1 00:00:04,000 --> 00:00:09,440 I've always been fascinated by railways and by war, probably 2 00:00:09,440 --> 00:00:12,800 mainly because Dad fought right through from 1939. 3 00:00:12,800 --> 00:00:15,360 He was at Dunkirk. He was lucky to survive. 4 00:00:15,360 --> 00:00:17,080 He was at D-Day. 5 00:00:17,080 --> 00:00:19,800 The railways were an essential part of modern warfare. 6 00:00:19,800 --> 00:00:22,600 Hitler certainly knew it, and he raced from one country 7 00:00:22,600 --> 00:00:25,680 to the next to the next as he invaded most of Europe, 8 00:00:25,680 --> 00:00:30,400 using the railways to basically transport his troops at high speed. 9 00:00:31,800 --> 00:00:34,400 Each time they invaded a new country, they absorbed 10 00:00:34,400 --> 00:00:36,240 that country's railway system 11 00:00:36,240 --> 00:00:41,120 so, by the end, 1.6 million people were working on Hitler's Reichsbahn. 12 00:00:43,360 --> 00:00:46,320 What happened then was that this vast network was used 13 00:00:46,320 --> 00:00:50,640 for a much more sinister purpose. And it wasn't just one mad dictator, 14 00:00:50,640 --> 00:00:54,160 all these people helped to accelerate the complete 15 00:00:54,160 --> 00:00:56,720 destruction of the Jewish nation. 16 00:00:56,720 --> 00:01:00,400 The railway speeded things up, and over six million Jews, we know, 17 00:01:00,400 --> 00:01:03,800 were murdered in the Holocaust. 18 00:01:03,800 --> 00:01:05,400 I want to go across Europe to see 19 00:01:05,400 --> 00:01:09,720 what part the railways played in this evil plan. 20 00:01:09,720 --> 00:01:13,080 I want to go to the ghettos, I want to go to the death camps 21 00:01:13,080 --> 00:01:14,880 and I want to talk to experts. 22 00:01:14,880 --> 00:01:18,640 I want to talk to survivors of the Holocaust. 23 00:01:18,640 --> 00:01:22,560 It won't be an easy trip, but I do think that it's a terrible chapter 24 00:01:22,560 --> 00:01:26,280 in history that we should just never, EVER forget. 25 00:01:37,120 --> 00:01:40,840 I'm starting my journey in the city where many believe the Holocaust 26 00:01:40,840 --> 00:01:44,800 began four years before the outbreak of World War II. 27 00:01:46,360 --> 00:01:49,480 This is the quaint medieval city of Nuremberg. 28 00:01:49,480 --> 00:01:52,200 It's so typically German, which is why Hitler chose 29 00:01:52,200 --> 00:01:56,680 it as the perfect backdrop for his own vision of nationalism. 30 00:01:56,680 --> 00:02:00,320 Every year, thousands, tens of thousands, maybe up to a million 31 00:02:00,320 --> 00:02:05,880 supporters of Hitler came here to witness the annual Nazi rally. 32 00:02:05,880 --> 00:02:08,960 And nearly all of them arrived on the train. 33 00:02:10,560 --> 00:02:13,840 Today, I want to see the site of the rallies. 34 00:02:13,840 --> 00:02:18,440 I want to find out how the railway was used to bring in the Nazi hordes 35 00:02:18,440 --> 00:02:21,680 with the same methods that would be repeated for the mass 36 00:02:21,680 --> 00:02:25,640 deportation of Jews in the coming years. 37 00:02:25,640 --> 00:02:28,640 Puzzlingly, it was very difficult to get permission to go in here, 38 00:02:28,640 --> 00:02:31,440 but just look at the state of this place. 39 00:02:31,440 --> 00:02:34,080 Graffiti everywhere, dirt. 40 00:02:34,080 --> 00:02:35,480 What a tip! 41 00:02:36,920 --> 00:02:40,520 First, I'm visiting the abandoned station that was built 42 00:02:40,520 --> 00:02:44,920 just before the war to handle the extraordinary volume of people 43 00:02:44,920 --> 00:02:47,480 who travelled to the rallies. 44 00:02:47,480 --> 00:02:53,240 This is very much the disused Bahnhof Marzfeld station. 45 00:02:53,240 --> 00:02:56,760 It was going to be the Nazis' ultimate station for taking Nazi 46 00:02:56,760 --> 00:02:58,480 supporters to the rallies. 47 00:02:58,480 --> 00:03:01,880 They had seven platforms, and the train would arrive here, 48 00:03:01,880 --> 00:03:04,440 bringing people on their way to the rally, and they would 49 00:03:04,440 --> 00:03:08,880 then storm down there in their thousands, down the subway. 50 00:03:12,120 --> 00:03:17,440 The idea was this subway would take tens of thousands of frantic Nazi 51 00:03:17,440 --> 00:03:20,200 supporters all the way along this tunnel to a specially 52 00:03:20,200 --> 00:03:22,840 designed camp for them at the end. 53 00:03:24,120 --> 00:03:28,040 The idea of using railways to transport thousands directly 54 00:03:28,040 --> 00:03:33,120 into camps would be adopted time and again during the Holocaust. 55 00:03:33,120 --> 00:03:36,680 Of course, those passengers wouldn't be baying Nazis 56 00:03:36,680 --> 00:03:38,600 but imprisoned Jews. 57 00:03:39,640 --> 00:03:43,240 Once they'd set up camp, the masses would walk a few hundred yards 58 00:03:43,240 --> 00:03:46,880 to the rallies, which happened here, Zeppelin Field. 59 00:03:48,800 --> 00:03:51,640 It's really chilling to follow in the footsteps of Hitler 60 00:03:51,640 --> 00:03:55,000 and his adoring followers in the place where he made his 61 00:03:55,000 --> 00:03:57,000 ranting speeches of hate. 62 00:03:58,000 --> 00:04:00,640 Unser Deutschland, Sieg heil! 63 00:04:02,880 --> 00:04:05,280 Sieg heil! 64 00:04:08,560 --> 00:04:10,920 There's something very eerie about standing here. 65 00:04:10,920 --> 00:04:14,840 This is the spot where Hitler addressed these huge rallies. 66 00:04:14,840 --> 00:04:18,600 There was always a giant swastika up there and tens and tens 67 00:04:18,600 --> 00:04:22,880 of thousands of worshippers out there, all in uniform, the SS, 68 00:04:22,880 --> 00:04:24,280 Hitler Youth... 69 00:04:24,280 --> 00:04:27,160 It's now a sports field, but I would not like to be 70 00:04:27,160 --> 00:04:29,720 here at night. It's really kind of spooky. 71 00:04:29,720 --> 00:04:34,560 I'm being joined by an expert on the history of the Nuremberg rallies. 72 00:04:34,560 --> 00:04:39,480 Alex. Hello! Chris. How are you? I'm fine, fine. Am I unusual? 73 00:04:39,480 --> 00:04:42,480 I find it really spooky standing here, that Hitler was here, 74 00:04:42,480 --> 00:04:45,000 ranting away at everybody. Yes, it's really spooky. 75 00:04:45,000 --> 00:04:49,240 You can't actually imagine, can you? Just here. Here, yeah. 76 00:04:49,240 --> 00:04:51,280 How many people would have come? 77 00:04:51,280 --> 00:04:53,040 200,000. 78 00:04:53,040 --> 00:04:55,600 Would you say it was a preparation for war? 79 00:04:55,600 --> 00:04:59,000 It was a preparation for war, because the people here learned 80 00:04:59,000 --> 00:05:03,320 to follow the leader, and the railway learned to transport 81 00:05:03,320 --> 00:05:08,800 a huge crowd to a place here in their exact time. 82 00:05:08,800 --> 00:05:15,360 So this was also useful for the war, to transport soldiers to the front. 83 00:05:15,360 --> 00:05:19,600 But was not that the same knowledge used for transporting Jews 84 00:05:19,600 --> 00:05:25,240 to the Holocaust? Yes. They learned to transport in a very fast way. 85 00:05:25,240 --> 00:05:28,800 Every train has to have 1,000 people. 86 00:05:28,800 --> 00:05:32,840 It's exactly the same number as deportation trains. 87 00:05:32,840 --> 00:05:36,400 So without railways, there's no party, really. 88 00:05:36,400 --> 00:05:39,160 There's no war and no Holocaust. 89 00:05:41,240 --> 00:05:45,680 In 1935, Hitler chose the Nuremberg rallies to announce 90 00:05:45,680 --> 00:05:48,360 the first anti-Jewish laws. 91 00:05:48,360 --> 00:05:52,320 Overnight, Jews lost all citizenship rights and were banned 92 00:05:52,320 --> 00:05:55,160 from marrying non-Jews. 93 00:05:55,160 --> 00:05:59,000 These racist Nuremberg Laws were just the start. 94 00:05:59,000 --> 00:06:03,840 It's difficult to imagine why Hitler actually hated the Jews so deeply. 95 00:06:03,840 --> 00:06:07,800 In his autobiography, Mein Kampf, there are all sorts of contradictory 96 00:06:07,800 --> 00:06:11,640 statements by Hitler, but he did say one very revealing thing. 97 00:06:11,640 --> 00:06:15,200 He said the elimination of the Jews would necessarily 98 00:06:15,200 --> 00:06:17,320 be a bloody process. 99 00:06:18,440 --> 00:06:22,160 Whatever Hitler had in mind, the railway would play a critical 100 00:06:22,160 --> 00:06:28,160 role, as discrimination evolved into segregation, deportation 101 00:06:28,160 --> 00:06:29,840 and eventually genocide. 102 00:06:32,760 --> 00:06:37,000 I'm following the path of Hitler's railway, as he used it to achieve 103 00:06:37,000 --> 00:06:40,080 the first of his goals, to expand the Reich. 104 00:06:45,160 --> 00:06:48,680 In 1938, Hitler was preparing for war, and he couldn't do 105 00:06:48,680 --> 00:06:50,720 that without an effective railway. 106 00:06:50,720 --> 00:06:55,840 So he used the Reichsbahn to quickly transport thousands of troops 107 00:06:55,840 --> 00:06:59,760 to occupy Austria and the area that I'm going into today. 108 00:07:04,560 --> 00:07:07,960 My journey is going to take me across Europe, to the ghettos 109 00:07:07,960 --> 00:07:10,240 and death camps of Poland. 110 00:07:10,240 --> 00:07:14,840 First, I'm travelling from Nuremberg into what was then Czechoslovakia, 111 00:07:14,840 --> 00:07:17,040 to the capital, Prague. 112 00:07:17,040 --> 00:07:19,560 On the way, I'm passing through the country's mountainous 113 00:07:19,560 --> 00:07:22,120 perimeter, the Sudetenland. 114 00:07:25,280 --> 00:07:29,720 The Sudetenland was populated mainly by ethnic Germans, and Hitler felt 115 00:07:29,720 --> 00:07:32,480 this gave him a right to claim it for the Reich. 116 00:07:32,480 --> 00:07:35,560 The British Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, and other 117 00:07:35,560 --> 00:07:40,320 European leaders were anxious to avoid war at all costs, 118 00:07:40,320 --> 00:07:43,760 so they met in Munich to thrash out a deal and listen 119 00:07:43,760 --> 00:07:46,080 to Hitler's territorial claims. 