Auschwitz: The Forgotten
Evidence
1 x 60 min
Produced and self-financed by Flashback Television with an advance from Channel 4 International/4 Ventures. To be shown on Channel 4 (on Monday 29 November 2004 at 8pm), on France 2, and on The History Channel UK (the latter on Holocaust Day in January 2005).
The Nazi extermination camps at Auschwitz in Poland were photographed
in extraordinary detail from the air. The aerial photographs capture
with chilling intensity the details of the Nazi genocide policy.
Astonishingly, the aerial photographs were only ever taken by accident.
The vast site of the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp was only 8km
from a large synthetic oil and rubber manufacturing plant. Such plants
became a priority target for Allied bombers and so on 4th April 1944,
an American reconnaissance aircraft took aerial photographs of the plant
and its surroundings for the first time.
Purely by chance it captured the horrors
of nearby Auschwitz – the
gas chamber and Crematorium I, the Commandment’s quarters, the
camp administration buildings, the infamous execution ‘wall’ between
barracks 10 and 11, the guard towers and security fencing and row
after row of barrack like huts where prisoners lived.
Photographs taken later in August and September 1944 show a train arriving
at the disembarkation point of the camp. Prisoners can be seen as they
are separated. Those selected as suitable for work by SS guards were
marched to the registration point where they were tatooed with a serial
number. Those deemed unfit for work were marched straight to the gas
chamber which was disguised as a shower block.
The film raises some uncomfortable questions – if Allied aircraft could photograph the concentration camps in detail, why could they not destroy them?
Written
and Directed by Lucy Carter
Producer: Taylor Downing
