Join Holocaust expert and historian Dr James Bulgin as he is given unprecedented access to Auschwitz-Birkenau to uncover how this site was transformed, step by step, decision by decision, from a concentration camp for political prisoners into the epicentre of one of the worst crimes in human history.
Released to coincide with Holocaust Memorial Day on Tuesday 27 January, Auschwitz: The Evolution of Terror offers a ground level view of how Auschwitz evolved from a concentration camp into the deadliest extermination centre operated by Nazi Germany.
James begins his journey in Kraków, once the seat of Nazi power in the East and the location of one of the first Jewish ghettos, before traveling on to Auschwitz I, the site where the earliest experiments in mass murder took place.
It’s here that James uncovers the harsh reality faced by the camp’s first prisoners, exploring the infamous Block 11 and the site of the first gas chamber, before moving on to Birkenau, where four purpose-built extermination facilities would later form the heart of the Holocaust.
Along the way, James brings to life the experiences of Auschwitz’s earliest inmates where they slept, what little food they were given, and how they managed to survive day-to-day under conditions of extreme brutality. At the same time, he examines those responsible for creating and running the camp, from guards to the commandant, following their roles in Auschwitz’s expansion and what ultimately became of them after the Allied victory at the end of the Second World War.
Special thanks to Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum.
Up Next in Top Documentaries
-
The Copper Scroll: Dead Sea Scrolls M...
The Dead Sea Scrolls regularly rank amongst the most significant archaeological discoveries of recent decades. Over 900 papyrus documents, discovered in caves near the site of Qumran, that date to the century before Jesus and include the oldest surviving manuscripts from the Hebrew Bible.
But am...
-
Death in the Parsonage: The Brontës
The Brontë family created some of the world's most passionate and enduring novels, yet their lives were shadowed by tragedy.
Dr Maddy Pelling and Dr Anthony Delaney challenge the romantic myths surrounding the family, tracing the harsh reality of their lives in 19th-century Haworth—a crowded Yor...
-
The Dead of Winter: Medieval Ghost St...
This winter, Dr Eleanor Janega leads us into the darker corners of the medieval imagination - a world where the boundary between the living and the dead was dangerously thin.
Drawing on medieval chronicles, religious monuments, and Icelandic sagas, we learn why people believed the dead could ret...
5 Comments