The film Chronicle of Liberation of Auschwitz

Transcript of the podcast

The Auschwitz camp was liberated on January 27, 1945, by soldiers of the Red Army. Well-known are the scenes captured by Soviet cameraman, which, although not showing the exact moment of liberation, are important documents revealing the crimes perpetrated by the Germans in Auschwitz.

It is essential to remember that some of the film material was created for propaganda purposes. Edyta Chowaniec from the Film Archive of the Museum explains the circumstances of the creation of the so-called Auschwitz Liberation Chronicle.

The newsreel recounting the liberation of Auschwitz Camp is an unparalleled film document. It depicts the image of the camp immediately following its liberation. The camp was liberated on January 27, 1945. Aside from minor skirmishes involving retreating German troops, there was no notable combat within the camp area. Thus, the situation in the initial days remained stable as the fighting transpired on the opposite bank of the Vistula River, approximately 20-30 kilometres northwest of Auschwitz. The newsreel documented the events at the camp in the weeks following the liberation in February and March of '45. It is possible that some shots were captured at a later time. The newsreel was produced by a team of Soviet soldier cameramen headed by Mikhail Oshurkov. Other team members included Bykov, Kenian Kutub-Zade, and Alexander Vorontsov. The filmmakers were assigned to the First Ukrainian Front to shoot the troop's march route and armed actions. Before reaching Auschwitz, they captured footage of the liberation of Cracow, which occurred on 18th of January 1945. Upon the Soviet soldiers' arrival, it became evident that there were approximately 7,000 prisoners residing in the blocks and barracks who, due to illness and malnourishment, were incapable of joining the evacuation march. In addition, the soldiers discovered numerous corpses of prisoners who had been either shot or succumbed to exhaustion shortly before being liberated, both within the blocks and on the camp premises.

You referred to a team of Soviet cameraman. What was the nature of the team's work upon their arrival at the liberated camp?

The film crew did not participate in the liberation of the city or the camp; they arrived at the camp the day after its liberation, on 28th of January 1945. However, on 7th of February, captain Oshurkov transmitted a telegram to the film studio in Moscow, stating, "We have commenced filming at the Auschwitz camp." On 8th of February, the day following the liberation, he dispatched the first 500 meters of tape to the studio, marking a span of 11 days since the liberation. During this period, it is presumed that the cameramen utilised their time to familiarise themselves with the camp site and facilities. In one of the earliest scenes, a shot from an aeroplane depicts the vast Birkenau camp area. Fresh snow can be observed in the initial shots, progressively melting as subsequent shots unfold. On 5th of February, Captain Oshurkov, in a subsequent telegram, formally requests the immediate dispatch of an additional cameraman and a portable light source. The purpose of this request is to film the work of the Soviet Commission, paying close attention to their members and the interiors of the barracks and gas chambers. Moreover, Oshurkov made several requests for additional film stock and eventually obtained it in early March 1945. The Soviet cameramen had limited equipment, consisting of an American Aimo 35mm handheld camera, but could not sync sound with the visuals. Consequently, Captain Oshurkov sent another plea to the film studio in Moscow, requesting the necessary equipment. He was denied access to the equipment because the second Ukrainian front cameramen were currently using it. Thus, it can be deduced that capturing Auschwitz on film was not a priority for the studio in Moscow. The Red Army did not prioritise the liberation of concentration camps. On March 19, Captain Mikhail Oshurkov forwarded an additional 2,500 linear meters of tape to Moscow. In his communication, he specified the importance of combining this footage with the previously sent material and emphasised its fragility due to being shot in extremely challenging conditions.

Did American film crews, while capturing footage of the liberation of the camps in Germany, experience comparable working conditions?

The Soviet team faced challenges with limited equipment and a shortage of film stock, whereas the American film crews had an utterly contrasting experience when documenting the liberation of camps in Germany. Images taken at Bergen Belsen, Buchenwald, Nordhausen, Dachau, Mauthausen, and other camps were made public in Britain through cinemas and the press. American soldiers were encouraged to produce photographic and film material to be shared with the families of the victims. The field laboratories were outfitted with top-notch equipment and staffed with entire teams of technicians. Renowned Hollywood directors like John Ford and Frank Capra were enlisted.

Soviet soldiers liberated approximately 7,000 prisoners. How were the initial shots involving only the prisoners documented in the chronicle?

