– English Lyrics

Lyrics & Translation

[English]

The wrongs which we seek to condemn and

punish

have been so calculated,

so malignant and so devastating

that civilization cannot tolerate their

being ignored

>> because it cannot survive.

They're being repeated.

>> This appalling program of

experimentation

by Nazi doctors on live human beings.

[Music]

I use the word doctor kind of in

inverted commas because these people

aren't curing people. They're killing

people.

When we

help

the hair

foreign.

[Applause]

Jews were not allowed to walk on the

pavements. They had to walk in the

gutters. Jews were not allowed to

practice their professions. My father

couldn't go to work anymore. At first,

we had to wear an armband, a white

armband with a blue star of David on it.

They later changed it to a yellow star,

which we had to wear. All Jews in Europe

had to wear it. One in the front, one in

the back. If you walked out without it,

you could have been shot.

They put up 10 gallows in the center of

our ghetto and they picked up 10 men

from either from work or from their

homes. And while they gathered hundreds

of people to stand by and watch it, they

hung 10 men together. These gallows were

never dismantled, but every now and

again the procedure was repeated. And we

thought it can't get any worse.

The Nazis passed the Nuremberg laws in

September 1935 and in particular the law

for the protection of German blood and

honor was the law that prohibited or

banned any marriages or sexual relations

between Jews and Aryans.

And of course the point there was to

prevent racial misogenation or racial

mixing.

The measures against Jewish people came

up first slowly but then more dangerous.

People disappeared

and then in 42 we went into hiding.

[Music]

We went in hiding from Holland where

I've been born in Vienna and when the

Nazis came there the population changed

immediately. This was quite quite

shocking and amazing. We had many

non-Jewish friends and they all turned

against us.

For me as a child, something I couldn't

understand at all.

[Applause]

[Music]

I remember one incident a shoe maker

that lived not far away from us. They

went into him barely made a living and

stabbed him to death.

95% they used to get drunk after their

meetings. This was our party. And then

they went out just beating up juice.

They used to throw stones in windows,

breaking windows and this kind of thing.

But mainly the people were locked up and

they were in their houses and the their

apartments and everybody didn't go out

at the time when they knew that you're

going to have a meeting.

So this was the kind of a life they went

through day after day.

[Music]

There was this concept called racial

hygiene which sounds as basically as

disgusting as it was. It's this idea

that you have a race of of pure people.

With the Nazis, it was meant to be pure

Aryans. That was the word they used for

sort of kind of basically tall white

people. And they didn't want their race,

the Aryan race to be sullied, if you

like, by people from other races. So the

whole idea of different races breeding

with each other was seen as being kind

of, you know, medically totally

objectionable. It was, you know,

racially unhygienic.

The Nazi regime was concerned to create

a pure national community and in order

to do so it enlisted the help of medical

professionals so doctors, physicians,

psychiatrists also demographers,

population policy experts in order to

create the perfect society that it

wanted to create. So it really harnessed

the skills and the expertise of the

medical profession and drew the medical

experts very closely into the remitt of

the regime.

>> You you only had to walk into any

university library in Germany and and go

to the medical section and see journal

after journal, book after book uh about

this whole idea of racial purity,

combating uh hereditary diseases. And so

the medical profession looked at what

Hitler was doing, looked at what the

Nazis were doing and going, "This is

great. This is exactly where medical

philosophy in Germany is taking us. This

is what we want to happen." You know, in

other countries such as Britain and the

United States, people were far more wary

of this idea of kind of trying to breed

out weakness. They didn't necessarily

think it was that humane because it

really isn't.

