English subtitles for clip: File:Death Mills (1945).webm

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On a day in April in 1945,

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the townspeople of Gardelegen, Germany

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carried eleven hundred crosses
to a local barn.

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The crosses were
for eleven hundred fresh graves;

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the victims of Gardelegen.

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But these eleven hundred were
a small fraction of the twenty million

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men, women and children
murdered by the Nazis.

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Twenty million human beings,

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equal to the population of
22 American States,

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Twenty million corpses,

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The product of 300 concentration camps
all over Germany and occupied territories.

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Death mills that ground up
their dead until the very day-

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-allied armies broke through their gates.

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Those who survived could answer
the role call of all the nations of Europe;

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of all religious faiths, of all political
beliefs condemned by Hitler

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because they were "anti-Nazi."

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And now they were free.

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The liberators had smashed
through the barbed wire at Dachau,

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At Buchenwald, at Ohrdruf,

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at Belsen, at Sachsenhausen,

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at Ebensee, and Ravensbrück.

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Many were freed, only to die.

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Years of imprisonment, starvation,
torture, and forced labor had broken them.

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They had been beaten down
to live like animals,

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Far worse.

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For few animals had lived in the terror,
hunger and filth of these victims.

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People who once had been
human beings, like you and me.

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When the allies came,
survivors were taken out of dungeons,

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where rats had been their companions
and vermin their bedfellows.

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Despite the desperate efforts of
Allied doctors and medical aides,

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help came too late for many.

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In the hell of Auschwitz,

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allied physicians studied
marks of the Nazi beasts.

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Children and infants died
the slow death of deliberate starvation.

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Allied leaders came to the camps
soon after the troops overran them.

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First was General Eisenhower,
who visited Ohrdruf.

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The inmates demonstrate the Bach(?),

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a torture instrument
with which they were well acquainted.

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This was just one of many
torture devices of Himmler's henchmen.

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Military leaders were followed
by church dignitaries,

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like the arch bishop of Canterbury.

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And civilians of the 
Allied Investigation Commission,

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came to authenticate 
to the world

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horrors that human 
beings found hard to believe.

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Such as dungeons where this sort of atrocity,

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pride with operations in each box was routine.

 Everywhere was the repeated, 
monotonous stench of corpses, 

shriveled bodies like old bones 
picked over by dogs,

 piles and heaps like the
 litter of a bone yard. 

These are the foul wretched 
remnants of human beings,

 human beings like you and me.

Not all died slowly and horribly by starvation, 

millions died quickly, 

and horribly, 

by burning in the furnaces of Poland. 

This is what is left of their agony,
 a handful of ash to swirl

 into oblivion on a puff of wind. 

Here’s the Folterkammer, 

a torture chamber in Majdanek, 

it is a lasting monument to
German scientific genius. 

Gas chambers were the 
principal agent of death, 

and their use was admirably organized.

Prisoners were told to 
prepare themselves

For a shower bath,

They were even given towels

To make them believe this story.

When the doors of the bathroom 
Were closed behind them,


Poison gas,

 Zyklon, was released 
through the shower ducts.

In Dachau,

In Auschwitz, 

In Nordhausen,

In Majdanek, 

The German murder trusts 

Standardized the procedure of slaughter.

The death gas was always
 the same; Zyklon.

Cremation was the chief means 
of disposal of the 

great mass of bodies,

Auschwitz alone had 
four of them going, 

Night and day,

Like the blast
furnaces of Pittsburgh. 

Having been put to
All of this expensive murder,

The Nazis were determined
To make a profit.

The charred remains 
Were ground up,

And sold to German 
farmers as fertilizer.

The death mills were 
Made to pay

In many ways.

Thousands of garments 
were stripped from prisoners.

Women’s clothes,

Infant’s shoes, 

Even toys and dolls.

Human hair,

Women’s hair

Cut before death
Dulled its luster. 

Methodically packed, it
Was ready

For sale to manufacturers.

Every murder mill had 
it’s storage room

Like this one at Buchenwald. 

Each contained jewelry,

Watches, 

Wedding rings,

Heaps of eyeglasses and gold teeth, 

torn from the mouth of the dead.

these were the instruments used

 to pull the teeth.

In their slaughterhouse,

The Nazi butchers wasted

As little of the body as possible.

When Allied armies approached,

The Nazis often tried to rush

Their prisoners elsewhere,

Thousands were suffocated
In overcrowded freight cars.

Many of the dead,

And the dying,

Were flung into the water.

If the Allies moved too rapidly,

The Nazis attempted to
 kill their prisoners

So that no witnesses of their crimes

Were left behind.

In Majdanek,

In Ohrdruf, 

In many other camps,

Thousands were murdered
Just before liberation.

