[TV] BBC2 9M Sir Simon Schama - The Road to Auschwitz

[jakarta]

9PM tonight, I don't suppose this will be cheeriest of the programmes on this evening but having been there myself a few years ago as part of a long weekend in Krakow I'm sure it will be a fascinating view, especially as Professor Schama is Jewish.

He will clearly will have a 'personal' take on this as well the History of this foul place.

 

[Barryseagulls]

He’s a very clever & articulate man.

 

[PascalGroß Tips]

9PM tonight, I don't suppose this will be cheeriest of the programmes on this evening but having been there myself a few years ago as part of a long weekend in Krakow I'm sure it will be a fascinating view, especially as Professor Schama is Jewish.

He will clearly will have a 'personal' take on this as well the History of this foul place.

I did the same in 2016. Have set this to record.

 

[nicko31]

The bloke is an immense historian

 

[Perfidious Albion]

Thanks for this , I love his programmes. I will have to find this on Catch Up” . I can’t think how I missed it.

 

[Arthur]

Really worth a watch. Isn't an hour long program about Auschwitz or Birkenau in fact it doesn't feature either a great deal at all until the last 10 minutes. Shows what went on from the start the holocaust all across europe. I personally didn't know what had gone on in Lithuania and at what scale before watching the program last night. Reading an interview with him that was his plan as he wanted to educate people about more than just Anne Frank and Auschwitz and he does it very well.

It's not an easy watch, some of the footage is very harrowing but it's a very important one.

 

[rippleman]

I join the list of those recommending this programme. Schama is an excellent historian and great storyteller.

I agree with Arthur that this is a story which needs to be told again and again, particularly with the rise in anti-semitism today.

The end segment when he paid his respects at the place where the records and testaments had been stored in the Warsaw ghetto was particularly touching.

 

[The Clamp]

I’m not ready to watch it yet. I gather the footage is very disturbing. But it’s on my list.

 

[osgood]

The main point of the subject was to show that it wasn't only the Germans guilty of the heinous crimes of the Holocaust
The general population of many other European countries were either complicit or pro-active in the persecution of the Jews
Many were eager participants who needed little encouragement to humiliate, plunder and kill
Not an easy watch but needs to be seen by the younger generation

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

I was a regular watcher of All Our Yesterdays presented by Brian Inglis in the early 60s when I was a wee lad.

I was not expecting to see what I saw on the death camp liberation episode,
the bulldozing of bodies, the mountains of shoes and glasses, literally a death factory.

It haunts me now, 60 years later.

So I won't be watching this programme.
But I will call out racism when I see it, whether from those who know what they are doing,
or those who perch at the top of a slippery slope they may not themselves know is there.

All Our Yesterdays (TV series) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

The main point of the subject was to show that it wasn't only the Germans guilty of the heinous crimes of the Holocaust
The general population of many other European countries were either complicit or pro-active in the persecution of the Jews
Many were eager participants who needed little encouragement to humiliate, plunder and kill
Not an easy watch but needs to be seen by the younger generation

Did the Daily Mail know what it was doing in the 1930s, writing hagiographies about nice Mr Hitler, the Mitfords and so on,
while on nearby pages discussing 'The Jewish Question'?
When does meanness, spite and prejudice become a conspiracy?
When does 'we only want them to leave our country' become 'let's kill them all'?

It seems our red tops have largely stopped this sort of business (although I can't pretend I ready any newspaper these days).
Meanwhile of course you can say what you like on the internet,
and with Musk and Trump calling the tune, being a racist/fascist on some platforms is not merely acceptable, it is almost compulsory.

Let's hope the majority of the public can see through all this shit.

 

[ManOfSussex]

I watched this last night and also went to Auschwitz myself in 2007. A very powerful programme by Simon Schama, pointing out that the holocaust did not fall down from the sky out of nowhere as antisemitism had been around long before and the cooperation and complicity of occupied populations played their part too. Comparing what happened in The Netherlands to what could have happened here if Hitler had crossed the channel was very stark too.

His genuine rage, anger and hurt when at Auschwitz was moving. As he said himself, non Jews only feel pity when there. It reminded me of walking past Jewish people at Auschwitz with my head bowed down as they sat and cried.