120 00:07:47,120 --> 00:07:49,680 Pathetically, they agreed to all his demands and handed 121 00:07:49,680 --> 00:07:52,960 all these lands over without any sign of a fight. 122 00:07:52,960 --> 00:07:55,920 The really scandalous thing about the Munich Agreement 123 00:07:55,920 --> 00:08:00,920 is that the Czechs were not invited to the conference at all. 124 00:08:00,920 --> 00:08:02,320 Neville Chamberlain said 125 00:08:02,320 --> 00:08:05,200 that the agreement would bring "peace for our time". 126 00:08:06,640 --> 00:08:10,400 But for many living in the Sudetenland, only 127 00:08:10,400 --> 00:08:12,360 bad times lay ahead. 128 00:08:26,180 --> 00:08:30,580 In autumn 1938, the countdown to war had begun 129 00:08:30,580 --> 00:08:33,180 as Hitler annexed the Sudetenland. 130 00:08:37,300 --> 00:08:40,980 Sudeten opponents of the Nazis left their homes and poured 131 00:08:40,980 --> 00:08:43,580 into what was left of Czechoslovakia. 132 00:08:45,980 --> 00:08:50,180 In Prague, teams of volunteers were working hard to find escape 133 00:08:50,180 --> 00:08:52,820 routes for those most at risk. 134 00:08:54,140 --> 00:08:58,540 There was a huge refugee problem and a growing fear that the Nazis 135 00:08:58,540 --> 00:09:01,060 just might take over the rest of the country. 136 00:09:01,060 --> 00:09:03,780 But in this part of town, there were one or two hotels 137 00:09:03,780 --> 00:09:08,260 where they were compiling secret lists of the most vulnerable people, 138 00:09:08,260 --> 00:09:11,700 who needed to get out of this country, and quick. 139 00:09:13,220 --> 00:09:19,100 One of the volunteers was a British academic who stayed in this hotel. 140 00:09:19,100 --> 00:09:24,740 Doreen Warriner had come to Prague to help political refugees 141 00:09:24,740 --> 00:09:30,020 but ended up playing a significant role in rescuing Jewish children. 142 00:09:32,140 --> 00:09:35,340 She drew up lists of thousands of men and women who would almost 143 00:09:35,340 --> 00:09:38,380 certainly be killed if they fell into Nazi hands. 144 00:09:38,380 --> 00:09:42,620 She arranged trains and visas for them to get to the UK and even 145 00:09:42,620 --> 00:09:45,180 accompanied some of them on the journey. 146 00:09:45,180 --> 00:09:50,380 Warriner worked tirelessly and often ended her day in this very hotel bar 147 00:09:50,380 --> 00:09:53,060 with a stiff tomato juice. 148 00:09:53,060 --> 00:09:59,060 But in January 1939, her drink was interrupted by disturbing news 149 00:09:59,060 --> 00:10:01,820 that would jeopardise her work. 150 00:10:01,820 --> 00:10:04,700 One night, a party of Germans were laughing and drinking, 151 00:10:04,700 --> 00:10:08,340 obviously celebrating, but a pale, young Jewish barman 152 00:10:08,340 --> 00:10:10,020 looked positively worried. 153 00:10:10,020 --> 00:10:14,740 When Warriner asked him, "Why are the Germans so happy?", he said, 154 00:10:14,740 --> 00:10:18,500 "Because they are coming for Czechoslovakia next." 155 00:10:18,500 --> 00:10:20,180 And she said, "When?" 156 00:10:20,180 --> 00:10:21,980 And he said, "March." 157 00:10:25,420 --> 00:10:30,020 That shocking prediction came true on the 15th of March. 158 00:10:30,020 --> 00:10:33,420 Hitler's ambitions hadn't stopped with the Sudetenland. 159 00:10:33,420 --> 00:10:35,700 He wanted ALL of Czechoslovakia. 160 00:10:36,900 --> 00:10:40,780 Czech Jews lost their rights, and Warriner was inundated 161 00:10:40,780 --> 00:10:43,860 with families who were desperate to get out. 162 00:10:43,860 --> 00:10:48,020 Britain promised to help, but there were strings attached. 163 00:10:49,060 --> 00:10:51,460 The British Home Office agreed to take some children in, 164 00:10:51,460 --> 00:10:53,380 but there were a number of conditions. 165 00:10:53,380 --> 00:10:57,260 They had to be under 17, the parents had to stump up £50, 166 00:10:57,260 --> 00:11:01,180 which was an absolute fortune in those days, and foster homes 167 00:11:01,180 --> 00:11:04,140 had to be found and guaranteed in Britain. 168 00:11:06,340 --> 00:11:10,580 That meant children had to be separated from their parents. 169 00:11:10,580 --> 00:11:15,740 Max Spitzer and his wife Pavla made this painful decision and applied 170 00:11:15,740 --> 00:11:19,620 for their three daughters to be transported to Britain. 171 00:11:19,620 --> 00:11:22,340 The youngest, Zuzana, was only seven. 172 00:11:23,860 --> 00:11:28,500 Nearly 80 years on, I'm meeting Zuzana on the platform 173 00:11:28,500 --> 00:11:31,660 from where she left for England in July 1939. 174 00:11:32,940 --> 00:11:36,060 The modern station's so noisy, we've moved to the state rooms next 175 00:11:36,060 --> 00:11:40,100 door to see an extraordinary home movie her father made 176 00:11:40,100 --> 00:11:42,260 days after the Nazis invaded. 177 00:11:43,820 --> 00:11:46,020 Now, we've got the swastika... That's the castle. 178 00:11:46,020 --> 00:11:47,860 ..from when the Germans took over. Yes. 179 00:11:47,860 --> 00:11:51,900 My father filmed that secretly, you know. 180 00:11:51,900 --> 00:11:57,780 He took films of the guards, the Germans, outside the castle. 181 00:11:57,780 --> 00:12:00,140 If they had caught him, they would have shot him. 182 00:12:00,140 --> 00:12:03,580 I don't understand that he didn't realise that. 183 00:12:03,580 --> 00:12:06,500 Look, there's the change of the guard. 184 00:12:06,500 --> 00:12:10,700 Germans in a Czech castle, that is something terrible. 185 00:12:11,780 --> 00:12:16,020 Terrible. Nobody really seemed to have any idea then just how bad 186 00:12:16,020 --> 00:12:18,380 it was going to become. No. 187 00:12:18,380 --> 00:12:21,900 I think people, they didn't want to believe it at the beginning, 188 00:12:21,900 --> 00:12:23,860 that there was danger, 189 00:12:23,860 --> 00:12:28,300 but stories seeped through and they started to be afraid. 190 00:12:28,300 --> 00:12:32,300 Unbeknown to Zuzana, an associate of Doreen Warriner's 191 00:12:32,300 --> 00:12:34,820 was planning her rescue. 192 00:12:34,820 --> 00:12:39,420 Nicholas Winton was a stockbroker who volunteered to help by arranging 193 00:12:39,420 --> 00:12:41,620 trains and foster homes in Britain 194 00:12:41,620 --> 00:12:45,140 for children like Zuzana and her sisters. 195 00:12:45,140 --> 00:12:49,460 When we got on the train, one of the most poignant memories 196 00:12:49,460 --> 00:12:54,180 is looking out of the train window, onto the platform, and seeing 197 00:12:54,180 --> 00:12:59,060 all those adult people crying. And we didn't know why. 198 00:12:59,060 --> 00:13:02,420 We didn't know why they were crying. But it was contagious, 199 00:13:02,420 --> 00:13:05,300 and...we started crying. 200 00:13:09,300 --> 00:13:11,140 Nicholas Winton is remembered 201 00:13:11,140 --> 00:13:14,540 on the platform from where his trains departed, 202 00:13:14,540 --> 00:13:20,420 commemorating the 669 children he rescued from almost certain death. 203 00:13:24,220 --> 00:13:27,140 It's a beautiful sculpture. They look so sad, don't they? 204 00:13:27,140 --> 00:13:29,500 Little girl, beautiful little girl. 205 00:13:29,500 --> 00:13:32,380 Obviously separated from her parents. 206 00:13:32,380 --> 00:13:35,940 And this little boy, just clinging on to anybody. 207 00:13:35,940 --> 00:13:39,700 It's very moving. He looks such a kind man, as well. 208 00:13:42,860 --> 00:13:47,300 Zuzana and her sisters were later reunited with their parents 209 00:13:47,300 --> 00:13:50,220 in the UK and survived the Holocaust. 210 00:13:50,220 --> 00:13:54,060 But most of the children who waved goodbye to their parents never 211 00:13:54,060 --> 00:13:55,980 saw them again. 212 00:14:00,580 --> 00:14:05,380 On the 1st of September 1939, any hope of further rescue trains 213 00:14:05,380 --> 00:14:09,940 to Britain came to an abrupt end when Hitler invaded Poland. 214 00:14:09,940 --> 00:14:13,540 The borders were closed and Britain declared war on Germany. 215 00:14:16,540 --> 00:14:19,580 ARCHIVE: It would have been quite possible to have arranged a peaceful 216 00:14:19,580 --> 00:14:23,340 and honourable settlement between Germany and Poland. 217 00:14:23,340 --> 00:14:26,340 But Hitler would not have it. 218 00:14:26,340 --> 00:14:31,060 I want to find out how the outbreak of war affected the Jews who hadn't 219 00:14:31,060 --> 00:14:35,220 escaped Prague and were now completely at the Nazis' mercy. 220 00:14:36,260 --> 00:14:40,220 This train is taking me 40 miles north of Prague, where I'm hoping 221 00:14:40,220 --> 00:14:43,340 to meet an extraordinary lady who wants to tell me 222 00:14:43,340 --> 00:14:48,140 about the terrifying journey she took 77 years ago. 223 00:14:55,740 --> 00:14:59,980 Good morning. Good morning. Are you Helga? Nice to meet you. I'm Chris. 224 00:14:59,980 --> 00:15:02,620 You look very smart. Thank you. 225 00:15:02,620 --> 00:15:06,460 Helga Weissova was the daughter of a prosperous banker 226 00:15:06,460 --> 00:15:10,220 until her family, and all of Prague's Jews, were forced 227 00:15:10,220 --> 00:15:12,420 to give up their homes and wealth 228 00:15:12,420 --> 00:15:15,900 and herded onto trains to live in a ghetto. 229 00:15:17,980 --> 00:15:23,220 Helga, what do you remember of this journey 77 years ago? 230 00:15:23,220 --> 00:15:27,660 I remember everything. They are things that I cannot forget. 231 00:15:27,660 --> 00:15:29,940 But I remember how we travelled at the time. 232 00:15:29,940 --> 00:15:32,460 But it was not such a nice day. 233 00:15:32,460 --> 00:15:38,900 It was cold, snow, it was December 1941. 234 00:15:38,900 --> 00:15:40,860 Yeah. I was 12. 235 00:15:43,940 --> 00:15:48,260 There were SS men, they were screaming on us and gave us orders, 236 00:15:48,260 --> 00:15:51,100 how to do, and all the time, "Hurry, hurry along." 