The Unbearable Lightness of Being a Nazi (2008)

these are the men and women who ran auschwitz a hell on earth the most notorious death camp the world has ever known [Music] the photographs were taken at a nearby resort in the summer of 1944 when the slaughter was at its height this was the summer that confirmed auschwitz's place in the annals of evil [Music] you know you look at these pictures they look almost like normal people they are they're devils there's something in human flesh because how you could sit there and know what's happening to people there and enjoy [Music] december 2006 i received a letter in the mail this gentleman who requested to remain anonymous wrote to the museum and said that he had world war ii era photographs in his possession that he thought we might be interested in he believed the pictures and he wrote in this letter that he believed the pictures to be taken in and around auschwitz poland i was quite doubtful of this actually because very few people actually have photographs of auschwitz as ever i requested more information from him and he said can i can i just send you the album that i have and i said sure so the beginning of january 2007 an album arrived on my desk federal express and i opened it up and and there was a photograph album clearly marked auschwitz 21 june 1944. [Music] it was found in germany at the end of the war by an american soldier [Music] the album belonged to karl hooker adjutant to the commander of auschwitz his job was to know everything before the commandant did and to make sure that things ran smoothly for his boss the other jobs he had was he supervised a team of women known as health varian and they were the telecommunications specialists they were in charge of all communications inside and out of the camp so every time a transport came in a group of jews came in on a train they would be in charge of saying this many people came in this number was selected for forced labor and this number was selected for the gas chambers and he would sign off on that before it was telegramed to berlin so he absolutely knew everything that was going on [Music] i think the most chilling thing is the time period that this is taken these are not random officers who are at this resort this is the peak this is the the a team this is people who were brought in specifically for the summer of 1944. by this point at least in terms of beer canal's killing capacity it reached its apex and the killing capacity was so expanded [Music] that for body disposal they were beginning to use open pit cremation beyond the crematories [Music] in those photographs i recognize dr joseph mengele and so once we saw him then we knew the album was was truly something really special because as we knew there there weren't any supposedly any photographs of mengele taken in the camp mengele known as the angel of death conducted heinous medical experiments on women and children [Music] in perhaps the most remarkable photograph in the album here he stands amidst a gallery of leading nazi killers at a sing-along [Music] now the front row of the album to me is the most interesting because it it's the hierarchy but they're all in a row they're all lined up they're all smiling and laughing um at the sing-along i mean at the end of one of the most horrific periods of murder in in one place in human history it's it's astonishing the photograph [Music] uh besides joseph mangala whose face is quite well known probably the most important person that i recognized was woodalf huss who was the founder of auschwitz as a concentration camp think 13 and 26 june a year after first viewing them researchers at the holocaust memorial museum are still finding new clues in these rare photographs and look at this guy isn't that inaudible cap off and i think you're right not long after this picture was taken regina spiegel an 18 year old polish jew was deported to auschwitz all these wrinkles all day doesn't even nice to the to the to the tattoos it was like it looked to me like a fountain pen you know and it and they just jumped it out and whatever and sometimes people would ask me did it hurt i said this was the least of our problem we had other problems this was the least of our problems [Music] there were no sing-alongs in regina's world only a deep dark abyss from which she thought she'd never emerge [Music] just how dark that abyss was can be seen in the only other auschwitz album known to exist the lily jacob album was named after the woman who discovered the photographs including this one of her younger brothers murdered a short time later it's really impossible to look at one without really looking at the other and this is what was actually going on in auschwitz this is the reality of the situation not [Music] not this world of fun in a remarkable coincidence the photographs in both albums [Music] were taken at the same time that album was created by the ss for ss purposes it was created to presumably to document what a selection process looked like from the from the beginning until just to the anti-chamber of the gas chambers [Music] between the middle of may and the beginning of july 1944 [Music] 437 000 hungarian jews were sent to auschwitz 80 percent were selected for death upon arrival these women and children unbeknown to them are taking their last steps towards the gas chambers when they told us to go into the showers [Music] that so helped god like i would never forget i was the first time that i pushed myself in because i figured maybe they are burning us off again mother will do it to me first so i don't hear anybody else scream and i of course i came out wet minus my hair and of course that's when they put my number on but that was auschwitz for me [Music] i really think that the album in the coming years will be of great interest to people who study the psychology of genocide and the psychology of perpetrators because it it's really astonishing that they can do this you know the blueberry pictures in particular those pictures were taken on a day where transports were coming into auschwitz 20 miles away and people are pretending to cry in these images that they don't have any more blueberries to eat i mean the duality of this of this is astonishing so i think the album also raises questions of bystander you know are these girls as guilty as the people putting the zyklon b in the gas chamber i mean they're at auschwitz they know what's going on what where does guilt fall the images seared into regina's mind are of the family friends and neighbors these men sent to their deaths i could see their haunted faces and you know it's a funny thing when they took him away they didn't begging them for mercy because they knew there was no mercy but they turned out to us when we were still standing on disappearance please remember us [Music] remember us because nobody likes to go on to oblivion not to be remembered [Music] and that's one of the things that's that's really difficult about this album and raises so many questions because they don't look evil in this album they look like normal people like you and i and and that how how does a person get to that point where um that mass killing is is socially acceptable and and morally acceptable to a person it's it's very difficult and i think that this album you know just raises that question even more than than it's already been raised by the holocaust itself you

Channel: Journeyman Pictures

Views: 7,815,547

Keywords: journeyman pictures, news, current affairs, world news, documentary, nazi, holocaust, auschwitz, Josef Mengele, extermination, hitler, ww2, world war 2, Winston Churchill, archive footage, news report, historical, history

Id: jUvcmGbtHWA

Length: 10min 13sec (613 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 07 2016