Auschwitz: The Nazis and the "Final Solution"

Discussion in 'The Holocaust' started by angie999, Jan 9, 2005.

  1. angie999

    angie999 Very Senior Member

    BBC2 screens the first episode of six in this series at 9.00 pm on Tuesday 11 January 2004 and there is an accompanying book of the same name by Laurence Rees, who produced the series (BBC Books, 2005, £20 - but discounts may be available).

    Starting on 12 or 13 January, I hope to post a brief weekly summary of that week's episode and the companion chapter of the book for discussion and questions. If you are interested in taking part, it would be good if you could briefly register your interest here.
     
  2. angie999

    angie999 Very Senior Member

    If anyone is interested, I am proposing to start a discussion on this new six part series and companion book over on the Holocaust forum (you will find it posted on the Auschwitz thread under Camps). The idea is to start a weekly thread for each of the six episodes.

    All contributions to the discussion will be welcome, including any questions.

    You will find a direct link to the site on this site's portal page, or to go direct to the forums go to: http://www.theholocaust.co.uk/forum/index.php?
     

    Attached Files:

  3. Wise1

    Wise1 There We Are Then

    Yup, I will be there, looking forward to what they have come up with. I am in London though on strategy days so will need to get my wife to tape it and watch it when I get back
     
  4. Wise1

    Wise1 There We Are Then

    Yup count me in!
     
  5. angie999

    angie999 Very Senior Member

    This is the discussion thread for the first episode of the new BBC series, screened 11 January 2004, and the introduction and first chapter of the companion book of the same name by Laurence Rees (BBC Books, 2005).

    We can discuss the TV series in two ways:

    1. As history. This is particularly where the book comes in as well, because it expands the history as shown on TV and explains mor eof the background to what happened at Auschwitz. But in the title and content of this first episode, we are given a view of Auschwitz not as a place where a million Jews were murdered, but of a camp originally intended to house 10,000 Polish political prisoners. Is this really surprising beginnings?

    2. As TV. It would be very difficult to make a series like this one over six episodes without the use of dramatisation, given the absence of archive footage of Auschwitz. But what do you think about the use of this technique, which is increasingly common in TV history? And how well do you think it was used here? Also, some use was made of survivor/participant accounts in the first episode, but no direct interviews with the "experts". Did the production team get it right.

    Above all, the series is aimed, in my opinion, not at the probably quite small number of people who already have a good idea of what happened at Auschwitz, but at a much wider group of viewers and readers who know about the murder of the Jews, who probably have no clear idea of how Auschwitz actually fitted into the overall picture and who are interested to know. If this is you and you are drawn here because of unanswered questions, please ask them. This is not to say that any of us involved in the discussion are experts ourselves, with all the information readily to hand, but between us we can discuss and try to find the answers.

    I will post my own personal contributions separatley below.
     
  6. angie999

    angie999 Very Senior Member

    This is to announce that the discussion thread on the first episode is now open.

    To take part, log in or register at the link above.
     

    Attached Files:

  7. Marina

    Marina Senior Member

    I thought the dramatisation was quite chilling, particularly the one where they were discussing the starvation of the Russian people and the one where the doctors were markig the red X on the forms of those who were to die - without even seeing the patient.
    Marina
     
  8. angie999

    angie999 Very Senior Member

    Originally posted by Marina@Jan 12 2005, 04:53 PM
    the doctors were markig the red X on the forms of those who were to die - without even seeing the patient.
    Marina
    [snapback]124[/snapback]


    Yes, I got the book a couple of weeks ago and finished reading it last week. This episode did not have the same impact in writing that it did on TV. I think that overall, the dramatisations were very effective and not overdone. And they helped to illustrate the points, like you describe, very effectively.

    My husband remarked that to save money they should use a clip from "Conspiracy" when they get to the Wannsee conference, but I think these images are too well known and would detract from the narative. By using (so far) relatively unknown actors and having them speak in German, it is coming across to me as dramatised history and not drama, which is the important point.

    One thing which was covered, but could be forgotten, is the apparent concern expressed about the effect of the mass shootings onthe members of the Einsatzgruppen, leading to the search for altermative methods. Rees makes quite a lot of this. Christopher Browning's Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland (1992) told the story of one group of police reservists who carried out a series of mass shootings without, apparently, the effects described in the programme and I would welcome further comment on this fromanyone who has studied it. Certainly mass shootings in the USSR continued long after the gas chambers in the Aktion Reinhardt camps had come into use.
     