237 00:15:54,100 --> 00:15:58,180 Helga and I are taking the same journey she and her family took 238 00:15:58,180 --> 00:16:02,020 in 1941 to a garrison town called Terezin. 239 00:16:03,900 --> 00:16:07,540 When you started your journey, what did you think it would be like 240 00:16:07,540 --> 00:16:11,260 at the other end? We were, perhaps, a little naive. 241 00:16:11,260 --> 00:16:16,820 They told us we would be somewhere concentrated, in a ghetto. 242 00:16:16,820 --> 00:16:20,460 We didn't expect the war would be so long. 243 00:16:20,460 --> 00:16:23,980 And so we supposed somehow we would survive it. 244 00:16:25,260 --> 00:16:27,860 What were you allowed to take with you, to bring? 245 00:16:27,860 --> 00:16:33,300 It was very few things. We were allowed to take 50 kilo luggage. 246 00:16:33,300 --> 00:16:35,820 50 kilo luggage is not so much. 247 00:16:35,820 --> 00:16:39,380 I was very fond of drawing since my childhood, 248 00:16:39,380 --> 00:16:45,620 so I put inside my luggage a box of watercolours, some crayons 249 00:16:45,620 --> 00:16:47,980 and some paper. 250 00:16:47,980 --> 00:16:51,900 We're arriving at the station where Helga disembarked. 251 00:16:51,900 --> 00:16:54,980 It's nearly two miles from the Terezin camp. 252 00:17:00,740 --> 00:17:04,260 Yeah, be very careful. I'm carrying your handbag. 253 00:17:04,260 --> 00:17:05,460 OK? 254 00:17:07,420 --> 00:17:10,460 And this is the same... Is that the same station building 255 00:17:10,460 --> 00:17:13,220 as when you came? I think so. 256 00:17:13,220 --> 00:17:17,100 From here, we had to walk to Terezin. 257 00:17:17,100 --> 00:17:21,660 How far was that? Three kilometres. Three kilometres? And was it cold? 258 00:17:21,660 --> 00:17:24,980 It was cold and it was snow. So there was snow everywhere, 259 00:17:24,980 --> 00:17:28,380 you'd have been freezing. It was in December. Yeah. 260 00:17:28,380 --> 00:17:30,580 It's a long way. Yes. 261 00:17:31,780 --> 00:17:36,580 The prisoners were forbidden to keep records of their time in Terezin, 262 00:17:36,580 --> 00:17:39,660 but this didn't stop Helga from using the pens and papers 263 00:17:39,660 --> 00:17:44,300 she'd packed to keep a diary, which she illustrated with drawings, 264 00:17:44,300 --> 00:17:47,940 like this one of the prisoners walking to the camp. 265 00:17:49,620 --> 00:17:55,500 "A bumpy road and a thaw. Our heavy feet sink into the mud, and dirty 266 00:17:55,500 --> 00:17:59,300 "yellow water squirts out from beneath the carriages, 267 00:17:59,300 --> 00:18:01,780 "laden with luggage. 268 00:18:01,780 --> 00:18:04,740 "We learn lots of unpleasant things. 269 00:18:04,740 --> 00:18:08,420 "The worst is that men and women live separately." 270 00:18:11,060 --> 00:18:14,500 Everybody who was able to walk had to walk. 271 00:18:14,500 --> 00:18:17,300 Some old or ill were carried. 272 00:18:18,380 --> 00:18:20,660 So, this is coming up to Terezin, isn't it? 273 00:18:22,020 --> 00:18:24,140 So, we are inside. Mm. 274 00:18:26,300 --> 00:18:30,140 Terezin suited the Nazis' purpose. 275 00:18:30,140 --> 00:18:35,220 As a former garrison town, it was separate from other settlements 276 00:18:35,220 --> 00:18:39,460 with a clear perimeter to prevent the inhabitants escaping. 277 00:18:41,260 --> 00:18:46,540 Before the war, 7,000 people lived here, but the Nazis threw them out, 278 00:18:46,540 --> 00:18:50,740 so more than eight times that number of Jews could be crammed 279 00:18:50,740 --> 00:18:52,500 into the same space. 280 00:18:54,100 --> 00:18:59,020 Always, the memories come back. I recognise the buildings. 281 00:19:03,660 --> 00:19:08,340 Is this the original door? Yes. This was the entrance we came inside. 282 00:19:08,340 --> 00:19:10,300 But only women. 283 00:19:10,300 --> 00:19:12,740 Women and men were separated. 284 00:19:12,740 --> 00:19:17,260 My father was somewhere else, but we didn't yet know where. 285 00:19:17,260 --> 00:19:19,820 So you and your mother must have been very worried 286 00:19:19,820 --> 00:19:22,700 about your father, what was happening. Yeah, we were, 287 00:19:22,700 --> 00:19:24,500 sure we were. 288 00:19:24,500 --> 00:19:26,980 We weren't allowed to go outside. 289 00:19:28,100 --> 00:19:31,340 Helga's painting of the corridor inside the barracks 290 00:19:31,340 --> 00:19:34,660 gives a flavour of how grim life was. 291 00:19:34,660 --> 00:19:39,220 The little girl in the makeshift bed has tuberculosis. 292 00:19:39,220 --> 00:19:41,780 Which one do you think was your window, your dormitory? 293 00:19:41,780 --> 00:19:42,940 Somewhere here. 294 00:19:44,380 --> 00:19:48,620 Locked in the building, Helga sketched the view of the courtyard. 295 00:19:48,620 --> 00:19:53,620 But one day, this would be the scene of unspeakable cruelty, when the SS 296 00:19:53,620 --> 00:19:57,620 caught nine boys who'd tried to send letters to their mothers. 297 00:19:57,620 --> 00:20:00,020 I remember this moment - it was terrible - 298 00:20:00,020 --> 00:20:03,780 because we were not allowed to go out, but we watched it. 299 00:20:03,780 --> 00:20:06,220 It was one of the worst moments. 300 00:20:09,100 --> 00:20:13,340 "My hand is trembling so much from just thinking about it. 301 00:20:15,660 --> 00:20:20,140 "We saw a small group. In the front and the rear were the SS... 302 00:20:21,420 --> 00:20:25,780 "..in the middle, nine young men with shovels on their shoulders... 303 00:20:26,860 --> 00:20:29,300 "..so they could dig their own graves. 304 00:20:30,460 --> 00:20:32,460 "Nine, condemned to death. 305 00:20:34,380 --> 00:20:38,580 "What did these boys do that was so terrible to be dealt 306 00:20:38,580 --> 00:20:40,100 "with so cruelly?" 307 00:20:43,460 --> 00:20:45,820 And they were hanged here. 308 00:20:47,780 --> 00:20:52,140 They only wanted to let their parents know they are alive. 309 00:20:54,340 --> 00:20:59,100 Helga witnessed the hangings from a small room shared with 20 others. 310 00:21:00,820 --> 00:21:05,780 Cramped, three-tier bunk beds, some sort of a bucket for basic washing. 311 00:21:06,860 --> 00:21:11,820 Bedbugs, lice, all sorts of disease. I can't imagine thousands of people 312 00:21:11,820 --> 00:21:14,060 living in conditions like this for several years. 313 00:21:14,060 --> 00:21:15,820 And of course, every single one of them 314 00:21:15,820 --> 00:21:17,740 had to wear the Jewish Star of David. 315 00:21:19,860 --> 00:21:23,460 Did you have many people sick? Of course. 316 00:21:23,460 --> 00:21:27,420 In such conditions, epidemic broke out 317 00:21:27,420 --> 00:21:30,260 and there was a lot of infections. 318 00:21:30,260 --> 00:21:34,700 So we did our best, but, of course, many people died every day. 319 00:21:36,180 --> 00:21:41,580 In 1943, the railway was extended directly into the camp. 320 00:21:41,580 --> 00:21:45,860 But this wasn't to make the Jews' journey into Terezin easier. 321 00:21:45,860 --> 00:21:48,540 The trains arrived to take the Jews away 322 00:21:48,540 --> 00:21:52,100 to a place rumoured to be even worse, 323 00:21:52,100 --> 00:21:54,700 a camp called Auschwitz. 324 00:21:56,060 --> 00:22:00,380 Did you, in this camp, have any real idea what was happening 325 00:22:00,380 --> 00:22:03,100 in camps like Auschwitz? 326 00:22:03,100 --> 00:22:06,140 We didn't know. We hoped... 327 00:22:07,740 --> 00:22:12,260 ..or believed that it would be a new ghetto, similar to Terezin. 328 00:22:12,260 --> 00:22:15,020 Or maybe better? No, we didn't suppose that... You didn't think 329 00:22:15,020 --> 00:22:16,180 that? ..would be better. 330 00:22:16,180 --> 00:22:19,940 We supposed it would be worse, but we had no idea it 331 00:22:19,940 --> 00:22:22,300 would be so terrible as it was. 332 00:22:23,460 --> 00:22:27,660 Helga lived in fear of being selected for "Transport", 333 00:22:27,660 --> 00:22:29,580 which often happened at night. 334 00:22:29,580 --> 00:22:33,820 Her diary recalls the moment her father, Otto, was selected 335 00:22:33,820 --> 00:22:37,100 and saying goodbye, before he was forced onto a train. 336 00:22:37,100 --> 00:22:41,340 "Your eyes glittered, strangely, and your hand shook 337 00:22:41,340 --> 00:22:46,220 "as you pressed me to yourself for the last time. 338 00:22:46,220 --> 00:22:49,940 "What did it mean? Goodbye or farewell? 339 00:22:52,820 --> 00:22:56,100 "Daddy, did you believe we'd ever meet again?" 340 00:22:58,220 --> 00:23:02,020 Did you ever find out what happened to your father? 341 00:23:02,020 --> 00:23:07,260 We didn't know where he died, but probably he went directly 342 00:23:07,260 --> 00:23:10,620 to Auschwitz and directly to gas chamber. 343 00:23:10,620 --> 00:23:13,900 So, nobody noticed his name anywhere. 344 00:23:13,900 --> 00:23:20,100 So the last stop is when he left Terezin. Mm. My father was 46. 345 00:23:21,500 --> 00:23:24,060 Terrible. Bless you. 346 00:23:26,860 --> 00:23:29,580 Five days after her father left, 347 00:23:29,580 --> 00:23:33,820 Helga and her mother were also transported to Auschwitz. 348 00:23:33,820 --> 00:23:37,340 Most of the deportees would be murdered on arrival, 349 00:23:37,340 --> 00:23:41,100 but, miraculously, Helga and her mother survived. 350 00:23:41,100 --> 00:23:44,380 Amazingly also, her pictures and her diary survived. 351 00:23:44,380 --> 00:23:46,140 They were bricked into a wall 352 00:23:46,140 --> 00:23:49,020 by her uncle after she'd left these barracks. 353 00:23:51,540 --> 00:23:56,420 The railway brought 150,000 prisoners to Terezin. 354 00:23:56,420 --> 00:24:01,020 33,000 died here and many more died in Auschwitz. 355 00:24:12,660 --> 00:24:17,940 By 1941, the Nazis' approach had changed from persecuting Jews 356 00:24:17,940 --> 00:24:21,460 at home to deporting them to ghettos like Terezin. 