"(translator) What we went through will be difficult to understand even for our contemporaries, and much more difficult for generations that have no personal experience from those days." "(narrator) The office of the National Socialist Party in Munich in 1929." "The keen young clerk who now comes forward has already been noticed." "He's marked for promotion, for high responsibility." "He is Heinrich Himmler." "Himmler it is who refines the philosophy of Nazism, its ideas on politics and on race." "Hitler has appointed him Reichsführer of the SS." "(translator) When I wanted to sign up, the man in charge asked me, "Were you a soldier?" I said, "Yes, indeed."" ""In the First World War?" "Yes, indeed."" ""Do you have awards for bravery?"" ""Yes, indeed." "What do you have?"" "Then I said, "Iron Cross, First and Second Class, and I served in the Hessian Lifeguard Regiment."" "Then he said, "Well, just as there was an elite guard in the Kaiser's time, there is an elite guard now in the new movement, and that is the SS."" ""You should join the SS."" "So I allowed myself to be persuaded and thereby, if you like, I came by fate to the SS to be Himmler's adjutant." "(narrator) Himmler's dream for his elite guard had roots in the fabled past, in the culture of an older, Aryan Germany." "When the Nazis came to power in 1933, he could put his ideas into practice." "(translator) Himmler had set out to achieve a dream." "He would inspire a new awakening of the Germanic race within the German people." "(narrator) Youth would achieve the dream." "Youth had the nerve and the strength that would be needed." "Fresh air, exercise, good food, to build blood and bone and marrow." "There were no limits to what healthy youth could do." "And the dream had a pseudoscientific base " "Neo-Darwinism, propagated in films like this." ""Only the fittest survive."" ""The weak go under."" "That, after all, was the law of nature." "Farmers knew it perfectly well." "Horses were bred for pace or for the plough." "Why not pedigree humans, too?" "It was time to develop a new race, a better one - a race of supermen." "There was no harm in that." "(translator) We must see how we could return to a more natural law, but only ever through positive racial thought - how one can improve something and breed it." "Never with the thought - it never occurred to us - that we might arrogantly talk about exterminating anybody who didn't happen to have been born with a white skin, or who was culturally inferior to us or was undesirable." "(narrator) The SS - the strongest, the purest, the fiercest." "They would do more than survive." "With Himmler at their head, they would create a racially superior Europe." "(translator) The SS was based on the Jesuit order, which had been founded as the elite guard of the Catholic Church." "And Himmler had taken much from this - the hierarchy, the strict selection and leadership, and the punishments." "(narrator) Himmler himself exacts the oath of obedience unto death." "(translator) They were conditioned to see themselves as the sons of light, that they were engaged in a struggle against powers of darkness, and that it was their duty to feel they were at all times on duty for the nation" "and, in a wider sense, for the new order in Europe." "(narrator) "Arbeit Macht Frei."" ""Work sets you free" on the gates of Dachau, a model concentration camp." "The SS were Hitler's instrument of terror in the creation of the new order." "It was only logical that they should run the camps." "Their first prisoners were dissidents of the Nazi state - political and religious, as well as racial." "The SS schooled themselves in brutality, systematically reducing their victims to total subservience, depriving them of individuality." "No names." "Numbers." "September 1935." "The Nuremberg Laws." "In the Reichstag, Göring spelled out the purpose of the Reich Citizenship Act, and the Act for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour." "Pure must not mix with impure." "From now on, intermarriage was forbidden and sex declared illegal between pure Aryan and impure Jew." "Appealing to feelings and beliefs deep- rooted in European Christian culture," "Nazi propaganda pilloried the dirty Jew." "Dishonest, scheming, money-lending capitalist and subversive communist, verminous, unclean, racially inferior:" ""Jews are not wanted here"." "But for leaders seeking to unite a people, they were mighty useful scapegoats to unite against." "In schools, the Jew-boys stood by the blackboard as their classmates pointed out the difference." "German schoolchildren were taught to despise Jewish culture as soft and evil, to be proud of their own strength, their own purity." "From all over Germany, the young converge on Landsberg, the castle where, as a prisoner," "Hitler had first