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00:00:46,784 --> 00:00:51,244
For 13 months between July 1942
and August 1943,

2
00:00:51,422 --> 00:00:56,325
trains ran through the Polish countryside
along this siding,

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00:00:56,527 --> 00:01:01,294
disgorging thousands of men,
women and children in this clearing.

4
00:01:06,237 --> 00:01:08,865
This used to be the SS barracks.

5
00:01:10,241 --> 00:01:12,505
This, the undressing room.

6
00:01:15,346 --> 00:01:18,144
And this, the route to the gas chambers,

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00:01:18,315 --> 00:01:21,512
known by the Nazis as the path to heaven.

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00:01:31,595 --> 00:01:33,563
This killing factory,

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00:01:33,898 --> 00:01:36,230
one of six the Nazis built in Poland,

10
00:01:36,433 --> 00:01:41,461
is near a tiny hamlet whose name
is still infamous today - Treblinka.

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00:01:42,940 --> 00:01:45,135
How could it happen?

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00:01:45,342 --> 00:01:48,539
How could such places ever come to exist?

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00:01:59,623 --> 00:02:02,057
(BELL CLANGS)

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00:02:05,563 --> 00:02:07,793
The Warsaw Ghetto.

15
00:02:07,965 --> 00:02:11,924
In 1940, the Nazis imprisoned
Polish Jews in ghettos like this.

16
00:02:12,636 --> 00:02:17,596
A temporary measure, whilst they
decided what the Jews' fate should be.

17
00:02:21,979 --> 00:02:24,447
The Nazis brutally persecuted the Jews.

18
00:02:24,615 --> 00:02:28,574
They thought them racially inferior,
but dangerous.

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00:02:28,919 --> 00:02:33,219
They believed a world-wide Jewish
conspiracy would destroy Germany,

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00:02:33,390 --> 00:02:35,881
that Jews were carriers of Bolshevism.

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00:02:36,093 --> 00:02:41,395
As a result, there had been Nazi rhetoric
saying that all Jews should be destroyed.

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00:02:45,669 --> 00:02:48,103
But even as late as 1940,

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00:02:48,305 --> 00:02:52,935
there was still no Nazi plan
systematically to exterminate the Jews.

24
00:02:53,110 --> 00:02:57,570
Up to now, the emphasis in Nazi planning
had been on expulsion.

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00:03:00,517 --> 00:03:04,283
The most bizarre plan
was that proposed in June 1940

26
00:03:04,488 --> 00:03:08,447
by an official in the German
Foreign Office, Franz Rademacher,

27
00:03:08,626 --> 00:03:13,086
to resettle the Jews on a tropical island
under German police control.

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00:03:13,264 --> 00:03:18,566
<i>"France must make Madagascar available</i>
<i>for the solution of the Jewish question. "</i>

29
00:03:22,906 --> 00:03:25,534
The Madagascar plan came to nothing.

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00:03:25,709 --> 00:03:30,169
By the time these pictures were taken
in the spring of 1941,

31
00:03:30,347 --> 00:03:34,977
Hitler had decided on a radical action
that was to alter the course of the war

32
00:03:35,152 --> 00:03:38,417
and change Nazi policy towards the Jews.

33
00:03:39,923 --> 00:03:44,883
Hitler had decided, as the fulfilment
of his great ideological dream,

34
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to invade the Soviet Union.

35
00:03:57,174 --> 00:03:59,438
The German Operation Barbarossa

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00:03:59,643 --> 00:04:02,373
began on June 22nd, 1941.

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00:04:07,451 --> 00:04:10,545
(GERMAN MARTIAL SONG)

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00:04:26,570 --> 00:04:31,530
Since the 1920s, the Nazis had been
ideologically opposed to Communism.

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00:04:31,709 --> 00:04:34,143
To them, this was not just a normal war.

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00:04:34,345 --> 00:04:36,336
This was a crusade.

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00:05:23,627 --> 00:05:28,587
Unlike the conflict in the West,
German soldiers knew that the war in the East

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00:05:28,766 --> 00:05:31,200
was to be fought without rules.

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00:06:37,401 --> 00:06:40,029
As they entered Soviet-held territory,

44
00:06:40,204 --> 00:06:43,173
the Germans encountered
hundreds of thousands of Eastern Jews.

45
00:06:43,340 --> 00:06:48,107
Nazi propaganda made it plain
what the German public should think of them.

46
00:07:05,028 --> 00:07:10,159
Hitler intended to colonise the captured territory
and settle Germans there.

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00:07:10,334 --> 00:07:13,303
Special killing squads - Einsatzgruppen -

48
00:07:13,637 --> 00:07:17,767
were now ordered
the cleanse the area of undesirables.