357 00:24:22,620 --> 00:24:26,860 Hitler's propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, wrote of the policy 358 00:24:26,860 --> 00:24:31,580 in his diary. He wrote, "The Fuhrer is of the opinion that the Jews 359 00:24:31,580 --> 00:24:34,980 "must be removed from all of Germany. 360 00:24:34,980 --> 00:24:38,860 "Berlin is the first in line, and I am hopeful that, in the course 361 00:24:38,860 --> 00:24:42,900 "of this year, we are able to transport a substantial part 362 00:24:42,900 --> 00:24:46,220 "of Berlin's Jews to the east." 363 00:24:46,220 --> 00:24:49,580 And in order to achieve this aim, of course, he'd need trains... 364 00:24:49,580 --> 00:24:51,220 ..and lots of them. 365 00:24:53,420 --> 00:24:57,780 I've come to Berlin to meet a rabbi and Holocaust railway expert 366 00:24:57,780 --> 00:25:01,340 who can help me understand the sheer scale of the Nazi railway 367 00:25:01,340 --> 00:25:04,220 infrastructure built for the war, 368 00:25:04,220 --> 00:25:07,580 starting with the Kriegslok, the war locomotive. 369 00:25:08,620 --> 00:25:13,500 God, that is just enormous, isn't it? What is that? Big train, no? 370 00:25:13,500 --> 00:25:17,260 Well, the technical term would be a Kriegslok Type 1, 371 00:25:17,260 --> 00:25:19,460 which was built for war purposes. 372 00:25:19,460 --> 00:25:22,300 The tender is a special design for the war, designed to have fewer 373 00:25:22,300 --> 00:25:24,300 man-hours involved in making it. 374 00:25:24,300 --> 00:25:26,980 It's just half of an oil wagon cut in half, really. 375 00:25:26,980 --> 00:25:28,820 And they were built in their thousands... 376 00:25:28,820 --> 00:25:31,020 ..for conveying what needed to be conveyed. 377 00:25:31,020 --> 00:25:33,980 I mean, obviously, tanks and munitions and troops... 378 00:25:33,980 --> 00:25:37,900 But also people. Also people. They were built by slave labour. 379 00:25:37,900 --> 00:25:42,140 They were built in Austria, in Poland, in Skoda, in Pilsen. 380 00:25:42,140 --> 00:25:45,340 In other words, the Germans got occupied countries building exactly 381 00:25:45,340 --> 00:25:48,180 the same type. So they would have had slave labour 382 00:25:48,180 --> 00:25:53,260 building the locomotives to take... Of course. ..to take Jews... 383 00:25:53,260 --> 00:25:56,100 It's a totalitarian system. ..to the camps. You didn't have a choice. 384 00:25:56,100 --> 00:25:58,980 That's a horrible thought. It's a very horrible thought. 385 00:26:01,740 --> 00:26:05,380 You do get a sense of the scale of this massive locomotive. 386 00:26:05,380 --> 00:26:10,900 Look, I'm six foot two, and I'm still miles under just this bit. 387 00:26:10,900 --> 00:26:13,380 And look at that up there! It's just huge! 388 00:26:16,660 --> 00:26:20,140 This old battle relic wasn't built to last. 389 00:26:20,140 --> 00:26:22,100 Nimble as an antelope. 390 00:26:23,500 --> 00:26:26,980 But such is the quality of the engineering and the preservation 391 00:26:26,980 --> 00:26:30,820 work of enthusiasts that, of the 7,000 that were built, 392 00:26:30,820 --> 00:26:33,620 about 30 of these locomotives still run. 393 00:26:40,820 --> 00:26:45,860 This one takes people on what are described as "cultural excursions" 394 00:26:45,860 --> 00:26:47,980 out into the countryside. 395 00:26:49,420 --> 00:26:53,300 It all feels rather odd, and I have to assume at least some 396 00:26:53,300 --> 00:26:56,500 of the people on board have very little idea 397 00:26:56,500 --> 00:27:00,460 about the Kriegslok's history as an instrument of war 398 00:27:00,460 --> 00:27:03,660 and particularly of the Holocaust. 399 00:27:03,660 --> 00:27:05,940 It's full of people, but, of course, in the 1940s, 400 00:27:05,940 --> 00:27:09,020 it would have been so, so different. 401 00:27:09,020 --> 00:27:11,500 Today, they just seem to be rejoicing. 402 00:27:11,500 --> 00:27:15,820 But in actual fact, there were over 1,000 on each train. 403 00:27:15,820 --> 00:27:19,060 They would have been travelling in converted cattle trucks. 404 00:27:19,060 --> 00:27:20,980 There would have been one window, one toilet. 405 00:27:20,980 --> 00:27:23,620 It would have been so, so different. 406 00:27:26,060 --> 00:27:29,500 Since I started out on this journey, I've been struggling 407 00:27:29,500 --> 00:27:33,980 with a question, a question about the Holocaust that perhaps 408 00:27:33,980 --> 00:27:35,660 only a rabbi can answer. 409 00:27:36,780 --> 00:27:39,860 Why do you think...it happened? 410 00:27:39,860 --> 00:27:42,220 What was the point of it? 411 00:27:42,220 --> 00:27:45,780 I'm sorry, there you get me. There is no answer. 412 00:27:45,780 --> 00:27:49,620 The people I fear are those who have answers. 413 00:27:49,620 --> 00:27:52,900 I think a lot of life, in Judaism especially, is a religion with a lot 414 00:27:52,900 --> 00:27:57,300 of questions, and I really believe in asking questions, and I fear 415 00:27:57,300 --> 00:27:59,820 those who have answers, because those who have answers 416 00:27:59,820 --> 00:28:01,380 stop asking questions. 417 00:28:02,820 --> 00:28:07,300 I still have plenty of questions, like how could the Reichsbahn, 418 00:28:07,300 --> 00:28:11,580 which employed more than a million people, collude with the Nazis 419 00:28:11,580 --> 00:28:13,540 to deport so many Jews? 420 00:28:15,300 --> 00:28:18,820 Did all those train workers know what they were doing? 421 00:28:18,820 --> 00:28:22,740 Did they know where they were taking the Jews or what would 422 00:28:22,740 --> 00:28:27,740 happen to them? Did civilian Germans know what was happening? 423 00:28:29,820 --> 00:28:34,780 These days, this is a memorial but, in 1941, it was a huge synagogue. 424 00:28:34,780 --> 00:28:38,020 But the Levetzowstrasse synagogue's days 425 00:28:38,020 --> 00:28:40,260 as a place of worship were over. 426 00:28:40,260 --> 00:28:44,500 The Nazis decided that it should be a transit camp, where Jews 427 00:28:44,500 --> 00:28:48,180 would be ordered to report before they were deported. 428 00:28:48,180 --> 00:28:52,460 Thousands of Jews camped here, often for several days, in quite appalling 429 00:28:52,460 --> 00:28:56,660 conditions, until one day they were told their train was ready 430 00:28:56,660 --> 00:28:58,980 and their new home was waiting. 431 00:29:08,420 --> 00:29:11,380 What would have been particularly degrading, I think, is that many 432 00:29:11,380 --> 00:29:14,300 of the Jews would have come from very smart homes. 433 00:29:14,300 --> 00:29:17,220 They would have been very wealthy. And most of this walk, 434 00:29:17,220 --> 00:29:21,700 this great march to the station, is through a really well-to-do area. 435 00:29:24,380 --> 00:29:27,500 But no-one seems to have seen anything. 436 00:29:27,500 --> 00:29:31,540 There isn't a single eyewitness account of Jews being led 437 00:29:31,540 --> 00:29:34,540 to this station and platform 17. 438 00:29:37,140 --> 00:29:40,020 This part of the station clearly hasn't been used for many years. 439 00:29:40,020 --> 00:29:43,820 Look at the trees now growing up between the sleepers. 440 00:29:45,100 --> 00:29:49,740 I can almost feel the ghosts of the 50,000 Jews who were deported 441 00:29:49,740 --> 00:29:55,020 from Berlin, their humiliation complete when they were forced 442 00:29:55,020 --> 00:29:57,940 to pay for their own one-way tickets. 443 00:30:03,420 --> 00:30:07,020 Since 1991, this platform has been a memorial 444 00:30:07,020 --> 00:30:09,660 with a plaque commemorating each Transport. 445 00:30:12,500 --> 00:30:15,220 So, this is the very first train, the very first one that transported 446 00:30:15,220 --> 00:30:16,700 the Jews from here. 447 00:30:16,700 --> 00:30:19,460 18th of October 1941, 448 00:30:19,460 --> 00:30:25,340 1,251, 1,251 Juden, Jews, were transported 449 00:30:25,340 --> 00:30:30,380 from Berlin, which is Grunewald, where we are, Grunewald, Berlin, 450 00:30:30,380 --> 00:30:34,620 to a city 300 miles east from here in Poland, Lodz. 451 00:30:34,620 --> 00:30:38,340 I do think, though, looking round all this - and it's beautifully 452 00:30:38,340 --> 00:30:42,500 done - how many people actually ever notice this memorial? 453 00:30:48,940 --> 00:30:52,460 Trains no longer run from Grunewald station to Poland. 454 00:30:53,500 --> 00:30:55,820 So I'm going to take the modern route, via Berlin's 455 00:30:55,820 --> 00:30:57,620 plush main station. 456 00:30:59,300 --> 00:31:02,140 I'm heading to Poland to follow the path of the Jews 457 00:31:02,140 --> 00:31:05,420 who were transported there in 1941. 458 00:31:15,900 --> 00:31:20,620 That path will take me 300 miles east to Lodz, but first 459 00:31:20,620 --> 00:31:24,460 I want to stop off at a place called Gniezno, to look at the remains 460 00:31:24,460 --> 00:31:28,660 of a vast train yard that was built as part of Hitler's plans 461 00:31:28,660 --> 00:31:30,860 to conquer the east. 462 00:31:30,860 --> 00:31:33,420 Operation Barbarossa was the code name for the invasion 463 00:31:33,420 --> 00:31:34,940 of the Soviet Union. 464 00:31:34,940 --> 00:31:39,180 In Mein Kampf, Hitler wrote the German people needed more space 465 00:31:39,180 --> 00:31:42,980 and he wanted to form German territories in the Ukraine. 466 00:31:42,980 --> 00:31:46,820 "What India was for England, he wrote, "the territories of Russia 467 00:31:46,820 --> 00:31:48,940 "will be for us." 468 00:31:50,180 --> 00:31:55,340 In June 1941, Nazi stormtroopers entered the Soviet Union. 469 00:31:56,660 --> 00:32:01,620 They shot dead around a million Jews and Communists in cold blood. 470 00:32:02,860 --> 00:32:06,580 These massacres marked a new phase in the Holocaust, 471 00:32:06,580 --> 00:32:11,020 euphemistically called the Final Solution to the Jewish Question. 472 00:32:12,580 --> 00:32:16,220 But Hitler had a problem. The Soviet Union was enormous, 473 00:32:16,220 --> 00:32:19,100 far bigger than anywhere he'd invaded before. 