set out his theory of a dominant Aryan race." "(men sing Nazi hymn)" "Hitler had dreamed of a youth as fierce as animals, with Christian tenderness and other degenerate soft mutations cleansed, burned out of them." "Now that youth was growing up to manhood." "November 1938." "The synagogues burned on Crystal Night." "The morning after, Jewish males were marched off to concentration camps." "The Jews were isolated, friendless." "It was time to get out, if they could." "Not many countries opened their doors to the Jews." "In Germany, too, bureaucratic obstacles." "Emigrants paid stiff charges when they obtained permissions to leave from state officials such as Adolf Eichmann." "(translator) I asked Eichmann," ""Why don't you make it easier for people who want to get out?"" ""You want to get the Jews out, they want to leave of their own accord."" "Eichmann organised it." "And they actually did it as I had envisaged it." "There was a representative from the passport office, one from the finance authorities, one from the shipping offices, and transport representatives." "And this man, this poor Jewish man who now wanted to emigrate, could make the rounds in two hours and could get all his confirmations and could get out." "And, as I said" " I really must say it - Eichmann said to me once:" ""You were actually the inventor of the Central Office for Jewish Emigration."" "(narrator) January 1939." "Hitler threatens a new solution to the Jewish problem." "If world Jewry drags Germany into another war, that will be the end of the Jews in Europe." "September 1939." "Germany attacks Poland." "The victorious armies parade through Warsaw." "Poland will be colonised." "The population are not Aryans, they're Slavs and Jews." "(translator) I remember in front, there was a German band with musical instruments." "For me, it was very nice." "I was happy." "I even remember that I clapped." "(narrator) German soldiers, aided by some Poles, beat up Jews in the streets." "Nazi rule in Poland is based at once on ruthless terror." "Any who resist, object, answer back, risk instant execution." "There are public hangings by the thousand." "The whole of Poland is on the move to be resettled on a racial basis - those of German origin to Germany, the Poles themselves to designated areas, a workforce without rights in their own country." "At the bottom of the heap, the Jews." "By order, they will wear the Star of David at all times." "There are heavy penalties for not doing so." "Wearing it, they're easily identified." ""The Jews started the war."" ""Now let them clear up the mess."" "German newsreel cameras could show people back home that Jews at last were being made to do an honest day's work to earn their daily bread." "(translator) My mother, may her soul rest in peace, asked me to go to the bakery and stand there the whole night to get a loaf of bread so that there would be something to eat at home the next day." "When I arrived, there were already masses of people standing in line." "Among us, there were little children - non-Jews, Poles - running around." "They pointed at each and every person," ""That's a Jew." "That's a Jew." "Das Jude." "Das Jude." "Das Jude."" "So that these people would be taken out of line and not get bread." "My turn came." "I turned around and saw that the boy was a friend with whom I played." "I said to him in Polish, "What are you doing?"" "His answer was, "I'm not your friend." "You're a Jew." "I don't know you."" "(narrator) In 1940, Germany struck west." "The SS went too." "Here again, a brutal terror." "Less so, however, than in eastern Europe." "Many in the west were Aryans too." "In Poland, in 1940 and '41," "Jews were ordered into recreated medieval ghettos." "(translator) We took a small cart." "I, with my father, built a small cart and we began to move." "Thousands and thousands, tens of thousands of people, were walking, taking their belongings with them, some on their heads, their backs, shoulders." "There were children, old people, babies, all of them," "like the exile of the peoples, the exile from Egypt." "(narrator) The ghettos were closed off behind wire and long, high walls." "In Warsaw, a road divided the ghetto in two with a bridge over it for the Jews to cross by." "(female translator) There were only two water pits in the ghetto." "The ghetto was small." "When they brought us into the ghetto, they put three families into one room." "In one room, three families with children." "We never slept." "(narrator) Starvation rations." "Harsh punishments for smuggling food." "For resistance or attempts to escape, public execution." "June 1941." "Germany attacks Russia." "SS shock troops in the first wave." "Another racial war, more resettlement, mass deportations, forced emigrations." "War against subhumans, against