1 00:00:02,000 --> 00:00:04,800 This programme contains discriminatory language 2 00:00:02,000 --> 00:00:07,000 Downloaded from YTS.MX 3 00:00:04,800 --> 00:00:07,600 and scenes which some viewers may find upsetting from the start. 4 00:00:07,600 --> 00:00:09,920 If I say the word "holocaust", what springs to mind? 5 00:00:08,000 --> 00:00:13,000 Official YIFY movies site: YTS.MX 6 00:00:09,920 --> 00:00:12,240 Imagine something like this. 7 00:00:12,240 --> 00:00:14,520 A concentration camp. 8 00:00:14,520 --> 00:00:16,080 Barbed wire. 9 00:00:16,080 --> 00:00:18,120 Trainloads of victims. 10 00:00:18,120 --> 00:00:20,320 Gas chambers and crematoria. 11 00:00:22,280 --> 00:00:25,760 Places like Auschwitz, and its system of mass murder. 12 00:00:29,680 --> 00:00:32,760 I think most of us assumed that this was always 13 00:00:32,760 --> 00:00:34,640 the pre-determined destination, 14 00:00:34,640 --> 00:00:36,400 designed from the outset in some 15 00:00:36,400 --> 00:00:38,960 great master plan of extermination. 16 00:00:40,160 --> 00:00:42,080 But it wasn't. 17 00:00:42,080 --> 00:00:45,160 There was no master plan for this. 18 00:00:45,160 --> 00:00:48,640 Its origins were chaotic and spontaneous. 19 00:00:55,400 --> 00:00:57,600 And improvised mass executions. 20 00:01:02,760 --> 00:01:06,000 It's believed that more than a million Jews were murdered 21 00:01:06,000 --> 00:01:07,800 in thousands of random killings 22 00:01:07,800 --> 00:01:10,320 that erupted all across Eastern Europe... 23 00:01:12,920 --> 00:01:15,520 ..in a holocaust of bullets. 24 00:01:29,120 --> 00:01:33,400 Largely lost and forgotten for more than 80 years, 25 00:01:33,400 --> 00:01:38,440 this first chapter of the greatest crime in history is now being fully 26 00:01:38,440 --> 00:01:41,080 revealed for the first time, 27 00:01:41,080 --> 00:01:44,000 thanks to newly-discovered aerial photographs, 28 00:01:44,000 --> 00:01:47,520 and advances in forensic detection, 29 00:01:47,520 --> 00:01:49,840 finding lost victims, 30 00:01:49,840 --> 00:01:52,400 uncovering the true scale of the killing. 31 00:01:54,680 --> 00:01:56,960 It began in earnest in the midst of Hitler's invasion 32 00:01:56,960 --> 00:01:59,760 of the Soviet Union in June 1941. 33 00:02:00,800 --> 00:02:03,960 Atrocities grew in scale and savagery. 34 00:02:07,840 --> 00:02:10,000 Until, just six months later, 35 00:02:10,000 --> 00:02:15,120 bullets gave way to gas in the first death camps of the "Final Solution." 36 00:02:19,600 --> 00:02:21,360 My name is James Bulgin. 37 00:02:21,360 --> 00:02:23,920 I'm a historian and Holocaust specialist 38 00:02:23,920 --> 00:02:25,880 at the Imperial War Museum. 39 00:02:26,840 --> 00:02:31,160 And this film tells a story that has never been fully told, 40 00:02:31,160 --> 00:02:36,280 of the crucial six months that ignited the Holocaust. 41 00:02:56,760 --> 00:02:59,360 If you're going to search for the events that started 42 00:02:59,360 --> 00:03:01,680 the Holocaust, Cambridge University Library 43 00:03:01,680 --> 00:03:03,760 might seem a strange place to look. 44 00:03:06,480 --> 00:03:10,160 But a researcher here thinks he can find that start point, 45 00:03:10,160 --> 00:03:14,280 using Second World War aerial archives. 46 00:03:14,280 --> 00:03:16,920 Hi, Chris. Ah, James. How are you? Good to see you. 47 00:03:16,920 --> 00:03:21,840 Good. Right, well, let me show you what we've been putting together. 48 00:03:21,840 --> 00:03:25,480 This is a map of the German reconnaissance and air survey 49 00:03:25,480 --> 00:03:29,520 photography taken during the Second World War. 50 00:03:29,520 --> 00:03:32,600 It represents something like 51 00:03:32,600 --> 00:03:35,880 1.5 million photographs taken 52 00:03:35,880 --> 00:03:37,520 by the Germans, primarily 53 00:03:37,520 --> 00:03:39,640 over Central and Eastern Europe. 54 00:03:39,640 --> 00:03:42,040 But if we're looking for the ramshackle beginnings 55 00:03:42,040 --> 00:03:43,640 of the Holocaust, as it were, 56 00:03:43,640 --> 00:03:47,680 the sort of ad hoc, the start of it all, 57 00:03:47,680 --> 00:03:51,520 one of the things that's really clear with air photography 58 00:03:51,520 --> 00:03:55,560 is that almost every action leaves a trace. 59 00:03:55,560 --> 00:03:58,000 So they were capturing the evidence of their own crimes. 60 00:03:58,000 --> 00:04:00,560 They were photographing the evidence of their own crimes. 61 00:04:00,560 --> 00:04:04,960 And there's a good example of this. Possibly... 62 00:04:04,960 --> 00:04:09,600 To me, this is the beginning of the entire sort of horrific process. 63 00:04:09,600 --> 00:04:11,800 This is Gargzdai in Lithuania. 64 00:04:11,800 --> 00:04:15,440 It's literally a stone's throw from the German border... 65 00:04:15,440 --> 00:04:17,880 That's the border here? ..which is running there. 66 00:04:17,880 --> 00:04:19,920 Proper border town. A proper border town. 67 00:04:19,920 --> 00:04:23,160 And this is a village where the Jewish inhabitants... 68 00:04:23,160 --> 00:04:27,680 It was about 20%, 30% Jewish before the war. 69 00:04:27,680 --> 00:04:30,360 ..they would have lived in the houses of 70 00:04:30,360 --> 00:04:32,360 the two Jewish streets here, 71 00:04:32,360 --> 00:04:34,560 and the synagogue was here. 72 00:04:34,560 --> 00:04:38,840 And on the 22nd of June, 1941, 73 00:04:38,840 --> 00:04:41,320 of course, the Germans pushed east. 74 00:04:41,320 --> 00:04:47,080 And within literally 24 hours of coming over the border, 75 00:04:47,080 --> 00:04:49,320 the Germans had destroyed the houses. 76 00:04:49,320 --> 00:04:53,160 And if you look, you can see this whole area here 77 00:04:53,160 --> 00:04:54,600 was burned during that day. 78 00:04:54,600 --> 00:04:57,680 It's so striking to me that these forces come through here 79 00:04:57,680 --> 00:04:59,800 from this direction. And, I mean, literally, what, 80 00:04:59,800 --> 00:05:02,520 within a few hundred metres of the German border? 81 00:05:02,520 --> 00:05:06,760 They come through and they... This this, this incident happens here, 82 00:05:06,760 --> 00:05:08,800 so quickly, so soon, so close. 83 00:05:08,800 --> 00:05:11,480 Absolutely. Well, look at this. 84 00:05:11,480 --> 00:05:16,600 If you look here, you can just see a slight linear feature there. Yep. 85 00:05:16,600 --> 00:05:20,440 You can see it more clearly in this other photograph, 86 00:05:20,440 --> 00:05:22,560 which picks it out in snow. 87 00:05:22,560 --> 00:05:24,720 And you can see it just there. 88 00:05:26,160 --> 00:05:29,000 It's not part of the agricultural landscape. It's not a path. 89 00:05:29,000 --> 00:05:30,720 I think this is a trench. 90 00:05:30,720 --> 00:05:34,840 We have a certain amount of sort of testimony from the time, to sort of 91 00:05:34,840 --> 00:05:38,240 indicate that this is precisely where the Jewish men 92 00:05:38,240 --> 00:05:42,880 had been marched up the street in which they had lived, 93 00:05:42,880 --> 00:05:46,800 and were then shot to death and buried in that trench. 94 00:05:48,120 --> 00:05:52,360 So I've been...I've been...I've been circling this question. 95 00:05:52,360 --> 00:05:56,760 How do we get to this huge, vast, catastrophic act 96 00:05:56,760 --> 00:05:59,960 of mass violence and mass murder? 97 00:05:59,960 --> 00:06:02,960 And it's possible, likely 98 00:06:02,960 --> 00:06:05,560 that this is where it began. 99 00:06:05,560 --> 00:06:06,960 It's very likely. 100 00:06:09,280 --> 00:06:12,720 If Chris has found a possible start point for the Holocaust, 101 00:06:12,720 --> 00:06:16,920 why is it in the Soviet Union, as late as 1941? 102 00:06:23,160 --> 00:06:28,000 Hitler had always envisaged a world free of his two great enemies - 103 00:06:28,000 --> 00:06:30,440 Jews and Communists. 104 00:06:35,840 --> 00:06:40,120 By 1940, he had conquered half of Europe and had millions of Jews 105 00:06:40,120 --> 00:06:42,280 rounded up and put in ghettos. 106 00:06:44,000 --> 00:06:47,880 His intention had always been to get rid of them entirely, 107 00:06:47,880 --> 00:06:51,360 but there was no concrete plan for how to do it. 108 00:06:52,760 --> 00:06:58,000 Then, in June 1941, he set out to destroy his other great enemy. 109 00:07:00,240 --> 00:07:01,720 Bolshevik communism. 110 00:07:11,760 --> 00:07:16,720 Hitler had always branded communism a Jewish conspiracy. 