474 00:32:19,100 --> 00:32:23,140 To maintain the assault, he'd need huge railway projects to keep 475 00:32:23,140 --> 00:32:26,260 the supply lines of men and weapons intact. 476 00:32:28,460 --> 00:32:32,700 I've come to Gniezno to see one of the extraordinary structures 477 00:32:32,700 --> 00:32:36,940 that made the invasion of the Soviet Union possible. 478 00:32:36,940 --> 00:32:38,500 Well, you can see it just over there. 479 00:32:38,500 --> 00:32:40,260 It's a massive Nazi rail yard. 480 00:32:41,900 --> 00:32:44,940 At its height, 3,000 people worked here... 481 00:32:45,980 --> 00:32:48,260 ..many of whom were Jewish prisoners. 482 00:32:50,300 --> 00:32:55,500 Today it's a deserted ghost town, a vast, crumbling relic of the war. 483 00:32:58,260 --> 00:33:01,540 It's something like three miles long from top to bottom, 484 00:33:01,540 --> 00:33:05,380 and it would have been heaving with armoured cars, jeeps, personnel 485 00:33:05,380 --> 00:33:08,420 carriers and, of course, thousands of men, all pouring 486 00:33:08,420 --> 00:33:10,100 up to the Russian front. 487 00:33:13,540 --> 00:33:19,620 This 450-yard siding with its water pumps, sand hoppers and this giant 488 00:33:19,620 --> 00:33:25,860 crane for lifting coal could refuel 12 locomotives at the same time. 489 00:33:30,100 --> 00:33:34,420 Incredibly, 24 engines would have been in those sheds at any one time. 490 00:33:34,420 --> 00:33:39,100 And this - pretty rusty - but nearly 80 years since it first worked, 491 00:33:39,100 --> 00:33:42,820 this turntable still actually works. 492 00:33:42,820 --> 00:33:49,380 So one bloke can actually turn a 110-tonne locomotive. 493 00:33:50,380 --> 00:33:53,740 It still works. It does. 494 00:33:53,740 --> 00:33:55,980 HE STRAINS AND LAUGHS 495 00:34:08,180 --> 00:34:12,020 Throughout this depot, there are reminders that here in Poland, 496 00:34:12,020 --> 00:34:16,860 more than 150,000 Poles and Jews were forced to work 497 00:34:16,860 --> 00:34:18,340 for Hitler's railway. 498 00:34:25,220 --> 00:34:27,780 Embossed on a lot of the rails in this workshop you can see 499 00:34:27,780 --> 00:34:29,340 the famous brand name Krupp, 500 00:34:29,340 --> 00:34:33,740 a big, massive German steel and ammunition company. 501 00:34:33,740 --> 00:34:37,540 After the war, the Krupps were found guilty at the Nuremberg trials 502 00:34:37,540 --> 00:34:40,420 of war crimes and the use of slave labour. 503 00:34:42,180 --> 00:34:44,820 I suppose Hitler was fighting two wars, 504 00:34:44,820 --> 00:34:47,020 one against the Allies and the Russians and one 505 00:34:47,020 --> 00:34:51,100 against the Jews, but without the Jewish and Polish slave labour, 506 00:34:51,100 --> 00:34:53,060 this place would never have been built. 507 00:34:53,060 --> 00:34:56,540 And without this railway depot, there wouldn't have been the trains 508 00:34:56,540 --> 00:34:59,580 or the rolling stock or any of the infrastructure 509 00:34:59,580 --> 00:35:01,220 to invade Russia. 510 00:35:01,220 --> 00:35:04,580 And in the end, this whole place says it all about whatever 511 00:35:04,580 --> 00:35:08,100 did happen to the Nazis' idea of world domination. 512 00:35:11,060 --> 00:35:15,700 But in 1941, the threat was still very real, and the railway 513 00:35:15,700 --> 00:35:19,860 was central to the Nazis' plan of getting rid of the Jews. 514 00:35:21,700 --> 00:35:26,740 I've reached Radegast station in Lodz, where 1,200 Berlin Jews 515 00:35:26,740 --> 00:35:31,580 arrived in October 1941 to be concentrated with other Jews 516 00:35:31,580 --> 00:35:33,820 in the ghetto. 517 00:35:33,820 --> 00:35:37,740 This is the first place where the Jews heading for the Lodz 518 00:35:37,740 --> 00:35:39,700 ghetto would actually have emerged. 519 00:35:39,700 --> 00:35:42,940 Basically, the deportees, maybe even tens of thousands, would have 520 00:35:42,940 --> 00:35:44,340 all arrived here. 521 00:35:44,340 --> 00:35:46,860 They would have made their way a few hundred yards up there 522 00:35:46,860 --> 00:35:50,780 to what they were promised were new homes and lots of work. 523 00:35:54,620 --> 00:35:56,340 But it was a lie. 524 00:35:57,740 --> 00:36:02,620 Nearly a thousand such ghettos were set up across the Reich. 525 00:36:04,020 --> 00:36:06,620 They were places of death and horror. 526 00:36:11,300 --> 00:36:15,660 Like most ghettos, Lodz was created next to a railway station. 527 00:36:17,060 --> 00:36:20,540 A perimeter was built to keep the inhabitants segregated 528 00:36:20,540 --> 00:36:23,900 from the rest of the city's population. 529 00:36:23,900 --> 00:36:27,740 Just two fenced-off roads ran across the ghetto 530 00:36:27,740 --> 00:36:31,100 for the convenience of non-Jews to pass through. 531 00:36:33,700 --> 00:36:38,460 The tram route that ran down one of those roads still operates today, 532 00:36:38,460 --> 00:36:42,180 and I can get a bit of a sense of what the ghetto must have been like. 533 00:36:50,340 --> 00:36:53,780 Now, this green area here is where the Germans razed 534 00:36:53,780 --> 00:36:56,620 this whole bit of the city to the ground to make sure 535 00:36:56,620 --> 00:37:00,340 they had a gap between the Germans and the Jews. 536 00:37:06,980 --> 00:37:10,940 There were wooden fences all the way along this route, and 164,000 people 537 00:37:10,940 --> 00:37:14,820 were crammed into this one-and-a-half-square-mile area. 538 00:37:16,820 --> 00:37:21,540 So little has changed that it's easy to picture what life was like. 539 00:37:23,620 --> 00:37:26,900 The wooden footbridge was built so the ghetto's inhabitants 540 00:37:26,900 --> 00:37:28,660 couldn't access the road. 541 00:37:31,540 --> 00:37:37,060 Overcrowded, overworked, full of disease. 542 00:37:38,140 --> 00:37:42,300 Nazi police had orders to shoot anyone who approached the perimeter. 543 00:37:45,340 --> 00:37:49,180 This fairly innocuous-looking building that's now a chemist, 544 00:37:49,180 --> 00:37:52,140 that was actually the Gestapo headquarters. 545 00:37:57,580 --> 00:38:01,340 This morning, I have an appointment with an incredible man who survived 546 00:38:01,340 --> 00:38:03,260 the horrors of this place, 547 00:38:03,260 --> 00:38:07,180 a man who cheated death so many times, it's remarkable 548 00:38:07,180 --> 00:38:09,740 that he's here to tell me his story. 549 00:38:18,660 --> 00:38:22,260 I'm in a part of the Polish city of Lodz that once was a horrific, 550 00:38:22,260 --> 00:38:24,620 overcrowded and brutal ghetto. 551 00:38:27,140 --> 00:38:30,820 Arek Hersh was still a child when he arrived. 552 00:38:30,820 --> 00:38:33,140 He'd already been orphaned by the Nazis... 553 00:38:33,140 --> 00:38:34,860 You're Arek. I recognise you. 554 00:38:34,860 --> 00:38:38,700 ..and he'd worked as a slave building the railway. 555 00:38:38,700 --> 00:38:42,900 What age were you when the Germans had you working on the railway? 556 00:38:42,900 --> 00:38:45,540 They took me... I was 11 years old. 557 00:38:45,540 --> 00:38:49,820 So only a little boy, really? Yes, that's all I was. 558 00:38:49,820 --> 00:38:53,060 How did the people working on the railway 559 00:38:53,060 --> 00:38:57,580 handle their situation? They were very, very badly treated. 560 00:38:57,580 --> 00:39:02,500 Many people jumped onto the train as it passed by, got killed, 561 00:39:02,500 --> 00:39:04,980 and I had to bury them. 562 00:39:04,980 --> 00:39:07,420 So you were still a little boy and you were scraping 563 00:39:07,420 --> 00:39:11,340 up body parts and... Yes, I had to do that. Oh, dear. 564 00:39:11,340 --> 00:39:15,060 And people were hanged. I had to bury them as well. 565 00:39:15,060 --> 00:39:17,700 We started with 2,500 men. 566 00:39:17,700 --> 00:39:21,940 Within 18 months, when our railway line was finished, 567 00:39:21,940 --> 00:39:24,420 there was only 11 people left alive. 568 00:39:24,420 --> 00:39:26,820 11?! 11. 569 00:39:26,820 --> 00:39:32,780 In his previous ghetto, 80 members of Arek's family and extended family 570 00:39:32,780 --> 00:39:35,100 had been taken away and murdered. 571 00:39:36,180 --> 00:39:39,980 Arek was now 12 years old and all alone in a place 572 00:39:39,980 --> 00:39:43,540 where he witnessed death every day. 573 00:39:43,540 --> 00:39:45,740 There were three hospitals. 574 00:39:45,740 --> 00:39:50,660 And just one day, the SS came and they threw the bodies 575 00:39:50,660 --> 00:39:54,220 from the first floor and the second floor onto trucks. 576 00:39:54,220 --> 00:39:57,180 What, people from the hospital? Yes. Were some alive? 577 00:39:57,180 --> 00:40:00,620 They were still alive, and they killed them. 578 00:40:00,620 --> 00:40:03,300 They emptied all the hospitals? Yes. Why? 579 00:40:04,300 --> 00:40:05,780 No idea. 580 00:40:05,780 --> 00:40:09,420 And you saw dead bodies all the time? All the time. 581 00:40:09,420 --> 00:40:13,180 There were carts that took bodies away from the street. 582 00:40:13,180 --> 00:40:17,460 People used to drop in the street, children used to drop in the street, 583 00:40:17,460 --> 00:40:19,860 died from malnutrition. 584 00:40:21,460 --> 00:40:25,140 These sick crimes are almost unimaginable. 585 00:40:25,140 --> 00:40:28,620 But the city's Jewish cemetery says it all. 586 00:40:28,620 --> 00:40:31,940 Most of those who died in the Lodz ghetto are buried 587 00:40:31,940 --> 00:40:34,060 in these paupers' graves. 588 00:40:36,660 --> 00:40:40,580 43,000 people are buried here, 589 00:40:40,580 --> 00:40:44,020 and that's just people who died in this Lodz ghetto. 590 00:40:44,020 --> 00:40:47,020 And then on the walls are the people who were taken 591 00:40:47,020 --> 00:40:48,780 from the ghetto and killed. 592 00:40:48,780 --> 00:40:51,980 And I've never seen this - the word "murder" is everywhere. 593 00:40:51,980 --> 00:40:55,100 Grandmother Ester murdered in 1942. 