Jews Survive the Holocaust | Exploitation of Jews | Documentary

[Music] one crime thousands of accomplices and finally the flight from responsibility the German war effort could not have lasted as long as it did without the work of the forced laborers a great deal of money was made from Forced labor in German Society the Injustice of forced labor was entirely ignored right up to the 1980s foreign what do people remember they remember the economic Miracle they don't remember forced labored is there real compensation for stealing your entire life murdering your entire family no there is no such thing the end of 1944 in both the West and East Germany's enemies continued to advance the war was lost yet Hitler's vermarked fought docketedly on the SS began to disband the concentration camps for the prisoners who'd managed to survive the horror continued the people in the camps are being brought closer into the interior of the Third Reich many of them are quite unwell quite weak already and so there's a great deal of just death from that people who can't keep up in those marches the stragglers are shot by the guards there's the chaos everywhere that's going on one of the prisoners on the so-called death marches was Nobert vulheim my name is Norbert wilheim born on April 26 1913 in Berlin Germany was a Jew from September 1941 he was a forced laborer in a factory in Berlin in March 1943 he was deported to Auschwitz with his wife Rosa and his three-year-old son Uriel Peter Rosa and Oriole Peter were selected immediately on arrival [Music] [Laughter] the selection process would be that generally that there would be a physician from the Camp staff at the arrival ramp and that person would know how many workers do we need today and the trains would arrive and they would then by looking at someone decide are you going to work are you going to be killed [Music] this was the moment when when I was separated from my wife and my child and this is where my wife then said well this is the moment I was will be I was afraid of as long as we were together and show enough this was the last day I have seen her and my child [Music] Robert walheim was moved to Auschwitz monovitz with thousands of other people this was a new part of the Auschwitz Camp complex where prisoners were put to work producing synthetic rubber for IG farben those who perform forced labor then can go through a subsequent selection processes and because every day in the morning in the evening there's a roll call and every day you see who's weak and who's sick and who can't do this and who didn't show up because they couldn't get out of their bunk because they're sick and those people are then also selected to be murdered 25 000 prisoners died at the IG farben construction site IG farben was a conglomerate of different German chemical companies Norbert volheim worked as a welder you are really a slave you were rented out by the SS to idifarm I was therefore a slave working for the benefit of the SS for IG from and I was aware of the fact that I was allowed to live only as long as I as I was able to do this kind of work the moment I became weak or the moment I would I would contract any any illness and so that was the end in early 1945 nearly 70 000 prisoners from Auschwitz were driven westwards in total up to 250 000 people died on the death marches many of them Jews it was mass murder on the roads in Cold Blood acting on orders for the Germans the only way to remove the threat supposedly posed by these dangerous people was to kill them even at the risk of being caught by the Americans and put on trial afterwards on the other hand people believed Nazi propaganda and said if this war is lost everyone will die anyway so why not take one of the enemy with me when I go and see insides the only people the SS left in the camps were those who could no longer walk many of them were so weak that they died in the days after liberation U.S troops forced the population of nearby Weimar to look at the corpses in Brooklyn concentration camp many Germans later claimed that they had known nothing of the crimes that were committed get the half-starving prisoners were often marched right through the towns to their place of work for years on end [Music] navigation from Ukraine spent the final months of the war in State team for years she has campaigned to make sure that the forced laborers are not forgotten and has found an ally in Luba danilenko I feel guilty because I forgot you've turned 90. the don't look at it was 13 when she was forced to travel to Germany with her aunt on foot through the decimated Ukraine the people had been strung up I don't know who they were or why they had been hanged my aunt tied a cloth over my eyes but I could see their feet I'll never forget that the visitors was made to work as a forced laborer in Statin digging tunnels around two and a half million civilians from the Soviet Union shared a similar fate half of them were women and many of them were children [Music] thank you her fellow Countryman Mikhail bochkareth a Red Army soldier was captured in 1941 age 19 he volunteered for the Red Army for the artillery he was wounded taken prisoner tortured and finally sent to buchenvault concentration camp us we were unloaded in front of an iron gate it bore the inscription they translated it for us into Russian each to his own as pictures after Liberation showed became a camp of the Living Dead was put to work building an armaments Factory the death rate at construction projects like this was extremely high also because