111 00:07:16,720 --> 00:07:20,840 So his invasion of the Soviet Union offered the perfect opportunity 112 00:07:20,840 --> 00:07:23,560 to target both enemies at once. 113 00:07:26,360 --> 00:07:31,080 Gargzdai, on the border of Soviet Lithuania and Nazi Germany, 114 00:07:31,080 --> 00:07:34,440 was right on the front line of that invasion. 115 00:07:42,240 --> 00:07:45,720 The Wehrmacht, as they swept into this whole area, were charged 116 00:07:45,720 --> 00:07:49,280 with this instruction from Hitler and the commanders of the army 117 00:07:49,280 --> 00:07:51,040 that this was a war of annihilation. 118 00:07:51,040 --> 00:07:54,320 They were coming through this space to decimate it. 119 00:07:57,440 --> 00:08:00,320 The order was for communism to be eradicated. 120 00:08:05,040 --> 00:08:08,320 No specific order was given to kill Jews. 121 00:08:11,000 --> 00:08:13,520 Yet, there is a monument here in Gargzdai, 122 00:08:13,520 --> 00:08:16,680 exactly where Chris's photos showed a trench. 123 00:08:23,160 --> 00:08:26,680 So, on the 24th of June, two days after the German invasion 124 00:08:26,680 --> 00:08:28,240 of the Soviet Union, 125 00:08:28,240 --> 00:08:31,120 the commander in this area, a man whose name was Bormann, 126 00:08:31,120 --> 00:08:33,800 instructed that 200 Jews should be rounded up 127 00:08:33,800 --> 00:08:36,040 and that they should be brought here... 128 00:08:37,320 --> 00:08:39,480 ..and they should be shot. 129 00:08:39,480 --> 00:08:42,880 I tend to think of military orders within the German army 130 00:08:42,880 --> 00:08:44,760 at this period as all coming from the top. 131 00:08:44,760 --> 00:08:47,720 The people at the top telling the people on the ground what to do. 132 00:08:47,720 --> 00:08:49,320 But that's not what happens here. 133 00:08:49,320 --> 00:08:52,320 And that's really important, because actually what happens 134 00:08:52,320 --> 00:08:55,520 is people on the ground, like Bormann, take their own initiative. 135 00:08:55,520 --> 00:08:58,680 Hitler has always wanted to remove Jews from Europe, 136 00:08:58,680 --> 00:09:01,520 and here these men take the initiative to interpret 137 00:09:01,520 --> 00:09:04,200 that in the most radical way possible, to interpret 138 00:09:04,200 --> 00:09:07,160 that as an instruction to murder. 139 00:09:09,760 --> 00:09:12,760 And this starts a process of mass murder 140 00:09:12,760 --> 00:09:16,320 that spreads like wildfire across this whole territory. 141 00:09:16,320 --> 00:09:18,000 And the numbers grow, 142 00:09:18,000 --> 00:09:19,760 and they grow and they grow. 143 00:09:22,640 --> 00:09:26,680 Hitler's head of security was SS Chief Heinrich Himmler. 144 00:09:27,880 --> 00:09:31,720 Himmler had created special killing squads, called Einsatzgruppen, 145 00:09:31,720 --> 00:09:34,480 to follow in the wake of the army and eradicate 146 00:09:34,480 --> 00:09:36,440 Hitler's political enemies. 147 00:09:38,800 --> 00:09:42,760 Capitalising on Bormann's initiative, his deputy, Heydrich, 148 00:09:42,760 --> 00:09:44,920 issued an instruction that any Jew 149 00:09:44,920 --> 00:09:47,760 working for the communist state must be shot. 150 00:09:51,280 --> 00:09:54,600 Four Einsatzgruppen teams were ready to carry out that order 151 00:09:54,600 --> 00:09:57,760 across all newly-conquered Soviet territory. 152 00:09:59,400 --> 00:10:03,520 I'm following Einsatzgruppen A from Gargzdai into Latvia, 153 00:10:03,520 --> 00:10:05,280 in a town called Liepaja. 154 00:10:09,240 --> 00:10:14,240 Here, there was another fierce battle for control of the city. 155 00:10:24,600 --> 00:10:28,000 In the aftermath of the battle, the SS Einsatzgruppen 156 00:10:28,000 --> 00:10:30,280 went in search of Hitler's enemies. 157 00:10:31,920 --> 00:10:35,280 And we can see what they did with them, in a unique piece of film 158 00:10:35,280 --> 00:10:37,320 shot by a German serviceman. 159 00:10:40,520 --> 00:10:42,080 In the opening of this film here, 160 00:10:42,080 --> 00:10:44,280 we see a pit - looks to be freshly dug - 161 00:10:44,280 --> 00:10:48,520 and then the Einsatzgruppen soldiers are milling around, waiting. 162 00:10:49,760 --> 00:10:52,800 And there's this really hideous sense of anticipation. 163 00:10:52,800 --> 00:10:54,760 And then we see why. 164 00:10:54,760 --> 00:10:58,560 We see a truck arrive and people being loaded off the back of it. 165 00:10:58,560 --> 00:11:00,040 We can see it's clearly Jews. 166 00:11:00,040 --> 00:11:02,720 We know they're Jews because they're wearing patches 167 00:11:02,720 --> 00:11:05,080 on their front and their back, and the people doing 168 00:11:05,080 --> 00:11:07,520 the shooting are Germans. 169 00:11:07,520 --> 00:11:11,880 But around them, we see spectators around here. 170 00:11:11,880 --> 00:11:14,640 We see members of the Navy here, 171 00:11:14,640 --> 00:11:18,680 military here, and amongst them, just people. 172 00:11:18,680 --> 00:11:20,480 They're there in huge numbers. 173 00:11:20,480 --> 00:11:23,160 They're smoking. They're talking. 174 00:11:23,160 --> 00:11:28,040 They're clamouring to get a closer look to see what's about to happen. 175 00:11:28,040 --> 00:11:30,040 Group after group come, 176 00:11:30,040 --> 00:11:33,000 and the people stay and they watch it. 177 00:11:36,280 --> 00:11:39,600 Here we can see this man just looking into the camera, suggests 178 00:11:39,600 --> 00:11:42,480 that he can see that he's being filmed as this is happening. 179 00:11:42,480 --> 00:11:44,760 He knows that this has been captured 180 00:11:44,760 --> 00:11:47,800 and that people will be watching this moment when he's gone. 181 00:12:03,560 --> 00:12:05,640 It's horr....it's horrible. 182 00:12:10,200 --> 00:12:14,360 It's almost as if shooting Jews has become a spectator sport. 183 00:12:17,920 --> 00:12:20,240 What we see in this film is where we are a few weeks 184 00:12:20,240 --> 00:12:21,640 after the invasion. 185 00:12:22,880 --> 00:12:25,920 So the Wehrmacht start to push further into Soviet territory. 186 00:12:25,920 --> 00:12:28,600 The Einsatzgruppen are coming behind them, and they're finding 187 00:12:28,600 --> 00:12:31,840 more and more Jewish communities to target, and they're keeping 188 00:12:31,840 --> 00:12:33,360 a running total of it as they go. 189 00:12:33,360 --> 00:12:35,320 They want to be able to report those figures, 190 00:12:35,320 --> 00:12:38,520 up to Heydrich and Himmler. And Heydrich and Himmler are saying, 191 00:12:38,520 --> 00:12:41,280 "No, no, no, we want more, more, more. Why haven't you done more?" 192 00:12:41,280 --> 00:12:43,400 The commanders of the Einsatzgruppen sometimes 193 00:12:43,400 --> 00:12:45,680 get chastised for not killing more people. 194 00:12:45,680 --> 00:12:50,120 There's this impetus, this force to constantly find 195 00:12:50,120 --> 00:12:53,040 more Jews to kill. And we see that recorded here. 196 00:12:53,040 --> 00:12:54,880 We see the date. 197 00:12:54,880 --> 00:12:58,960 So, 22nd of August '41, 544 people. 198 00:12:58,960 --> 00:13:04,280 23rd of August '41, 7,525 people. 199 00:13:04,280 --> 00:13:08,880 And now they include Judinnen and Judenkinder - women and children. 200 00:13:10,880 --> 00:13:14,280 It's only taken a few weeks from those first murders at Gargzdai 201 00:13:14,280 --> 00:13:16,640 for this to accelerate. 202 00:13:16,640 --> 00:13:18,160 And there's a tally at the bottom. 203 00:13:18,160 --> 00:13:19,840 At the bottom of this document here, 204 00:13:19,840 --> 00:13:22,920 by the start of September 1941, 205 00:13:22,920 --> 00:13:27,600 it says 47,614 people. 206 00:13:27,600 --> 00:13:30,960 That's 47,614 human beings. 207 00:13:34,720 --> 00:13:38,000 The Nazis wanted to do more than just kill their victims. 208 00:13:39,920 --> 00:13:42,360 They wanted to erase them from memory. 209 00:13:45,240 --> 00:13:48,760 The graves of many tens of thousands have never been found. 210 00:13:51,280 --> 00:13:54,120 And that matters to Dr Harry Jol. 211 00:13:54,120 --> 00:13:57,960 So much so, he's devoted his career to finding them. 212 00:13:59,880 --> 00:14:02,560 You can't just hide the bodies. 213 00:14:02,560 --> 00:14:04,400 The bodies will be found. 214 00:14:09,360 --> 00:14:12,600 I'm trained as a physical geographer, a geomorphologist, 215 00:14:12,600 --> 00:14:17,480 and people such as myself and academics and others need to say, 216 00:14:17,480 --> 00:14:22,120 "Let's take our tools that we use for other research projects, 217 00:14:22,120 --> 00:14:24,920 "and let's apply them to the Holocaust." 218 00:14:26,400 --> 00:14:28,680 We need to put closure to this. 219 00:14:28,680 --> 00:14:31,160 It does line up brilliantly. 