594 00:40:55,100 --> 00:40:57,340 Mother murdered in Auschwitz, '44. 595 00:40:57,340 --> 00:41:00,820 Sister murdered in Treblinka. Brother murdered. 596 00:41:00,820 --> 00:41:04,100 The whole Talmud family murdered during the war. 597 00:41:04,100 --> 00:41:05,860 I've never seen anything like this, 598 00:41:05,860 --> 00:41:09,100 and all because of one evil little maniac. 599 00:41:12,820 --> 00:41:17,100 Perhaps most sinister of all was that many of those who died 600 00:41:17,100 --> 00:41:22,340 were selected for death not by the Nazis but by fellow Jews. 601 00:41:23,660 --> 00:41:27,860 The Nazis forced this council of elders to select people 602 00:41:27,860 --> 00:41:30,100 to be relocated from the ghetto. 603 00:41:31,100 --> 00:41:33,740 They PROBABLY had no idea 604 00:41:33,740 --> 00:41:36,740 of the fate that awaited the people they'd chosen. 605 00:41:43,220 --> 00:41:46,780 In September 1942, Arek heard rumours 606 00:41:46,780 --> 00:41:52,260 that he might be chosen next, so he fled to a cemetery to hide. 607 00:41:53,820 --> 00:41:58,220 First of all, the president of the ghetto, he asked the parents 608 00:41:58,220 --> 00:42:01,700 to hand over 10,000 children. 609 00:42:01,700 --> 00:42:04,940 And what parents would hand over, to know that they're going 610 00:42:04,940 --> 00:42:07,740 to be killed? Mm. Nobody did. 611 00:42:07,740 --> 00:42:11,100 A lot of the parents hid the children. 612 00:42:11,100 --> 00:42:14,380 And a lot of parents were killed 613 00:42:14,380 --> 00:42:17,420 when the SS found the children hiding. Yeah. 614 00:42:17,420 --> 00:42:21,820 And I hid behind a tombstone and was praying to God that I'm not 615 00:42:21,820 --> 00:42:25,060 captured, because I was the age group from which they would 616 00:42:25,060 --> 00:42:26,500 take me away. 617 00:42:26,500 --> 00:42:31,140 If the SS found children hiding, what did they do? 618 00:42:31,140 --> 00:42:32,940 They shot them. 619 00:42:34,340 --> 00:42:38,220 The next evil chapter in the Holocaust was being written. 620 00:42:38,220 --> 00:42:42,780 And if Arek was going to live, he'd have to hide among the dead. 621 00:42:46,180 --> 00:42:51,300 As he hid, thousands of children and adults were rounded up, marched 622 00:42:51,300 --> 00:42:55,460 to Radegast station and taken deep into the countryside. 623 00:42:58,540 --> 00:43:02,340 The man who chose to transport the children here was one 624 00:43:02,340 --> 00:43:05,180 of the greatest criminals of the Holocaust, 625 00:43:05,180 --> 00:43:08,860 SS-Sturmbannfuhrer Herbert Lange. 626 00:43:08,860 --> 00:43:13,100 He already had form for murdering mental patients for the Reich, 627 00:43:13,100 --> 00:43:16,180 and now he was going to turn his attention to the Jews. 628 00:43:20,340 --> 00:43:24,780 Lange chose this remote area with a small population and dense 629 00:43:24,780 --> 00:43:27,780 forest that allowed him to operate in secret. 630 00:43:31,380 --> 00:43:34,500 There was also the convenience of a narrow-gauge railway. 631 00:43:35,540 --> 00:43:37,860 It's really hard to imagine, but this is actually the end 632 00:43:37,860 --> 00:43:41,500 of the narrow-gauge railway that brought them here. 633 00:43:41,500 --> 00:43:44,140 From here, they were loaded into these lorries. 634 00:43:44,140 --> 00:43:45,660 Now, you can see the German soldiers 635 00:43:45,660 --> 00:43:49,620 very gently moving everybody into the trucks. 636 00:43:49,620 --> 00:43:53,300 See, it's all very calm. They have no idea what's ahead. 637 00:43:53,300 --> 00:43:54,820 They think they're going to rest 638 00:43:54,820 --> 00:43:57,220 and then go on to work in a new place. 639 00:43:57,220 --> 00:44:00,900 These are actually some sort of fruit and veg truck, a forerunner 640 00:44:00,900 --> 00:44:02,940 of the cattle trucks that were to follow. 641 00:44:02,940 --> 00:44:05,460 But at the moment, nobody has a clue that anything untoward's 642 00:44:05,460 --> 00:44:07,140 going to happen. 643 00:44:07,140 --> 00:44:11,420 And that calmness has been deliberately created by the Nazis. 644 00:44:15,100 --> 00:44:17,820 The prisoners were taken to a mansion on the edge 645 00:44:17,820 --> 00:44:20,580 of a village called Chelmno. 646 00:44:22,340 --> 00:44:25,780 Here, they would be met by a commandant who greeted them 647 00:44:25,780 --> 00:44:27,900 with a reassuring welcome. 648 00:44:31,260 --> 00:44:32,940 This place gives me the creeps. 649 00:44:32,940 --> 00:44:35,820 You have to imagine it with a great big, high wooden fence all the way 650 00:44:35,820 --> 00:44:38,420 round and barbed wire on the top of that. 651 00:44:38,420 --> 00:44:41,380 But there is a beautiful church over there looking 652 00:44:41,380 --> 00:44:45,180 down on the valley. There was a granary over there. 653 00:44:45,180 --> 00:44:51,020 And then all this was a magnificent mansion that the Germans blew up 654 00:44:51,020 --> 00:44:54,100 when they'd finally completed their work. 655 00:44:55,620 --> 00:44:59,540 It's now an archaeological site where historians are piecing 656 00:44:59,540 --> 00:45:02,900 together the camp's modus operandi. 657 00:45:07,140 --> 00:45:10,940 Up to 100 people at a time would come through here, 658 00:45:10,940 --> 00:45:13,820 down these steps, hand over all their valuables 659 00:45:13,820 --> 00:45:16,020 and actually get a receipt for them. 660 00:45:16,020 --> 00:45:18,900 Then they would go into a much larger room here. They would 661 00:45:18,900 --> 00:45:20,260 remove their clothes. 662 00:45:20,260 --> 00:45:23,780 There would be cynically reassuring signs everywhere saying things 663 00:45:23,780 --> 00:45:27,460 like "bedrooms", "bathrooms", and they would go down into 664 00:45:27,460 --> 00:45:30,180 the basement for a bath. 665 00:45:30,180 --> 00:45:32,660 They would then come down this narrow corridor, 666 00:45:32,660 --> 00:45:37,020 which, as you can see is being excavated at the moment. 667 00:45:37,020 --> 00:45:40,500 And at that point, all pretence would suddenly stop. 668 00:45:40,500 --> 00:45:43,740 They were forced along this narrow corridor here with rifle butts 669 00:45:43,740 --> 00:45:46,140 and whips, raced along the corridor. 670 00:45:46,140 --> 00:45:49,100 They were pushed up a ramp here into vans and the doors 671 00:45:49,100 --> 00:45:51,500 were slammed shut. 672 00:45:51,500 --> 00:45:53,980 These were no ordinary vans. 673 00:45:53,980 --> 00:45:57,660 They were hermetically sealed with heavy bolts on the doors. 674 00:45:57,660 --> 00:46:01,260 Gas from canisters and from the van's exhaust was pumped 675 00:46:01,260 --> 00:46:07,340 into the trailer. In a matter of minutes, everyone inside was dead. 676 00:46:07,340 --> 00:46:10,220 And once the bodies had been stripped of any remaining 677 00:46:10,220 --> 00:46:14,380 valuables, they were dumped somewhere in the nearby forest. 678 00:46:17,740 --> 00:46:19,820 This was an experimental camp 679 00:46:19,820 --> 00:46:23,420 where the Nazis learned how to murder efficiently... 680 00:46:24,420 --> 00:46:26,100 ..and in huge numbers. 681 00:46:28,540 --> 00:46:30,740 This was the first actual death camp, wasn't it? 682 00:46:30,740 --> 00:46:34,700 No work or anything, just death. It was the first death camp 683 00:46:34,700 --> 00:46:37,260 the Germans established in occupied Poland. 684 00:46:37,260 --> 00:46:42,580 It was the first place where the gas was used for mass-killing the Jews. 685 00:46:42,580 --> 00:46:47,300 We know the time from arrival to death. It was about one hour. 686 00:46:49,620 --> 00:46:51,820 I'm really struggling to get my head around this. 687 00:46:51,820 --> 00:46:55,500 I've been to genocide sites in Rwanda, 688 00:46:55,500 --> 00:46:59,140 and you see blood on the walls, a little child's shoe, and yet here, 689 00:46:59,140 --> 00:47:02,940 there's nothing really to see and yet you know what happened - 690 00:47:02,940 --> 00:47:06,220 the commandant making his welcome speech about ten times a day 691 00:47:06,220 --> 00:47:09,260 to another truckload of Jews that he knew were going to die 692 00:47:09,260 --> 00:47:11,140 within a matter of minutes. 693 00:47:11,140 --> 00:47:17,060 Something like, I don't know, 200,000, maybe even 300,000 people 694 00:47:17,060 --> 00:47:18,780 died in this site. 695 00:47:18,780 --> 00:47:24,140 100,000 people died, probably were gassed where I'm standing now. 696 00:47:24,140 --> 00:47:26,100 And that's a horrible thought. 697 00:47:30,180 --> 00:47:35,220 Behind a tombstone 60 miles away in Lodz, a terrified orphan 698 00:47:35,220 --> 00:47:36,660 was still in hiding. 699 00:47:38,500 --> 00:47:42,820 Arek's quick wits had saved him from being murdered at Chelmno, 700 00:47:42,820 --> 00:47:45,940 but now he had to concentrate on staying alive. 701 00:47:50,100 --> 00:47:54,540 When he felt the danger was over, he snuck back into the ghetto 702 00:47:54,540 --> 00:47:56,820 and looked for a new place to live. 703 00:47:59,180 --> 00:48:02,500 He moved into this orphanage here for two more years, 704 00:48:02,500 --> 00:48:05,860 but by 1944, the war looked like it was beginning 705 00:48:05,860 --> 00:48:07,540 to turn against Germany. 706 00:48:08,780 --> 00:48:11,340 About 180 children were here. 707 00:48:11,340 --> 00:48:13,820 But it's still part of the ghetto? Yes. 708 00:48:13,820 --> 00:48:17,700 In the road over there, that was where the wire was. 709 00:48:17,700 --> 00:48:22,260 Guards? Yes, with guns. The SS? Yes. 710 00:48:22,260 --> 00:48:25,260 What did you do here? Did you have a job of any sort? Yes. 711 00:48:25,260 --> 00:48:28,900 I used to work in a factory. Yeah? It was a textile mill. 712 00:48:28,900 --> 00:48:33,660 So, what did you do? I used to help the mechanic. 