the SS systematically starved the forced laborers why that's for Virginia later after Liberation I'm moving forward a bit now we discovered that the Russians at Buchan Vault had been calculated to allow a normal healthy person to work for eight to nine months no longer than that gradually the body became emaciated and turned into a cups into skin and bones this is because Soviet prisoners of War were regarded as enemies at the end of the war they were in a situation that amounted to annihilation many concentration camps were located close to armaments factories as a result they became a target for Allied bombers in August 1944 buchenwald was hit ler and a bomb hit almost exactly the place where I had been until the attack the man Sheltering there I remember him well was blown to Pieces but I survived foreign the bombs were followed by the next horror concentration camp prisoners could now be dangerous Witnesses against the SS many were murdered shortly before liberation and Hitler's Reich continued to shrink hundreds of thousands of forced laborers were moved into the interior of the country there was no longer any work for prisoners or for civilian forced laborers ultimately the risk of becoming the victim of ill treatment or the victim of murder increased almost daily until Liberation finally came before Young um we should never forget that a majority of the forced laborers who were killed in the territory of the Reich were in fact murdered only in the final weeks or months of the wars it's it's a desperate period in in the third right and so this reflects the chaos and Desperation of the period and it becomes murderous Ansberg forest in the zoellent region in March 1945 U.S troops Advanced towards the center of Germany meeting Little Resistance [Music] thousands of forced laborers left to fend for themselves were also wandering through the countryside there was total chaos in this region in March 1945 thousands of people were marching through here in just a few days so to lessen the pressure SS group leader Hans kamler decided the numbers of forced laborers should in his words be decimated between the 20th and the 23rd of March 1945 more than 200 forced laborers were murdered by the wehrmacht and the SS with the prospect of Liberation just Round the Corner year two the U.S army forced the local residents to come and look at the bodies [Music] fanelusa was 15 years old then precisely these people who were away from home anyway and who had hardly anything to drink and nothing to eat and then to be killed in such a horrible Causeway as they were up there you just can't imagine it you can't forget it that image would stay with me forever the victims included two children I was ashamed what else can I say massacres such as these took place everywhere in Germany historians estimate that there were about 400 internals with thousands if not tens of thousands of activities overall about 2.7 million forced laborers were killed most of them were Soviet prisoners of War concentration camp prisoners and arbites uden or work Jews as well as civilians who had been taken from their homes 2.7 million dead this is a population on average between 20 and 40 years old in other words an edge where the chances of survival are normally very very high West Housing Cemetery in Frankfurt and mine over four and a half thousand Italian soldiers are buried here in 1943 Italy left the alliance with Hitler's right more than six hundred thousand Italians were then brought to Germany as forced laborers one of them was Dante Dante he arrived in Germany in 1943. a year later he was dead in October 2019 his niece Lorena and his great nephew Andrea transferred his remains to Italy [Laughter] this is certainly a sad moment because here my great uncle is being exhumed at the same time it is a moment of Joy because now he can finally return to his home Village to his family and his own Brothers in the family room born in 1919 Dante Dante volunteered for the mountain Corps at the start of the war [Music] another four Japanese he was Sanctified in Tirana in Albania in Albania for three years Benito Mussolini's forces had been fighting alongside Hitler's then Mussolini was toppled and Italy signed a truce with the Allies the German Vermont imprisoned thousands of Italian soldiers who until then had been fighting on the same side they became Italian military internees with no rights after being captured my great uncle was only identified by a number he was no longer a Dante Dante but prisoner 67052 the Italians were not considered prisoners of War for this reason Germany was also allowed to put them to work in the armaments industry comrades in arms had now become despised Enemy at the Italian military the Italian military internees were treated badly as traitors and they were given very little to eat they recorded as being extremely thin at the end of the war they weighed just 40 or 50 kilos Dante Dante was made to work for a mechanical engineering company in ludwigshafen on July the 22nd 1944 he was killed in a U.S air raid forced laborers were not allowed into the air raid shelters used by Germans [Music] are from Kiev experienced her first air raid when she was 13. the Germans locked us in a wagon a cattle wagon fairy but they themselves fled and the guards ran away and we survived everything that happened yes well can you imagine what 2 000 planes flying towards Berlin sounded like At first we screamed and then we just sat there and nothing more but we were not here [Music] was adopted as a young girl by her aunt