 

[rippleman]

HWT and The Clamp

It really is worth watching despite your reservations. The stories are disturbing and upsetting (particularly the young artist who, knowing she was going to be murdered, took her drawings of children in the Warsaw ghetto to be hidden away for safekeeping).

The images I don't think were any more disturbing (and even probably less so) than those I have seen in other programmes, (or in books) about the Holocaust.

Yes, the atrocities of the Holocaust are very upsetting and very disturbing and that is why everyone needs to understand the potential consequences of allowing a mad, right-wing fascist dictator to take power in the world again.

 

[The Lemming Stomper]

The following program, 'What they found', is far more graphic showing images from two soldier cameramen during the liberation of Belsen...

Horrific and heartbreaking

 

[osgood]

I was a regular watcher of All Our Yesterdays presented by Brian Inglis in the early 60s when I was a wee lad.

I was not expecting to see what I saw on the death camp liberation episode,
the bulldozing of bodies, the mountains of shoes and glasses, literally a death factory.

It haunts me now, 60 years later.

So I won't be watching this programme.
But I will call out racism when I see it, whether from those who know what they are doing,
or those who perch at the top of a slippery slope they may not themselves know is there.

All Our Yesterdays (TV series) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Classic TV , as was "The World at War"
Too many parallels in todays world ,
When Dictators put their country in a mess they tend to start a war

 

[rippleman]

Classic TV , as was "The World at War"
Too many parallels in todays world ,
When Dictators put their country in a mess they tend to start a war

And sadly, and worryingly, todays world has three of them.

 

[Dr Q]

Watched it last night. An uncomfortable watch, but these days a story that should be retold over and over. The opening graphics of news articles highlighting antisemitism and Holocaust denial was treuly worrying

 

[Gwylan]

When I was a kid, my parents took me to Belsen so that I could have an idea of the horrors that were unleashed on the world before I was born: it was one of the most haunting experiences of my life. It's in the middle of a forest and, yet, there's complete silence in the camp - no bird song, even the wildlife shuns it.

I had an uncomfortable reminder of how close in time we are to these events when I went to the Jewish cemetery in Prague with my then girlfriend. I knew that she came from a refugee Jewish family but there in the memorial of the dead were several people bearing her family name: it was too much for her, she wept and wept some more. How many people are there, shedding tears for those in Auschwitz, in Belsen, in Buchenwald, in Sobibor? Hundreds and hundreds of relatives, still mourning their losses. Despite this, as the programme demonstrated, there are still many people who deny it all happened or claimed it was exaggerated. What the hell is wrong with them?

 

[Zeberdi]

- My Grandfather was imprisoned in Birkenau (the Auschwitz II camp).

My Grandmother managed to bribe German soldiers with all her jewellery to get my Grandfather out. They were Polish and Austrian Jews. He was lucky to get out but he never recovered from the trauma - many of my relatives died in extermination camps.

When tracing my Grandparent’s footsteps in the 80s, I visited Oświęcim ( Auschwitz-Birkenau) - a year after the Berlin Wall came down in fact.

It’s true what they say about Auschwitz - despite being surrounded by trees and fields, no birds sing there - it is silent. The piles of shoes and huge piles of glasses, and false teeth, still preserved in the huts is truly horrific.

Yes we have dictators today and yes, there have been repeated genocides since the Holocaust but none on the unconscionable and incomprehensible scale that was perpetrated against the Jews. Children, elderly and the sick, not killed in ‘collateral‘ bombardments nor even felled in battle but millions marched into especially constructed gas chambers in camps spread around occupied Poland at gun point and gassed to death.

I agree with @Dr Q above, programmes about the Holocaust should be watched, lest we forget one of the darkest blots on human history and also so we don’t become blind to the possibilities of it happening again.

The programme should also be a poignant reminder that “the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing”.

 

[PascalGroß Tips]

Watched it last night. An uncomfortable watch, but these days a story that should be retold over and over. The opening graphics of news articles highlighting antisemitism and Holocaust denial was treuly worrying

I also watched it last night and totally agree. What happened was utterly horrific. I went to Auschwitz (both) in 2016. I also went to Berlin the year before and visited the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe - above and below - which I found incredibly powerful and quite haunting in terms of getting across the atrocities that happened.