713 00:48:33,660 --> 00:48:38,820 They took me to learn about the machinery, and I also 714 00:48:38,820 --> 00:48:42,100 did a bit of weaving from time to time. 715 00:48:42,100 --> 00:48:46,940 By 1944, did you kids start to get a sense that maybe 716 00:48:46,940 --> 00:48:51,660 the war was turning? We had a feeling that the war was turning. 717 00:48:51,660 --> 00:48:55,140 It came through from certain people. 718 00:48:55,140 --> 00:48:57,500 I think they had radios. 719 00:48:57,500 --> 00:49:03,500 So we knew in 1944 that the Germans are losing, the Russians 720 00:49:03,500 --> 00:49:08,740 were already in Warsaw, which is not so far away. No. 721 00:49:08,740 --> 00:49:12,460 But Arek's hopes of liberation were suddenly dashed when the Nazis 722 00:49:12,460 --> 00:49:14,740 decided to liquidate the ghetto 723 00:49:14,740 --> 00:49:17,980 and unleash new horrors on its inhabitants. 724 00:49:27,460 --> 00:49:31,900 In August 1944, the Nazis cleared the Lodz ghetto. 725 00:49:33,740 --> 00:49:40,020 Over three weeks, 68,000 inhabitants were marched to Radegast station 726 00:49:40,020 --> 00:49:42,540 for a journey on the railway of death. 727 00:49:44,340 --> 00:49:47,100 When people think about the Holocaust, this is the image 728 00:49:47,100 --> 00:49:51,380 that most of them conjure up, line after line of cattle trucks 729 00:49:51,380 --> 00:49:54,060 crammed with desperate people inside. 730 00:49:54,060 --> 00:49:58,300 One of the reasons why they used these boxcars was because so much 731 00:49:58,300 --> 00:50:01,060 of their rolling stock was tied up with the war effort, 732 00:50:01,060 --> 00:50:02,940 this was all that was left. 733 00:50:15,580 --> 00:50:19,580 So this is how you travelled? Yep. Oh, dear, oh, dear. 734 00:50:19,580 --> 00:50:23,580 That was our journey. Barbed wire on the window? 735 00:50:23,580 --> 00:50:26,740 Yeah, all the windows had barbed wire. 736 00:50:26,740 --> 00:50:29,020 But nobody's going to escape anyway, are they? 737 00:50:29,020 --> 00:50:31,540 How are you going to get out of that? You couldn't, 738 00:50:31,540 --> 00:50:35,220 but they put barbed wire on to make sure that we don't. 739 00:50:39,100 --> 00:50:41,900 What was it like? I just think it must have been... 740 00:50:41,900 --> 00:50:43,500 Horrific. Yeah. 741 00:50:43,500 --> 00:50:47,300 Yes, 100 people standing. You couldn't even sit down. 742 00:50:47,300 --> 00:50:51,500 One lavatory? One bucket? One bucket, yes. 743 00:50:51,500 --> 00:50:56,060 And a blanket to cover... 744 00:50:56,060 --> 00:50:57,700 Cover your modesty. 745 00:50:57,700 --> 00:51:00,660 Did anybody die during the journey? One person. 746 00:51:01,780 --> 00:51:04,540 Who was that? A woman. 747 00:51:04,540 --> 00:51:09,260 She collapsed, but the train just went on and nobody took 748 00:51:09,260 --> 00:51:13,700 any notice of her. They kept her in the corner, and that was it. 749 00:51:15,500 --> 00:51:19,380 Arek has agreed to retrace the terrifying journey he took 750 00:51:19,380 --> 00:51:24,900 in August 1944 with 184 other orphans... 751 00:51:24,900 --> 00:51:30,180 ..from Lodz to a town in southern Poland called Oswiecim. 752 00:51:31,220 --> 00:51:35,460 Back then, this was a busy, centrally located railway junction, 753 00:51:35,460 --> 00:51:39,260 with lines stretching all over Nazi Europe. 754 00:51:39,260 --> 00:51:43,100 They were used to transport over a million Jews and other 755 00:51:43,100 --> 00:51:44,820 prisoners to this area. 756 00:51:47,660 --> 00:51:52,660 I was worried, because they told us we're going to work in factories. 757 00:51:52,660 --> 00:51:56,420 Yeah. So I didn't know what to expect. 758 00:51:56,420 --> 00:51:59,020 When you first all arrived, even though you've been cramped 759 00:51:59,020 --> 00:52:01,540 for two days and you were starving, can you remember 760 00:52:01,540 --> 00:52:03,420 what your first impressions were? 761 00:52:03,420 --> 00:52:06,220 I looked through a crack of the train and noticed 762 00:52:06,220 --> 00:52:10,500 SS men with dogs. That got me worried right away, 763 00:52:10,500 --> 00:52:15,420 because I knew the most horrendous people were waiting for us. 764 00:52:21,540 --> 00:52:24,660 Ooh, take it easy. This is a long way down. 765 00:52:25,900 --> 00:52:27,860 Yeah, take it easy. 766 00:52:31,300 --> 00:52:33,500 When Arek passed through here, 767 00:52:33,500 --> 00:52:36,540 he would've been in trucks similar to these, 768 00:52:36,540 --> 00:52:41,780 exhausted, hungry, anxious and oblivious to what awaited him 769 00:52:41,780 --> 00:52:43,620 just a mile up the line. 770 00:52:45,660 --> 00:52:48,780 From this footbridge, you can see this is such a focal point. 771 00:52:48,780 --> 00:52:52,860 So many rail lines converge on this one spot, and that's one 772 00:52:52,860 --> 00:52:56,860 of the main reasons why the Nazis chose this place for the largest 773 00:52:56,860 --> 00:53:00,740 of all their death camps. The Poles call it Oswiecim. 774 00:53:01,860 --> 00:53:04,500 The Germans called it Auschwitz. 775 00:53:05,860 --> 00:53:10,220 There were actually over 40 different Auschwitz camps, 776 00:53:10,220 --> 00:53:14,180 the two largest being the original Auschwitz 777 00:53:14,180 --> 00:53:16,660 and the colossal Auschwitz-Birkenau. 778 00:53:21,060 --> 00:53:25,540 Boguslaw Starzecki is a veteran of the Polish railway. 779 00:53:25,540 --> 00:53:28,540 Hi. I'm Chris. How are you? Boguslaw. Pleased to meet you. 780 00:53:28,540 --> 00:53:33,380 He's spent his life studying the rail network in this region. 781 00:53:33,380 --> 00:53:36,940 It's so overgrown now, but this would be the line 782 00:53:36,940 --> 00:53:40,420 that thousands of Jews came going towards the gas chambers. 783 00:53:50,540 --> 00:53:56,020 Up an abandoned siding 500 yards from the camp is the Judenramp, 784 00:53:56,020 --> 00:53:58,460 the ramp of the Jews. 785 00:53:58,460 --> 00:54:02,620 Where we are now, is this what they called Judenramp? 786 00:54:05,060 --> 00:54:10,740 Until 1944, the wagons would stop here and the Jews could be herded 787 00:54:10,740 --> 00:54:12,980 on foot to the camp. 788 00:54:12,980 --> 00:54:17,220 But then the Nazis forced the prisoners to build this spur. 789 00:54:38,260 --> 00:54:42,260 Arek's packed cattle truck would have travelled along this spur 790 00:54:42,260 --> 00:54:43,980 and eventually through a gate 791 00:54:43,980 --> 00:54:48,180 that has become one of the Holocaust's most infamous sights. 792 00:54:53,980 --> 00:54:56,540 It's called the Gate of Death because virtually everybody 793 00:54:56,540 --> 00:54:59,300 who travelled along this track and went through that gate 794 00:54:59,300 --> 00:55:00,780 was murdered. 795 00:55:00,780 --> 00:55:07,860 At its peak in 1944, in just eight weeks, over 430,000 Jews went 796 00:55:07,860 --> 00:55:12,220 through that gate, and hardly any of them were ever seen again. 797 00:55:14,540 --> 00:55:18,820 Birkenau is where the lessons learned in Nuremberg, in the ghettos 798 00:55:18,820 --> 00:55:24,900 and at Chelmno were combined with unprecedented evil and efficiency. 799 00:55:24,900 --> 00:55:27,820 It's an enormous place, and the scale of what the Nazis actually 800 00:55:27,820 --> 00:55:29,820 did is still pretty colossal. 801 00:55:29,820 --> 00:55:32,500 The women's quarters are over there on the left. 802 00:55:32,500 --> 00:55:34,820 The men's quarters are over there on the right. 803 00:55:34,820 --> 00:55:37,860 Now, those are the ones who were selected to work. 804 00:55:37,860 --> 00:55:41,580 But the rest, the very young, the very old and the sick 805 00:55:41,580 --> 00:55:44,700 have already gone to the end of the platform up there 806 00:55:44,700 --> 00:55:46,340 to the gas chambers. 807 00:55:48,180 --> 00:55:51,660 As the arrivals disembarked on this platform, they'd be 808 00:55:51,660 --> 00:55:54,540 subjected to selection. 809 00:55:54,540 --> 00:55:58,300 This was overseen by Dr Josef Mengele, known 810 00:55:58,300 --> 00:56:00,660 as the Angel of Death. 811 00:56:00,660 --> 00:56:04,260 His team chose between life, death or being sent 812 00:56:04,260 --> 00:56:07,380 for cruel medical experiments. 813 00:56:07,380 --> 00:56:10,820 Arek and the other children from the orphanage were too young 814 00:56:10,820 --> 00:56:14,540 for work, so it seemed certain to Arek at least 815 00:56:14,540 --> 00:56:16,740 they'd be selected for death. 816 00:56:16,740 --> 00:56:20,580 The train stopped there on this line, 817 00:56:20,580 --> 00:56:25,460 and we walked towards three high-ranking officers. 818 00:56:25,460 --> 00:56:27,060 They stood here. 819 00:56:27,060 --> 00:56:30,540 Because one of them, we now know, was Mengele. Mengele, yes. 820 00:56:30,540 --> 00:56:33,340 So what did Mengele and co do at that point? 821 00:56:33,340 --> 00:56:36,380 They picked you to die... 822 00:56:37,380 --> 00:56:38,980 ..or live. 823 00:56:40,300 --> 00:56:42,420 This side, you died. 824 00:56:43,740 --> 00:56:48,140 They selected women, children, old men, 825 00:56:48,140 --> 00:56:51,660 and all those people went to this side. 826 00:56:52,820 --> 00:56:57,940 That got me frightened, and I've got to try and find a way out. 827 00:56:57,940 --> 00:56:59,340 What did you do? 828 00:56:59,340 --> 00:57:03,940 I heard a commotion with a child. A mother had a child on her arm, 829 00:57:03,940 --> 00:57:06,860 and they wanted the mother, they didn't want the baby. 830 00:57:06,860 --> 00:57:10,140 And she didn't want to give the baby up? She started screaming 831 00:57:10,140 --> 00:57:13,860 the moment they tried to pull the child, and she screamed. 832 00:57:13,860 --> 00:57:18,300 This is the time when, basically, I got stuck in the middle 833 00:57:18,300 --> 00:57:22,300 here for a few seconds because I didn't know what was going on here. 834 00:57:23,660 --> 00:57:28,620 In the confusion, 14-year-old Arek approached an SS officer 835 00:57:28,620 --> 00:57:31,020 and thought up a lie. 836 00:57:31,020 --> 00:57:33,940 One of the officers asked me how old I am. 837 00:57:33,940 --> 00:57:36,980 Yeah. So I told him a lie. 838 00:57:36,980 --> 00:57:40,900 I said 17. And I told him that I was a locksmith. 