Lena and her husband Marcel who like nastiesta were forced laborers in Statin in 1945. there are no photos or documents relating to najesda from this period a workbook for foreigners she's only mentioned in her adoptive father's workbook her name is not given with one child that's me do they have no children of Their Own no her real father had been a victim of Stalin's terror her mother was in a Soviet prison in Germany was forced to toil in a quarry until her German employer valtter cook wanted her to work in his private household he could see that we were suffering terribly in the campus that it was very difficult for us it was murderous work we were exhausted we were fed very badly it was after all just before the end of the war [Music] at the end of April 1945 statine was liberated by the Red Army and her adoptive parents moved to Poland the homeland of her adoptive father for a long time the full extent of the suffering caused by the Nazi policy of forced labor was suppressed in Germany even allowing for one and a half million possibly double counted at least 13 million civilians captured soldiers and concentration camp prisoners were forced to work for the Germans bitter irony was that through their work they prolonged the war the German war effort could not have lasted as long as it did without the work of the forced laborers they were a crucial part of the workforce in industry in agriculture across the board that enabled Germany to fight as long as it did May 1945 Berlin was taken Hitler was dead and the war was nearly at an end foreign millions of forced laborers were still in Germany now they no longer feared for their lives but they still faced hunger and other difficulties [Music] that there was looting too although you have to say that pretty much everyone looted after being liberated how else could they get by the Germans are saluted it was the only way to get food or clothing the forced laborers became displaced persons the Victorious powers and Aid organizations helped them return to their home countries Millions were registered cared for and allocated transportation [Music] [Music] Joy on the return home to France for forced laborers from Western Europe the period of suffering came to an end [Music] but that was not the case for those returning to the Soviet Union they were received with suspicion by Stalin's authorities [Music] just since they were collaborators they were people who had worked for the Germans who were not regarded as victims but as potential enemies of the Soviet States [Music] foreign I never made it a secret that I had been a prisoner of war and that was probably also the reason why no one took me on not only in the depot but also in factories numbers 163 and 7 40. I wanted to die the fate of this former Railway worker was shared by millions of Soviet citizens I couldn't understand it there the SS needed me I was put in a concentration camp but here back with my own government I was useless and was not allowed to work married his teenage sweetheart started a family and in 2001 received compensation from Germany for the time he spent in the concentration camp anyone who surrendered with a weapon in their hand was seen as a traitor that's why these people were subjected to extremely stringent monitoring they included officers who were prisoners of War for example many of them ended up in the Gula and Stalin's camps the Eastern workers the Hostile biter were also interrogated the Communists called this filtration [Music] stayed in Poland with her adoptive parents until 1948. she then returned to Ukraine to her birth mother it was a difficult life her mother had been a prisoner in Stalin's re-education camps while her daughter was a former forced laborer in hated Germany he yeah yeah somehow I always felt uncomfortable about the fact that I had been in Germany because people always said very bad things about the girls who had been in Germany even though I was a bit younger than they were mentioned yeah and some of it also stuck with me I find it hard to talk about it thank you now Jester was branded to the daughter of an enemy of the people even so she succeeded in obtaining a doctoral degree she married and had two daughters as a pensioner she works for an organization supporting victims of the Nazi regime and founded A Center for Women traumatized by totalitarian regimes I want to say this the generation that had to suffer all of this can't separate them it wasn't just Germany we this generation are the victims of two totalitarian regimes my generation [Music] not all the former forced laborers were able to return home in 1945. three years after the end of the war nearly half a million were still living in Germany most of them were Jews they found themselves facing a new reality and that is that their homes had been murdered not just the physical people that much of their family has gone and their friends are gone but what they conceptually saw of his home is gone is an ocean of blood many Jews had to live in camps again they were not prisoners but it was not clear where they would live in the future Germany was divided into four zones of occupation and de-notsified German Society the economy and the judicial system the press and the political system were to be freed of national socialism and militarism in November 1945 the trial began in Nuremberg of the men known as the principal war criminals of the 24 defendants 12 were sentenced to death they included Fritz salkul responsible for the exploitation of millions of forced laborers his