Despite the Soviets' anticipation of what they would witness at Auschwitz as another camp – Majdanek – had been liberated half a year before, the scenes they encountered at Auschwitz were truly shocking to them. They were unaware of the horrifying images they would stumble upon. The majority of the liberated prisoners were in a state of extreme exhaustion. Vorontsov, one of the operators, says in a later interview that the people lying on the bunks were bone skeletons, covered with skin and absent eyes. Thus, several of them perished following their liberation, prompting the initial focus of the Soviet military medical service and the Polish Red Cross to be on saving the lives of the prisoners. Field hospitals were hastily established in Birkenau, but the conditions were catastrophic. As a result of water shortage, water had to be brought in from distant fire basins or obtained by melting snow. The absence of sanitary facilities necessitated the efforts of Polish volunteer doctors and nurses from Krakow and its environs to convert buildings in the main camp into hospitals. Once they were completed, hundreds of bedridden patients were transported from their dirty and sticky bunks to the former main camp via horse-drawn carts. The film precisely documented the evacuation of the sick from the former Birkenau camp. The Polish Red Cross hospital accommodated over 4,000 ailing prisoners, including approximately 400 children. Notwithstanding the determined efforts put forth by the medical staff, several hundred of them tragically lost their lives in the ensuing weeks.

What was the objective behind capturing film images from the site of the former camp?

Following the liberation, dedicated Soviet and Polish commissions were established at the camp to conduct thorough investigations into the crimes perpetrated. The initial efforts commenced in February under the guidance of the Prosecutor of the First Ukrainian Front, who operated under the oversight of the Extraordinary Soviet Commission tasked with probing the crimes of – as they called it then - German-Fascist aggressors. The objective of the Soviet camera crew was to document the activities of this Soviet commission on film. The commission members conducted a site visit where they acquainted themselves with the premises of the former main camp, as well as the Birkenau, and Monowitz camps and the remaining camp facilities. A thorough examination was conducted on the areas of the crematoria, including the incineration piles. The committee was also assigned to obtain evidence related to the crimes. Images were recorded on film showing burning pits with human remains, furnace installation components, a gas chamber door with a peephole, Zyklon B cans, pits with human corpses, human hair packed in paper bags prepared for shipment, piles of eyeglasses, artificial jaws and dental crowns pincers for extracting teeth, hundreds of thousands of pieces of clothing and footwear, clothes brushes, shaving brushes and suitcases stacked in piles. These images were created to illustrate the extensive scope of looting systematically executed by the authorities of the Third Reich, as well as to draw attention to the absence of the owners of these objects and to highlight the immense scale of the genocide crime. Additionally, the newsreel portrays the endeavours of the forensic medical committee, which conducted examinations on over 2,800 prisoners. The film showcases distressing imagery of children suffering from frostbitten feet, enduring the irreversible effects of starvation disease and gunshot wounds, and young people being subjected to pseudo-medical experiments in the camp, which were conducted on behalf of German pharmaceutical companies. Forensic experts of the Soviet Commission performed post-mortem examinations of over 500 corpses. The corpses were placed on tables outside the wooden barracks in Birkenau. Research findings indicate that in most cases, the leading cause of death was general cachexia due to malnutrition. Furthermore, these scenes were meticulously documented in the newsreel. These are probably some of the most drastic shots on film. Moreover, the newsreel features the solemn funeral of the victims, organised by the local authorities and the clergy. This funeral took place on 28th of February 1945. It was a religious event attended by several thousand people. The funeral procession began at the gates of the Birkenau camp through a viaduct over a railroad crossing to the burial site, located near the main camp. The procession was led by the miners' orchestra, followed by representatives of the clergy, priests and altar boys. In succession, a hearse with a coffin holding the body of a young child was symbolically driven behind them, and the residents of Oświęcim carried the coffins of the camp's victims on their shoulders.

It was stated that the camera operators started filming in February... When and where was the film's premiere?

