Dachau Liberation (2021) - full transcript

Here, we

find out that this is hell,

not a camp.

We were at the gates of hell.

To them, we were not human beings.

To them, we were just like an animal.

My father was taken to one

of the subcamps of Dachau

and my mother and little brother

were taken from there to ,

to Auschwitz, to Auschwitz.

Of course, they were killed the same day.

I received a number 106016.

And from then on, I was no

longer Andrzej Branecki.

I became that number.

They brought me to Dachau from Zaporizhia

in October, 1943.

216 of us were being transported,

all captives of the Zaporozhian SD prison.

My friend and I decided to leave Holland

and get to Great Britain to join the army.

The only way of getting to the other side

of the English Channel

was to use an old kayak.

The German Army stopped us.

With our hands behind our heads,

we were transported from

to.

After that, we were taken to Dachau.

It turned out that the cars

are filled primarily with the deceased.

I wasn't chosen for

the malaria experiments

because I contracted typhus.

When I contracted typhoid fever,

it was already April of 1945.

At the end of January 1943,

Hitler sent me to the

language corps to Auschwitz.

The weather soon changed for the worse.

We began to send an SOS signal.

Three German boats swam up to us.

Instead of going to Great Britain,

we ended up in the

concentration camp Dachau.

It was said that Dachau

is a place without God.

I can't believe I survived.

God bless you that I can

tell you all about it.

Detained in Annecy

and subsequently transported

to the camp in Dachau.

Germany, February 28th, 1933.

A special ordinance for the

protection of the nation

and state was put into effect.

In cases of disloyalty

among German citizens

towards the Third Reich and the Fuhrer,

it allowed specific

restrictions to be introduced,

that of personal freedom,

right of speech, and

the right to organize.

Meanwhile, confiscations,

searches, arrests,

and jail sentences without a trial

for people suspected of being enemies

of the German nation

and state were allowed.

Great times are only beginning.

Germany has been awakened.

We have gained power over the country.

Now, we need to win

over the German people.

I know my comrades,

we have been through difficult times

when you have demanded

changes that never came.

So we must appeal again and

again to continue the struggle.

You cannot act alone.

You must listen.

You must succumb.

You have to surrender

to the overwhelming need for obedience.

The first German concentration camp

was built in a small Bavarian town

a mere 20 kilometers from Munich.

Dachau was established by Heinrich Himmler

March 21st, 1933,

an entire six years before

the start of World War II.

In the times before the war,

the prisoners consisted

mainly of the German people,

enemies of the regime, along

with the clergy, and Jews.

The layout of the camp was simple.

The larger areas

surrounded by a brick wall

was reserved for the prisoners.

They were kept in 18 long barracks

with about 200 individuals in each.

As the war began,

Dachau became a prototype

for a rapidly growing number of Nazi camps

throughout Europe.

Mauthausen Gusen, Sachsenhausen,

and Auschwitz were also

based on its construction.

It wasn't just the concept of such a camp

that became widespread.

The building, arrangement, the floor plan,

even the manner in which

the prisoners were treated

were the same.

Before the start of the war,

Dachau was a training area

for future camp commandants.

During the war,

the number of people in the

extremely overpopulated camp

reached as many as 16,000.

Hitler's aggressive politics soon expanded

beyond the borders of the Reich,

beginning in 1936 with the

German Army occupying Rhineland

and followed by the annexation of Austria.

Hitler's next targets,

Czechoslovakia and Klaipeda County,

are captured in March, 1939.

His attack on Poland

on September 1st, 1939,

marks the beginning of World War II.

I received my ordination of

priesthood June 3rd, 1939.

And I was appointed as vicar in Klebowiec,

three kilometers away from the

former Polish German border.

When the war began,

I remember the rector

asking Governor

What the people should do.

The governor said that those who are young

and able to join the army should escape.

1939, my life was turned upside down

when the Nazis occupied our city of Loich.

Two soldiers burst in.

They arrested me and took

me to Germany as a hostage.

They they forced me to

sign a document stating

that if something happens

to a German in Klebowiec

or the surrounding area,

I am to be shot.

Europe waits.

Warsaw surrenders September 28th.