  9. Marina

    Marina Senior Member

    One thing which was covered, but could be forgotten, is the apparent concern expressed about the effect of the mass shootings onthe members of the Einsatzgruppen, leading to the search for altermative methods. Rees makes quite a lot of this. Christopher Browning's Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland (1992) told the story of one group of police reservists who carried out a series of mass shootings without, apparently, the effects described in the programme and I would welcome further comment on this fromanyone who has studied it.

    I read that book too - the chilling thing was that so many men quite happily followed orders without questioning them - an abject lesson in peer pressure - the ten (was it ten?) who refused were thought of as wimps and cowards and uncommitted by their peers.
    I'm not sure it was as easy as all that for some of these men though - didn't they have to be fed vodka and so on to fire them up? And I know there were concerns in Berlin about the effect of this kind of work.
    I suppose it was like everything else - different effects on different people.
     
  10. Wise1

    Wise1 There We Are Then

    Sorry for the delay in replying, still trying to find that "work life balance"

    Generally I thought it was a good introduction and without appearing to end already I felt the point in which it finished was a bit of a cliff hanger, of course we know where they are going with part two but many wont, and that ending will certainly keep them tuned in.

    Overall I was neither here nor there with the dramatization, the acting was good and there was nobody as such "famous", I tend to think when you get someone well known then it appears too much of a "drama" for such a serious issue.

    I often find in my talks and discussions that block 11 never gets the kind of attention it merits, so that was good to see a bit of time being spent on it, after all they did carry out the testing of ZB crystals which would as we know spark off something much bigger.

    I know a few that really hit back at the comments made in the scene where concern was made over the ability of the Einsatzgruppen to continue mass shootings, stating they felt it was portrayed in such a way that we should feel sorry for them.

    Well in a way I dont disagree, it was a war yes, but that does not totally remove a humans compassion and feelings about shooting people in the back of the head on a regular basis! There is much more I could say about this subject and best left to another topic.

    I will no doubt have more to say :)
     
  11. angie999

    angie999 Very Senior Member

    In the book, there is a lot more discussion about the process and timing of the decision to implement the "Final Solution" than there was in the programme.

    Quite a lot has been written elsewhere about this and having read some of it, I think that it is impossible to pin down a precise date now, but undoubtedly the process evolved duting the series of meetings between Hitler and Himmler in the second half of 1941.

    The Wannsee conference in January 1942 was not, I believe, a significant event in the decision making process, although the survival of the minutes of that meeting, deliberately written by Eichmann in a circumspect style though they were, give a rare glimpse into it. The descision had already been made. I think the puropse of that meeting was twofold:

    1. To spell out the leading role of the SS in the process.
    2. To co-ordinate the activities of the various departments of state.

    In his book, Rees seems to agree with this, yet this is not the impression I got from the programme.

    There is obviously a difficulty with packing a detailed history like this into even six 50 minute episodes and I do not envy the producers, who often have to decide not what to put in, but what to leave out.

    I thought that the episode was good on the establishment of Birkenau, the development of the use of ZB after the initial experiments in block 11 and the fate of the Slovakian Jews.

    Also, the decision to begin deprtations of German Jews and the beginnings of the liquidation of the Lodz ghetto was well covered.

    As part of this, we saw some scenes of Chelmno today and the foundations of a large house where the victims were taken before being put into gas vans. This large house is sometimes called the "castle" and gives its name to the so called "castle period" of Chelmno killings. There was another period when the church shown in the programme and still in use today was used, the so called "church period". In both cases, the same area in the forest was used for burials, although later, incomplete, attempts were made to dig up the bodies and burn them.

    Both Lodz and Chelmno were in the part of Poland incorporated into the German Reich and these killings were not part of the operation in the rest of Poland which accounted over one and a quarter million deaths by the end of 1942 - none of them in Birkenau.
     
  12. Marina

    Marina Senior Member

    You're right about the hideousness of those mass murderers - I cannot see how anyone could feel remotely sorry for them - except the High Command. What beats me is how stressed they were and yet did not have the courage or conviction to refuse. You'd think that even if they felt no pity for the victims they'd have realised that the Aktions were no good for them either. I remember reading about a camp officer - I;m sorry, I can't remember exactly who this was - who tried to show that he was sensitive by relating that he always kept his office chair facing away from the window overlooking the camp because he could not bear the sights there. perhaps hell will have a chaoir foxed to the floor where is forced to look at his handiwork.
     
  13. angie999

    angie999 Very Senior Member

    This was the episode fist screened on 25 January.