The film was completed before 8th of May 1945. It is assumed that the film's premiere was intentionally delayed until the war officially ended, mainly to coincide with the public release of the results of the Extraordinary Soviet Commission's investigation report in the newspaper ‘Krasnaya Zvezda’ on May 8, 1945. The film was showcased for the first time in Moscow on 28th of May 1945. Following this event, the film was approved for internal distribution and screened for three weeks in Moscow's Metropol, Taganskij and Orion cinemas. An eighteen-minute documentary titled "Auschwitz - Film Documents of the Monstrous Crimes of the German Government at Auschwitz" was compiled from approximately 60 minutes of material. The film's distribution served not only to inform about the extraordinary crimes committed at the camp but also to establish its legal recognition as evidence for the forthcoming international tribunal. In 1946, the film "Auschwitz" was screened at the Nuremberg trial as a component of a 60-minute film. The film chronicled the liberation of Majdanek and Auschwitz, as well as the film documentation produced by British and American soldiers during the liberation of the camps in Germany. Besides being distributed domestically, the film "Auschwitz" primarily targeted foreign audiences. However, the demand for foreign language copies was minimal due to the prevailing post-war atmosphere of depression and the tendency to avoid discussions on martyrdom. As an illustration, shortly after the premiere, a copy was dispatched to France, but only in October did references to the film's showing appear in the press there. The film enjoyed a much broader distribution within Germany's Soviet occupation zone. Between June and October 1945, 69 copies were produced in German at the Moscow laboratory.

The image is of utmost importance in the newsreel, but a commentary is necessary for a complete understanding. However, the commentary in the initial material had a highly propagandistic connotation in certain instances. What can be said about this?

The film's commentary includes the results of an investigation by special Soviet and Polish commissions. Indeed, the merits of both commissions in documenting and securing evidence of the crimes are indisputable. However, both commissions, particularly the Soviet one, did not refrain from errors that impacted the study of the camps' history and perpetuated erroneous public perception for several post-war years. In determining the number of victims, they relied on the accounts of survivors and calculations of the so-called throughput capacity of the gas chambers and crematoria. Neglecting to account for outages and irregularities in their operation resulted in an estimated four million casualties. Furthermore, the Soviet Commission made no mention of the Jews in its summaries of the national composition despite their status as the vast majority of the victims. These findings and conclusions were then echoed in the Chronicle commentary, which consistently states that 4 million people died in the camp. The chronicle's commentary also fails to acknowledge that most of the camp's victims were Jews, instead placing them alongside other nationalities or omitting them altogether. The scene featuring an album of civilian photographs explicitly mentions that these pictures portray individuals from different parts of Europe, such as Poles, Hungarians, Czechs, Jews, French, Serbs, Romanians, and Belgians. In a subsequent shot featuring a stack of suitcases, the voiceover states that these suitcases bear stickers in all languages. Another shot shows the Soviet Commission inspecting the gallows in the courtyard of block eleven, accompanied by former Jewish prisoners. They include Professor Bertold Epstein, a paediatric surgeon and employee of the University of Prague, Mansfeld Géza, a pharmacologist and professor at the University of Pecs in Hungary, and Sigmunt Fischer, a neuropathologist from Prague. The commentary describes them as men in striped uniforms, eminent European scholars.

In the 1980s, a film titled “Die Befreiung von Auschwitz”, also known as “The Liberation of Auschwitz”, was produced. The film was based on footage captured following the camp's liberation. Can you shed light on what this process entailed?

The complete footage captured by Soviet cameramen remained entirely undisclosed until the mid-1980s. In 1984, the filmmakers Irmgard and Bengt von zur Mühlen, a married couple from the Berlin-based German film studio Chronos, sent a request to the state film archive in Moscow. They requested a thorough search for any footage captured by Soviet cameramen at Auschwitz. In an interview, Irmgard von zur Mühlen recalls that Chronos established a branch in the film archive and entered into a co-production agreement, granting it limited access to its film stock. The filmmakers of Chronos were aware of the existence of an eighteen-minute documentary on Auschwitz. The filmmakers at Chronos knew that during the trial, an eighteen-minute documentary on Auschwitz had been presented and that no further content on Auschwitz had been included in subsequent documentaries. Therefore, they were highly confident that the remaining material, excluded from the 18-minute documentary, must have been retained in the film archive in Moscow. After a two-year search, continuous reminders, and mounting pressure, the filmmakers resigned themselves to the belief that the footage from Auschwitz had been lost. Their focus had shifted to other projects until, quite suddenly, in November 1985, it was revealed that the metal cans containing the rejected footage had been located. Chronos staff also managed to establish the fate of three filmmakers and three Soviet cameramen. One of them had passed away; the other was struggling with a terminal illness. Alexander Vorontsov, 74 years old at the time, was the only crew member in good health and willingly agreed to an interview, which was included in the film “The liberation of Auschwitz”. However, I would like to mention that the information here is divergent. Multiple press articles state that the filmmakers from Chronos managed to contact Alexander Vorontsov, who had film material, specifically rejects from Auschwitz, in his private archive. Alexander Vorontsov agreed to make this material available to Chronos in exchange for other film material of interest to him. Irmgard von zur Muhlen, representing Chronos, undertook the challenging task of integrating all the material, which proved extremely difficult, tedious and labour-intensive. In 1945, the Russians cut out a total of 18 minutes of footage from the source material for the film “Auschwitz” without creating any initial copies. The remaining material was fragmented and disorganised. It was necessary to merge all the material while maintaining chronological order. The weather forecast for the first 14 days, obtained from Poland, was conducive. The film's initial sequences were reconstructed by analysing data on snowfall and snowmelt. Additionally, help was sought from the archives of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum to gather the necessary personal information and ascertain the subsequent destiny of individuals whose images appeared in the chronicle. This was accomplished by examining existing photographic documentation, personal files, death certificates, or medical records, particularly in cases where the individuals were subjected to pseudo-medical experiments.