A large bus with barred windows

left the former Wittelsbach

Square in Munich.

Feeling melancholic,

my mind drifted to the memory

of saying goodbye to my wife.

I could still see her teary-eyed face.

For as soon as the bus

passed ,

it turned off the road that

led to the city Dachau.

You entered through a wide gate,

holding up a sign that read.

The Germans used terror and persecution

to create strict order in

the occupied territories.

The remaining morale was to

be crushed by the radical

and ruthless politics of the master race.

You will be my witnesses,

Archbishop Kazimierz Majdanski.

The arrest take place in stages

according to a code known

only to the almighty Gestapo.

There are 43 of us,

clergy professors as well

as seminary educators,

curialists, parish priests, and reverends.

A plan to destroy the

Polish clergy is underway.

The concept applied to

powerful social classes,

namely the clergy,

and those who as priests

had a large influence on the society.

One day in 1940, they

brought out 40 people,

everyone I knew to a gallows.

At that gallows, I saw the butcher,

the plumber, the , the author,

the doctor, the lawyer,

all of them known to me.

But one of the things

that I'll never forget

because we had to stand there watching

as hangings were going on

and what they were doing

every time they put the

noose around the neck.

They asked, "Is the noose too tight?"

And then they would

hang each individually.

But the bad part about it is

I had to watch my own teacher being hung

while all of us have been

standing around for hours

watching this as the

Germans were filming it,

taking pictures, and

laughing the entire time.

At night,

we were transported to a train

and put into cattle cars.

Where are we going?

No one knows.

And then the older priests said

they now know where we are headed.

We are headed towards Dachau.

When they marched in,

they gave us 10 minutes

to leave the main city

and pushed us into a place

which was an old part of the city.

Filthy, dirty.

230,000 people were pushed

into a place of four square kilometers.

If that wasn't enough,

children under the age of 10

were not allowed to be in the city.

They told us all the children under 10

will be sent to a colony.

But they didn't really do.

With those children,

they sent him to a gas

chamber in.

I was lucky because my

father had the foresight.

Those camps were not

extermination camps,

but every second, people died,

because it was impossible to stay alive.

And ever since,

I've been calling my father the angel

because he saved me from calamity.

He saved me from troubles.

The example that I gave,

he changed my age, that

I was born in 1927.

Because having a birthday in 1927,

I could go ahead and

have a passport to work.

I worked as a cloth

cutter for four and a half

or something like that years,

from 1940 until 1944.

I spent

24 hours in Terezin,

six weeks in Birkenau and.

Within five weeks,

I had already lost eight

members of my family.

Only one of my brothers survived the war.

The rest died in the gas chambers.

The true journey was long,

but we still didn't know

where we were going.

We arrived at a place called Auschwitz.

We still didn't know what it was

because all we saw was a selection ramp.

I was selected to go with

my mother, and my brother,

and the younger cousins,

and all the women.

My father had the foresight

to have a copy of my documents

which was one, the work permit,

and the other one was the

registration with the Gestapo

to prove that I was born

in 1927, that I was strong,

I worked for German

authorities all this time.

I had no idea where I was.

For the next few days,

the only things I thought about

were that I was locked

up and I didn't know why.

I was arrested for being part

of a communist guerilla division

of an anti-fascist group.

On January 6th, 1944,

Soviet soldiers cross the

former borders of Poland.

We were sent out of Warsaw

when the Soviet Army was

approaching the Vistula.

We walked 120 kilometers in wooden shoes.

We went by foot from

Warsaw to.

We were very thirsty.

Our whole group descended

under a bridge by the Vistula.

And when we began drinking the water,

the Nazis began shooting at us.

The water was like blood.

It was red from the blood.

We waited for the train,

and August 6th, 1944,

we arrived here to Dachau.

June 6th, the allies land in Normandy.

A growing number of prisoners

evacuated from camps

situated near the war zone

are being transferred to Dachau.

Around 1,000 left

Frankfurt for Buchenwald.

Only 350 made it.

The rest were shot on the way.

Those who had no more strength to walk

laid down in a ditch.

And the first of the SS men

who walked after every

three rows would shoot them.