220 00:14:31,160 --> 00:14:34,680 Fish-smoking building with the five smokestacks, 221 00:14:34,680 --> 00:14:38,760 would be just beyond that modern building on the other side of it. 222 00:14:38,760 --> 00:14:41,120 So we can't see the pit from here, but if we back up... 223 00:14:41,120 --> 00:14:45,600 Harry works with fellow US academic Dr Phil Reeder. 224 00:14:45,600 --> 00:14:46,800 There's the pit. 225 00:14:46,800 --> 00:14:50,160 And every summer for the last seven years, they've been bringing teams 226 00:14:50,160 --> 00:14:53,600 of students to Eastern Europe in search of Holocaust victims. 227 00:14:53,600 --> 00:14:57,000 We have a different perspective on it now, but if we look up 228 00:14:57,000 --> 00:14:58,560 where the two students are, 229 00:14:58,560 --> 00:15:02,280 they're standing where the crowd was standing... 230 00:15:02,280 --> 00:15:05,920 Today they're looking for the men in the film. 231 00:15:05,920 --> 00:15:08,400 But then, as they run, look, there's a lighthouse. 232 00:15:08,400 --> 00:15:11,280 Yes. You can see the lighthouse right there. Yep, that's it. 233 00:15:11,280 --> 00:15:13,520 The film gives them landmarks they can locate 234 00:15:13,520 --> 00:15:15,680 on historic air photos of the site, 235 00:15:15,680 --> 00:15:18,760 allowing them to triangulate where the men were shot, 236 00:15:18,760 --> 00:15:21,200 and where they should start their search. 237 00:15:21,200 --> 00:15:24,600 But here is that road where they would have taken people here. 238 00:15:24,600 --> 00:15:26,800 And then we see all those cars parked, 239 00:15:26,800 --> 00:15:29,240 and where they're actually dropped off. 240 00:15:29,240 --> 00:15:31,600 So I think that's a good spot for, in the video, 241 00:15:31,600 --> 00:15:33,640 where they're getting out of the trucks. 242 00:15:33,640 --> 00:15:35,800 There's actually a structure right there. Yeah. 243 00:15:35,800 --> 00:15:38,480 And because you can see the people up on this side, and people 244 00:15:38,480 --> 00:15:42,320 up on this side, and then they would run to the pit over here. 245 00:15:42,320 --> 00:15:45,960 So the pit, to me, is right out here in front of us. 246 00:15:45,960 --> 00:15:49,160 Or at least that's the place to start. Yeah. 247 00:15:55,920 --> 00:15:59,480 Judaic law forbids any physical disturbance of the dead, 248 00:15:59,480 --> 00:16:02,720 so they're digging with radio waves. 249 00:16:02,720 --> 00:16:04,760 EQUIPMENT BLEEPS 250 00:16:04,760 --> 00:16:07,640 Ground-penetrating radar gives them the ability to image 251 00:16:07,640 --> 00:16:11,680 any large feature buried in the earth, like a mass grave. 252 00:16:14,320 --> 00:16:18,680 After a few hours, they find what appears to be a buried trench. 253 00:16:18,680 --> 00:16:22,440 But it's facing the wrong way to be the one in the film. 254 00:16:22,440 --> 00:16:26,000 It's literally in that direction, right? 255 00:16:26,000 --> 00:16:28,880 So it's almost 90 degrees off what we were expecting, 256 00:16:28,880 --> 00:16:31,920 looking at the photos and taking a look at it here. Right. 257 00:16:31,920 --> 00:16:35,480 So maybe means that there multiple trenches and, you know, the video 258 00:16:35,480 --> 00:16:36,960 is just one point in time, 259 00:16:36,960 --> 00:16:39,400 where that particular trench is being used. 260 00:16:40,640 --> 00:16:42,560 So there could be trenches everywhere. 261 00:16:45,280 --> 00:16:47,640 After multiple passes of the GPR, 262 00:16:47,640 --> 00:16:50,360 another trench appears beneath the tarmac... 263 00:16:51,560 --> 00:16:55,000 ..and this one lines up exactly with the film. 264 00:16:58,320 --> 00:17:00,840 As we take a look at this trench, it's pretty impressive. 265 00:17:00,840 --> 00:17:02,680 You know, this is 38 metres long. 266 00:17:02,680 --> 00:17:05,840 You know, this is probably the first or second time I've ever seen 267 00:17:05,840 --> 00:17:08,960 something like this. Yeah, I mean, it stands out very clearly. 268 00:17:08,960 --> 00:17:12,480 I mean, from all the time spent watching the video, it fits 269 00:17:12,480 --> 00:17:15,120 very well with what we imagine the angle would be of the trench 270 00:17:15,120 --> 00:17:16,760 coming in towards the fortress. 271 00:17:16,760 --> 00:17:20,760 And, you know, they were basically brought into the trench and fell 272 00:17:20,760 --> 00:17:26,520 against this side when they were shot. Right. Yep. 273 00:17:26,520 --> 00:17:29,280 All the pieces of the puzzle are here. Yeah. 274 00:17:29,280 --> 00:17:32,880 But at the same time, there's more work to do. Yep. Most certainly. 275 00:17:35,720 --> 00:17:38,040 The men in the film have finally been found. 276 00:17:40,880 --> 00:17:42,960 But it's clear there were more people shot and 277 00:17:42,960 --> 00:17:45,600 buried here than anyone ever realised. 278 00:17:47,560 --> 00:17:50,160 And further along the same stretch of coast, 279 00:17:50,160 --> 00:17:52,080 a few months after Liepaja's men, 280 00:17:52,080 --> 00:17:56,320 thousands of women and children were shot and buried in the sands. 281 00:18:00,280 --> 00:18:04,320 No-one knows exactly how many, or where their bodies lie. 282 00:18:12,520 --> 00:18:15,360 It's only since the fall of the Soviet Union that mass graves 283 00:18:15,360 --> 00:18:17,680 like these, lost for over 80 years, 284 00:18:17,680 --> 00:18:21,280 are being forensically investigated for the first time. 285 00:18:23,560 --> 00:18:26,600 But pioneers like Harry and Phil are just scratching the surface 286 00:18:26,600 --> 00:18:28,160 of a monumental task. 287 00:18:34,560 --> 00:18:39,440 In Latvia, there are more than 70 suspected Holocaust sites. 288 00:18:39,440 --> 00:18:41,920 Most are yet to be fully explored. 289 00:18:43,120 --> 00:18:45,800 The same is true in neighbouring Lithuania, with more than 290 00:18:45,800 --> 00:18:47,680 200 suspected sites. 291 00:18:50,520 --> 00:18:52,960 What seems extraordinary is that there was 292 00:18:52,960 --> 00:18:56,640 a single Einsatzgruppen team of fewer than a thousand men to account 293 00:18:56,640 --> 00:18:59,120 for an estimated quarter of a million deaths 294 00:18:59,120 --> 00:19:00,720 across both countries. 295 00:19:05,200 --> 00:19:07,720 There's only one way that was possible, 296 00:19:07,720 --> 00:19:11,560 and it's one of the most disturbing aspects of this entire story. 297 00:19:12,880 --> 00:19:15,600 Widespread local complicity. 298 00:19:19,240 --> 00:19:21,640 And there is evidence of that happening here, 299 00:19:21,640 --> 00:19:24,400 in the Lithuanian town of Alytus. 300 00:19:26,640 --> 00:19:31,280 So we're just driving into the town now, from exactly the same direction 301 00:19:31,280 --> 00:19:36,800 that the Germans came in on the 22nd of June in 1941. 302 00:19:36,800 --> 00:19:40,160 So, from the very start of the invasion, this is where 303 00:19:40,160 --> 00:19:42,160 they were coming from. 304 00:19:42,160 --> 00:19:45,560 And behind them were these Einsatzgruppen soldiers, 305 00:19:45,560 --> 00:19:48,680 with this task of looking for the town's Jews. 306 00:19:50,800 --> 00:19:54,720 They found them in the town and the surrounding villages. 307 00:19:54,720 --> 00:19:57,160 And according to Nazi records, 308 00:19:57,160 --> 00:20:00,880 nearly 2,500 Jews were rounded up 309 00:20:00,880 --> 00:20:03,800 and brought to be murdered in the nearby forest. 310 00:20:05,360 --> 00:20:09,000 Here we arrive at the end of the town, and the very same road 311 00:20:09,000 --> 00:20:12,560 driven on through the centre of Alytus becomes... 312 00:20:13,640 --> 00:20:16,120 You can see here, it's becoming... 313 00:20:16,120 --> 00:20:20,600 It's a dirt track. And now we're in forest. 314 00:20:20,600 --> 00:20:25,000 And what I find really, really chilling, 315 00:20:25,000 --> 00:20:27,360 and really unnerving, 316 00:20:27,360 --> 00:20:29,000 is the fact that it's walking distance 317 00:20:29,000 --> 00:20:30,880 from the middle of the town. 318 00:20:35,080 --> 00:20:39,640 But who brought the thousands of Jews here, and who killed them? 319 00:20:44,840 --> 00:20:49,520 Because the SS have fewer than a dozen men stationed in this area. 320 00:20:54,440 --> 00:20:56,840 I'm here to meet the leader of Lithuania's 321 00:20:56,840 --> 00:20:58,360 surviving Jewish community. 322 00:21:00,080 --> 00:21:02,960 Faina Kukliansky believes her grandmother was killed 323 00:21:02,960 --> 00:21:04,080 in this forest... 