This man was killed with a Wehr.

Here’s a typical German barn
at Gardelegen. 

Eleven hundred human beings

Were herded into it,

And burned alive.

Those who, in their anguish. broke out,

Were shot as they emerged.

What subhumans did these things?

Here’s one captured at Mauthausen. 
At Belsen, 
We caught the camp commander,

Josef Kramer. 

The beast of Belsen.

Men or women,

They were the Nazi elite.

Himmler’s own.

Amazons,

turned Nazi killers,

Were merciless in the 
use of the whip.

Practiced in torture
And murder.

Deadlier than the male.

In the interrogation
 room at Hadamar, 

A witness testifies. 

The camp commander

And chief position are 
brought into the room.

They can explain everything, 

Of course the 
Prisoners were 

Used as guinea pigs.

Of course poison was injected

Into their bloodstream 
and they died.

Here doctor seems 
Surprised that 

anyone should find 
Anything wrong with this.

The camp cemetery

Discloses hundreds of victims

Of this nazi research and murder.

This is a woman.

Allied members of the
War Crimes Commission

Open thousands of bodies.

The record of their autopsies

Shows the same murder system

At work everywhere. 

Slow suffocation, 

Starvation, 

Poison injections,

Burning,

Shooting

Hitler’s henchmen tried them all.

Mauthausen tells the same story.

These dead were starved or shot. 

Often prisoners still alive,

Or rather not quite dead,

Were thrown among the corpses.

Mass killing methods

Were standardized for efficiency. 

In Ohrdruf, shooting.

In Baumbach, shooting. 

In Landsberg, starvation. 

In dachau,

Burning,

Poison gas,

Starvation.

In Auschwitz, 

Shooting, 

Poison gas,

Starvation, 

Even for newborn babes.

In ebensee, starvation. 

In Belsen, 

Shooting,

Starvation.

In Nordhausen,

Shooting, 

Poison gas, starvation.

In Leipzig, 

Burned to death on
High voltage wires. 

A few thousand of those

Twenty million victims survived

The years of horror. 

The faces of these women

At Nordhausen tell the story

Of their sufferings. 

In Rhemsdorf 

Six women were found alive

Among thousands of corpses.

Six women,

With wounds like this.

Wounds as ghastly as
Any on the battlefield. 

These are children who
Survived at Auschwitz. 

Their parents and relatives

Had been murdered 
by poison gas.

Most of them have forgotten their names.

And have nothing left to identify

Them except the numbers 

The Nazis tattooed on their arms.

Holsen (?) had a handful left.

One of these men had his

Eyes gouged out 
By the Nazis.

Ebensee survivors were 
walking skeletons.

Most of them couldn’t 
Even walk.

Or crawl.

In Offenburg, 

In Fehrbellin,

In Belsen, 

Thirteen thousand people

Died in the weeks 
Following liberation.

For them, 

Allied science and 
medical nursing

Came too late.

Nazi party leaders

And office holders were


Commanded by Allied
 military authorities

To visit concentration camps in

The neighborhood of their cities. 

They were forced to see with
 their own eyes

Crimes whose existence 
they had indignantly denied.

At Weimar,

 All citizens were ordered to visit

The concentration camp.

They were called from their homes,

Assembled in the streets,

And marched off.

They started the trip as if

They were going on a picnic.

After all, it was only a short walk

From any German city to the nearest 

Concentration camp.

But there was no picnic
 behind the barbed wire.

Death was the only one 
who had feasted here.

Each and every one had been murdered,

On orders of the Nazi high command. 
But these germans,

The ones who said they
Didn’t know,

Were responsible too.

They had put themselves

Gladly, into the hands of 
Criminals and lunatics.

They tell you now

That meant no evil.

That they knew
nothing of what was going on,

Or could do nothing
Even if they knew.

The farmers received tons
Of human ash as fertilizer

But apparently never suspected

It came from human beings.


The manufacturers received 

Tons of human hair,


But apparently never dreamed 
it came from

The heads of murdered women.

No nightmares ever haunted

Those who lived near 
concentration camps.
The cries and moans of the tortured

Were no doubt believed to be

The wailing of the wind.

Yesterday, 

While millions were dying 
in concentration camps,

Germans jammed Nuremberg

To cheer the Nazi party,

and sang hymns of hate.

Today,

These Germans who cheered 

For the destruction of humanity in
Their own land,

Who cheered the attack on
Helpless neighbors,

Cheered the enslavement of Europe,

Plead for your sympathy.

They are the same Germans who

Once Heiled Hitler.

Remember;

If they bear heavy crosses now,

They are the crosses of 
the millions crucified

In Nazi death mills.

Thank you for your time.

Captions added in part by:
Accessibleworlds, Pacha Tchernof, et al.