In 1933, there wasn't a law to to stop a

kind of racial intermingling, you know,

and and and sex with people from

different races. Um, you know, the Nazis

did not like this whole idea of mixed

race people and it took the blood

protection law in September 1935 in

Nuremberg and that does make, you know,

relationships between kind of black

people and white people, between Jews

and non-Jews completely illegal. um it

would become a criminal act to actually

you know if you were an Aryan uh to go

to bed or marry a Jew. It seems

absolutely insane that you know the kind

of reach that Nazi party and Nazi medics

had on people's private lives. You know

surely you should be allowed to

reproduce with exactly who you want but

no the whole idea is you had to keep

things racially pure and if you have a

mixed race child that's going to be bad

for Germany.

[Music]

I don't think that anybody even us in

our wanted to feel like a piece of meat

and we have been reduced in this case to

a mass of breathing living cells.

So much of the detail of the experiment

I still do not remember because the only

way I could cope with it is by blocking

it out. I would let my mind just take

off into other directions.

Nazi medical experimentation then was a

drastic set of policies in which the

concentration camp prisoners were

experimented on often to the point of

death and if they didn't die during the

experiments they were often killed

subsequently.

This has been something of a taboo

subject. So in terms of questions of

medical ethics and medical research,

such difficult moral questions of

course, but I think that perhaps this

particular episode in a very dark

history of the whole of the Third Reich

is less wellknown and less well

understood,

perhaps reflecting an unwillingness to

come to terms or to address what was

essentially Nazi murderous science.

A friend of mine, they took her in for

surgeries.

She came back in the afternoon

and she was really

I mean we saw that she lost her mind.

She I mean the pain was so terrible

and she was still bleeding you know when

they pushed her out in the hospital

and then she said

they won't do that to me again

and she started running before we knew

it. There she was.

Yeah. She went to the fence.

She couldn't tolerate the pain.

What they did, they took you in and they

inflicted wounds on you and then to see

how it would heal if soldiers were

wounded like that. If they could

if there is a way to

>> one of the other kind of hallmarks of

Nazi medicine, if you like, is is not

just involuntary euthanasia and killing

the incurable, life unworthy of life,

getting rid of it. It's also this

appalling program of experimentation

by Nazi doctors on live human beings.

It's no accident in in the SS, you know,

Hinrich Himmler's kind of elite core of

of of evil. Really, there's no other way

of putting it. The profession that had

the most representation, the SS was the

medical profession. Doctors join the SS

in their droves.

Some of the most well-known of the Nazi

doctors were Yseph Mangala most known at

Avitz. Also Dr. Sigman Rasher who

conducted freezing and high alitude

experiments among other experiments at

DHA.

Klaus Carl Schilling who conducted

malaria experiments at Dah.

Carl Clowberg, a gynecologist at Avitz

who used hundreds of female prisoners to

conduct artificial insemination and mass

sterilization.

And Carl Vinett who was involved in

hormone research and was particularly

interested in experimenting on

homosexual men to see if he could cure

them.

Today there are a lot of people who who

regard, you know, frankly, experiments

on animals, you know, morally

objectionable. Well, how about if you

were kind of experimenting on living

human beings and that is what takes

place in so many concentration and

extermination camps all over the Third

Reich.

One of the things that Rashid does is

that he puts people in in pressure

chambers and he either increases or

decreases the pressure to simulate

different altitudes uh in which you

might not have any oxygen to see what

pilots could cope with. A and there is

footage you can see these poor men

usually in the and they're in agony

because the pressure is either too

little or too much in these chambers and

their their their bodies are screaming

out. They're literally screaming out or

they're put into freezing water and

they're basically made to get

hypothermia. And you know what is this

teaching anybody? If you get into

freezing water, you're going to get very

cold and then you're going to die.

Everybody knew that before Sigman Rash

is doing it in Dow. H how can this be

medically acceptable? What with a

stopwatch? You're just going to murder

someone and that's going to teach you

about what the human body can endure.

Where does that end? You're murdering

someone. And the whole idea, Rasher

would turn around and go, "This person's

not important. This person's unworthy of

life anyway, so we might as well use his

living body to gain some more data for

our wonderful Nazi medical experiments."