324 00:21:05,560 --> 00:21:08,720 ..and she may have discovered who the killers were. 325 00:21:10,760 --> 00:21:14,280 My grandparents were quite educated people, 326 00:21:14,280 --> 00:21:17,920 and my grandmother was a doctor in the hospital. 327 00:21:21,480 --> 00:21:25,480 Then the war started, and my grandmother was taken 328 00:21:25,480 --> 00:21:30,560 from the street and imprisoned by the local people. 329 00:21:30,560 --> 00:21:33,480 She's held prisoner by local people? Yeah, yeah, yeah. 330 00:21:33,480 --> 00:21:34,920 And then what happened? 331 00:21:34,920 --> 00:21:38,560 And what happened after that, nobody knows. 332 00:21:38,560 --> 00:21:42,680 But in any way, she did not come back. 333 00:21:48,120 --> 00:21:52,480 I asked the Genocide Centre of Lithuania 334 00:21:52,480 --> 00:21:56,680 to do the research for me, especially on Alytus. 335 00:21:58,280 --> 00:22:01,560 And it's written here clearly 336 00:22:01,560 --> 00:22:06,120 that in 1941, in August, 337 00:22:06,120 --> 00:22:09,080 there were mass killing 338 00:22:09,080 --> 00:22:14,080 of Jewish children and women. 339 00:22:14,080 --> 00:22:18,920 The victims were asked to go into the pits, to jump 340 00:22:18,920 --> 00:22:21,400 into the pits, to lie. 341 00:22:21,400 --> 00:22:23,080 Then they were shot. 342 00:22:26,440 --> 00:22:31,160 All the people who used to work in the prison took part, 343 00:22:31,160 --> 00:22:36,680 together with the students of Alytus school. 344 00:22:36,680 --> 00:22:39,600 So this is local school students... Of the school. 345 00:22:39,600 --> 00:22:42,120 ..participating in the shooting? Yeah. 346 00:22:42,120 --> 00:22:45,000 And together, they came together 347 00:22:45,000 --> 00:22:47,520 with policemen with guns. 348 00:22:47,520 --> 00:22:51,360 And that confirms that - what my uncle used to tell me - 349 00:22:51,360 --> 00:22:56,440 that probably his classmates killed his mother. 350 00:22:59,800 --> 00:23:02,760 Faina, that is such a difficult thing to comprehend. 351 00:23:02,760 --> 00:23:06,640 The idea that it was your parents' friends from school 352 00:23:06,640 --> 00:23:09,320 who were some of the ones who were actively participating 353 00:23:09,320 --> 00:23:12,160 in this process. They must have known her. They must have... 354 00:23:12,160 --> 00:23:16,720 Her son was studying with Lithuanians in a Lithuanian school. 355 00:23:16,720 --> 00:23:20,160 Doesn't matter that they were citizens of Lithuania, 356 00:23:20,160 --> 00:23:22,240 that they live in the same city. 357 00:23:22,240 --> 00:23:25,000 But it should be Judenrein, 358 00:23:25,000 --> 00:23:27,560 "Jews should be killed." 359 00:23:27,560 --> 00:23:29,280 And they were killing. 360 00:23:29,280 --> 00:23:32,200 So her only crime was being Jewish? 361 00:23:32,200 --> 00:23:34,760 Yeah. Well, that's enough. 362 00:23:40,280 --> 00:23:43,600 Zinaida Kukliansky and more than 2,000 other Jews 363 00:23:43,600 --> 00:23:45,160 were murdered here... 364 00:23:46,360 --> 00:23:48,840 ..not solely by Nazis, 365 00:23:48,840 --> 00:23:51,720 but also by their fellow citizens. 366 00:23:54,160 --> 00:23:57,200 No-one knows where any of them are buried. 367 00:23:58,800 --> 00:24:02,960 There is a cluster of monuments here in the forest, but they were put up 368 00:24:02,960 --> 00:24:06,320 relatively recently, and no-one knows if they mark 369 00:24:06,320 --> 00:24:08,240 any actual burials. 370 00:24:10,480 --> 00:24:13,880 I do not know where my grandmother is. 371 00:24:13,880 --> 00:24:18,560 I would like very much to know, where is her remains? 372 00:24:20,440 --> 00:24:24,640 The sculptures, I think it's more like art pieces, 373 00:24:24,640 --> 00:24:27,680 not like the document pieces. 374 00:24:27,680 --> 00:24:31,520 And I do not see any information 375 00:24:31,520 --> 00:24:34,400 here about the people. 376 00:24:34,400 --> 00:24:37,800 When were they killed? How many people were killed? 377 00:24:37,800 --> 00:24:40,680 Where the women are. Where the children are. 378 00:24:40,680 --> 00:24:44,600 Who are they? We are missing that. 379 00:24:44,600 --> 00:24:47,960 We just do not know where they are. 380 00:24:47,960 --> 00:24:51,040 You guys got everything? Yep. OK. 381 00:24:51,040 --> 00:24:52,920 On up. 382 00:24:52,920 --> 00:24:56,280 Faina has invited Harry and Phil down from Liepaja to try 383 00:24:56,280 --> 00:24:57,640 and put that right. 384 00:24:59,400 --> 00:25:02,240 But this forest holds a puzzle. 385 00:25:03,720 --> 00:25:06,400 We know, in August, September 1941, 386 00:25:06,400 --> 00:25:08,920 we had approximately 2,000 Jews 387 00:25:08,920 --> 00:25:12,080 being executed and buried at this site. 388 00:25:12,080 --> 00:25:15,600 Flags in - red, white. 389 00:25:15,600 --> 00:25:18,560 The idea that they're here is interesting. 390 00:25:20,560 --> 00:25:22,360 But where are they buried? 391 00:25:22,360 --> 00:25:24,800 Are they all buried at this location, 392 00:25:24,800 --> 00:25:29,040 or are they buried at other locations within this larger forest? 393 00:25:29,040 --> 00:25:32,320 And so our job is to try to find those sites. 394 00:25:40,800 --> 00:25:45,280 The murders in Alytus's forests troubled me for another reason. 395 00:25:45,280 --> 00:25:47,880 The element of local collaboration. 396 00:25:49,360 --> 00:25:53,680 And what happened here was just the tip of the iceberg. 397 00:25:53,680 --> 00:25:57,240 A truth some Lithuanians are determined to lay bare. 398 00:26:00,080 --> 00:26:03,920 I'm heading to a small town just 20km from Alytus to meet 399 00:26:03,920 --> 00:26:08,320 a prominent author and Holocaust researcher called Ruta Vanagaite. 400 00:26:10,200 --> 00:26:14,720 Ruta introduces me to 94-year-old Ona. 401 00:26:14,720 --> 00:26:18,280 UNTRANSLATED 402 00:26:18,280 --> 00:26:20,520 Hello. 403 00:26:23,360 --> 00:26:26,160 Ona grew up here among the town's Jewish population, 404 00:26:26,160 --> 00:26:30,840 and she is the last known surviving witness to their mass murder. 405 00:26:30,840 --> 00:26:33,120 UNTRANSLATED 406 00:26:33,120 --> 00:26:37,960 We go with her in my car, OK? Perfect. It's very nice to meet you. 407 00:26:37,960 --> 00:26:41,160 UNTRANSLATED 408 00:26:41,160 --> 00:26:42,640 Is that comfortable? 409 00:26:51,080 --> 00:26:52,840 UNTRANSLATED 410 00:26:52,840 --> 00:26:55,720 She's going to show where they used to live. 411 00:27:18,520 --> 00:27:20,720 The massacre Ona witnessed took place on 412 00:27:20,720 --> 00:27:24,680 September 9th, 1941. 413 00:27:24,680 --> 00:27:26,920 Not in the dark of a large forest, 414 00:27:26,920 --> 00:27:29,280 but in the open fields in front of 415 00:27:29,280 --> 00:27:31,680 the house she lived in as a child. 416 00:27:33,560 --> 00:27:37,200 So, what happened on that day? 417 00:27:43,400 --> 00:27:46,320 INTERPRETS: There were a lot of people being marched down the hill. 418 00:27:46,320 --> 00:27:50,240 And when did you see the first people coming past? 419 00:27:54,360 --> 00:27:56,760 They heard the screaming. 420 00:27:56,760 --> 00:27:59,160 A cry and screaming. 421 00:28:07,080 --> 00:28:10,160 We looked through the windows only, "What's going on?" 422 00:28:10,160 --> 00:28:13,520 There were hundreds of people being marched here. 423 00:28:15,520 --> 00:28:17,880 My mum started crying, and everybody... 424 00:28:17,880 --> 00:28:20,040 The screaming was the first thing that she heard, 425 00:28:20,040 --> 00:28:21,560 before she saw anything? 426 00:28:25,400 --> 00:28:30,200 And then we heard the shooting. And who was in the column? The Jews? 427 00:28:37,280 --> 00:28:39,280 They were mostly old people. 428 00:28:41,200 --> 00:28:42,760 And later on, children. 429 00:28:44,760 --> 00:28:47,280 And children were being shot in another place. 430 00:28:47,280 --> 00:28:50,440 And when you heard the shots, you realised what was happening? 431 00:28:53,800 --> 00:28:55,080 Yes. 432 00:29:27,080 --> 00:29:29,560 INTERPRETS: This past is in my head. 433 00:29:36,440 --> 00:29:40,280 This is Butrimonys, where most of the victims lived. 434 00:29:40,280 --> 00:29:44,520 Its historic heart lies empty because, that September day, 435 00:29:44,520 --> 00:29:46,760 740 Jews, 436 00:29:46,760 --> 00:29:49,480 80% of the town's population, 437 00:29:49,480 --> 00:29:51,040 were murdered. 