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00:07:17,941 --> 00:07:22,708
In charge of the Einsatzgruppen
was one of Hitler's most ruthless subordinates,

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00:07:22,913 --> 00:07:27,213
Reinhard Heydrich,
37-year-old head of the security police.

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00:07:28,986 --> 00:07:33,946
He issued this directive immediately after
the invasion of the Soviet Union.

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00:07:34,124 --> 00:07:38,083
<i>"The following are to be executed.</i>
<i>All officials of the Comintern.</i>

53
00:07:38,262 --> 00:07:40,628
<i>"Officials of senior and middle rank</i>

54
00:07:40,831 --> 00:07:45,291
<i>"and extremists in the party, the central</i>
<i>committee and the district committees.</i>

55
00:07:45,469 --> 00:07:50,099
<i>"The people's commissars, all Jews</i>
<i>in the service of the party and the state.</i>

56
00:07:50,274 --> 00:07:53,903
<i>"No steps are to be taken</i>
<i>to interfere with any purges</i>

57
00:07:54,077 --> 00:07:58,207
<i>"by anti-Communist or anti-Jewish</i>
<i>elements in the occupied territories.</i>

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00:07:58,382 --> 00:08:02,079
<i>"On the contrary,</i>
<i>these are to be secretly encouraged. "</i>

59
00:08:07,457 --> 00:08:10,756
Heydrich was a cold, desk-bound murderer

60
00:08:10,928 --> 00:08:14,193
who prided himself on being a man of culture.

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00:08:24,308 --> 00:08:26,367
Heydrich was a talented musician,

62
00:08:26,510 --> 00:08:31,277
and held weekend parties for his friends
in the SS castle of Wewelsburg.

63
00:10:11,548 --> 00:10:15,507
Heydrich and his boss,
the head of the SS, Heinrich Himmler,

64
00:10:15,686 --> 00:10:19,315
would organise
this quantum leap forward for Hitler -

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00:10:19,489 --> 00:10:24,085
the murder of Communists and Jews
as the German army advanced eastward.

66
00:10:24,461 --> 00:10:27,430
Hitler said the Jews were behind Communism.

67
00:10:27,597 --> 00:10:31,055
The crusade in the East
was to attempt to crush both.

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00:10:31,401 --> 00:10:35,861
Under Heydrich's command
were four Einsatzgruppen, or killing squads,

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00:10:36,039 --> 00:10:39,008
each with between 600 and 1,000 men.

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00:10:39,342 --> 00:10:41,810
Each was led by an educated German.

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00:10:44,815 --> 00:10:49,946
Einsatzgruppe A was led by Walther Stahlecker.
He held a doctorate in law.

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00:10:50,120 --> 00:10:55,080
Einsatzgruppe B was led by Arthur Nebe,
head of the German criminal police.

73
00:10:55,826 --> 00:10:58,556
Einsatzgruppe C was led by Otto Rasch.

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00:10:58,729 --> 00:11:03,029
He held two academic doctorates,
one in law and one in political science,

75
00:11:03,366 --> 00:11:06,494
so he was known as Doctor Doctor Rasch.

76
00:11:06,670 --> 00:11:09,935
Einsatzgruppe D was led by Otto Ohlendorf,

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a gifted economist, the most intellectual
of the Einsatzgruppen leaders.

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00:11:15,112 --> 00:11:19,412
Bloodiest of them all
was Stahlecker's Einsatzgruppe A,

79
00:11:19,583 --> 00:11:21,847
which operated in the Baltic states.

80
00:11:30,427 --> 00:11:34,022
Einsatzgruppe A followed
the German army into Lithuania

81
00:11:34,431 --> 00:11:36,695
in the early days of the invasion.

82
00:11:37,768 --> 00:11:40,737
Lithuanians were a staunchly Catholic people,

83
00:11:40,904 --> 00:11:44,533
but Stalin's Communists had invaded their country

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00:11:44,741 --> 00:11:48,507
and oppressed their traditions and their beliefs.

85
00:11:52,949 --> 00:11:57,113
So when the Germans reached Kaunas,
Lithuania's second city,

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00:11:57,487 --> 00:11:59,751
they were welcomed as liberators.

87
00:12:29,553 --> 00:12:34,081
Throughout Lithuania,
symbols of Communism were destroyed.

88
00:12:34,491 --> 00:12:36,459
And not just symbols.

89
00:12:36,626 --> 00:12:41,689
To Lithuanian nationalists, as to Nazis,
Communism was linked to Judaism.