And you know, he kills about 300 people

of hypothermia alone. You know, how is

that medically useful? That's just

sadism.

Although we think we know quite a lot

about all the sinister and extreme

policies and brutalities of the Nazi

regime,

perhaps we understand less and know less

really about the extent and the

parameters and the scale of the human

medical experimentation that went on in

the Nazi camps.

We can take a figure of about 15,000,

20% of whom were Jewish and we know that

also a lot of the other experiments were

on the Cintian Roma and on prisoners of

war and other political prisoners.

In terms of the scale of the

experimentation though, if we take into

account large-scale nutritional project

at Mount Housen concentration camp as

well as other anthropological

experiments, the number can go up to an

estimate of around 90,000.

There was a sense that the sinister side

and the brutal side perhaps would never

be discovered.

The doctors and the scientists engaged

in carrying out the research did so with

callousness, very much coldheartedness,

brutality, but also especially with

impunity.

The truth is I witness I witness

hanging. I witness shooting. I witness

terrible beatings. I witness in Bhenwald

where they had a hose with a regulator

and had women out there by the wall

pregnant tried to see how much pressure

it takes to make a hole.

[Music]

I saw a pit in a where they made soap

from people.

You throw in people and took the fat and

make soap for the German military,

boiling water,

big pool.

I mean, there's a lot of things. Sure,

you you know, you don't want to talk

about it because it's, you know, I choke

or I start crying or something like

that. And besides, I tell you this is

except people they've been in there,

they saw it and witness this, it's very

hard for people even to imagine that

that this was there that this happened,

you know, taking people and throwing

them in and boiling water making soap

for the German army. a minute. There's

no one in the pictures that you know.

>> Mangala in my case never ever talked to

me. He talked about me. He talked at me.

You have to realize Mangala did not

treat us as human beings.

with just his treasured

experiment subjects.

>> Now, we shouldn't really even give him

the title doctor because what he did was

so anti-medical and actually the

university that gave him his degree took

away that degree when it discovered what

he had been doing.

>> He became very well known on the

arrivals ramp at Ashvitz. So when the

train loads of new prisoners arrived, he

could be seen there in a very callous

and matter-of-act manner directing um

the new arrivals straight to the gas

chambers or to work duties.

We arrived at Awitz and um there was

some Jewish people came up the train. He

said to us whatever we do don't say that

we are sick and we stand in the line and

Mangala was sitting there Dr. Mangala

they called them

and u

left right you know older the older

indeed they announced

every uh young woman should take the

baby give the children to the elderly to

the mothers to the elderly people.

Then when we came in the line you know

Mangala

he said uh he said on Germany he talked

us if we are healthy we are sick or

something is hurting us. He talked so

nice so soft you know things.

It seems that he sometimes spent time

there in an offduty capacity because he

was interested particularly in twins and

in people with dwarfism. So it seemed

that he would just turn up and sort of

have a look and see if he could pull any

people out of the line who were of

interest to him. Families would be

separated, children would be separated

from their parents and and the loss they

would see of their parents, you know,

would would be them going off to this

this weird sort of building with a

chimney coming out of it.

What Mangala was also looking out for,

and why he was particularly keen on

being there to receive these new

prisoners, he wanted to find twins. He

was obsessed with twins.

Why was he obsessed with twins? Because

what you can do with twins, if you are

basically an evil Nazi doctor, which is

what Mingala was, is that you can

experiment on one twin and then see, you

know, what goes on with that twin and

compare it to the still healthy twin.

So, you've got to kind of control as as

as medics call it.

>> I thought I was the only one.

In fact, it's interesting when in 1985

when we first found out there were other

twins who survived Ashitz, I said to

Renee, I said I thought we were the only

kids who survived. How could there be

anybody else? What do you mean there are

twins?

So, no, I

had no idea that anybody else was having

anything done to them.

We would stand by our bunk beds with our

hands behind our back like little

soldiers for mangalis inspection.

