be given towels

and told they were being taken to the showers to bathe.

They would wait their turn, then undress

and enter a chamber similar to this one at Dachau.

Zyklon B would be released

and, within minutes, everyone would be dead.

Other prisoners would drag the bodies out

and then the bodies would be burned.

These photographs, taken secretly

by an inmate forced to work

the crematoria, are the only ones

known to exist of the atrocities

that took place at Auschwitz.

So, you can't film in there out of respect for the victims,

because along one side of the wall there's a huge display case

and it is full of human hair that has been shaved

from the bodies of people after they'd been gassed.

And it's those details

that I had no idea.

It really...will stay with me.

Even the ashes of the burned bodies at Auschwitz would be put to use.

Arek was one of the inmates forced to work in the fields.

They used to bring, from the crematorium, ashes and we put

it on the soil.

Sometimes I used to feel some bones in my hand,

but you couldn't help it.

It's...

You know, you had to do what you had to do.

How many members of your family do you think you lost

because of the Holocaust?

I think it must have been in the hundreds.

Oh, dear, dear, dear, dear, dear.

I would say, definitely say my mother.

And my youngest brother and sister.

I mean, I'm sure, I'm sure they died at Auschwitz.

Painful.

Painful.

By the autumn of 1944, with the end of the war in sight, the authorities

at Auschwitz had begun transferring prisoners to other camps

and systematically destroying evidence of the atrocities

that had taken place.

I don't think I've ever come across a physical embodiment

of hatred like this.

If you've not been here and you've not experienced it,

then I don't think you are as afraid as you should be

of where hatred can go.

And this is unthinkable, right?

This is unthinkable for most people in their normal lives.

This is unthinkable.

But it happened.

When the Soviet Red Army

entered Auschwitz on the 27th January 1945,

they found the last remaining prisoners.

Thousands of starving men, women and children.

They found the burned remains of thousands more,

several tons of human hair

and the last remnants of the lives of those killed.

In less than five years in Auschwitz alone,

around 1 million Jews were killed,

approximately 70,000 Poles...

By the time Auschwitz-Birkenau was liberated, Renee, Arek and Ivor

had all been moved on to other camps.

Renee was freed from Bergen-Belsen and eventually managed

to make her way to Paris, where she fell in love

with a British military policeman.

They later married and had two children.

Instead of hate, I learned to love

life and people,

and I hope that everybody should live in peace.

After liberation,

Ivor and his brother, who had also survived the war, were sent

to a displaced persons camp.

I was hungry for life.

I was more looking for the good things

and forgetting about the bad things.

Both Arek and Harry, who had spent the war incarcerated in forced

labour camps working for the German war effort,

were rescued from Theresienstadt.

When did you think, "I'm finally safe"?

On the last day of the war, the 8th of May, 1945.

The whole camp was taken over by the Red Cross

and the nurse said the British government allowed to

take 1,000 orphans to be taken to England.

So I went to England.

Ivor, Harry and Arek were all selected for the British government

scheme designed to help survivors recover.

Ivor was brought to Southampton before being moved on to Ascot.

Arek, along with Harry, was offered a new beginning at Lake Windermere.

We sat on the floor, 15 on one side.

That was me.

AREK LAUGHS

Yeah.

They took off and we eventually arrived

in the Lake District

and we were taken to the encampment there,

and we were put so many children into a barrack.

We each had a little room and a bed

and a little chest of drawers.

And we all had our own door

and it was marvellous.

Windermere was a different place altogether.

We arrived there at the dining hall,

with plates and tablecloths and bread,

white bread, on the table.

We hadn't seen bread for a long...for years!

What was it like when you first saw the lakes and when you

got off the coach?

It's unbelievable. You just can't imagine it.

We had clothes to wear, but it was...

We were human again for the first time in years and years.

We were human.

Today, Harry and Arek are revisiting

the place where they were given the chance to live again.

We're getting on in life.

Getting on... But you haven't changed a bit.

Except your hairs are grey.

We are... We're the dinosaurs.

AREK LAUGHS

I used to swim in this lake.

Yeah, so did I. Yeah?

I was in one of the barracks.

Had my own little room -

a bed and a wardrobe and that was it!

Yeah, I know, but what number? What number block were you?

I think it was number six.

Remember what block you were here?

In block E. E. I think block E.

Yeah. I think so.

Those, those were the days.

We were brought up here for holidays,

not quite knowing what our father had been through.

And it was always a happy...

..positive place for him and seeing him so happy here.

He still seems to come alive when he arrives here -

when he sees that lake and when he arrives here.

He said they had such fun times here.

They were family to each other because they'd lost everybody

and it was somewhere to belong and somewhere to start again.

For them to have gone from such horror to such a beautiful place,

and learning to just be boys again, learning to be human

after everything they've been through, I didn't think

that I would get to hear that in this story.

That demonisation, that dehumanisation

and that disinformation that the Nazis used

against the Jewish people,

well, it's not just in books, in the cinema and radio

like it was back then. Now we get it direct.

We all get it direct to our phones.

I think we owe it to the people that have been through that to really

ask, where are we getting this information from?

Who's giving this information and why?

Because that hatred that we have seen, it still exists

in different forms, even today.