90
00:12:42,799 --> 00:12:46,565
In Kaunas, locals rounded up Jewish men,

91
00:12:46,770 --> 00:12:51,104
particularly those they believed
had Communist sympathies.

92
00:12:51,274 --> 00:12:53,572
They turned on them here,

93
00:12:53,743 --> 00:12:58,703
in an act of revenge of the type Heydrich
asked the Einsatzgruppen to encourage.

94
00:12:58,882 --> 00:13:02,648
A German army photographer
witnessed what happened.

95
00:14:17,627 --> 00:14:21,085
Once all the Jews
had been bludgeoned to death,

96
00:14:21,264 --> 00:14:26,031
one of the killers climbed on top
of the bodies with his accordion.

97
00:14:26,236 --> 00:14:29,205
(ACCORDION MUSIC)

98
00:15:05,208 --> 00:15:07,699
But the Nazis played the major role

99
00:15:07,911 --> 00:15:12,678
in organising the rounding up
of those Heydrich had called to be executed.

100
00:15:12,882 --> 00:15:15,851
In the Baltic states, Einsatzgruppe A

101
00:15:16,052 --> 00:15:18,680
took Heydrich's directive as a minimum,

102
00:15:18,855 --> 00:15:23,815
and soon began to arrest not just Jewish leaders,
but all young Jewish men.

103
00:15:26,329 --> 00:15:29,821
They were taken out of the towns and shot.

104
00:15:38,308 --> 00:15:42,267
That August, less than two months
after the German invasion,

105
00:15:42,445 --> 00:15:44,413
Himmler visited Minsk,

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00:15:44,748 --> 00:15:49,708
one of a series of morale-boosting visits
he paid to the Einsatzgruppen, the police

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00:15:49,886 --> 00:15:52,150
and other SS units in the East.

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00:16:13,243 --> 00:16:17,942
A crucial part of Himmler's itinerary
was not filmed for this propaganda newsreel.

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00:16:18,148 --> 00:16:20,412
It is mentioned in his appointment book,

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00:16:20,817 --> 00:16:24,150
recently discovered in the Moscow State Archive.

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00:16:24,354 --> 00:16:26,788
The entry for 15th August, 1941,

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00:16:26,990 --> 00:16:29,254
during Himmler's visit to Minsk, reads,

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00:16:29,459 --> 00:16:31,825
"Vormittags - before lunch.

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00:16:32,028 --> 00:16:36,465
"Attend execution of Jews and partisans
just outside Minsk."

115
00:16:39,402 --> 00:16:41,836
Among those attending the execution

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00:16:42,038 --> 00:16:44,472
was Lieutenant Frentz, a German cameraman.

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00:17:25,915 --> 00:17:29,874
Himmler witnessed a similar
Einsatzgruppen execution to this,

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00:17:30,053 --> 00:17:33,819
filmed in the sand dunes
of Liepaja in Latvia in 1941.

119
00:18:11,361 --> 00:18:15,320
Himmler now announced an extension
of the cleansing in the East.

120
00:18:15,498 --> 00:18:20,458
As the Nazis thought that every single Jew
was a supporter of Bolshevism,

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00:18:20,803 --> 00:18:24,762
they now said that every single Jew
was a military threat.

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00:18:24,941 --> 00:18:29,901
So women and children in the newly
conquered territories were to be killed.

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00:18:30,079 --> 00:18:33,412
Himmler later tried to justify
the killing of Jewish children

124
00:18:33,816 --> 00:18:38,412
by saying that the Nazis could not allow
a generation of avengers to grow up,

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00:18:38,621 --> 00:18:41,055
as they'd cause problems in the future.

126
00:18:41,257 --> 00:18:43,851
But Himmler was worried about his killers.

127
00:18:44,561 --> 00:18:47,860
Arthur Nebe, commander of Einsatzgruppe B,

128
00:18:48,031 --> 00:18:52,331
told him that the psychological effect
of murdering at such close quarters

129
00:18:52,502 --> 00:18:54,868
was clearly affecting some of his men.

130
00:18:55,104 --> 00:19:00,064
So Himmler pressed on with experiments
to find a more humane method of killing.

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00:19:00,243 --> 00:19:02,973
Humane for executioners, not victims.

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00:19:07,483 --> 00:19:11,442
The Nazis experimented with gas
as a means of killing,

133
00:19:11,621 --> 00:19:14,112
and filmed some of their experiments.

134
00:19:19,429 --> 00:19:21,863
Whilst gassing experiments continued,

135
00:19:22,065 --> 00:19:24,329
the shooting carried on in the East.

