Auschwitz: The Nazis and the Final Solution is a BBC 1 Documentary series consisting of 6 episodes. It was broadcasted back in 2005 and is currently available on Netflix as well.This documentary series covers the history and development of the infamous death camp which is known to be one of the Nazi's biggest camps the Nazi's made during the Holocaust and one of the starting points for the mass murder of the Jewish People.
The documentary was written by Laurence Rees, Doris L. Bergen, Megan Callaway and David Orenstein. It was Produced by the BBC. However, the screenwriters did state that there isn't actually any screenwriters, but rather researchers as the documentary uses historical documents to explain the history of the camp. As well as this the series also has GV's of the camp in it's current state as it's open to be viewed back the public back in Poland. The biggest thing this documentary has is it's interviews, not only does it have interviews with Holocaust Survivors and survivors of Auschwitz, but it also has interviews with people who worked at Auschwitz. Not as the men or women who committed the act of murder. But people who did witness it never the less.
Episode 1 - Surprising Beginnings
Episode 1 introduces the main character that is focused on throughout the documentary which is the man that set up and ran Auschwitz, Rudolf Höss. The documentary shows all of the scenes referring to Rudolf with reconstruction using actors. In a sense this becomes more of a drama but having watched the series I found it feels more like you're actually there and you're actually witnessing what happened at this point in time.
This episode focuses on the beginning of Auschwitz and how it was brought up from a few bunkers to become this infamous camp of death. The episode refers back to original blueprints of Auschwitz that only become available in the 90's. As well as GV's of the camp and a large amount of Archive footage being used for this episode, it leads the viewers into the history of the camp slowly but no mention of the killing comes about until the end of the episode.
Episode 2 - Orders & Initiatives
Episode 2 begins to go into the main area of the documentary, the mass murder of the Jews. It's here that we begin to see archive photos and footage of starved Jews, walking into what they were told was a shower but was actually the back of a lorry and they were gassed with the fumes made from the engine. This episode mostly uses the reconstruction with actors to tell the story of the Nazi's and how they embarked on their 'final solution'. The episode gives us more information and also gives us eye witnesses from the 'hell vans' which were the early make shift gas chambers before they introduced the poisonous gas Zyklon B.
Episode 3 - Factories of Death
This episode is where we got much more archive footage and interviews from survivors of the camp and how they would work in the gas chambers having to clear up the bodies and burn them. We also get reconstructions of the gas chambers done with graphics as the original chambers were destroyed before the end of the war to try and cover the Nazi's tracks. This episode focuses on the most well know fact of the camp which is that it was a death camp and murdered hundreds and thousands of Jews.
Episode 4 - Corruption
This episode focuses on the workers from Auschwitz and shows more than just murder happened at the camp. The documentary takes a slight detour and shows the profit that the Nazi's made by stealing the belongings from the arriving Jews as they entered the camp and how easy it was to steal from it all. Here we'll see much more recreation with actors on the stories of greed and how some even managed to avoid it.
Recreation is done to a large extent in this documentary simply because there isn't actually any footage that could be used or photos to help show what happened so recreation was the only solution but it works as it shows you rather than tells you but the researchers use minutes of meetings and memoirs from soldiers to help with the dialogue and ensure everything is factually correct.
Episode 5 - Frenzied Killing
This episode gives the biggest shock of the documentary, showing how the Nazi's went from Murdering thousands to Millions in only a matter of weeks as they moved from the Jews for a period and went over to the Gypsies. We also find out facts and figures of how many people had died so far in Auschwitz and then we discover the cover up that began when the Nazi's learnt about the fact they were losing the war.
Episode 6 - Liberation & Revenge
This is the final episode and the one with the most archive footage as this is the time where the camp was liberated so footage was being recorded to show the world what the Nazi's had done and we learn the final truth of the total death that came with the camp. The final word comes from one of the workers of Auschwitz as he clears all the theories that the Holocaust never happened. He explains that he saw it, he was there and it did truly happen.
My reasons for choosing this TV documentary is because it was about the most infamous death camp in the Holocaust. But also, because it's a completely different documentary to what I'm creating but it still uses some of the techniques that I aimed to use in my documentary. The GV's of Auschwitz in the modern dat helped to explain with the voice over where people were. The archive photos worked to show the tragic history of the camp. I also found how they did the reconstruction of the events with actors working really well as to not only explain, but show rather than tell the audience. Since the majority of the documentary series is through voice over.
As well as this, they broke down the entire history of the camp section by section, but this is also what I wanted from my documentary but on a much smaller scale. I wanted to bring in the information bit by bit, with each Interview offering a new part of the argument we couldn't have guessed, we see an artist that took outrange from the selfies but we see that actually he was trying to help them see what they were doing. Holocaust survivors that find the selfies seriously insulting only to then see the public finding the memorial a nice calming place to sit and rest.
This documentary didn't so much as offer me structure, but rather it was the complete different to what I wanted to make because I could see that my documentary wouldn't work like this. It's too formal and isn't right for what we want to get accross but that helped me to make that choice.
No comments:
Post a Comment