It turned out that the cars are filled

primarily with the deceased.

Very few remained alive.

When they opened the doors,

they gave us a choice,

camp or crematorium.

The Warsaw Uprising

breaks out on August 1st,

Forcing the Germans to

begin deporting residents

of suburban towns near Warsaw.

Here, we find out that this is hell,

not a camp.

We were at the gates of hell.

It was said that Dachau

is a place without God,

that the cruelty there was so terrifying,

the savagery so horrendous,

that it was impossible to believe

that man could act this way

and be so brutal towards another human.

They took us 10 at a time,

made us undress.

Only suspenders and

handkerchiefs were allowed.

After the shower, we received

new numbers, each his own.

I got 11424.

I walked naked with

only a number in my hand

to the next lavatory.

Clothes were already

prepared and set on a bench.

It was a short fustian

shirt with blue stripes

and a few holes here and there.

I felt that everything

but my mind and heart had underwent

some kind of bizarre transformation.

I arrived at Dachau on April 26th of 1945

and I was already sick with typhus.

A prisoner has no rights

other than the right to die.

For him, liberation and freedom

means passing through the

chimney of the crematorium.

The law is equality before

death of starvation,

exhaustion, or of other causes.

Who you were and how you had lived

has to be immediately forgotten.

Here, you are just a number.

The instinct of self-preservation

should show the prisoner

ways to instantly adapt

to the circumstances

and surroundings with no

objection or criticism.

It is best not to think.

Here, those who cannot

handle the mental stress

are generally the ones to die.

Most people who are survivors,

they call themselves prisoners.

I don't use that word because

we were slave laborers.

The Germans needed us

because most of the

Germans were on the front.

Father

Wincenty Frelichowski

was in my chamber.

He was known for being

very religious and calm.

In the evenings as we laid down to sleep,

he would lead us in evening prayer.

He even had the Holy Sacrament

with which he would bless us all.

Then when typhus broke out,

people were dying in the barrack.

For the sick, what to do?

He said, "I'll go."

And he went and preached

and prepared the sick for death.

He contracted the disease there and died.

Daily life in concentration camp.

Get up five o'clock in the morning.

Appellplatz,.

They were torturing you for a couple hours

and then we had to go to work.

12 hours work a day without food.

Only when we came back in the evening,

appellplatz again, torturing again,

and then got some soup

and a slice of bread,

some margarine.

The day in

the life of a prisoner.

Wake up at 5:00 a.m.,

shower, then make the bed.

After receiving nothing but black coffee,

you march to the roll call square,

where standing in rows,

the inmates are meticulously counted.

We had to be counted on the appellplatz

to count how many people died

and how many people are alive.

After

a thorough inspection,

the kapo would sound a whistle,

And every prisoner would head out

to their designated work area.

And when the German

officer was satisfied

that the numbers were the

same as the day before

between the deadlines and the live ones,

we started to march.

And we came to a place

called.

In ,

they were building a

special underground factory.

We were

placed in block four.

We were young, 14, 15, 13 years old.

They designated us to work

in the sewing workshop

where we were taught how

to patch camp clothing.

There was a kapo in the sewing workshop.

He was a Russian.

One time, the chief's jumper went missing

and the kapo pointed to me.

As punishment,

the chief move me to barrack number nine

where those six typhus were located.

Among the bedridden were

Polish and Czech priests,

Russians, and people of

different nationalities.

The worst unit was the one

that collected the dead.

You would have to ride

from barrack to barrack

in a very large vehicle

and gather the bodies.

I served in this unit for 14 days.

You didn't get any food.

You didn't get any water.

And it didn't work fast enough,

they would beat you.

There were

many cruel punishments.

During the most painful one,

prisoners were taken to the bath area

where they were hung on

special hooks by their hands.

You could hear drops of

sweat falling on the floor.

I stole a piece of bread

from the German officer

that I saw or maybe he

was just a plain soldier

that he laid it down on the table.

And I was punished for that.

Stanislaw

Gresiuk in his book recalls,

"I once had a dreadful

encounter next to that chest."

Inside it,

I found a large amount of paper

thickly covered in cheese curd.

I snatched some of it, turned around,

and walked straight into an SS man.