136
00:19:25,668 --> 00:19:30,128
The Einsatzgruppen
meticulously recorded their killings.

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00:19:31,007 --> 00:19:35,967
In that summer of 1941, their records
show the murders drastically increasing,

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00:19:36,145 --> 00:19:41,105
coinciding with a massive increase
in the number of police units sent to the East.

139
00:19:41,284 --> 00:19:44,913
The killing squads based in Kaunas in Lithuania

140
00:19:45,088 --> 00:19:48,057
had killed 4,400 Jews in July 1941.

141
00:19:48,224 --> 00:19:51,853
In August, they killed more than 38,000.

142
00:19:52,362 --> 00:19:54,626
Including women and children.

143
00:19:54,998 --> 00:19:58,263
Stahlecker, the commander of Einsatzgruppe A,

144
00:19:58,468 --> 00:20:01,437
boasted that "new possibilities in the East

145
00:20:01,604 --> 00:20:05,301
"allow a complete clearing up
of the Jewish question".

146
00:20:09,912 --> 00:20:12,312
In the Lithuanian village of Butrimonys,

147
00:20:12,482 --> 00:20:18,114
the consequences of this extension in killing
were felt on September 9th, 1941.

148
00:20:19,922 --> 00:20:25,155
Before the arrival of the Germans,
Jews here had been tolerated by Lithuanians,

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00:20:25,361 --> 00:20:29,627
though many villagers had envied
the Jews their supposed wealth.

150
00:20:29,999 --> 00:20:32,968
Now, with the prospect of theft and plunder,

151
00:20:33,136 --> 00:20:37,095
some locals were happy
to respond to the German order

152
00:20:37,273 --> 00:20:41,403
to march the remaining Jews
along this road out of the town.

153
00:22:01,457 --> 00:22:04,426
Riva Losanskaya and her mother escaped.

154
00:22:04,594 --> 00:22:07,563
The remaining Jews were driven off the road

155
00:22:07,730 --> 00:22:11,496
towards where this thicket of trees now grows.

156
00:22:13,703 --> 00:22:19,164
Here, in scenes repeated throughout
the Einsatzgruppen area of operation,

157
00:22:19,342 --> 00:22:21,810
the Jews were ordered to undress.

158
00:22:35,591 --> 00:22:37,786
Villagers had come to watch,

159
00:22:38,161 --> 00:22:41,130
some out of curiosity, others out of greed.

160
00:23:59,075 --> 00:24:04,206
The killing was carried out by Lithuanian
collaborators, under German orders.

161
00:24:06,949 --> 00:24:10,908
The suffering is recorded
in the Einsatzgruppen killing book

162
00:24:11,087 --> 00:24:14,648
as 9th September, 1941, Butrimonys.

163
00:24:14,824 --> 00:24:17,019
67 Jewish men,

164
00:24:17,260 --> 00:24:19,694
370 Jewish women,

165
00:24:19,896 --> 00:24:22,160
303 Jewish children.

166
00:24:22,965 --> 00:24:25,763
A total of 740 Jews killed.

167
00:24:27,737 --> 00:24:30,205
The same day in nearby Alytus,

168
00:24:30,540 --> 00:24:34,670
the killing book records 1,279 Jews murdered.

169
00:24:35,711 --> 00:24:37,975
The next day in Merkine,

170
00:24:38,180 --> 00:24:40,148
854.

171
00:24:40,316 --> 00:24:42,750
And in Varena, 831.

172
00:24:44,687 --> 00:24:49,647
In the Baltic states, more than 80%
of the killing squads were made up of locals

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00:24:49,825 --> 00:24:53,283
acting under German Einsatzgruppen orders.

174
00:24:53,629 --> 00:24:55,961
Men like Petras Zelionka.

175
00:26:59,355 --> 00:27:04,315
After the war ended, the Soviets sent
Petras Zelionka to a Siberian gulag.

176
00:27:04,660 --> 00:27:09,791
His former comrades, against whom
he gave evidence, were executed.

177
00:28:08,457 --> 00:28:13,759
That autumn of 1941, whilst Zelionka
and his comrades carried on killing,

178
00:28:13,929 --> 00:28:18,059
Hitler directed the war in the East
from here at the Wolf's Lair,

179
00:28:18,234 --> 00:28:22,364
his headquarters in a forest
near Rastenburg in East Prussia.

180
00:28:22,538 --> 00:28:25,098
Hitler's talk was of annihilation.

181
00:28:25,274 --> 00:28:30,234
In 1941, he said that Leningrad should
vanish from the surface of the Earth.