839 00:57:42,020 --> 00:57:45,660 Which you weren't. Never was, no. Never. 840 00:57:45,660 --> 00:57:47,380 Why did you pluck locksmith out? 841 00:57:47,380 --> 00:57:51,340 I just thought a locksmith, mechanical, anything mechanical 842 00:57:51,340 --> 00:57:53,700 the Germans wanted, and so on. 843 00:57:53,700 --> 00:57:57,060 But he told me to go to this side. 844 00:57:57,060 --> 00:57:59,220 And all the others went left. 845 00:57:59,220 --> 00:58:00,740 All of them went. 846 00:58:00,740 --> 00:58:04,260 There were about 182 children... From the orphanage? 847 00:58:04,260 --> 00:58:08,260 ..from the orphanage, and they were all sent to this side. 848 00:58:08,260 --> 00:58:12,060 Your friends? Everybody. You never saw any of them again? 849 00:58:12,060 --> 00:58:13,980 No. No. 850 00:58:17,900 --> 00:58:21,460 Arek didn't know where his friends had been taken. 851 00:58:21,460 --> 00:58:26,420 He was alone again, surviving in a world even more hostile than before. 852 00:58:28,500 --> 00:58:32,780 Starvation was going on all the time. Yeah. 853 00:58:32,780 --> 00:58:36,700 Grass, you see grass now. There wasn't a blade of grass here. 854 00:58:36,700 --> 00:58:41,980 People picked it and cooked it. You know, it was a death machine here. 855 00:58:54,700 --> 00:58:59,900 Arek had saved himself from certain death by lying about his age. 856 00:58:59,900 --> 00:59:03,460 He now had to live as an adult in a men's barracks 857 00:59:03,460 --> 00:59:05,340 with up to 500 others. 858 00:59:08,060 --> 00:59:11,780 After you've been selected for work, what happened then? 859 00:59:11,780 --> 00:59:18,300 Head shaved, had a shower and got clothing. 860 00:59:18,300 --> 00:59:20,140 Yeah. This is the striped pyjamas? 861 00:59:20,140 --> 00:59:25,300 The striped pyjamas, yes, and then we got a pair of clogs. 862 00:59:25,300 --> 00:59:29,980 Yeah. Tattoo? Did you get the tattoo then, and a number? And the tattoo 863 00:59:29,980 --> 00:59:36,340 and the number, yes, and I got B7608. Which you must remember all 864 00:59:36,340 --> 00:59:38,540 your life, every day of your life, that number. 865 00:59:38,540 --> 00:59:41,180 Every day. Did they ever call you by your name, or did they just call 866 00:59:41,180 --> 00:59:43,380 you by your number? By the number. 867 00:59:43,380 --> 00:59:47,540 So you were just a number? My name has been lost here altogether. 868 00:59:48,820 --> 00:59:53,380 So this is... This is just plywood. We slept on the wood, yes, 869 00:59:53,380 --> 00:59:58,340 no mattress. Sheets? No sheet, no. Pillow? No pillow. 870 00:59:58,340 --> 01:00:02,100 We just took our clothes off, wound the trousers around, put 871 01:00:02,100 --> 01:00:05,060 it on our head, and that's how we slept. 872 01:00:05,060 --> 01:00:06,820 And how many of you in here? 873 01:00:06,820 --> 01:00:10,220 About ten people on each bunk. 874 01:00:10,220 --> 01:00:13,260 What was it like at night-time? 875 01:00:13,260 --> 01:00:15,140 People snored, people cried, 876 01:00:15,140 --> 01:00:19,380 people coughed from all the beds. It was dreadful. 877 01:00:19,380 --> 01:00:22,100 Horrific. Can you imagine? No, I can't. 878 01:00:22,100 --> 01:00:26,020 Did people die during the night? Many people. Yeah? Yes. 879 01:00:26,020 --> 01:00:31,260 Every morning, they had a cart and collected the bodies. 880 01:00:32,380 --> 01:00:36,060 Did you sometimes find yourself lying next to somebody you thought, 881 01:00:36,060 --> 01:00:38,020 "I think this person's died beside me"? 882 01:00:38,020 --> 01:00:42,300 I've had quite a few situations like that. 883 01:00:42,300 --> 01:00:46,020 But then, that's how it went every day. 884 01:00:46,020 --> 01:00:50,460 Sometimes it seems like every detail you give me is worse 885 01:00:50,460 --> 01:00:53,340 than the last one. Well, that was life here. 886 01:00:57,380 --> 01:01:03,020 As Arek struggled to survive, every day more and more trains arrived 887 01:01:03,020 --> 01:01:05,380 bringing more Jews to their deaths. 888 01:01:10,780 --> 01:01:14,100 I think it's amazing that Arek's come back to Auschwitz at all, 889 01:01:14,100 --> 01:01:17,340 but I certainly wouldn't expose him to this next bit. 890 01:01:17,340 --> 01:01:22,180 If he'd turned left instead of right, he'd have come here. 891 01:01:22,180 --> 01:01:24,420 It's the gas chamber. 892 01:01:34,100 --> 01:01:38,340 Because you know the history of this place and what happened 893 01:01:38,340 --> 01:01:41,460 in there, it's just almost beyond belief. 894 01:01:51,660 --> 01:01:54,660 You can see where the gas would have been dropped in. 895 01:01:55,700 --> 01:02:00,900 You can imagine them screaming, terrified, gasping for air, 896 01:02:00,900 --> 01:02:04,540 desperate to get out, fighting over each body to try and get 897 01:02:04,540 --> 01:02:09,220 that last little gasp of air. It's just...monstrous. 898 01:02:14,580 --> 01:02:19,860 The dead would have then been loaded into these furnaces and incinerated. 899 01:02:29,860 --> 01:02:31,900 The chimneys were burning. 900 01:02:31,900 --> 01:02:34,660 There were four chimneys burning day and night. 901 01:02:34,660 --> 01:02:38,260 So, when you saw that black smoke coming out of the chimneys, 902 01:02:38,260 --> 01:02:40,460 did you know what it was? No. 903 01:02:40,460 --> 01:02:44,820 Somebody told me these are the gas chambers and these are crematoriums 904 01:02:44,820 --> 01:02:47,820 that kill the people that arrived here. 905 01:02:55,700 --> 01:02:58,780 But the Nazis' grip was weakening. 906 01:02:58,780 --> 01:03:02,780 By January 1945, the Soviet Red Army 907 01:03:02,780 --> 01:03:06,700 was advancing on southern Poland and Auschwitz. 908 01:03:08,020 --> 01:03:13,420 Did you begin to think just maybe the war was coming to an end? 909 01:03:13,420 --> 01:03:19,060 Yes, we've seen about 500 planes, bombers flying low. 910 01:03:19,060 --> 01:03:21,620 Over Auschwitz? Over Auschwitz, yes. 911 01:03:21,620 --> 01:03:26,140 And also we've seen tanks going back on the way to Germany. 912 01:03:26,140 --> 01:03:28,340 So it looks like they're leaving Poland? 913 01:03:28,340 --> 01:03:32,300 Yes. And we could hear Russian artillery from a distance. 914 01:03:33,700 --> 01:03:39,180 On the 27th of January 1945, the Russians finally liberated 915 01:03:39,180 --> 01:03:42,700 Auschwitz and were horrified at what they found. 916 01:03:47,740 --> 01:03:52,340 Prisoners were helped to freedom, but Arek wasn't among them, 917 01:03:52,340 --> 01:03:56,540 because a few days earlier, the SS had started evacuating 918 01:03:56,540 --> 01:03:59,100 the prisoners at gunpoint. 919 01:04:02,300 --> 01:04:06,540 And they just took you out of the camp? Yes. Minus 25 degrees. 920 01:04:06,540 --> 01:04:12,340 Snow? Heavy snow, heavy snow, and we were in pyjamas and clogs 921 01:04:12,340 --> 01:04:16,900 and we marched. And they say, "We're taking you to a different camp." 922 01:04:16,900 --> 01:04:19,340 How many people are we talking about? Hundreds. 923 01:04:19,340 --> 01:04:22,460 I mean, everybody would have been very weak by then. They were. 924 01:04:22,460 --> 01:04:25,180 Did anybody fall by the wayside? Anybody who couldn't walk was shot 925 01:04:25,180 --> 01:04:28,100 in the back of the head and the body was thrown on the side of the road. 926 01:04:28,100 --> 01:04:31,140 And what did you have for supplies? Did you have food? Water? 927 01:04:31,140 --> 01:04:33,460 What did you have? Absolutely nothing. 928 01:04:34,660 --> 01:04:37,860 The Germans were in retreat, which meant fewer and fewer 929 01:04:37,860 --> 01:04:40,060 camps were available. 930 01:04:40,060 --> 01:04:43,820 For three months, Arek and thousands of other Auschwitz prisoners 931 01:04:43,820 --> 01:04:45,940 were moved from camp to camp. 932 01:04:48,260 --> 01:04:50,540 This remarkable amateur footage 933 01:04:50,540 --> 01:04:54,340 shows Auschwitz prisoners in coal trucks. 934 01:04:54,340 --> 01:04:58,100 They were being evacuated west through Czechoslovakia. 935 01:04:59,700 --> 01:05:01,900 What do you remember about your last journey? 936 01:05:01,900 --> 01:05:07,420 They put us onto a train - open wagons, no roofs - 937 01:05:07,420 --> 01:05:09,620 and we ate grass. 938 01:05:09,620 --> 01:05:14,660 We cooked grass. And I also ate my shoe. 939 01:05:14,660 --> 01:05:18,460 You ate your shoe? I cut it and I bent the leather. 940 01:05:18,460 --> 01:05:22,540 And that was food? That somehow sustained you, eating your shoe? 941 01:05:22,540 --> 01:05:28,100 Yes, just bits of leather. So you were desperate by then. 942 01:05:28,100 --> 01:05:31,580 Yeah, very desperate. They gave us no food. 943 01:05:31,580 --> 01:05:33,860 Most people died on the journey. 944 01:05:39,220 --> 01:05:43,460 Arek's final rail journey was in April 1945 from another 945 01:05:43,460 --> 01:05:45,740 concentration camp in Germany. 946 01:05:45,740 --> 01:05:49,940 He was sent on a train with 3,000 others for a month. 947 01:05:49,940 --> 01:05:52,380 Only 600 survived. 948 01:05:52,380 --> 01:05:55,940 Arek somehow ended up in Terezin, Czechoslovakia, 949 01:05:55,940 --> 01:05:57,540 and from there, he was liberated 950 01:05:57,540 --> 01:06:01,300 by the Russians on the 8th of May 1945. 951 01:06:02,980 --> 01:06:08,020 It was a miracle Arek survived, but six million others didn't. 952 01:06:08,020 --> 01:06:12,260 For a few terrible years, these were the railways of death. 953 01:06:12,260 --> 01:06:16,460 This was a chapter in human history that must never be repeated 954 01:06:16,460 --> 01:06:19,260 and never, EVER forgotten. 955 01:07:16,620 --> 01:07:18,860 Subtitles by Red Bee Media