438 00:29:52,640 --> 00:29:55,640 The question is, who by? 439 00:29:56,840 --> 00:29:59,440 The killers were Lithuanian killers 440 00:29:59,440 --> 00:30:02,160 from Alytus, coming to get rid of the Jews. 441 00:30:02,160 --> 00:30:04,680 So we're talking about Lithuanians killing... Yes, yes. 442 00:30:04,680 --> 00:30:06,520 ..other Lithuanians? But they are not... 443 00:30:06,520 --> 00:30:09,360 Those, the killers were not neighbours of those Jews, but those, 444 00:30:09,360 --> 00:30:11,640 the policemen and the partisans were neighbours of 445 00:30:11,640 --> 00:30:14,480 the Jews were killed, yes. And the whole process throughout has been 446 00:30:14,480 --> 00:30:16,960 managed by these people's neighbours, the people doing the 447 00:30:16,960 --> 00:30:19,880 round-ups? Yes, the preparation was managed by people's neighbours. 448 00:30:19,880 --> 00:30:22,280 But killing was done by somebody coming from outside. 449 00:30:22,280 --> 00:30:25,200 All Lithuanians? Yes. From another town nearby. And they're the ones 450 00:30:25,200 --> 00:30:26,440 who do the shooting? Yes. 451 00:30:26,440 --> 00:30:29,000 They're the ones with their fingers on the triggers? 452 00:30:29,000 --> 00:30:32,480 And after the shooting, the neighbours are taking the property. 453 00:30:32,480 --> 00:30:34,600 Wow, that's quite a thought, isn't it? 454 00:30:34,600 --> 00:30:36,720 And then they move into the houses around here, 455 00:30:36,720 --> 00:30:39,520 presumably they take over the town, and all the Jews are gone. 456 00:30:39,520 --> 00:30:42,480 Yes. In one night. In one night. 457 00:30:44,520 --> 00:30:47,120 It's clear that the Holocaust here was much more 458 00:30:47,120 --> 00:30:49,280 than just a series of spontaneous acts. 459 00:30:51,600 --> 00:30:55,120 It was rapidly evolving into organised ethnic cleansing 460 00:30:55,120 --> 00:30:56,920 on a massive scale. 461 00:31:04,520 --> 00:31:08,360 In Alytus' forest, Harry and Phil think they may have stumbled on the 462 00:31:08,360 --> 00:31:10,600 biggest mass grave they've ever seen. 463 00:31:11,880 --> 00:31:14,840 It's getting more pronounced here, Phil. Yeah. 464 00:31:16,600 --> 00:31:20,720 I mean, obviously we're walking in a lower area 465 00:31:20,720 --> 00:31:24,280 that has, what, to our left, a mound of stuff. 466 00:31:24,280 --> 00:31:26,000 Yeah, let's climb up. 467 00:31:27,680 --> 00:31:32,040 Wow. I mean, that's human-built. 468 00:31:33,440 --> 00:31:36,080 Most definitely human-built. Wow. 469 00:31:36,080 --> 00:31:39,280 I mean, I mean, it's macabre, but I mean, the idea 470 00:31:39,280 --> 00:31:42,360 that where you are was where the trench would be, and here 471 00:31:42,360 --> 00:31:44,120 you would be lining up people 472 00:31:44,120 --> 00:31:47,600 being shot, falling into the trench where you are, 473 00:31:47,600 --> 00:31:49,880 then burying, with that sediment 474 00:31:49,880 --> 00:31:53,880 that you have, and then continuing that along here... Right. 475 00:31:53,880 --> 00:31:56,160 ..for, potentially, months. 476 00:31:56,160 --> 00:31:57,520 Right here. 477 00:31:59,080 --> 00:32:01,720 This is a trench where you could have thousands of people. Yeah. 478 00:32:01,720 --> 00:32:05,120 This is one that is not, you can say, limited in... 479 00:32:05,120 --> 00:32:09,080 The discovery is the result of resolute detective work, 480 00:32:09,080 --> 00:32:13,840 because the trench is nowhere near any of the Holocaust monuments. 481 00:32:15,680 --> 00:32:18,640 So we checked out the area of the monuments. 482 00:32:18,640 --> 00:32:22,280 All the data indicated, really, that there was nothing there. 483 00:32:22,280 --> 00:32:25,400 So I went back to the air photos to try to find something 484 00:32:25,400 --> 00:32:30,320 that potentially fits where a large number of bodies could be buried. 485 00:32:30,320 --> 00:32:35,440 And this is a 1944 Luftwaffe air photograph of this area. 486 00:32:35,440 --> 00:32:40,440 And if we zoom in, what's interesting about it is this is 487 00:32:40,440 --> 00:32:42,880 the road that we come in on, and these two roads 488 00:32:42,880 --> 00:32:44,560 that are coming off of it. 489 00:32:44,560 --> 00:32:47,400 And this particular road is essentially a road to nowhere. 490 00:32:47,400 --> 00:32:51,480 So it's a road that goes into the middle of a forest and stops? 491 00:32:51,480 --> 00:32:54,520 And stops. I would... Yes, I would agree with that. 492 00:32:54,520 --> 00:32:58,720 But there is testimony of a family member, soon after her father 493 00:32:58,720 --> 00:33:00,600 and brother were murdered, 494 00:33:00,600 --> 00:33:02,880 of visiting this site and seeing 495 00:33:02,880 --> 00:33:05,440 the evidence of trenches that were so fresh, 496 00:33:05,440 --> 00:33:07,200 that they were stained with blood. 497 00:33:07,200 --> 00:33:09,680 So that's what was at the end of the road? Yes. 498 00:33:09,680 --> 00:33:12,240 That's what prompted us to start to look 499 00:33:12,240 --> 00:33:14,320 in this particular area. 500 00:33:14,320 --> 00:33:16,120 And we'll have two people going on this. 501 00:33:16,120 --> 00:33:18,400 And then one person will be moving the line. 502 00:33:18,400 --> 00:33:22,520 And when, upon closer inspection, we found a series of trenches leading 503 00:33:22,520 --> 00:33:26,440 up to, at least visually, potentially the largest trench, 504 00:33:26,440 --> 00:33:28,280 and this may be a mass grave, 505 00:33:28,280 --> 00:33:30,000 or a series of mass graves, 506 00:33:30,000 --> 00:33:33,080 where there are tens of thousands of people buried. 507 00:33:36,160 --> 00:33:40,160 The evidence is compelling, but it's only circumstantial. 508 00:33:40,160 --> 00:33:44,160 The only way they can be sure they've found a mass burial 509 00:33:44,160 --> 00:33:46,440 is to look beneath the surface, 510 00:33:46,440 --> 00:33:49,080 as they did so effectively at Liepaja. 511 00:33:50,840 --> 00:33:54,480 So what we've done at this site is we've started collecting a grid 512 00:33:54,480 --> 00:33:56,000 with ground-penetrating radar. 513 00:33:56,000 --> 00:33:59,440 And now I'll show you a time slice as we go down into the subsurface. 514 00:33:59,440 --> 00:34:02,920 OK. And remarkably, you know, we never know what we're going to get, 515 00:34:02,920 --> 00:34:05,320 we see this feature right here. 516 00:34:05,320 --> 00:34:08,600 This is what we are interpreting as a burial trench. 517 00:34:08,600 --> 00:34:11,080 So, because that's anomalous within the rest of this here, 518 00:34:11,080 --> 00:34:13,960 it's clearly something distinctive. Right, it's rectangular. 519 00:34:13,960 --> 00:34:17,920 And so now we can start calculating the dimensions of a trench here. 520 00:34:17,920 --> 00:34:21,240 And it's not just here. It goes all the way up to where this linear 521 00:34:21,240 --> 00:34:23,480 feature goes, and goes all the way down... 522 00:34:23,480 --> 00:34:25,560 Right down to the end, there? ..right down to... 523 00:34:25,560 --> 00:34:28,560 Almost to the end, and it does a right-hand turn down there. 524 00:34:28,560 --> 00:34:33,600 And there's... So, I mean, we can't even start doing the calculations. 525 00:34:33,600 --> 00:34:35,800 We were just looking at the data right now. 526 00:34:35,800 --> 00:34:38,320 This is a large feature. That's massive. It's huge. 527 00:34:38,320 --> 00:34:40,920 All the way to there, to all the way to there? And then... 528 00:34:40,920 --> 00:34:44,320 And then we have seven to four... seven to 11 metres here, 529 00:34:44,320 --> 00:34:46,560 on the tapes here. But take a look. 530 00:34:46,560 --> 00:34:50,440 All the trees have been taken out at seven metres, and they're gone 531 00:34:50,440 --> 00:34:53,120 all the way to 11 metres. All the way down this way. Walking past 532 00:34:53,120 --> 00:34:55,800 every day, I wouldn't...I wouldn't have noticed this detail. 533 00:34:55,800 --> 00:34:58,520 How do you...? I wouldn't have noticed. But now you point it out, 534 00:34:58,520 --> 00:35:01,320 it seems so obvious that clearly some...something 535 00:35:01,320 --> 00:35:02,960 has happened to this earth. 536 00:35:02,960 --> 00:35:07,320 Something has disrupted the continuity of this space. 537 00:35:07,320 --> 00:35:09,640 When we take... I mean, I just take a look out here. 538 00:35:09,640 --> 00:35:11,800 We thought there was going to be nothing out here. 539 00:35:11,800 --> 00:35:15,840 And we see some, you know, linear features and things like that. I... 540 00:35:15,840 --> 00:35:18,600 You know, I'm shocked when I walk around now. I'm looking at things 541 00:35:18,600 --> 00:35:21,400 and it's like, potentially, we are sitting on thousands 542 00:35:21,400 --> 00:35:24,040 of executed Jews at that site. 543 00:35:26,720 --> 00:35:29,160 We could work here for years and years... 