Who were you able to recognise in the footage at the time?

The subsequent fate of some individuals, at the time children, was ascertainable through examination conducted by the medical commission. The chronicle portrays a scene where two girls are brought before the medical commission for inspection. They were Slovakian Jewish girls, fourteen-year-old Alicja Ziemlich and thirteen-year-old Gertruda Mangel. Alicja Ziemlich arrived in September 1943 at Birkenau camp with her siblings, father and a sizeable family. They were transported from Terezin and imprisoned in sector BIIb. There, she worked in the so-called weberei workshops, weaving long ropes from various scraps of material, cellophane, waste and clothing. Unfortunately, while undertaking this work, her feet got frostbitten. After liberation, she remained in the Polish Red Cross hospital until March. At the end of March, she was transported to Użhorod with a group of other children, and from there, she was taken to Košice. However, we are already acquainted with this information from the account she provided in the presence of Tadeusz Iwaszko, the head of the Archives.
A girl lying on a stretcher with frostbitten legs was also recognised in the newsreel. The newsreel describes her as a girl from the Czech Republic. She is Jana Ecksteinova, a nine-year-old Jewish Czech girl transported to Auschwitz from the Terezín ghetto in October 1944. Doctors diagnosed her with second-degree food cachexia and frostbite. The girl stayed at the Polish Red Cross hospital, but her fate is unknown. The fate of her brother and mother is unknown, while her father searched for the girl in '47. He visited the Museum and presumably did not find her, and her distant relatives had inquired about her fate in 1977. A four-year-old boy lying on a stretcher with contracted limbs was also recognised in the newsreel. He was Josef Hajman, a Jewish boy from Slovakia brought from the Sered ghetto in November 1944. During a medical examination, he was found to have third-degree exhaustion and scurvy. The boy passed away at the Polish Red Cross hospital on 30 March 1945 as a result of an internal haemorrhage. Katarzyna Ber, a young woman, was also recognised in the newsreel. In the scene depicting her departure from the wooden barracks, she is accompanied by an older woman, while in the background, a lifeless body is visible amidst the muddy terrain. It was Katarzyna Ber, then eight years old, a Jewish girl from Slovakia, transported with her family from the Sered ghetto in November 1944. The father died in another camp in Germany. She survived but was liberated in Buchenwald. Following the liberation, the girl also remained at the Polish Red Cross hospital, after which she was taken to Katowice, where she stayed with other Jewish children under the care of the Congregation of the Sisters of Saint Jadwiga and later deported to Slovakia. There, she was taken to the Tatranská Lomnica sanatorium for lung problems. In Tatranská Lomnica, her mother located her in a sanatorium, and the girl recognised her by the hat she was wearing. The film was completed and published under the title "The Liberation of Auschwitz" in 1986 to mark the 41st anniversary of the liberation of the camp. Another publication was released in 2005. As part of a cooperation with the Auschwitz Birkenau Museum, Chronos released this newsreel digitally on DVD in 12 languages.

We know that certain scenes in the newsreel were reconstructed. Can we state which scenes these were and elaborate further on them?