182
00:28:31,447 --> 00:28:35,076
In this atmosphere
of blood lust and destruction,

183
00:28:35,251 --> 00:28:39,483
he was also privately expressing
his undying hatred of the Jews.

184
00:28:39,822 --> 00:28:42,791
<i>That race of criminals has on its conscience</i>

185
00:28:42,958 --> 00:28:45,222
<i>the two million dead of World War One,</i>

186
00:28:45,427 --> 00:28:49,386
<i>and now, already,</i>
<i>hundreds of thousands more.</i>

187
00:28:49,565 --> 00:28:55,003
To his staff at headquarters, Hitler talked
of taking revenge against the Jews.

188
00:29:30,339 --> 00:29:35,800
But even before America entered the war,
Hitler showed no mercy to Jews in the East.

189
00:29:35,978 --> 00:29:41,280
Now he was about to show no mercy
to Jews in the rest of the Nazi empire.

190
00:29:41,450 --> 00:29:43,816
In September 1941,

191
00:29:43,986 --> 00:29:48,946
two new measures showed
that German Jews were under increased threat.

192
00:29:49,124 --> 00:29:54,289
Hitler agreed to an order which said
that German Jews must wear a yellow star.

193
00:29:55,464 --> 00:29:57,830
And a secret order from Himmler

194
00:29:58,033 --> 00:30:01,992
said that Hitler had authorised
that, beginning that autumn,

195
00:30:02,171 --> 00:30:06,130
all Jews from Germany, Austria
and the occupied Czech lands

196
00:30:06,308 --> 00:30:08,435
should be transported east.

197
00:30:19,889 --> 00:30:23,484
350 miles to the west of Hitler's headquarters,

198
00:30:23,859 --> 00:30:26,419
Berliners relaxed by the capital's lakes.

199
00:30:32,935 --> 00:30:37,895
So far, they had heard only good news
from the war in the East.

200
00:30:57,159 --> 00:31:00,094
But that autumn there was one new sign

201
00:31:00,296 --> 00:31:02,628
that showed that life was changing,

202
00:31:02,998 --> 00:31:05,330
at least for some of the population.

203
00:31:05,501 --> 00:31:07,867
Now the Jews were marked.

204
00:31:12,942 --> 00:31:15,410
<i>There's nothing to say. It's bad.</i>

205
00:31:15,577 --> 00:31:18,011
It's bad you are signed.

206
00:31:18,213 --> 00:31:20,477
You have a sign on you.

207
00:31:20,683 --> 00:31:24,642
Nobody would have thinked that I am a Jew.

208
00:31:24,987 --> 00:31:26,955
But this...

209
00:31:27,122 --> 00:31:29,317
We had to wear it.

210
00:31:29,525 --> 00:31:31,891
The hate grew up.

211
00:31:32,728 --> 00:31:35,026
We felt it.

212
00:31:36,332 --> 00:31:40,098
The Germans always said,
"The Jews are not Germans."

213
00:31:40,302 --> 00:31:42,634
And I said, "I am a German

214
00:31:43,005 --> 00:31:45,269
"of Jewish faith."

215
00:31:45,474 --> 00:31:48,602
And, for them, I am not a German.

216
00:31:48,944 --> 00:31:51,208
But I am a German.

217
00:31:54,984 --> 00:31:57,248
As autumn turned to winter in 1941,

218
00:31:57,419 --> 00:32:01,048
and the war bogged down in the mud of the East,

219
00:32:01,223 --> 00:32:05,683
the Nazis knew there would be
no easy victory over the Soviet Union.

220
00:32:06,028 --> 00:32:08,656
There was a new enemy to contend with.

221
00:32:08,998 --> 00:32:13,162
After Germany's ally Japan
attacked Pearl Harbor in December,

222
00:32:13,335 --> 00:32:16,736
Germany declared war on the United States.

223
00:32:17,072 --> 00:32:21,031
Hitler had a series of meetings
with Nazi leaders that December

224
00:32:21,210 --> 00:32:25,169
to discuss the consequences
of all this for the Nazi cause.

225
00:32:25,347 --> 00:32:27,975
The fate of the Jews was also discussed.

226
00:32:29,752 --> 00:32:33,711
A new piece of evidence
from Himmler's appointment diary

227
00:32:34,056 --> 00:32:38,356
shows that on the 18th of December, 1941,
Hitler met with Himmler

228
00:32:38,527 --> 00:32:42,759
and the topic was the Judenfrage,
the Jewish question.

229
00:32:43,465 --> 00:32:46,730
The entry is written in Himmler's own hand.

230
00:32:47,102 --> 00:32:49,570
Himmler writes cryptically alongside,

231
00:32:49,738 --> 00:32:52,229
"to be exterminated as partisans."

