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It showed hitherto unseen war footage and shocked the media world and the country with its power and impact. I remember seeing it, I was about 15 then and loved every moment of the series.
It had possibly the most dramatic theme music for any TV documentary - listen here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqONgYHYo88
It was produced by Jeremy Isaacs for London Weekend TV and featured the voice over of one of our most notable actors Laurence Olivier. Each one hour episode was indeed an event.
It is fairly regularly re-run on satellite stations including Yesterday TV on British satellite broadcasting. I have been watching some of the shows this week as they are re-run on Yesterday.
Given that it was produced nearly 50 years back it is fascinating to see how the appreciation of WW2 has changed over time and in last night's episode they covered some of the holocaust. So I plumped up the cushions and settled in for an entertaining session.
One of the key USPs of TWAW was their interviews with combatants, officers, politicians and in last night's case those involved in the holocaust. The speakers included Rudolf Vrba and a guy whose name I didn't see who claimed to be involved in emptying the gas chambers after each killing. Vrba just giggled through his interview and said what we already know but the second guy gave some interesting and mad evidence. He claimed that after each killing in the gas chambers they would wait a short while and then open the doors which would let out a 'blue plume'! Further he said the bodies were piled up into a pyramid shape. He didn't say anything about washing the room out or repainting before the next group came in.
Obviously this was presented as fact in a doomsday type of way.
They also showed the famous photo of the long armed men shuffling bodies into the smoke which is claimed as proof of a burning pit inside Auschwitz. I don't have that picture to hand so cannot include it here. The man who claimed to be a gas chamber emptying operative also said he was involved in the burning pit routine. He did the usual thing of claiming there thousands of bodies burned and their fat was drained off. It reminded me that as said before given that some believe they know exactly where this pit was located, it isn't marked at Auschwitz and has never been marked or excavated.
The programme of course had the usual witnesses claiming all the chimneys spewed flames 'up to the sky'. A brief section on the crematories claimed that bodies were burned in just 15 minutes...
Majdanek was covered very briefly which I think stated that nearly two million people were murdered there, but at this point I had a phone call so missed a little.
I'm sure you could find this episode on youtube which is highly recommended.
The point I am making here is how we see the holocaust today with benefit of forensic research and common sense as opposed to how we were assured it was by the propaganda machine.