There was two we had three supervisor in

our back block

and one of them would stand at the front

and say mangala is coming

and everybody would just it's like like

some kind of a horror was entering. He

would come very elegantly with his hands

behind his back. He had his stick in his

hand. He would hit it sometime against

his riding boots and start counting. He

always had at least six people with him

many times, as many as eight or 10. Was

a big entourage.

>> What Alitz represented to Mangalow was

an absolutely unparalleled opportunity

to experiment on live human beings in a

way that you simply couldn't do outside

a place like Achvitz. You got to

remember that what mangallay symbolizes

is the ultimate embodiment of Nazi

medicine if you like.

Unfortunately, a lot of memories of um

the hospital and um the doctor's office,

it I seem to recall spending a great

deal of time

um there. also being in the hospital

and being very sick.

I know one time when I went to the

doctor's office, they took blood from me

and it was extremely painful because it

was from the left side of my neck.

That's a strange thing to remember.

I also remember having blood taken out

of my finger, but that wasn't quite so

bad.

And

I also remember having to sit um very

still for long periods to be measured

and

or weigh or and x-rays. I I remember

x-rays. X-rays

and injections. I remember injections.

And then I'd be sick because then I I'd

be in this hospital

and I remember having a high fever

because I know they were taking my

temperature. Somebody was

um

I really got to hate doctors.

>> I was with other I had to think were

twins. My visits to the um hospital I

don't think were anywhere near as

frequent as Irene's

and I don't remember ever being

invaded into my body. The only thing I

remember them doing to me is measuring.

And I do remember uh the runin the x-ray

I guess it was runken. I remember that

name. They used runin a lot and had to

stand still or sit still for a very long

time for this process to take place. It

was cold wherever you were.

Uh but that that was just about the

experience with the hospital. Very

minimal compared to Irene's.

One of the most horrific experiments the

Mangala did was to try and change the

color of people's eyes by injecting dye

into their eyes without any anesthetic.

You can imagine the pain on that. Why?

Because he thought that people with blue

eyes were racially more pure than people

who didn't have blue eyes. Well, the

idea that you just inject someone with

blue dye into their eyes and that's

going to kind of make them better is

clearly insane and it has to be seen as

sadism rather than anything, you know,

medically useful.

What he would also do would carry out

sterilizations, often without anesthetic

because he just wanted to try and see

what was the quickest way of sterilizing

women who were racially impure. If you

could make lots and lots of women

sterile very very quickly, that was

going to be a really good thing for the

Nazis to do to stop all these people

from reproducing.

We saw the the children in the camps for

mangala used to experime

in in the barracks not very long maybe

four weeks or six weeks I forgot

uh where I used to clean the bar. So

this was visible within the camp, but

again, I don't think a lot of people

took notice of it because everybody

tried to survive. So you didn't worry

about somebody else's problems.

And besides, you couldn't do nothing

about it anyway. You know, you lived on

the dictatorship.

You were just a number, not a not not a

person.

You know, I remember times when that was

a luxury which literally you envy the

people that were dead. You envy them. I

done it many times. Many times.

Cuz he no longer has to go through this

ordeal. He doesn't have to suffer. He's

finished.

So dying was a luxury

>> in a very grim way. You know what

Mangala thought he was doing was was

completely correct. And what he has in a

place like Ashvitz is living human

material he can experiment on. Under

normal circumstances, no, you're not

experimenting on living human beings.

But these people are largely Jews.

They're not worthy of life. And so if

you no longer see these beings as human

beings, it becomes very easy for someone

like Mangallay just to think of them as,

you know, like kind of lab rats.

One day I couldn't take anymore the pain

in my mouth. I had a very sore mouth. My

tongue was hanging out. I couldn't even

keep my tongue in my mouth. And there

was uh medical help, so-called medical

help. They said I should if anybody

wants a little treatment or help, but

you took a chance because that could

have mean that you going to the gas

chambers. But I couldn't take it any

longer. I said my mouth is very I have

very much pain. So they took us in

another room

and there was a lady who was a doctor

and she smeared something in my mouth.

