NARRATOR: This is the site of the largest mass murder in the

history of the world. Auschwitz. 1.1 million people died here.

More than the total of British and American losses in the whole
of the Second World War.
This is the story of the evolution of Auschwitz and the mentality
od the perpetrators. It’s a history based in part on documents
and plans only discovered since the opening of archives in
Eastern Europe. And informed by interviews with people who
were there. Including former members of the SS. And if you ask
yourself if this is really necessary, you’ll say to yourself, “yes of
course”. We’ve been told that these are our enemies and there is
a war on.
NARRATOR: But the horrors of Auschwitz did not occur in
isolation. The camp evolved alongside the Nazi plant for the
conquest of Eastern Europe. A war of destruction unlike any
other in modern times. One in which innocent civilians were
murdered by special killing squads. The order said, they’re to be
shot. And for me that was binding.
NARRATOR: As the war developed, Nazi decision makers
conceived one of the most infamous policies in all history. What
they called the final solution, the extermination of the Jews.
Under Auschwitz, they journeyed down the long and crooked
road to mass murder to create this. The building which
symbolized their crime, a factory of death.
DARIO GABBAI (Jewish prisoner, Auschwitz 1944-1945): There were
people screaming. All the people, you know. They didn’t know
what to do, scratching the walls, crying, until the gas took
effect. If I close my eyes, the only thing I see is standing up.
Women with children in their hands.
NARRATOR: What follows is the surprising story of the birth
of Auschwitz and the Nazi policy of mass extermination. With
Auschwitz initially built for an altogether different purpose
than the gassing of the Jews. And the Nazis evolving their
wider policy of killing, in ways that defy the popular myth of
the SS as robotic killers who simply acted under orders.
---(sigle)---
(Southwest Poland, April 1940)
In the spring of 1940, Captain Rudolf Hoess of the SS
journeyed through Poland to take up the job of commandant
of the new Nazi concentration camp. Hoess was travelling to
the outskirts of the town of Auschwitz. In the midst of
territories snatched by Hitler during his invasion of Poland the
previous year. Here Hoess would create this concentration
camp, the very first Auschwitz, which was later known as the
Stammlager of Auschwitz 1.
But when Hoess first arrived in April 1940, few of these
buildings existed. This infamous concentration camp began
life as a collection of dilapidated former Polish army barracks,
set around a huge horse-breaking yard. The task wasn’t easy.
In the shortest possible time, I had to create a camp for 10000
prisoners.