544 00:35:29,160 --> 00:35:31,880 And just find more? . .and just find more. Yeah. Yeah. 545 00:35:37,360 --> 00:35:41,400 Just the experience of being here today has been a really stark 546 00:35:41,400 --> 00:35:45,960 reminder of the point about taking Jewish individuals into a site 547 00:35:45,960 --> 00:35:48,080 like this and murdering them. 548 00:35:50,880 --> 00:35:55,840 When the Nazis come into these territories, they find, in various 549 00:35:55,840 --> 00:35:58,800 different ways and in various different capacities, different 550 00:35:58,800 --> 00:36:02,000 people who are prepared to support it, 551 00:36:02,000 --> 00:36:05,480 to support it. Sometimes to allow it to happen, but sometimes 552 00:36:05,480 --> 00:36:07,720 to become directly involved, 553 00:36:07,720 --> 00:36:10,160 to become the people who are... 554 00:36:10,160 --> 00:36:12,960 ..the people with their fingers on the trigger. 555 00:36:16,240 --> 00:36:19,360 It's so important to remember that the Nazis were at the centre 556 00:36:19,360 --> 00:36:22,000 of this, but they didn't act alone. 557 00:36:22,000 --> 00:36:26,160 They required the active participation of hundreds 558 00:36:26,160 --> 00:36:27,960 of thousands of people. 559 00:36:27,960 --> 00:36:30,480 They couldn't have done it without that. 560 00:36:38,880 --> 00:36:42,080 Like a lot of formerly-occupied Eastern European nations, 561 00:36:42,080 --> 00:36:44,800 modern Lithuania has a history problem... 562 00:36:47,800 --> 00:36:51,160 ..because the truth of its role in the Holocaust is finally coming 563 00:36:51,160 --> 00:36:53,360 out of the ground, 564 00:36:53,360 --> 00:36:55,560 and it's being obliged to face up to it 565 00:36:55,560 --> 00:36:58,120 by writers like Ruta Vanagaite. 566 00:36:58,120 --> 00:37:01,840 In another 50 years, the people will come to terms with it. 567 00:37:01,840 --> 00:37:04,600 Ruta, this is something that you've gone to great lengths 568 00:37:04,600 --> 00:37:08,160 to investigate. What happened when you did that? 569 00:37:08,160 --> 00:37:10,760 My book about the Holocaust was published. 570 00:37:10,760 --> 00:37:14,160 It became a bestseller, but the reaction was very violent. 571 00:37:14,160 --> 00:37:18,400 Some people accepted it, but the majority of my nation didn't accept 572 00:37:18,400 --> 00:37:21,280 and I became, like, enemy of the country, 573 00:37:21,280 --> 00:37:25,760 because I was, like, defaming my own people, 574 00:37:25,760 --> 00:37:29,400 and they called me a Jewish whore. 575 00:37:29,400 --> 00:37:33,360 So, in the end, when people were attacking me 576 00:37:33,360 --> 00:37:37,760 and spitting at me on the street, I endured, 577 00:37:37,760 --> 00:37:40,920 and in the long run, I had to leave the country for a while until 578 00:37:40,920 --> 00:37:44,200 they forgive... Not forgive me, but forget me a little. 579 00:37:44,200 --> 00:37:48,320 So speaking out came at great personal cost to you? 580 00:37:48,320 --> 00:37:51,560 I don't regret. Yes, it did, but I don't regret. 581 00:37:51,560 --> 00:37:54,040 Had I known that it would be such a violent reaction, 582 00:37:54,040 --> 00:37:56,920 I would have done it anyway because I spoke for the victims. 583 00:37:56,920 --> 00:38:00,160 This is my army, those 200,000 murdered people. 584 00:38:00,160 --> 00:38:02,640 This is my army. They gave me a lot of strength. 585 00:38:02,640 --> 00:38:05,360 And if you published the book today, do you think you would get 586 00:38:05,360 --> 00:38:06,760 the same reaction? 587 00:38:06,760 --> 00:38:09,240 There won't... It wouldn't be published. No way. 588 00:38:09,240 --> 00:38:11,280 It wouldn't be published? No way. 589 00:38:11,280 --> 00:38:14,320 And nobody after me, nobody would write a book about the Holocaust, 590 00:38:14,320 --> 00:38:16,720 because people know that you'll lose your friends, 591 00:38:16,720 --> 00:38:18,960 and you get...you become a public enemy. 592 00:38:18,960 --> 00:38:22,360 So what is said, when this comes up in conversation, what is said? 593 00:38:22,360 --> 00:38:25,440 What do people say? It is a defence reaction. It is self-defence. 594 00:38:25,440 --> 00:38:28,560 So they always say, "It wasn't us. It wasn't us." Yes, kind of. 595 00:38:28,560 --> 00:38:32,840 I mean, I told my friend that I am coming to see Butrimonys 596 00:38:32,840 --> 00:38:35,800 with a BBC crew and she said, 597 00:38:35,800 --> 00:38:38,880 "What? Are you going to tell the whole world again, 598 00:38:38,880 --> 00:38:43,240 "and defame our country and tell everybody that, you know, 599 00:38:43,240 --> 00:38:46,000 "we kill the Jews, Lithuanians kill the Jews?" 600 00:38:46,000 --> 00:38:47,520 I said, "Yes." 601 00:38:47,520 --> 00:38:48,880 She said, "Why?" 602 00:38:48,880 --> 00:38:50,720 I said, "Because they did." 603 00:38:52,040 --> 00:38:55,680 We are bloody uneducated. Uneducated. 604 00:38:55,680 --> 00:38:57,600 The school hasn't educated us. 605 00:38:57,600 --> 00:39:00,520 Our parents didn't educate us. 606 00:39:00,520 --> 00:39:02,880 Our grandparents were too afraid to speak about it. 607 00:39:02,880 --> 00:39:06,200 Who could tell us about what happened? 608 00:39:06,200 --> 00:39:10,440 So, for the moment, Holocaust subject is closed. 609 00:39:10,440 --> 00:39:12,320 I don't know for how long. 610 00:39:17,800 --> 00:39:21,920 80 years ago, many Lithuanians welcomed the invading Nazis 611 00:39:21,920 --> 00:39:25,680 for what seemed at the time to be a very sound reason - 612 00:39:25,680 --> 00:39:29,560 because the Nazis were liberating them from communism. 613 00:39:31,840 --> 00:39:34,480 The same nationalist response manifested across all 614 00:39:34,480 --> 00:39:38,680 the Baltic states, as well as large parts of Ukraine. 615 00:39:47,280 --> 00:39:52,400 Everywhere, nationalists fanned the flames of anti-communism, 616 00:39:52,400 --> 00:39:55,840 and the Nazis pushed the myth of that communism 617 00:39:55,840 --> 00:39:57,600 as a Jewish conspiracy. 618 00:40:04,120 --> 00:40:08,080 As Hitler's invasion of the USSR reached its fullest extent, 619 00:40:08,080 --> 00:40:12,080 coercion and complicity across territories under Nazi control 620 00:40:12,080 --> 00:40:16,000 allowed the SS to initiate nearly 2,000 atrocities 621 00:40:16,000 --> 00:40:18,040 across seven countries 622 00:40:18,040 --> 00:40:21,560 from the Baltic to the Black Sea, 623 00:40:21,560 --> 00:40:25,000 scaling up their murderous ambition in village after village, 624 00:40:25,000 --> 00:40:27,120 town after town. 625 00:40:33,680 --> 00:40:37,840 As victim numbers grew, the SS developed a system for ensuring 626 00:40:37,840 --> 00:40:41,400 maximum efficiency and minimal panic. 627 00:40:43,760 --> 00:40:46,120 It began with a calming ruse. 628 00:40:46,120 --> 00:40:49,760 Jews were told to assemble with money, belongings 629 00:40:49,760 --> 00:40:51,440 and warm clothing. 630 00:40:53,240 --> 00:40:57,400 So they waited patiently, expecting to be deported. 631 00:40:58,680 --> 00:41:01,520 Then they were led away in groups, 632 00:41:01,520 --> 00:41:04,360 often by local police, to be shot. 633 00:41:13,920 --> 00:41:17,160 When the Germans took the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, 634 00:41:17,160 --> 00:41:19,520 in late September 1941, 635 00:41:19,520 --> 00:41:22,960 they claimed their biggest Soviet city so far, 636 00:41:22,960 --> 00:41:25,840 with tens of thousands of Jews. 637 00:41:28,520 --> 00:41:32,560 And SS Commander Friedrich Jeckeln saw the chance to perfect 638 00:41:32,560 --> 00:41:35,600 mass murder on a monumental scale. 639 00:41:38,720 --> 00:41:41,760 He issued the standard order to the city's Jews to assemble. 640 00:41:48,560 --> 00:41:51,920 Then he had them escorted out of town by local police, 641 00:41:51,920 --> 00:41:54,080 along this road, 642 00:41:54,080 --> 00:41:56,680 to a 30m-deep, 643 00:41:56,680 --> 00:41:59,480 half-kilometre-long ravine called Babyn Yar. 644 00:42:04,280 --> 00:42:08,320 Here, they were stripped naked, ready for the waiting guns. 645 00:42:25,560 --> 00:42:28,600 Jeckeln's plan was carefully engineered. 646 00:42:28,600 --> 00:42:31,560 Yet Dina Pronicheva survived it. 647 00:43:20,720 --> 00:43:23,760 These are the belongings of those who didn't escape. 648 00:43:26,120 --> 00:43:30,880 On 29th and 30th September 1941, 649 00:43:30,880 --> 00:43:37,280 Jeckeln's men shot 33,771 men, women and children. 