As I was in that room there was Dr.

Mangala.

There were a few ladies on the floor.

They just gave birth. You see they come

to they came to Ashitz just in the

beginning of their pregnancy. Nobody

knew they were pregnant otherwise they

would have put them in the gas chambers.

But as they get they stayed there, the

baby developed and had to be born. So

the ladies were on the floor in that

room and there was about 10 babies on a

wooden bench wrapped in paper crying

and the mothers were were on the floor

all exhausted from giving birth.

I looked at Mangala. He was going to

each baby. Gave a needle for each baby

right in front of my eyes. So help me

God.

And those babies never cried again.

Right there. He killed one after

another.

And the mothers were so exhausted they

were half asleep from giving birth.

And then another thing happened. One

night a woman was very very sick in our

block

some she was in terrible pain and she

had about a 14 year old daughter with

her. So the daughter was running to the

block. Please help my mother help my

mother. So that was at night. So all of

a sudden we heard that meant everybody

got so quiet you could hear a pin

falling on the floor when Mangala walked

in. And he went up to the lady he looked

at her. He gave her a needle.

The woman was quiet forever. I suppose

they took her out. She looked dead and

I'm sure she was there.

>> One of the reasons why Mangallay becomes

this really kind of notorious figure is

because he does manage to escape after

the war. You know, when the Russians

come to outfits in January 1945, yes,

they find a load of kind of living

skeletons, if you like, but what they

don't do is find people like Joseph

Mangallay because he's got out. He knows

what he's done is wrong. Otherwise, why

would he want to escape?

So, he lives in hiding in Germany until

1949. And then he eventually escapes to

South America where he spends, you know,

the rest of his days until 1979 when he

drowns, probably has a stroke off a

beach in Brazil. He never faces justice.

What's really chilling about Mangallay

is that throughout the rest of his life,

he always would justify what he had done

in Achvitz. He had always thought he had

done the morally correct thing. And in

fact, he meets his son Rolf in 1977.

This is two years now before Mangala

dies and he's in his late 60s. And Rol

starts asking questions. Look, you know,

dad, you know, why did you do this in

Avitz? Why did you experiment with

people? Why did you kill people? A and

Mangallay would go through to two

different stages. First of all, he would

kind of deny that he had done many of

the things that the people said he had

done. Um, you know, and frankly, there

may have been slightly an element of

truth to that because there was an

enormous amount of mythologizing of what

Mangala did. But when he would admit to

doing some of the things, he said to

Rol, his son, you know, I've done

nothing wrong. I was saving lives and

out of it. I wasn't ending them. and and

he would see his work on the selection

ramps for starters saying to people,

well, you're going to live and you're

going to die. You know, we see that as

sending people to their deaths. Megalith

saw that as sending people to their

continued life because he had this

attitude that everybody there was going

to die anyway. So, in fact, he was, you

know, kind of delaying their deaths. He

was being the nice guy. And he also

would say that the experiments he did

were for the good of humanity that this

was an an essential role of medicine was

to experiment on people. It is totally

possible of course that Mangala deep

down in his you know deep dark heart

knew what he had done was completely

amoral and completely wrong and perhaps

he could never admit it to himself. If

that's the case it showed an enormous

amount of moral cowardice.

4 million people lost their lives at

Awitz.

The 620 barracks housed from 180 to

200,000 inmates.

Fascist builders had designed a singular

architecture

for people condemned to death.

There is no support. There's people just

absolutely full with their own misery

and pain.

There is no support. There is nobody.

You're on your own. You're on your own

with your thoughts and your pain and

your misery. There you're totally on

your own.

[Music]

Unbelievable that human beings cultivate

intelligent

human beings can treat other innocent

people like well worse than cattle.

