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Nazi Designers of Death
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Program Overview
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More than six million people were killed as part of the Nazi
genocide called the Holocaust. More than one million of those people
died in two neighboring concentration camps in Poland - Auschwitz
and Birkenau. After the Nazis abandoned the camps in December 1944,
Russian troops freed the remaining prisoners, destroyed the
buildings, and secretly took most of the records from the camps back
to Moscow.
In the aftermath of the war, survivors told horrifying stories of
gas chambers, mass graves, and huge crematoriums. Many Nazi leaders
were convicted of serious war crimes on the basis of these
testimonies. However, without specific records such as blueprints
and written orders, investigators had some difficulty determining
the extent of Hitler's plans for mass extermination. Some Nazi
leaders argued that the camps were used only as labor camps and that
the crematoriums were used merely to burn the bodies of prisoners
who had died of disease or from the harsh conditions. Nearly 50
years later, NOVA joins a British historian who has gained access to
the files and gathered powerful evidence to show how Nazi death
camps were planned and constructed.
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