biggest customer Albert Speer the most powerful Nazi armaments Minister received only 20 years imprisonment for many Germans the issue of guilt had been taken care of man Mart it was made very very easy by very narrowly defining the group of people who were guilty and it was very easy for people to claim that basically they themselves were victims victims of the war the victims of alleged arbitrary treatment by the Victorious allies the victims of flight and expulsion and the victims of the air War um foreign [Music] suppress deny considering the crimes that were committed against forced laborers the majority of beneficiaries Got Away scot-free Farmers businessmen officials Tradesmen hardly any of the Germans who forced others to work for them were called to account [Music] the crime of forced labor has never been the subject of a proper legal process only a few major industrialists were brought to trial some former Nazi directors including the management of IG falban were found guilty of using forced laborers however all of them like Alfred cupp for example were soon released early release or Rehabilitation of war criminals at every level meant that no one was forced to confront their own guilts and in principle they were also given carte blanche in society since they had atoned for their guilt if indeed they had been guilty in the first place the majority of Germans regarded themselves as victims victims of the bombing raids of expulsion of the cruelty of the victors indeed most Germans did suffer hardship in their everyday lives in the Years immediately after the war the German economy also appeared to have been raised to the ground of course there was a lot of Destruction but it's incredible how much of the German economy was not only left intact in 1945 but how much it had grown compared to 1939 or even 1936 these were very impressive figures and results the pressure to produce ever more and better weapons had led to a modernization drive in industry forced laborers and lucrative Armament contracts made many companies rich in 1945 mining irons steel and mechanical engineering companies had assets worth 20 more in the west and 50 percent more in the East than before the war the German economy was one of the most modern in the world not only during the war but also quite soon after the war many things had been hidden away many industrial facilities had survived the bombing raids in bunkers and underground tunnels and were ready for use in rebuilding Germany after the war the Victorious allies split into two groups separated by what became known as the Iron Curtain Germany was divided and both sides had problems dealing with their responsibility for the injustices of the Nazi era the German Democratic Republic in the East regarded itself as being anti-fascist per se old Nazis were only to be found in the West the conflict between East and West encouraged the desire to forget what had happened on both sides of the new border at first the perpetrators the bystanders and the beneficiaries all found an excellent place to hide in the shadow of the border to a certain extent they became invisible but the victims of forced labor were also unseen the millions of forced laborers and the Holocaust Survivors who played no role in public discourse during the 1950s in the German Democratic Republic the possibility of paying compensation to forced laborers was never discussed Republic the question of compensation was simply deferred this was an achievement of the adenawa government with the London agreement on German external debts the agreement stated that compensation only needed to be paid after a reunified Germany had signed a peace treaty what suited the politicians suited German business as well well basically the London debt agreement neatly allowed German industry to evade responsibility by stating that the final question of compensation and reparations would be linked to a peace treaty so in effect the whole issue was put off for Evan today in 1953 it was entirely clear that in light of the Cold War there would be no peace treaty for a very long time even so Norbert vulheim the Jewish forced laborer who had survived Auschwitz pressed charges against IG farben and demanded compensation for his suffering as well as the wages that he had not been paid at first he was offered 10 000 Deutsche marks in the German papers there was an old cry even the headlines that I'm endangering German industry because not only I.T farmer had taken a taken slave labor but also crop and the others and that say this IG farben took the case further and the ensuing legal battle went on for years the chemical giant refused to admit any responsibility whether it's IGA farben or crook or anybody else they know they know what's going on and certainly by 1942 they have a very good idea that these people are being killed systematically and the ones who no longer can work for them the next stop is a murder station they know that very well finally both sides agreed to a settlement around 6 000 Jewish survivors and several hundred non-jews received a maximum payment of 5 000 Deutsche marks for the horrors that they had endured IG farben paid 30 million Deutsche marks into a fund and in return was protected against further legal claims [Music] I wonder is here in fact this is typical to the extent that here is later on German industry managed to avoid making any admission of guilt while at the same time acknowledging to a certain degree in a legally binding manner that compensation must be paid Norbert vulheim's