
“One minute in Auschwitz was like an entire day. A day was like a year. A month, an eternity.” Roman Kent, Holocaust survivor.
70 years ago this week, the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp was liberated by the Soviet Red Army after years of unspeakable horrors. The world remembers one of its darkest times in history and this is the last major anniversary event for many of the survivors of the death camp. Between the years 1940-1945, approximately 1.1 million people, mostly Jews, were murdered in this extermination camp.
The following video is a haunting and very moving look at Auschwitz, 70 decades after the captured were set free. The 2.5 minute drone video swoops over the empty and silent camp that held unimaginable pain and sorrow for so many. I watched the entire video with chills and tears in my eyes as I pictured the hundreds of thousands whose lives were torn apart and also for the other 5 million Jews and persecuted who lost their lives at other camps such as this one.
[REWIND: LOST BUT NOT FORGOTTEN| RESCUED FILM PROJECT SAVES UNDEVELOPED WWII PHOTOS]
The video begins with a sweeping view of the entrance to the camp, a long, endless railroad track that brought victims each day – for many of them, their final destination on this Earth. The thought is chilling. Watching the video, I am reminded of a book I read a few years ago, Man’s Search For Meaning, by Holocaust survivor, Viktor Frankl. In it he documents his experiences at the Auschwitz camp and how he survived after being yanked away from his wife and children. Seeing the places where this man watched his friends die one by one, as he plotted his escape, as he fought to live and as he was freed…it’s powerful.
Watch Auschwitz: Drone Video Of Nazi Concentration Camp
There is also a longer version which is twice as lengthy which you can see here.
[Via BBC News]
Hanssie
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Some things are just too emotional for words.
Incredibly well done!
Moving and poignant video, thank you BBC.
Wow. Incredible footage. Longing to visit someday. It is very eerie though..
All who can, go and visit Auschwitz. Seeing the real thing is a completely different experience than seeing movies or pictures. There are many things to see in the interior of the museum. Besides Jews, lots of Poles died there (half of their intellectuality), Russians etc.
Incredible!!!
wow…wonderful footage, very eerie.
There was a made for TV movie called the Holocaust back in the 70’s I believe. I was young, and our family purchased our first VCR, not so much to record the series but to capture the end of the series where our grandparent’s first cousins were interviewed, who spoke of watching their parents taken away, never to be seen again. you know what happened there…
If anyone remembers that series, starring James Woods, Meryl Streep, Joseph Bottoms, Sam Wannamaker, Tovah Feldshuh, David Warner, Ian Holm – I could go on…
We have a holocaust museum in the area (Chicagoland) and a few of my friends who are not of my faith went on a tour of that museum, stated they were in tears leaving the place – touched! They’d come back to me asking if I had gone there to see it, and I asked them why should I go and see something that I have already heard stories about directly from relatives who experienced it; been through religious school where they spent many years going over the same thing I would have seen in the museum. Obviously I did not experience it directly, yet just knowing that human beings are capable of these type of atrocities – not too dissimilar to what we see today, gets quite visceral in a haunting way…
I may watch the video above as a function of art / film, yet not really motivated to, yet.
to those who know what the following phrase (below) means, would really have been all I needed to say here…
NEVER AGAIN!!
I have a friend who survived. Never forget.
Beautiful photography but I agree.. every eerie for sure.
Wow. Well done but creepy!
Nunquam iterum
Makes me want to visit !
great
I visited back in 1995 when I was an exchange student in Germany. I left my Minolta in my host parent’s car and I didn’t last more than 15 minutes before I needed to leave. The emotions can’t be described with words.
I went there as a kid on school excursion – it was terrifying. I remember some of us couldn’t make it through the museum with hills of shoes, hair and other belongings of people killed there.
Wow. I wasn’t able to make it through the Museum of Tolerance here in LA, so I cannot even imagine :(
eerie