650 00:43:41,360 --> 00:43:44,800 1,700 people an hour... 651 00:43:46,880 --> 00:43:48,640 ..for two days. 652 00:43:54,560 --> 00:44:00,040 Babyn Yar was the biggest single massacre of the Holocaust thus far. 653 00:44:00,040 --> 00:44:03,280 Yet it would become just one notable landmark 654 00:44:03,280 --> 00:44:06,040 in a continental killing spree. 655 00:44:22,200 --> 00:44:25,800 By the end of 1941, over a million people have been killed 656 00:44:25,800 --> 00:44:27,800 under the hail of bullets that the Nazis 657 00:44:27,800 --> 00:44:29,880 and their collaborators have thrown at them. 658 00:44:29,880 --> 00:44:32,880 We've got 25,000 murdered here in Riga. 659 00:44:32,880 --> 00:44:35,440 50,000 murdered here in Kaunas. 660 00:44:35,440 --> 00:44:38,200 70,000 here in Ponary. 661 00:44:38,200 --> 00:44:40,560 We've got, in Minsk, 30,000. 662 00:44:40,560 --> 00:44:42,760 In Kyiv, 34,000. 663 00:44:42,760 --> 00:44:46,200 In Kamianets-Podilskyi, we've got 25,000. 664 00:44:46,200 --> 00:44:48,440 And down in Odesa, we've got 30,000. 665 00:44:48,440 --> 00:44:50,520 Hundreds of thousands of Jews, 666 00:44:50,520 --> 00:44:52,760 and thousands more between all of these places. 667 00:44:52,760 --> 00:44:55,640 But it doesn't start as a plan of total annihilation. 668 00:44:55,640 --> 00:44:59,080 That's something that evolves as part of these operations here. 669 00:44:59,080 --> 00:45:02,520 What they've been able to do here conceptualises something 670 00:45:02,520 --> 00:45:05,880 within their...within their minds, they hadn't previously anticipated 671 00:45:05,880 --> 00:45:07,880 in this way, they can kill them. 672 00:45:07,880 --> 00:45:10,480 They can kill them, and they can kill them, all of them, 673 00:45:10,480 --> 00:45:12,000 across the whole territory. 674 00:45:12,000 --> 00:45:14,880 But the largest number of Jews still alive are here 675 00:45:14,880 --> 00:45:17,640 in occupied Poland. They're living in ghettos. 676 00:45:17,640 --> 00:45:19,720 They're living in terrible conditions. 677 00:45:19,720 --> 00:45:22,520 They suffered appallingly during this period, but there's 678 00:45:22,520 --> 00:45:26,160 been no central plan to annihilate them until now. 679 00:45:26,160 --> 00:45:29,920 And that's what changes at the end of 1941. 680 00:45:39,840 --> 00:45:43,200 But when the Nazis set out to murder the millions of Jews languishing 681 00:45:43,200 --> 00:45:44,760 in their ghettos... 682 00:45:47,480 --> 00:45:50,160 ..they did not use millions of bullets. 683 00:45:55,640 --> 00:45:58,360 By the end of 1941, 684 00:45:58,360 --> 00:46:02,200 after more than a million individual murders, 685 00:46:02,200 --> 00:46:04,680 mass shooting had become unsustainable. 686 00:46:07,840 --> 00:46:10,120 And when we look at these photos, 687 00:46:10,120 --> 00:46:13,080 we start to understand why that is. 688 00:46:13,080 --> 00:46:15,800 You can see here these young men 689 00:46:15,800 --> 00:46:18,480 are facing other human beings 690 00:46:18,480 --> 00:46:20,520 and killing them, 691 00:46:20,520 --> 00:46:25,040 and they're seeing what they're doing, 692 00:46:25,040 --> 00:46:27,720 first-hand, face-to-face. 693 00:46:29,800 --> 00:46:32,840 And what senior Nazis become really concerned about is 694 00:46:32,840 --> 00:46:37,080 the mental health of the people that are doing it - never the people 695 00:46:37,080 --> 00:46:41,200 that are being killed, the people that are doing it - 696 00:46:41,200 --> 00:46:44,880 because they know that that's 697 00:46:44,880 --> 00:46:49,200 something which is going to be impossible for them 698 00:46:49,200 --> 00:46:50,920 to deal with. 699 00:46:50,920 --> 00:46:54,040 They talk about it as a burdening of the soul. 700 00:46:56,040 --> 00:46:59,440 There's reports here of these soldiers getting nausea, 701 00:46:59,440 --> 00:47:02,080 nervous tension during the massacres. 702 00:47:02,080 --> 00:47:04,760 In many cases, killers suffered vomiting attacks 703 00:47:04,760 --> 00:47:08,960 or developed severe eczema or other psychosomatic disorders. 704 00:47:08,960 --> 00:47:13,480 You know, there's this sense that this whole generation 705 00:47:13,480 --> 00:47:17,440 will be corrupted forever, irreconcilably corrupted 706 00:47:17,440 --> 00:47:20,800 by what they've been asked to do in the name of the Reich. 707 00:47:22,800 --> 00:47:25,480 The other big factor was location. 708 00:47:29,880 --> 00:47:33,560 Everything that's happened so far, everything that I've looked at 709 00:47:33,560 --> 00:47:36,280 has happened a long way from the heart of Germany. 710 00:47:36,280 --> 00:47:39,480 It's in this kind of...this Wild East in the Nazi imagination. 711 00:47:39,480 --> 00:47:42,120 It's a different place where different things can happen, 712 00:47:42,120 --> 00:47:43,480 different permissibility. 713 00:47:43,480 --> 00:47:47,280 We see here that absolutely indescribable scene of carnage, 714 00:47:47,280 --> 00:47:49,800 and it's so public and it's so barbaric, 715 00:47:49,800 --> 00:47:51,560 and it's completely grotesque. 716 00:47:51,560 --> 00:47:56,480 And even the Nazis find this kind of scene unconscionable. 717 00:47:56,480 --> 00:48:00,120 Killing hundreds of thousands, millions of people is something 718 00:48:00,120 --> 00:48:01,200 that they can accept, 719 00:48:01,200 --> 00:48:04,320 but from their perspective, as things develop, there are ways 720 00:48:04,320 --> 00:48:06,760 that it should be done, and this isn't it. 721 00:48:13,760 --> 00:48:18,240 And so they need to find a new means of mass murder 722 00:48:18,240 --> 00:48:21,920 that can be scaled up, that can be efficient, 723 00:48:21,920 --> 00:48:24,200 that can be secret, 724 00:48:24,200 --> 00:48:29,480 and that can be civilised, in their mind, 725 00:48:29,480 --> 00:48:32,400 much more closely aligned with this new Germany 726 00:48:32,400 --> 00:48:34,400 that Hitler wants to create. 727 00:48:37,040 --> 00:48:41,120 One of the men tasked with finding those new civilised ways of killing 728 00:48:41,120 --> 00:48:44,360 was an SS major called Herbert Lange. 729 00:48:48,040 --> 00:48:51,120 And this forest, called Kazimierz Biskupi, 730 00:48:51,120 --> 00:48:52,760 in the west of Poland, 731 00:48:52,760 --> 00:48:56,000 is what Lange was given to use as a laboratory. 732 00:49:04,200 --> 00:49:08,000 A team of researchers from across Poland is attempting to find 733 00:49:08,000 --> 00:49:11,080 the evidence left behind by Lange's experiments. 734 00:49:13,920 --> 00:49:16,280 Traces of mass graves can be seen in 735 00:49:16,280 --> 00:49:18,720 the Nazis' own aerial photographs. 736 00:49:22,240 --> 00:49:25,080 Agnieszka Nieradko hopes they will help locate 737 00:49:25,080 --> 00:49:27,120 extraordinary events described 738 00:49:27,120 --> 00:49:28,880 in eyewitness testimony. 739 00:49:35,760 --> 00:49:38,320 This is part of our team. 740 00:49:38,320 --> 00:49:39,760 Hello. Sebastian. 741 00:49:39,760 --> 00:49:42,440 Sebastian Rozycki, University of Technology. 742 00:49:42,440 --> 00:49:43,720 Nice to meet you. 743 00:49:43,720 --> 00:49:45,280 And Shimon. Hello. 744 00:49:45,280 --> 00:49:46,840 Hello. 745 00:49:46,840 --> 00:49:49,720 Institute of Geophysics, Polish Academy of Sciences. 746 00:49:49,720 --> 00:49:52,720 Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you, too. Thank you. 747 00:49:52,720 --> 00:49:55,240 So, what have we found here? 748 00:49:57,080 --> 00:50:01,800 OK, so, that. This is this depression here. This bit here? 749 00:50:01,800 --> 00:50:05,200 This is, yes. And you have a rectangular shape, 750 00:50:05,200 --> 00:50:09,160 and it could be the mass grave we are looking for. 751 00:50:09,160 --> 00:50:12,400 Just where we're standing now, could be one just here? Yes. 752 00:50:12,400 --> 00:50:16,160 From one perspective, it can look like just a regular mass grave 753 00:50:16,160 --> 00:50:19,880 from the wartime. However, 754 00:50:19,880 --> 00:50:23,240 we know from a single testimony 755 00:50:23,240 --> 00:50:25,880 we have of a pre-war vet, 756 00:50:25,880 --> 00:50:30,760 Polish vet, who was brought here as a prisoner, political prisoner, 757 00:50:30,760 --> 00:50:33,560 he was brought here with 30 other Poles, 758 00:50:33,560 --> 00:50:38,600 forced to assist the Germans in killing Jewish people 759 00:50:38,600 --> 00:50:40,600 from a neighbouring ghetto. 