case led to the first large-scale compensation payment to former slave laborers who worked for the Nazi regime bolheim immigrated to the USA and died in New York in 1998. there are almost no other comparable success stories only in rare cases has the Jewish claims conference succeeded in winning compensation for Jewish forced laborers and usually only when the German companies see a risk to their business interests in the USA only to do what couldn't be avoided it was absolutely no empathy with the victims and no recognition of the part that they the companies had played with regard to this issue nor any admission that Nazi forced labor was a crime and that the victims must be compensated accordingly May 2020 Ansberg Forest archaeologists are searching for the memorial stone at the site of the massacre of over 200 forced laborers in 1964 the Obelisk was secretly removed the Obelisk was erected in 1945 on the orders of the Allies it contained a very clear inscription stating that here people were murdered in a bestial fashion by fascists naturally the subset people particularly during the 50s and 60s when they wanted to forget about their time the Germans were busy rebuilding the country judicial proceedings against Nazi criminals remained the exception one of the few trials took place in arnsberg the charge was the murder of 208 forced laborers in 1945. one of the main defendants was a former captain and Son of an industrialist ANS Moritz kloner who had participated in the murder without being officially ordered to do so he appeared at the trial just after having an operation foreign [Music] most of them had very good positions in society as public officials or teachers they were highly regarded citizens and Clinic was the local shooting champion foreign [Music] [Music] if you read the Judgment you see a great deal of Sympathy for the perpetrators but not for the victims they were of no interest there's also a great deal of allowance for the security situation and the shortage of food to the perpetrators faced it was not until 2020 that the memorial stone to the victims saw the light of day again unknown persons had toppled it with a heavy Implement and buried it [Music] hardly anyone wants to face it and yet forced labor was the most publicly visible crime of the Nazi era it caused the deaths of 2.7 million people many of the survivors suffered for decades afterwards most died without ever hearing an apology or receiving compensation [Music] then the Iron Curtain fell Germany was reunited no mention was made of a peace treaty since that could lead to payment of outstanding reparations and demands for compensation for that reason the reunification was regulated through the two plus four agreement formerly the rules still applied compensation and reparations were deferred until goodness knows when and with the two plus four agreement they had in effect been buried forever That was supposed to be the end of it but then the Jewish claims conference brought up the subject again saying well actually the two plus four agreement is a bit like a peace treaty so we'd like to talk about the issue of restitution again from the mid-1990s a series of class actions were raised in the USA against German companies there was a lot of money at stake for some of the companies that earned a lot from Forced labor be accused were a who's who of the German economy as well as financial compensation the victims wanted one thing above all an acknowledgment of guilt and responsibility some companies began to examine the part they had played during the Nazi era others continued to procrastinate on behalf of the attorneys in the USA story and Thomas kucinski researched how much money had not been paid in wages to the former forced laborers instead of calculating what the individual Survivor should receive I worked backwards what did the forced laborers contribute to galasted the result 64 billion working hours were contributed by forced laborers during the Nazi period the employers paid only about half of what German Workers received therefore a total of 20.5 billion rice Mark remained unpaid to the forced laborers according to kuchinsky in 1999 that was the equivalent of 180 billion Deutsche marks that was the amount due as compensation for wages not received [Music] dear is this approach was never really implemented this is here the point was that this was not just a simple compensation issues everybody knew it was about the company's obligation to pay the film the German side refused to acknowledge that obligation in the USA the pressure on Germany was increased with campaigns legal action and legislation yet the German federal government and Industry refused to cooperate finally a compromise was negotiated compensation would be paid but only under one condition it became clear that it would be impossible to avoid paying compensation German industry had one main goal namely that there would be legal Indemnity and that with this one-off ruling no more demands could ever be made in 1999 more than four decades after the end of the war German and U.S government officials victims groups attorneys and Industry Representatives haggled over the amount of compensation to be paid major groups of victims such as prisoners of War were excluded right from the start ultimately the only thing that mattered was money would have been too expensive they didn't want to have to pay money to them as well there is some money given and a feeling that of trying to make it okay but but there's so much more to it and there