    The episode covered a lot of ground, some of it fairly superficially, such as the beginnings of the deportations of the French Jews, or rather at that stage foreign Jews in France, with the co-operation of the French authorities.

    In my opinion, what happened in France is worthy of further reading, especially in the light of the trials which took place in the 1970s and 1980s. If anyone wants reading suggestions on this, please post a request.

    Also covered were the operations during 1942 at other camps in Poland, such as Treblinka. Quite good in my opinion and clearly showing that even at this stage, Auschwitz was still not a significant part of the Holocaust. It also made the point well that things had gone badly wrong at Treblinka, due to failures to dispose of bodies at the rate that the killings were taking place, which let in well to the construction of the first Birkenau cremetoria and the decision to build gas chambers right into them. This was actually crematoria 2 and 3, where the gas chambers were below ground level. Crematorium 1 was at the Auschwits main camp and was the only one to survive the war.

    Incidentally, did you notice that the French Jews had to walk a couple of miles from the trains to the gas chembers in bunker 1 or 2? The unloading ramp inside the camp, actually known as the "new ramp" was built for the arrival of the Hungarian Jews in 1944. Before that, the trains were unloaded at a ramp out by the main line and the prisoners faced quite a long walk. The photograph taken by the RAF in the Summer of 1944 showing a group on their way to the gas chamber shows the new ramp in use.

    What are your comments on this episode? In particular, what do you think of the pace of the series so far? After three episodes did you expect events to have moved along a bit quicker?
     
  14. laufer

    laufer Senior Member

    The series has just strted yesterday in Polish tv channel TVP1. Unfortunately I've missed first episode. But sooner or later I'll buy a book.
     
  15. Wise1

    Wise1 There We Are Then

    Originally posted by Marina@Jan 21 2005, 05:58 PM
    You're right about the hideousness of those mass murderers - I cannot see how anyone could feel remotely sorry for them - except the High Command. What beats me is how stressed they were and yet did not have the courage or conviction to refuse.

    I am in by no way justifying anyones actions, really trying to understand them, the propaganda machine spewing out hatred for the Jews and the simple fact that having the "courage" to refuse would end up in their own death is probably enough reasons not to refuse in their own eyes.

    We can all say we would not do it but that was a different time, place and a lot other things.
     
  16. Marina

    Marina Senior Member

    But some did refuse - and nothing much seems to have happened to them - barrck cleaning duties - not too difficult. Others paid lip service - and turned a blind eye. I supposed it was a case of each man according to his own nature. But you're right - no one can know how they would react.
    marina
     
  17. angie999

    angie999 Very Senior Member

    From what we know about those who refused, it appears that you could do so on the grounds that you had no stomach for it and be assigned to other duties, but I know of no case where anyone refused on principle, which I think would have resuled in severe repercussions.
     
  18. Marina

    Marina Senior Member

    I know of a couple of cases - there was a violent Hamburg criminal sent to Auschwitz to be a guard after he was wounded on the Russian front - they showed him round the camp and then brought him back to the office. He told the officer they were all 'BLEEP mad' and walked out. No stomach? Or a principle at work? Or a human instinct? He was given some sort of guard duty in an army camp . Many doctors and such 'respectable persons' had the same experience of being shown round the camp - but as far as I recall, none of them refused the duties.

    German officer sent to Vilna - got escort duty to a high ranking officer. As they drove back to their quarters after a meeting, he saw the ground seething in the moonlight. His companion was angry that 'they' hadn't buried the bodies deep enough along the side of the road. The young officer was sickened and happened to have good connections - he got himself a transfer out of there to Russia. Must ahve been a shock when he found out what was happening there?

    It's a fascinating subject - what was the difference between those who cooperated and those few who found a way out of it? That book you mentioned earlier - Browning's on the Police Reserve Battalions - chilled me almost more than any other book I've read on the subject. I just didn't EXPECT (although I knew what happened before I read it all) that it would be so easy to involve so many 'ordinary' men is such awful events. That book left me feeling very bleak, I have to admit.
     
  19. the*president

    the*president Junior Member

    Hello everyone
    Iam an A/V technician at Harrow College and have recorded all 6 episodes of the above series. However, before I put it into the library I need the title for each programme and a paragraph of information on the content of each programme to be able to list it. If anyone has this information it would be appreciated. Unfortunately, I do not have any back episodes of the TV Times to find the programme content.

    I would also be happy to make copies of episodes missed for other members if needed.

    Thank you

    gary Carter
     
  20. Gibbo

    Gibbo Senior Member

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