One of the most kind of brutal,

pointless, sadistic uh Nazi experiments

was carried out in Saxonhousen

concentration camp on what was ominously

called the shoe testing track.

Prisoners were made to walk along like

25 30 miles a day, endlessly testing

various shoes until the shoes, you know,

were were completely worn out. And the

track had lots of different types of

surfaces on it. And of course, you know,

it it was barbaric because what you're

doing is you're making them walk or run

for hours at a time until these people

collapse. Doesn't matter how hot it is.

And of course, you know, the shoes would

wear thin. It didn't matter cuz their

feet would end up sort of bloodied. And

people would just be kind of almost walk

to their deaths or made to run to their

deaths just to test shoes.

[Music]

In the wounding experiments, the doctors

took perfectly healthy human beings and

inflicted injuries upon them that were

supposed to replicate war wounds and

they deliberately introduced foreign

objects like

of wood as well as deliberately

introducing infection um and bacteria to

the rooms as well.

As far as the practitioners were

concerned and the perpetrators,

they could somehow justify to themselves

the viciousness and the callousness and

brutality of these experiments by

somehow arguing that they were vital and

important for the future, for the future

of the Aryan race, for the future of

science. Even the Nazis had enough of a

moral compass to know that what they

were doing ultimately was wrong. other

cultures, other societies, you know,

wouldn't do it. And Himmler makes this

very famous speech in a place called

Posen in which he tells the assembled

kind of SS there, that look, what we've

got to do, what our generation's got to

do, it's distasteful. It's horrible. You

know, it, you know, killing all these

people is is is going to be a really

hard and tough thing to do. But

actually, humanity is going to thank us,

you know, in centuries and millennia to

come that we've got rid of these people.

[Music]

I'm

sorry.

[Music]

Foreign

speech. Foreign speech. Foreign speech.

[Music]

on

your hard

and hard in

[Music]

today. In the waning weeks of the

European War, the world sees proof of

acts of savagery unparalleled in

history. The Supreme Allied commander

himself views the Nazi murder mills with

his generals. Fearing that word of these

nameless horrors might not be believed

at home, he summons lawmakers and

editors to see for themselves, then

report to America.

At this fish gallows, men died in drawn

out agony. In the new light of this

camera record, the last war's atrocity

stories, once thought propaganda, gain

new credence.

The international community had a very

good idea from the word go that the

Nazis were anti-Semitic. But I don't

think anybody believed that Jews were

going to be killed on an industrial

scale. Uh it was a fullyfledged

industrial genocide. The Jews were

murdered in thousands at a time in gas

chambers and then their bodies were

subsequently cremated. When the Allied

forces turned up at the camps, places

like Bellson, uh the world was horrified

when they saw the footage that emerged,

you know, corpses piled up having to be

bulldozed into pits. And the Allied

forces when they saw what had been done

to all these people in the camps, they

often got local Germans in to come and

see what had been done in their name.

And and obviously they also made, you

know, some of the people running the

camps, the SS not only help, you know,

clean up the camps and and, you know,

dispose of the bodies, but obviously

there was also summary justice. Uh even

though it's not kind of officially

recorded, there are many stories of

troops getting absolutely livid with um

some of the SS who you know ran the

camps and just shooting them out of

hand.

The question of how much the Germans

knew about what had happened to the

Jewish population is very complex. So

certainly they knew that their Jewish

compatriots were disappearing, being

taken away. They were being taken away.

They believed as indeed some of the

Jewish people themselves believed they

were taken away to work um in the east.

You know during the war leaked out from

people who had escaped some camps. There

were aerial pictures uh taken of places

like Achvitz. So you know by the middle

of the war uh the world at large had a

very good idea that this slaughter was

being carried out on an industrial

scale. Yes, some rumors did circulate

back um from soldiers on leave and um

other information did filter back to the

Reich, but the the German population was

busy with facing its own war, dealing on

a day-to-day basis with the course of

the war, Allied bombings, rationing,

food shortages.