232
00:32:52,441 --> 00:32:55,069
We can't know exactly what this means.

233
00:32:55,244 --> 00:32:57,644
It's likely that it's camouflage language

234
00:32:57,813 --> 00:33:01,772
to justify the murder of the Jews
in the East to the German Army.

235
00:33:02,117 --> 00:33:06,076
But the diary entry
clearly links Hitler with the killings.

236
00:33:12,661 --> 00:33:17,121
In January 1942, a conference
was called here at the Wannsee

237
00:33:17,299 --> 00:33:19,767
on the outskirts of Berlin.

238
00:33:20,702 --> 00:33:25,162
By now, Hitler had authorised
that all Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe

239
00:33:25,340 --> 00:33:27,672
should be deported to their deaths,

240
00:33:28,043 --> 00:33:32,207
and the meeting here
was called to work out the details.

241
00:33:34,450 --> 00:33:37,783
The discussion was chaired
by Reinhard Heydrich.

242
00:33:38,153 --> 00:33:43,614
He had been asked to compile a plan
for the final solution to the Jewish problem.

243
00:33:45,494 --> 00:33:50,261
The minutes were taken by Heydrich's
specialist in Jewish matters,

244
00:33:50,466 --> 00:33:52,661
Adolf Eichmann.

245
00:33:54,570 --> 00:33:57,300
The minutes are deliberately euphemistic

246
00:33:57,473 --> 00:34:00,271
and talk of the "evacuation" of the Jews.

247
00:34:02,144 --> 00:34:05,136
But this was code for "extermination".

248
00:34:05,314 --> 00:34:09,080
Hans Frank, the Nazi
who ran part of occupied Poland,

249
00:34:09,284 --> 00:34:14,244
told his senior officials what
the Wannsee conference was really about.

250
00:34:14,423 --> 00:34:19,383
<i>What will happen to the Jews? Do you</i>
<i>imagine they will be settled in the East?</i>

251
00:34:19,561 --> 00:34:24,521
<i>People said to us in Berlin, "Why should</i>
<i>we go to all this trouble? Liquidate them. "</i>

252
00:34:31,373 --> 00:34:35,241
Now deportations were occurring
all over Germany.

253
00:34:37,579 --> 00:34:42,539
The forced eviction of Jews in Dresden
was filmed by an amateur cameraman.

254
00:34:48,857 --> 00:34:52,623
This was the final act in a series of persecutions

255
00:34:52,828 --> 00:34:55,797
which the Jews of Germany had suffered.

256
00:34:55,964 --> 00:34:59,161
First they had been denied Reich citizenship,

257
00:34:59,535 --> 00:35:02,003
then the right to a state education,

258
00:35:02,171 --> 00:35:05,607
then they had had their property confiscated.

259
00:35:05,807 --> 00:35:10,107
Now the Jews were told they were
to be sent east, to work camps.

260
00:35:22,658 --> 00:35:27,118
More Jews were deported from Berlin
than any other German city -

261
00:35:27,296 --> 00:35:29,093
55,000 -

262
00:35:30,966 --> 00:35:34,925
many of them from the freight station
here at Putlitzstrasse.

263
00:35:35,103 --> 00:35:37,469
We were trucked there.

264
00:35:37,639 --> 00:35:39,698
The truck was empty.

265
00:35:39,908 --> 00:35:42,706
And... the people were...

266
00:35:42,878 --> 00:35:45,676
conducted immediately inside the car.

267
00:35:47,316 --> 00:35:49,614
And then...

268
00:35:49,785 --> 00:35:52,583
in the moment they went in,

269
00:35:52,754 --> 00:35:56,212
they had the package of four slices of bread...

270
00:35:57,893 --> 00:36:01,590
...given from the community,
from the Jewish community.

271
00:36:02,164 --> 00:36:05,531
It was an atmosphere of...

272
00:36:05,701 --> 00:36:07,168
fear.

273
00:36:07,336 --> 00:36:09,770
An atmosphere of big fear.

274
00:36:11,773 --> 00:36:13,968
There were babies.

275
00:36:14,142 --> 00:36:17,111
There were little children. And they cried.

276
00:36:17,946 --> 00:36:21,109
And the mothers said, "Behave well.

277
00:36:21,316 --> 00:36:23,284
"Don't cry."

278
00:36:23,619 --> 00:36:25,883
We couldn't think.

279
00:36:26,088 --> 00:36:28,818
We couldn't... think.

280
00:36:31,226 --> 00:36:35,686
(NARRATOR) There were Germans
who helped Jews. Some even hid them.