Since the Soviet cameramen did not participate in the military action of liberating the city and the camp, they decided to recreate the liberation scene as they envisioned. They might have also received instructions from Moscow on how to portray the scene. In the recreated scene, the prisoners are shown pushing against the closed Arbeit Macht Frei gate while armed Soviet soldiers approach with their rifles pointing towards the gate. The soldiers open the gate, and the prisoners run out, throwing their caps in the air. Some even embrace the soldiers to show their gratitude for their liberation. The scene lasted 80 seconds and was captured using three cameras from different positions. A leafy tree in the background indicates that the recording was not made in January or February but a few weeks later. Out of the roughly 50 participants, only two had striped uniforms. As Vorontsov said in a press interview, Polish forced labourers who had not yet left the labour camps set up at the Buna Werke chemical factory belonging to the IG Farben Industrie concern located at the third part of the Auschwitz III-Monowitz camp were used for this scene. Some individuals in the scene may have been prisoners who were healthy enough to agree to participate in the filming. According to one of the cinematographers, Alexander Vorontsov, this scene was far from the truth. The prisoners could barely stand on their feet. Upon initial contact, the people were frightened of the Soviet soldiers. They hid in the barracks and were distrustful due to their emaciated state. They moved with difficulty; their eyes were almost cold and indifferent, and they lacked the strength to feel anything, let alone greet the liberators with joy. This scene was so grotesque that it was not included in the film's final version, published in May 1945 under the title “Auschwitz”.

Another reconstructed scene shows Polish women occupying a wooden barrack, some sitting by the chimney's draft and others lying on bunks. A commentary informs us that these are Polish women from the Warsaw Uprising. This scene had to be recreated because the Soviet operators lacked the necessary equipment and lighting, resulting in it being filmed in a roofless wooden barrack. Naturally, this cannot be seen in the film, but the camera operators used natural daylight while shooting.

Another reconstructed scene shows children being led between the wires by the Polish Red Cross, nuns and Soviet soldiers. This group consists of 180 Jewish twins liberated from the camp who had been subjected to pseudo-medical experiments. In the next scene, the children roll up their sleeves and show the camp numbers tattooed on their arms. To strengthen the emotional impact of this scene, it is apparent that the kids were dressed in adult-sized striped clothes.

Another scene features prisoners standing behind wires. They have been intentionally arranged according to their height to allow the camera to capture their faces in close-up shots. The prisoners vary in age, ranging from children to older men, some wearing caps and others with bandaged heads, covered with blankets and dressed in striped uniforms or civilian clothes. Some of them support themselves with crutches. Some smile shyly, while others stare seriously into the camera as if they have just encountered the soldiers who are liberating the camp.

When was the Auschwitz Museum shown the newsreel that featured the liberation of the camp, and how did they obtain the footage?

This film appeared in the Museum in 1956. At the time, the museum's director, Kazimierz Smoleń, also an Auschwitz survivor, ordered a search in Warsaw to find the film shot in Auschwitz. Mr Tadeusz Kinowski, an employee of the Museum, conducted this search and discovered the film in the Polish Army film archive in the Polish Film Chronicle materials. It was a 35mm copy in Russian that perfectly replicated the original. This copy's initial and sole screening occurred at the former cinema in Oświęcim, situated across from the railway station. Further screenings were discontinued to protect the copy from destruction and, with the consent of the Polish Film Commission, the film studio in Łódź was commissioned to produce the source material for the Museum, which included a counter negative of image and sound, and a positive copy. Beginning in April 1957, the Museum started screening the film "Auschwitz - Documents of German Crimes in Auschwitz" for visiting groups. It is known that the film was viewed by 126 groups from April until the end of the year. In 1960, a film studio in Łódź was commissioned to create Polish, English, French and German copies. Additional copies were also produced in Serbo-Croatian, Hungarian and Czech in subsequent years. The film "Auschwitz" was continuously presented to visitors until 1990 for over 30 years. In 1991, under the guidance of Ms Teresa Świebodzka, a team at the Auschwitz Birkenau State Museum made noteworthy revisions to the commentary. These revisions were based on extensive research conducted over several years concerning the number of victims and the national composition of those deported to Auschwitz. The team's primary focus was to emphasise the predominance of Jewish victims. They also eliminated certain sequences. The revised version, shortened to 15 minutes, was commissioned to the film studio in Łódź. The outcome was an abridged 15-minute version of the newsreel presented in seven languages: Polish, English, German, French, Russian, Italian and Hebrew until 2019. In 2020, a new eight-minute introductory film was produced for visitors in 16 languages. The film presents up-to-date footage of the Auschwitz Birkenau State Museum as a unique Memorial. The film incorporates fragments from the newsreel capturing the camp's liberation and archival photographs illustrating the deportation of Jews from Hungary. These shots are cleverly superimposed onto present-day locations, employing an infiltration technique to emphasise the site's authenticity and credibility to the viewer.