At first, he beat me calmly and steadily.

However, he gradually became

more eager with his blows.

He became vicious.

He grabbed a peg thicker

than a leg of a table

and beat me with it.

When I saw him with foam in his mouth

hitting me with the peg,

I thought he had gone mad and

now he was going to kill me.

Not for a moment did I think

it would end in any other way.

There were SS men

who would commit to

killing 10 people a day,

and they did.

In order to increase the

efficiency of the German soldier,

Headquarters of the Third Reich

commissioned a series of

pseudo-medical experiments.

Returning to our block,

we were met with the horrible surprise.

While being inspected by the oberkapo

of the camp hospital, Zimmermann,

who often worked as a local surgeon,

he ordered the numbers of the

chosen prisoners to be noted.

As we're standing there,

he selects 10 to 15 young

people from our unit

and takes them to the camp hospital

where they become guinea pigs.

An eerie stillness hung over the room.

Within me, a dead silence.

Healthy prisoners were

injected with phlegmon and oil.

They began to draw numbers.

Once they finished, the

chosen ones were taken away.

Where did they go?

First, on an operating

table, it was quick.

An SS man painfully

punctured the right thigh,

a powerful injection.

The Luftwaffe commissions experiments

that are potentially useful

for the German Air Force.

A large amount of prisoners

die in brutal ways.

Doctors gather information

about pressure chamber tests

and how long humans are capable

of survival in cold water.

Healthy patients were frozen

in pools with cold water.

They were testing how humans

react to cold temperatures.

Approximately 6,000 prisoners

took part in the experiments,

of which as many as 2,000

people did not survive.

Harsh conditions and massive

overcrowding in the camp

by the end of the war caused

the outbreak of typhoid fever.

Starting with a high fever,

severe headaches, and rapid breathing,

after about five days,

the illness causes

substantial weight loss,

usually leading to death.

At the end almost

before liberation time,

I contracted typhoid fever.

You call it typhus.

Again, my father, the angel,

managed to save me because

there was no medicine.

After his working day,

he would come at night to

the special sick barrack

and bring me a cup of hot water.

And that's what saved me was the hot water

on a daily basis for almost two weeks.

Spring of 1945,

the American Army is closing in on Munich.

Under Himmler's orders,

no prisoner can fall into

the hands of the enemy alive.

Before our release,

I was part of a group in Dachau

whose goal was to contact

the American Army.

We begged them to come

and free the camp as quickly as they could

because we did not know what lay ahead,

life or extermination.

The sounds of guns and

machine guns filled the camp.

Countless SS men

reinforced the watchtowers.

I escaped from the unit with my friend

near the city of Wolfratshausen.

The unit continued

forward towards the Alps

where it would reach its

destination,.

My friend told me that when

we reached the mountains,

they would kill us.

We knew the war was ending

and we needed to survive,

so we ran.

Morning came

and blocks still capable of walking

gathered on the main square.

People were saying the

camp was being evacuated

to the Tyrol mountains,

a journey to be made on foot.

The square was covered

in piles of garbage,

clothes, fires, and junk.

Documents from

And prisoner files were

being hastily burned.

Allies' spy planes were

circling above the camp,

destroying the local

lines of communication,

attacking columns of

troops and motor vehicles.

Each prisoner had two rolled

up blankets and a package.

No food for the journey was distributed.

After a few hours,

we were ordered to head

back to our blocks.

Saturday morning, once more,

we gathered in the main square

and told that there would

be no further evacuation.

Owing to the ongoing battles,

the slowly retreating German Army

cannot execute a proper

evacuation of the camp

Headquarters makes an

equally dreadful decision

to follow through with Himmler's order

and at all costs prevent prisoners

from falling into the hands of the allies.

April 29th,

it turned out that we were all

supposed to be exterminated.

Traveling commands would constantly return

to say the camp is surrounded,

that behind its walls,

there is only chaos and panic.

Everyone is fleeing,

even external sectors working in companies

and establishments located near the camp.

Thousands of prisoners starved, dirty,

and exhausted had become mere shadows.

Suddenly at 5:30 p.m. in the

closest area of the camp,

a shootout erupted.