760 00:50:40,600 --> 00:50:44,680 So people were brought in carts here, alive, 761 00:50:44,680 --> 00:50:49,080 and the pits were already waiting for them. 762 00:50:49,080 --> 00:50:50,640 They were not shot. 763 00:50:50,640 --> 00:50:52,560 They were just... 764 00:50:52,560 --> 00:50:55,840 They were just covered with quicklime 765 00:50:55,840 --> 00:50:58,440 and burned inside the pit. 766 00:50:58,440 --> 00:51:02,120 And so they dug pits, put quicklime into the pits? 767 00:51:02,120 --> 00:51:04,960 Brought containers with water... 768 00:51:04,960 --> 00:51:08,200 Brought people inside, brought containers with water, 769 00:51:08,200 --> 00:51:10,240 and put the water inside, 770 00:51:10,240 --> 00:51:15,840 what make...what made the quicklime to react chemically. Boil. Boil. 771 00:51:15,840 --> 00:51:19,920 With...? Boiling people in...? Exactly, yes. Yes. Inside. 772 00:51:19,920 --> 00:51:23,800 And this is what we know from this testimony of a Polish vet. 773 00:51:23,800 --> 00:51:27,920 He was here from the very beginning until the end, 774 00:51:27,920 --> 00:51:31,760 forced afterwards with other Poles to bury the victims. 775 00:51:33,080 --> 00:51:35,480 So, right where we are here, 776 00:51:35,480 --> 00:51:40,280 there was a pit in which people boiled alive? 777 00:51:40,280 --> 00:51:42,160 Correct. 778 00:51:42,160 --> 00:51:43,800 Do we know how long it took? 779 00:51:43,800 --> 00:51:45,920 According to Sienkiewicz, several hours. 780 00:51:48,440 --> 00:51:53,120 We think that is an experimental killing site here. 781 00:51:53,120 --> 00:51:54,920 Right where we're standing? Yeah. 782 00:51:54,920 --> 00:51:57,240 They were just trying out different ways...? 783 00:51:57,240 --> 00:52:00,480 Yeah, different ways of killing people. 784 00:52:05,920 --> 00:52:10,880 It's believed Lange killed 3,000 Jews here in a series of trials, 785 00:52:10,880 --> 00:52:13,720 which included not just lime pits, 786 00:52:13,720 --> 00:52:16,160 but mobile gas vans. 787 00:52:19,560 --> 00:52:23,600 It was just a pure technical rehearsal of which method 788 00:52:23,600 --> 00:52:27,720 would be the most effective, efficient, as if the Nazis 789 00:52:27,720 --> 00:52:31,600 were just getting ready for the big task that was ahead, 790 00:52:31,600 --> 00:52:34,800 meaning killing the European Jewry. 791 00:52:34,800 --> 00:52:39,600 So clearly there's an intention being consolidated 792 00:52:39,600 --> 00:52:43,560 from within the heart of the Nazi hierarchy, you know, from Hitler, 793 00:52:43,560 --> 00:52:46,000 from the top down, there's this idea, this intention 794 00:52:46,000 --> 00:52:50,360 is becoming more and more and more determined towards a Final Solution, 795 00:52:50,360 --> 00:52:52,720 which is about complete annihilation. 796 00:52:52,720 --> 00:52:54,840 But, of course, as an intention, 797 00:52:54,840 --> 00:52:57,880 that is meaningless without the means of achieving it. 798 00:52:57,880 --> 00:53:00,840 And that's what we see here. Yes, yes. The actual practical means 799 00:53:00,840 --> 00:53:02,480 of achieving this, taking this... 800 00:53:02,480 --> 00:53:04,720 This is what it meant, this is how I understand it. 801 00:53:04,720 --> 00:53:07,800 They are testing, they are trying, they are drawing conclusions. 802 00:53:07,800 --> 00:53:10,880 Lime, quicklime is expensive, 803 00:53:10,880 --> 00:53:14,400 gas in wagons was also inconvenient, 804 00:53:14,400 --> 00:53:17,680 so it just drives Lange to a natural conclusion 805 00:53:17,680 --> 00:53:19,480 that it doesn't work. 806 00:53:19,480 --> 00:53:23,240 "We need to think about something else." Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is it. 807 00:53:23,240 --> 00:53:25,520 And of course, the thing is, you know, we're talking 808 00:53:25,520 --> 00:53:28,680 about experimentation, but this is... The people that are being 809 00:53:28,680 --> 00:53:31,280 experimented on are real people. I mean... Yes. 810 00:53:31,280 --> 00:53:33,640 You know... That's something we can't forget. 811 00:53:37,120 --> 00:53:39,800 Agnieszka's team continues to search the forest 812 00:53:39,800 --> 00:53:41,760 for more of Lange's victims. 813 00:53:45,960 --> 00:53:49,760 But Lange himself concluded that the answer he was looking for 814 00:53:49,760 --> 00:53:51,840 did not lie in forests. 815 00:53:53,200 --> 00:53:57,360 He'd found the most efficient killing agent was gas, 816 00:53:57,360 --> 00:54:01,360 but it needed to be used in a completely different location. 817 00:54:06,520 --> 00:54:08,800 What Lange realised, in fact, 818 00:54:08,800 --> 00:54:12,240 was that the future of mass murder lay in the past... 819 00:54:14,360 --> 00:54:17,800 ..in an old SS prison called Fort VII. 820 00:54:20,840 --> 00:54:27,480 Here, in 1939, Lange had been part of a project called Aktion T4. 821 00:54:29,560 --> 00:54:33,440 T4 was created to purge the Third Reich of the disabled - 822 00:54:33,440 --> 00:54:37,440 what the Nazis called "life unworthy of life". 823 00:54:45,480 --> 00:54:49,600 And the key to T4's efficiency, Lange recalled, had been to bring 824 00:54:49,600 --> 00:54:52,120 the victims to the means of killing, 825 00:54:52,120 --> 00:54:56,240 inside a special secure facility. 826 00:54:56,240 --> 00:55:01,120 In this quiet, old fort, Lange had improvised a whole new concept 827 00:55:01,120 --> 00:55:02,720 in mass murder. 828 00:55:13,200 --> 00:55:15,800 What may be the world's first gas chamber. 829 00:55:24,480 --> 00:55:26,480 People were led up here. 830 00:55:26,480 --> 00:55:29,120 The doors were closed behind them. 831 00:55:29,120 --> 00:55:30,880 When they were all in, 832 00:55:30,880 --> 00:55:35,120 clay was put around the edges outside to seal it off, 833 00:55:35,120 --> 00:55:38,440 and then tubes were put through openings in the door. 834 00:55:38,440 --> 00:55:44,000 Through those tubes, carbon monoxide was pumped from sealed bottles, 835 00:55:44,000 --> 00:55:45,720 and people would wait outside. 836 00:55:47,760 --> 00:55:49,840 When there was no more noise inside, 837 00:55:49,840 --> 00:55:53,520 people outside knew that everyone in here was dead. 838 00:55:55,960 --> 00:56:00,280 By the end of 1941, it's become clear that Hitler's ambition 839 00:56:00,280 --> 00:56:02,720 is to murder every single Jew 840 00:56:02,720 --> 00:56:06,360 across Nazi-occupied and Nazi-allied Europe. 841 00:56:06,360 --> 00:56:09,760 And in order to do that, he needs the necessary scale. 842 00:56:10,840 --> 00:56:13,680 And that's what this offers. 843 00:56:13,680 --> 00:56:15,400 It needs development, 844 00:56:15,400 --> 00:56:19,280 and it's the development of that idea which is what leads us 845 00:56:19,280 --> 00:56:20,840 to the death camps. 846 00:56:35,800 --> 00:56:39,440 So these urns contain ashes 847 00:56:39,440 --> 00:56:42,360 from different camps across Europe. 848 00:56:44,360 --> 00:56:47,800 The one directly in front of me is from Chelmno. 849 00:56:47,800 --> 00:56:52,000 Chelmno is where Herbert Lange went directly from here, and it became 850 00:56:52,000 --> 00:56:53,840 the first death camp. 851 00:56:53,840 --> 00:56:56,560 And from that, a network was developed that led 852 00:56:56,560 --> 00:56:59,000 to the murder of millions of people. 853 00:57:00,000 --> 00:57:03,480 And it all started...here, 854 00:57:03,480 --> 00:57:05,280 in this room. 855 00:57:27,880 --> 00:57:33,000 From early 1942, millions of Jews were taken from all across 856 00:57:33,000 --> 00:57:35,120 Nazi-occupied Europe 857 00:57:35,120 --> 00:57:38,480 and sent to extermination camps like this one... 858 00:57:41,040 --> 00:57:44,200 ..to become no more than ash and memory. 859 00:57:48,640 --> 00:57:50,640 It took just six months to get here 860 00:57:50,640 --> 00:57:53,280 from the first bullets fired in the east. 861 00:57:54,640 --> 00:57:56,400 How did that happen? 862 00:58:06,960 --> 00:58:10,640 Of course, there was Hitler's poisonous ideology, 863 00:58:10,640 --> 00:58:13,400 but it needed more than ideology. 864 00:58:15,560 --> 00:58:18,920 It needed tens of thousands of ordinary people... 865 00:58:20,440 --> 00:58:23,280 ..to betray a neighbour, 866 00:58:23,280 --> 00:58:26,680 or turn their backs and say nothing, 867 00:58:26,680 --> 00:58:29,840 to help round up and rob, 868 00:58:29,840 --> 00:58:32,040 to sign an order, 869 00:58:32,040 --> 00:58:33,920 pull a trigger 870 00:58:33,920 --> 00:58:35,960 or open a valve. 871 00:58:41,280 --> 00:58:46,920 To see others as sufficiently different from them to be killed.