281
00:36:35,864 --> 00:36:38,059
Most acted as Erwin Massuthe did

282
00:36:38,267 --> 00:36:42,704
as he saw the deportations
at Putlitzstrasse across the street.

283
00:37:43,965 --> 00:37:47,833
The fate of these Jews
was supposed to be a secret.

284
00:37:48,003 --> 00:37:52,303
Just how big a secret,
switchboard operator Alfons Schultz learnt

285
00:37:52,641 --> 00:37:56,600
when a colleague overheard
a conversation at the Fuhrer's HQ

286
00:37:56,778 --> 00:37:58,746
in May 1942.

287
00:38:56,438 --> 00:38:58,929
Hitler wanted the Jews annihilated,

288
00:38:59,141 --> 00:39:01,405
and he wanted it kept a secret.

289
00:39:01,777 --> 00:39:04,245
But it couldn't be kept secret from everybody.

290
00:39:04,413 --> 00:39:08,179
As the train carrying Gunther Ruschin
travelled east,

291
00:39:08,383 --> 00:39:12,149
he learnt his intended fate
from an unexpected source.

292
00:39:12,354 --> 00:39:14,720
<i>At Frankfurt Oder,</i>

293
00:39:14,923 --> 00:39:17,255
<i>the train stopped at the station.</i>

294
00:39:18,093 --> 00:39:20,891
And then we shouted, "Please,

295
00:39:21,062 --> 00:39:23,257
"give us some water.

296
00:39:23,465 --> 00:39:25,831
"We are thirsty."

297
00:39:26,001 --> 00:39:29,459
And we heard crying back,

298
00:39:29,805 --> 00:39:32,273
"You damn Jews.

299
00:39:32,441 --> 00:39:35,001
"Didn't they kill you yet?"

300
00:39:36,044 --> 00:39:38,842
The workers at the station

301
00:39:39,014 --> 00:39:41,073
in Frankfurt.

302
00:39:41,917 --> 00:39:44,181
If they knew...

303
00:39:44,386 --> 00:39:48,083
Because they told, "Didn't they kill you yet?"

304
00:39:49,825 --> 00:39:52,794
The population must have known it,

305
00:39:52,961 --> 00:39:56,158
or must have imagined what will happen,

306
00:39:56,364 --> 00:39:59,060
or what they are doing us.

307
00:40:04,372 --> 00:40:10,004
Nazi propagandists didn't want the public
to dwell on the possible fate of the Jews.

308
00:40:10,178 --> 00:40:12,373
In the winter of 1942,

309
00:40:12,581 --> 00:40:15,209
as the Jewish deportations continued,

310
00:40:15,383 --> 00:40:17,749
this was the image of Germany

311
00:40:17,986 --> 00:40:21,387
that Goebbels preferred to sell to the public.

312
00:40:23,391 --> 00:40:26,326
(CHOIR SINGS)

313
00:40:54,923 --> 00:41:00,452
It's impossible to tell how many Germans
knew what was happening to the Jews.

314
00:41:00,629 --> 00:41:05,862
The same month this propaganda film
was shown in cinemas, December 1942,

315
00:41:06,868 --> 00:41:12,238
a Nazi intelligence report records disquiet
among some Germans in the south.

316
00:41:12,407 --> 00:41:15,035
<i>"One of the strongest causes of unease</i>

317
00:41:15,210 --> 00:41:19,169
<i>"among those attached to the Church</i>
<i>and in the rural population</i>

318
00:41:19,347 --> 00:41:24,307
<i>"is based on news from Russia in which</i>
<i>extermination of Jews is spoken about.</i>

319
00:41:27,255 --> 00:41:29,815
<i>"The news leaves great anxiety, care</i>

320
00:41:29,991 --> 00:41:33,449
<i>"and worry in those sections of the population.</i>

321
00:41:33,628 --> 00:41:40,329
<i>"According to opinion in the rural population,</i>
<i>it's not at all certain that we will win the war,</i>

322
00:41:40,502 --> 00:41:45,132
<i>"and if the Jews return to Germany</i>
<i>they will extract dreadful revenge upon us. "</i>

323
00:41:45,340 --> 00:41:49,470
By the time this secret report
was written at the end of 1942,

324
00:41:49,644 --> 00:41:53,011
the Nazis' successful experiments with gas

325
00:41:53,214 --> 00:41:57,913
had led to the creation of extermination
centres at Auschwitz/Birkenau,

326
00:41:58,119 --> 00:42:00,587
Belzec, Chelmno, Sobibor,

327
00:42:00,922 --> 00:42:03,186
Majdanek and Treblinka.

