Customer Reviews
A great documentary about the worst place in the world - By: , 23 Oct 2008 
I watched this programme while it was coming out & found it gripping viewing. Impeccably researched & sensitively presented, it is TV history at its finest.
Nothing can prepare you for what Auschwitz is like. I visited it in November 1996 with my wife. Camp I is grim, but the way a deserted hospital or minimum security prison is grim. You know that terrible things happened there, but it's a bit hard to imagine it. Camp II, however, is an awful place. The day we visited, the weather was chilly but dry & the sky was lightly overcast. The sheer size of the site is mind-boggling - it seems to go on to the horizon. The remaining barracks are as cold inside as they are outside, because the wallls do not touch either the ground or the roof. You realise that it was truly a place where people were not supposed to live.
"Auschwitz" is an excellent account of the camp's origin, growth & eventual dissolution. It should be shown in schools.
The most incredible place on earth - compelling viewing - By: Diane Burke, 12 Sep 2008 Auschwitz should be included on the list of places a person should see before they die. Why? Well, despite it looking inhospitable & at certain times of the year, cold & hostile - it is also the place where one man tried to wipe an entire race of people off the face of the earth & given the number of people he targeted, it could be said he very nearly succeeded.
Yes, there are those out there who say Stalin & Mao killed many many more people but are there monuments to that today? In China, I would doubt it. The Nazis certainly did their best to wipe out the crematoria by blowing them up but what remains is a place where birds will not sing & screams could probably be heard from every place.
The BBC did an incredible job on this programme with their computer enhanced images & the role playing to alllow the viewer to become more involved in the story telling. What amazed me was that there were people who actuallly managed to escape & live to tell the tale. However, was there any retribution to this? Who can say - but it is chilling viewing coupled with excellent research by Laurence Rees. Samuel West's narrative is very well done - how he must have felt reading the text & keeping his emotions in check, I cannot imagine.
My 2nd year history teacher told us of her trip to Auschwitz when I was a 14 year old in 1978. It was she who told us of the lack of birdsong. That image has never left me.
For those who care about man's inhumanity to man - this is a must see.
Should be shown in every school... - By: S. KETTLEWELL, 06 Jul 2008 The eye witness accounts including confessions of some of the SS guards & harrowing recollections of some of the survivors is shocking. What happened at Auschwitz wasn't just due to the Nazi participants but also to the collective blind eye that was the rest of Europe. I had never realised before that the camps could have been bombed but were not, or that other governments had refused refuge to the Jews trying to escape. I also now understand why this subject should never be forgotten or dismissed as having happened "in the past". Recent world events involving "ethnic cleansing" such as in Bosnia are reminders of how a "modern" cultured nation can still descend into this type of insane hell. This 6 part series should be shown to alll school kids, as part of their curriculum.
Terrifying but essential viewing - By: Bookworm, 30 Jun 2008 Laurence Rees is one of the BBC's outstanding historical documentary producers & one of his principal interests is the havoc wrought in Europe by Hitler & his henchmen. Ten years ago, he gave us the six-part series "The Nazis, A Warning from History". This series, homing in on one aspect of Nazism, was broadcast on the BBC around the time of the 60th anniversary of Auschwitz' liberation by the Red Army in January 1945. When it was broadcast I was unable to tear myself away from the screen & I seized a copy of the 2-DVD set as soon as I saw it in the shops.
The series mixes actual footage, interviews with victims & perpetrators & computer generated images of the two main camps (the "administration centre" at the confluence of the Sola & Vistula rivers in Auschwitz itself & the later Auschwitz-Birkenau some 3km away, where most of the mass murder took place).
Rees, ably supported by series consultant Professor Sir Ian Kershaw, traces the story of Auschwitz from its beginnings in April 1940 to its liberation in January 1945. They show how its development was a reaction to different Nazi priorities as World War II progressed. It was only after the infamous Wannsee conference in January 1942 that it developed as an extermination camp, but throughout its life it was a centre for Polish political prisoners, Russian prisoners of war & only later did it become a death camp as well.
It is one thing to watch old, blurred black & white pictures & scratched films, but quite another to follow a CGI image through the dimly-lit changing rooms into an underground gas chamber, one of the four that were the final destination for over a million victims of Auschwitz. This is disturbing viewing, definitely not for the faint hearted, but neither should it be ignored if we are to avoid repeating this black episode in recent history.
One thing that struck me was a CGI view of the yard between blocks 10 & 11 of the main camp, the so-callled "death yard". I watched the DVD to remind myself of Rees's comments a few days after a visit to Krakow in March 2007. During that visit I took the 60km or so journey to Auschwitz & was able to pause my DVD player at that stage, point to a particular spot on the screen & say "I stood right there a few days ago". That brought it home to me that this is living history.
At times frightening, at times heartbreaking, but always completely riveting.
Good but flawed - By: I. Burgess, 17 Oct 2007 
Like other reviewers I found this a must watch series & was gripped by it. However as I have studied the holocaust over many years I was horrified to see the manipulation of various aspects withing this series. If you saw The Nazis-A Warning From History, you would be expecting hard fact only in this series but oh no we get speculation & pandering to the myth of the gas chambers. I will be precise. One statement in voice over talks about the design & functionality of the gas chamber at Auschwitz. He said 'no plans exist of the gas chamber but if they did it would look something like this. Pardon? Read this statement again & like me you will start to question a lot of content in this otherwise tremendous series. I am not a holocause denier but as a jewish friend of mine once said on the subject 'we would be better off if we started with hard facts on the matter' Auschwitz was a terrible place where unimaginable things were done against many jews & others of course. But if you start to research the whole thing you begin to find more questions than answers. This series is however a must see but unlike one other reviewer having seen this programme I decided NOT to visit the place as I would lose my respect & compassion for the whole subject.