is so much suffering and things that you really can't be compensated for this is it was a laughable gesture that caused nothing really nothing even if it had been 10 billion minutes that was nothing compared to what was really old in August 2000 the bundestag in Berlin founded the remembrance responsibility and Future Foundation compensation payments were processed via this Foundation the work performed by the forced laborers would have been worth 180 billion Deutsche marks in the end just 10 billion was paid in return the USA waived reparation payments U.S attorneys dropped their class actions and the German economy gained legal indemnity and here's some kind of a you know a dirty deal will give you what you want but then that's it you can't come back anymore and that's painful that's painful because it's not a business deal it's a moral issue it's a question of what is right and what is wrong the German federal government and the German economy each paid 5 billion Deutsche marks into the compensation fund the money was distributed according to an agreed set of rules prisoners of War Italian military internees and domestic workers in private homes received nothing forced laborers who worked in agriculture only received money if funds were still available forced laborers who had survived the concentration camps and who were still alive received a maximum of 7 700 euros [Music] Otto Rosenberg asinto from Berlin was forced to work for the Nazis for six years and survived numerous concentration camps including Auschwitz buchenwald and middlebaldora after the war he fought for acknowledgment of the crimes committed by the Nazis and finally had to Grapple with German bureaucracy his daughter Petra Rosenberg helped him with the application process or some questions were absurd did you perform forced labor everyone had to work it wasn't a sanatorium the Nazis murdered around 500 000 so-called gypsies Otto Rosenberg lost almost his entire family at age 74 he applied for compensation I can still remember that I submitted the application in Spring 2001 and my father died at the beginning of July 2001 there was a compensatory payment but he never actually received it so many died before they got anything and then yeah one could say that what they got in the end was not enough to to to make any sort of recompense for the life uh chances and they that they'd lost and the Damage that you've been done to them too little too late but better than nothing following their return Soviet prisoners of War were regarded as traitors rather than victims for them the compensation was of particular significance for them it was not so much of material value but above all of moral value it was a recognition of the fact that they had been victims of this war but on the other hand particularly for those who didn't receive compensation the wound was twice as deep because the lack of compensation was forever connected to the failure to recognize them as victims of national socialism this applied in particular to over 5 million Soviet prisoners of War it was not until 2015 that 4 000 of them received compensation of 2 500 euros more than 20 million people worked as forced laborers for Germany during the Nazi era fewer than 1.7 million received compensation over 90 percent got nothing in reality the entire so-called compensation procedure of the early 2000s should be regarded as broken Justice [Music] Autumn 2019 the small town of magliano in Tuscany from here Dante Dante left to join the war he died in German captivity 75 years later his remains were returned to their final resting place the mayor a former member of the mountain Corps and members of his family paid their final respects no one here knew him personally after the war his siblings didn't talk about him much because it was a very sad painful memory yet even though not much was said about him the connection to their lost brother was very strong dunta's brother Roberto even named his son after him the family paid 2 200 Euros for the transfer of Dante Dante's remains they received no support from Germany [Music] VA campaigned for the issue of forced labor to be reappraised and together with others erected this Monument she received compensation totaling 5 500 Deutsche marks [Music] the moisture I was very glad when I was able to buy a computer with my daughter Elena's husband he's an architect and why did we need a computer to produce books together we have written five books the memories of more than a thousand forced laborers have passed through that computer foreign anything [Music] is there real compensation for stealing your entire life and murdering your entire family no there is no such thing is there a sincere effort can there be to compensate as much as you possibly can knowing that there's always a gap that is possible have we reached that not yet [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: criminals and crime fighters

Views: 266,080

Keywords: Antisemitism, Jews, Jewish people, germany, nationalism, full documentaries, documentaries, history documentary, history, nazi, nazi documentary, nazis in germany, nazi history, nazi hitler, germany nazis, nazi members, history nazi, third reich, facism, pogromnacht, rise of the nazis, nazis ww2, nazis world war 2, nsdap doku, NSDAP, hitlers slaves, forced labor, germany forced labor, labor camp germany, ww2, holocaust, shoah, holocaust documentary, concentration camp, nazi holocaust

Id: 2C1_porBkuM

Length: 52min 30sec (3150 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 30 2022