It took a long time for the German

people to really come to terms with what

had been done in their name. I think a

lot of German people throughout the war

had had more than an inkling, but I

don't think they knew the extent of the

savagery of what went on, you know,

behind those miles upon miles of barbed

wire.

>> There was a deliberate policy on the

part of the Nazis that this

extermination should take place not on

German soil. So these death camps were

all in Poland. So they were out of the

direct line of vision of the German

population,

>> you know, as as well as places like

Achvitz, which were relatively easy to

keep quite secret. What people also knew

about from troops returning from the

front and especially from the eastern

front was the Inats group and the mobile

killing squads that went behind the

German lines, killing anybody they

regarded as being an enemy of the Third

Reich, such as Jews and communists and

so on. a and these group had killed

millions of people and it was impossible

to keep that quiet.

>> So once again there had been some

knowledge but limited knowledge about

the extent of what the Nazi regime was

putting into place in terms of um this

genocide that was taking place in in the

death camps.

>> When when the Germans fully appreciated

what had been done in their name by the

Nazis, it took a very long time for that

to sink in. If you look at public

opinion polls carried out in the 40s and

the 50s in Germany, there was still a

lot of residual affection for Nazism. It

was felt that this was something that

had made Germany great again. It was

something that had got things moving and

done. Yes, there had been excesses, the

small matter of the Holocaust clearly,

but people some people in Germany were

willing just to say if we can divorce

the kind of genocide bit from Nazism,

you know, is Nazism so bad? So there was

still this sort of kind of I'm not

saying all Germans I mean but a minority

of Germans were still you know

affectionate uh towards Nazism and

towards Hitler but I think yes

ultimately when it was shown quite how

evil Nazism was and the German people

fully appreciated it then yes uh the

opinion of Hitler was not quite so

positive.

Well, as you get older, I taught as

older you get, you forget what happens.

And it worked quite different. The older

you get, the more it works on you. The

more guilty you feel that you alive or

how did you really survive or your

family becomes more important to you

generates the feelings of revulsion.

Something you just cannot imagine or

take in.

But the will to live is extraordinarily

strong even under these conditions.

And the way I went through my period in

the camps was

each morning trying to do my best to

still be alive that evening.

[Music]

It's very disturbing. Of course, it's

very painful. You know, I live today

with

nights that I don't sleep, wondering

what went through their mind before

they're dead, what they felt, what they

were thinking of. Cuz it didn't take

very long to know. You know, you go into

the gas chamber. Took a minute and a

half, 2 minutes. You start choking.

You're still a little bit conscious

till you're dead. And this is a very

pretty fast process, but a very slow

one. When you suffer 30 seconds is a is

is a year. And the screaming and the

hollering is still ringing in my ears.

Doesn't go away. Does never go away.

[Music]

[Music]

Quite frankly, I don't think that any

human being can ever be prepared for a

place like oh No matter how much

persecution before the

[Music]

I thought for a while it seemed like I

am watching

something that it's not really relating

to me. I was numb.

I closed my eyes and I thought maybe

this is a nightmare and if I close them

and open them up again maybe the whole

thing will disappear.

[Music]

[Music]

[Music]

[Music]

[Music]

