WORLD HISTORY : AUSCHWITZ: THE FORGOTTEN EVIDENCE
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Auschwitz: The Forgotten Evidence
About The Programme
This programme is a controversial reassessment of the Holocaust. Did the Allies know more than they liked to admit about the Nazi factories of death? Could they have done more to stop the horrors?
The Nazi extermination camps at Auschwitz in Poland were captured in extraordinary detail in aerial photographs. Bizarrely, the photographs were taken purely by accident. The site of the Auschwitz-Birkenau was only 8km from an oil and rubber plant – priority targets for Allied bombers.
The aerial photographs captured the horrors of Auschwitz including the gas chamber, the crematorium and the commandants quarters. From these photos it’s possible to see how the SS organised this factory of death, murdering over 12,000 people every day.
The film raises some disquieting questions. If Allied aircraft could photograph the concentration camps, why did they not destroy them?
Symbol Of The Holocaust
At the time these photographs were taken, the Allies knew that Auschwitz was more than just a slave labour camp. Winston Churchill, on hearing of these mass murder camps, called Auschwitz ‘probably the greatest and most horrible crime ever committed in the whole history of the world.’
He urged that the RAF bomb the camp, but this was never carried out. It would be four months from the time the photographs were taken until Auschwitz was liberated by the Soviet army in January 10945. In that time, thousands of Jews, gypsies, gay men and political activists were killed.
Auschwitz is the largest single site of the mass murders committed during World War II. According to Jonathan Webber, vice-chairman of the Institute for Polish-Jewish Studies (Oxford), it is the largest cemetery in the world.
Should Auschwitz Be Preserved?
Ernst Michel spent almost two years at Auschwitz and has raised millions to help preserve the concentration camp where he was prisoner number 104955. Michel says he is not in favour of beautifying the camp but preserving it as a reminder of what happened there.
In 1947, Poland passed a law declaring that Auschwitz needed to be preserved forever. The museum here has a staff of 200 people, including historians and researchers who have published over 400 titles in different languages.
Today, half a million people visit the former concentration camp. But a continuing lack of funds means that the site is falling into disrepair.
One of the most potent displays is in danger of being lost completely. The former barracks known as building No. 4, is a display of thousands of shoes, a stark reminder of how many people were gassed here. These are now rotting and may soon be beyond repair.
Even more graphic are the displays of women’s hair, shorn before they went into the gas chamber. Used as stuffing in German mattresses, the hair is starting to decompose.
Some suggestions include building a structure around the site to protect it from the elements and further damage.
A strong argument in protecting Auschwitz from further decay is that is an international cemetery for people interned here including Jews, gypsies, Poles, Slavs and Russians. As such, it should be preserved as a monument to the crime of genocide.