328
00:42:25,313 --> 00:42:29,272
It wasn't just German Jews
who were sent to the new camps.

329
00:42:29,484 --> 00:42:33,443
Now that the Nazis had developed
an efficient means to kill the Jews,

330
00:42:33,622 --> 00:42:37,922
they wanted to eliminate them
everywhere, from Holland to Greece,

331
00:42:38,093 --> 00:42:40,357
and France to Poland.

332
00:42:50,138 --> 00:42:54,438
Other groups the Nazis considered
a threat were also to suffer,

333
00:42:54,609 --> 00:42:57,043
most prominently Europe's gypsies.

334
00:43:04,185 --> 00:43:08,588
Trains converged on Nazi-occupied Poland
and its extermination centres.

335
00:43:08,957 --> 00:43:12,916
This film shows Jews
from Bulgarian occupied territory

336
00:43:13,094 --> 00:43:15,358
being transported to Treblinka.

337
00:43:28,443 --> 00:43:33,210
In this remote spot, about three quarters
of a million people were murdered,

338
00:43:33,415 --> 00:43:36,976
though we can never know
exactly how many died.

339
00:43:37,152 --> 00:43:42,112
Because a handful managed to escape,
we can know what the camp looked like.

340
00:43:43,458 --> 00:43:48,020
This drawing was done by one
of the escapees, Samuel Willenberg.

341
00:43:48,196 --> 00:43:52,326
It shows how sophisticated
the Nazi killing machine had become

342
00:43:52,500 --> 00:43:57,028
since the early days
of the Einsatzgruppen shootings in the East.

343
00:43:57,205 --> 00:44:00,333
Treblinka station
was designed to look normal,

344
00:44:00,508 --> 00:44:03,136
with train timetables and a waiting room.

345
00:44:03,311 --> 00:44:07,270
New arrivals would be driven through
to the undressing barracks.

346
00:44:07,449 --> 00:44:09,713
They were told it was a hygiene stop.

347
00:44:10,085 --> 00:44:14,488
And they must take a shower to be disinfected
before continuing their onward journey.

348
00:44:33,108 --> 00:44:36,703
A connecting path
led from the undressing barracks

349
00:44:37,078 --> 00:44:40,343
through two high fences to the gas chambers.

350
00:45:06,074 --> 00:45:08,542
If any of the arrivals said they were sick,

351
00:45:08,710 --> 00:45:11,577
the Nazis directed them to the hospital.

352
00:45:39,407 --> 00:45:44,174
Samuel Willenberg is one of fewer
than 70 known survivors from Treblinka.

353
00:45:44,379 --> 00:45:48,338
More than 99% of those
who arrived here were murdered,

354
00:45:48,516 --> 00:45:51,781
the vast majority within three hours of arriving.

355
00:46:44,439 --> 00:46:47,237
The Nazis didn't just kill. They stole.

356
00:46:48,209 --> 00:46:52,612
Once the victims had been murdered,
their clothes and valuables were sorted

357
00:46:52,780 --> 00:46:55,408
and the plunder sent back to Germany.

358
00:46:57,652 --> 00:47:00,917
In 1943, their murderous work completed,

359
00:47:01,289 --> 00:47:04,816
the Nazis tried to eliminate all trace of the camp,

360
00:47:05,193 --> 00:47:07,593
but not because they were ashamed.

361
00:47:07,762 --> 00:47:10,196
That same year, 1943,

362
00:47:10,398 --> 00:47:15,165
Himmler spoke to his SS colleagues
about the extermination of the Jews.

363
00:47:15,370 --> 00:47:19,329
<i>We know what it means</i>
<i>when 100 corpses are piled together,</i>

364
00:47:19,507 --> 00:47:21,975
<i>when 500 are piled together, or 1,000.</i>

365
00:47:22,310 --> 00:47:27,270
<i>To have endured this and, at the same time</i> - 
<i>ignoring moments of weakness</i> - 

366
00:47:27,448 --> 00:47:29,643
<i>to have remained decent,</i>

367
00:47:29,851 --> 00:47:32,342
<i>this is what has made us tough.</i>

368
00:47:32,553 --> 00:47:35,181
<i>It is a glorious chapter in our history,</i>

369
00:47:35,356 --> 00:47:37,984
<i>which has not, and may never, be written.</i>

370
00:47:39,627 --> 00:47:43,393
But the crimes of the Nazis would be discovered,

371
00:47:43,598 --> 00:47:45,862
because they were losing the war.

372
00:47:46,234 --> 00:47:50,694
In the East, the Nazis saw the enemy
they feared the most, the Russians,