I was with the 20th Armored Division.

We came into the camp on April 29th, 1945.

When the American soldiers

entered through the gate,

they had no idea they were

crossing over into another world,

a world where the human

life was insignificant.

Our tank smashed the barbed wire

and the infantry from the

42nd and 45th Divisions

rode in on top of our tanks.

We didn't see it

until we actually got to

the barbed wire fence.

It was very quiet.

Nothing was happening.

Many of our men became distraught.

Some cried while others raged.

It was incredible.

We had no idea what was here.

The whole thing was a surprise.

When we got to the camp,

the first thing we saw was

a string of 39 railway cars

all filled with human bodies.

All dead.

I think there were

about 2,000 dead bodies.

It stunned us.

The men were looking pretty mad.

They were hardened combat veterans.

They didn't say much,

but there was a lot of cursing,

quite a bit of silence,

and some men started crying.

Suddenly, I see SS men from

the tower near barrack 28

firing shots at American soldiers.

A moment later,

they cease fire and hang up a white flag.

They are surrendering.

Dachau

concentration camp,

Professor Popovitch.

Yugoslavian.

I earned my BA at the

University of Cambridge,

a Doctorate of Philosophy

at the University of London,

and the Professor of English

in the University of Belgrade.

I was put into prison by

the German authorities

as soon as they arrived to Belgrade.

The reason for my arrest was

that I was an anglophile.

I was actually before the war

General Secretary of

the Society of Friends

of Great Britain and

America in Yugoslavia.

And the co-editor of an

anglophile periodical

called.

All of a sudden,

a few American soldiers

burst through the camp gate

and entered the square.

A crowd of prisoners emerged

from various hideouts

and ran towards them with

screams of joy and excitement.

They cheered as they carried their saviors

around the square.

They were just wonderful.

They gave us a big hug and everything.

They couldn't believe we were here

and that their terrible

time had come to an end.

32,000

tormented starving prisoners

mad with bliss falling

into each other's arms,

kissing, crying.

The slavery is over.

Long live the victorious American

Army that brought freedom.

We saw and talked to many prisoners.

We were told not to feed them too much.

They would get sick.

We were able to walk

down to the crematorium.

The wording was freeze

the prisoners in place

so that they would not get out.

Many of them had typhus and

they needed medical attention.

They needed food, they needed care,

and they didn't need

to spread out all over

the camp and the town.

When the

Americans entered the camp,

they were terrified by what they saw.

They said they had never before witnessed

the type of savagery that

took place in Dachau.

They said that Dachau

and death are synonymous.

We were allowed to walk around

and say hello to people,

give them some food.

And then our officers came

and said we had to get

out of the camp and go on.

And we captured Munich at that point.

Many years ago now when I

was in the forces to Belsen

and I can remember seeing the

chairs covered in human skin,

and the large vats of fat

which would have been boiled for fuel,

and large mounds which said

here lie toten 500,000 people.

I survived

this only because of God,

because I kept praying

to return to Warsaw.

I can't believe I survived.

God bless you that I can

tell you all about it.

Finding themselves in

this dreadful situation

and having to live in

awful camp conditions,

many prisoners lost faith in God,

while others felt his presence

and strengthened their belief.

When it started, I was 13.

And when the war ended, I was 17,

so you can imagine four years as a kid

in several concentration

camps without parents,

without food, hard labor.

And I'm still alive.

Today, I'm 82.

It's a miracle.

After the war, I asked the same question

and I still ask the same question today

of the German people.

How is it possible that

an educated country,

an educated people with

great history behind them,

how could they allow this to happen?

What happened

in Dachau was inhumane.

People were hanged, used

in medical experiments.

They were cruelly tormented.

How was it possible to tell

that you didn't know anything about it,

that you never saw us when

you say us on a daily basis?

There is no answer other

than they were forced,

but they didn't care.

I think it's more that

they really didn't care

because we were not Germans.

We were just slaves and numbers.

The

people from nearby cities

were forced to enter the camp

to see the true face of Adolf Hitler.

Soldiers were ordered to document

everything they found in the camp

so nobody would ever question the terror

and savagery that took place

in German concentration camps.