Auschwitz: The Nazis and 'The Final Solution'

Auschwitz: The Nazis and 'The Final Solution'
BBC DVD cover
Genre	Documentary
Written by	Doris Bergen Megan Callaway David Orenstein Laurence Rees
Directed by	Laurence Rees Catherine Tatge
Starring	Linda Ellerbee Horst-Günter Marx Klaus Mikoleit
Narrated by	Sam West (UK) Linda Hunt (USA)
Country of origin	United Kingdom
Original language(s)	English
No. of episodes	6
Production
Producer(s)	Mary Mazur
Running time	60 minutes
Distributor	BBC
Release
Original network	BBC One
Original release	11 January 2005 (2005-01-11)

Auschwitz: The Nazis and 'The Final Solution' is a BBC six-episode documentary film series presenting the story of Auschwitz through interviews with former inmates and guards to include authentic re-enactments of relevant events. It was first televised on BBC One on 11 January 2005. In the United States, this series first aired on PBS television stations as Auschwitz: Inside the Nazi State in early 2005 and was released, under that title, in a 2-DVD box set (Region 1), by BBC Warner, on 29 March 2005.

Production

The series uses four principal elements: rarely seen contemporary color and monochrome film from archives, interviews with survivors such as Dario Gabbai and former Nazis such as Oskar Gröning, computer-generated reconstructions of long-demolished buildings as well as meticulously detailed and historically accurate re-enactments of meetings and other events. These are linked by modern footage of locations in and around the site of the Auschwitz camp.

Laurence Rees stressed that the re-enactments were not dramatisations, but exclusively based on documented sources:

There is no screenwriter… Every single word that is spoken is double — and in some cases triple — sourced from historical records.

This reflects the conception of the earlier BBC/HBO film Conspiracy, which similarly recreates the Wannsee Conference (an event briefly portrayed in programme 2 of this series) based on a copy of the minutes kept by one of the attendees, although that film also includes speculative dramatised sections.

The computer-generated reconstructions used architectural plans that only became available in the 1990s when the archives of the former Soviet Union became accessible to Western historians. The discovery of these plans is described in the 1994 BBC Horizon documentary Auschwitz: The Blueprints of Genocide.

Music featured

• The Symphony No. 3, composed by Polish composer Henryk Górecki
• The Fratres and the Spiegel im Spiegel, both composed by Estonian composer Arvo Pärt
• The Harpsichord Suite No. 4 in D minor, HWV 437, composed by Handel, for the ending credits.
• The Piano Trio No. 2 (Schubert), composed by Schubert.

The last episode of the series also features Introitus from Mozart's Requiem in D minor, which is played just before the ending credits start to roll.

Episodes

Episode number	Title	Original UK broadcast
1.	Surprising Beginnings	11 January 2005
2.	Orders and Initiatives	18 January 2005
3.	Factories of Death	25 January 2005
4.	Corruption	1 February 2005
5.	Frenzied Killing	8 February 2005
6.	Liberation & Revenge	15 February 2005

Media information

DVD releases

• Released on Region 2 DVD by BBC Video on 2005-02-14.
• Also included in the BBC World War II DVD Collection.
• Released on Region 1 DVD (2 DVD box set) by BBC Warner on 29 March 2005. (Dist. PBS Video.)

External links

• Auschwitz: The Nazis and 'The Final Solution' at IMDb