Key Vocabulary

Vocabulary	Meanings
experiment /ɪkˈspɛrɪmənt/ B1	noun - a scientific procedure undertaken to make a discovery, test a hypothesis, or demonstrate a known fact verb - perform a scientific procedure, especially in a laboratory, to determine something
condemn /kənˈdɛm/ B2	verb - express complete disapproval of, typically in public
punish /ˈpʌnɪʃ/ B1	verb - inflict a penalty or sanction on (someone) as retribution for an offense, crime, or mistake
calculated /ˈkælkjʊleɪtɪd/ B2	adjective - carefully planned or intended; not accidental
appalling /əˈpɔːlɪŋ/ B2	adjective - causing shock or dismay; horrifying
human /ˈhjuːmən/ A2	adjective - relating to or characteristic of people or human beings noun - a human being
kill /kɪl/ A2	verb - cause the death of (a person, animal, or plant)
survive /sərˈvaɪv/ B1	verb - continue to live or exist, especially in spite of danger or hardship
pain /peɪn/ A2	noun - highly unpleasant physical sensation caused by illness or injury
camp /kæmp/ A2	noun - a place with temporary accommodation of huts, tents, or other structures, typically used by soldiers, refugees, etc.
doctor /ˈdɒktər/ A1	noun - a qualified practitioner of medicine; a physician
law /lɔː/ A2	noun - the system of rules which a particular country or community recognizes as regulating the actions of its members
race /reɪs/ B1	noun - each of the major divisions of humankind, having distinct physical characteristics
pure /pjʊər/ B1	adjective - not mixed or adulterated with any other substance or material
prohibit /prəˈhɪbɪt/ B2	verb - formally forbid (something) by law, rule, or other authority
marry /ˈmæri/ A2	verb - join in wedlock
friend /frɛnd/ A1	noun - a person with whom one has a bond of mutual affection, typically exclusive of sexual or family relations
death /dɛθ/ B1	noun - the action or fact of dying or being killed; the end of the life of a person or organism

Key Grammar Structures

• The wrongs which we seek to condemn and punish have been so calculated, so malignant and so devastating that civilization cannot tolerate their being ignored because it cannot survive.

  ➔ Present Perfect Passive Voice

  ➔ **Have been so calculated** uses the present perfect passive to describe actions that started in the past and have relevance to the present, emphasizing ongoing effects of the wrongs.

• Jews were not allowed to walk on the pavements.

  ➔ Past Simple Passive Voice

  ➔ **Were not allowed** is past simple passive, showing a completed action in the past where the subject (Jews) did not receive permission to perform the action (walk on pavements).

• They had to wear an armband, a white armband with a blue star of David on it.

  ➔ Past Modal of Obligation (Had To)

  ➔ **Had to** expresses past obligation, meaning it was necessary for them to wear the armband as a compulsory requirement at that time.

• They put up 10 gallows in the center of our ghetto and they picked up 10 men from either from work or from their homes.

  ➔ Parallel Structure in Past Tenses

  ➔ **Put up** and **picked up** use past simple in a parallel structure to list sequential actions taken by 'they', creating a narrative flow of events.

• The measures against Jewish people came up first slowly but then more dangerous.

  ➔ Comparative Adjectives with Irregular Form

  ➔ **More dangerous** uses the comparative form of 'dangerous' (an irregular adjective), implying that the measures escalated in threat level over time.

• This has been something of a taboo subject.

  ➔ Present Perfect for States and Opinions

  ➔ **Has been** is present perfect, used here for a state or opinion that remains relevant, indicating the topic has been controversial up to now.

• They took her in for surgeries. She came back in the afternoon and she was really I mean we saw that she lost her mind.

  ➔ Past Tense Sequence for Narration

  ➔ **Took... came back... was** uses past simple to sequence events in chronological order, narrating a story of what happened step by step.

• If you were an Aryan uh to go to bed or marry a Jew.

  ➔ Conditional Clause with Implied Protasis (First Conditional)

  ➔ **If you were... to go to bed** implies a first conditional structure, where the act of marrying outside the race would result in criminal consequences.

• He's miserable, though that's a luxury which literally you envy the people that were dead.

  ➔ Relative Clauses with 'That'

  ➔ **That were dead** is a relative clause defining 'people', specifying those who have passed away, adding detail to why they are envied.

• Dying was a luxury in a very grim way.

  ➔ Past Continuous for Emphasis

  ➔ **Was** (from the original: 'was a luxury') could imply past tense, but in context, it emphasizes a state considered as a grim benefit under circumstances.