Slavs and against Jews." "Millions of Jews." "(translator) We found a round figure of three million Jews in Poland, then immediately after that came the Russian campaign and we found another five million Jews in Russia." "How on earth should we manage to emigrate this eight million by using these long and tiresome official methods?" "Now, with the war, we were cut off." "We had no way out." "(narrator) To be rid of so many Jews... only one alternative left:" "kill them all." "The job was begun by SS execution squads," "Einsatzgruppen." "(gunshot)" "(translator) They're shooting." "People are already lying dead." "My daughter was in my arms the whole time." "Somehow, I found the strength to carry her." "She was so close to me that I couldn't undress." "She wouldn't let me." "She said, "Let's run away." "They're killing us." "Why do we just stand here?"" ""Why do people stand and not run away?" "Why are they standing?"" "I said to her..." "I could not really speak." "I think I said, "Where are we going to run to?"" "Some people did start to escape, but they didn't let them." "There were many Germans guarding us." "There were many Germans." "Not only Germans, they even got non-Jews from the towns together to guard that we shouldn't escape." "There were some sort of policemen there." "So we undressed." "There was no alternative." "There were about 500 people altogether." "Our turn came." "I came up and saw how my father went, how my mother is shot," "how my sisters are shot." "My sister was very pretty - absolutely beautiful." "The German looked into her eyes and she pleaded with him to let her go:" ""Don't kill me." "Just let me live."" "Nothing helped." "She was shot." "Then I, with my daughter in my arms, came up." "He told me to put her down." "I wanted to, but she wouldn't let me." "She hid her head so as not to see what was being done with her." "He forcibly, as far as I can remember, took her, stood her up." "He shot, or didn't shoot." "I neither saw nor heard." "Then he shot me." "I stood there and heard a shot." "It didn't touch me." "Then again, a shot." "I fell." "I am lying in the pit and I feel that I do feel something." "I didn't believe" " I couldn't believe - that I'm alive." "I was lying in a pit of blood, a pit full of blood." "This is how I lay the whole night, under corpses." "(narrator) In August 1941," "Himmler visited a concentration centre near Minsk." "It was crowded with Jews, Russian prisoners of war and others who were to die." "The SS Reichsführer asked to see for himself how the killing was done." "(translator) And there, an open grave had been dug." "They had to jump into this and lie face downwards." "And sometimes, when one or two rows had already been shot, they had to lie on the people who'd been shot and then they were shot from the edge of the grave." "And Himmler had never seen dead people before, and, in his curiosity, he stood right up at the edge of this open grave - a sort of triangular hole - and was looking in." "While he was looking in, Himmler had the deserved bad luck that from one or other of those who'd been shot in the head, he got a splash of brains on his coat, and I think it also splashed onto his face." "And he went very green and pale." "He wasn't actually sick, but he was heaving and turned around and swayed." "And then I had to jump forward and hold him steady, and then I led him away from the grave." "(gunshot)" "(gunshot)" "(translator) After the shooting," "Himmler gathered the shooting commanders." "Standing up in his car so he'd be higher and be able to see the whole unit, he made a speech." "He could not relieve them of this duty." "He could not spare them." "In the interests of the Reich - in this planned thousand-year Reich - in its first decisive great war after the takeover of power, they must do their duty." "(narrator) But shooting was messy, distressing, inefficient." "So vast an undertaking required careful planning." "At Wannsee in January 1942," "Himmler's deputy, Heydrich, convened a conference." "Senior civil servants attended from various departments of state." "There were representatives of the ministries of justice and of transport." "Formal minutes were kept, and lists of Jews, country by country - in Poland, over two million, in Norway, 1300," "England, 330,000," "Russia, five million." "Grand total: over 11 million." "Eichmann, with his experience in transportation, was appointed permanent administrator for this final solution of the Jewish problem." "It had been decided that all the Jews in Europe were to be gassed." "All Occupied Europe had a concentration-camp system based on the model camp, Dachau." "The camps were not only an instrument of terror, they were an important factor in war production, each with its cluster of labour camps attached." "Now, they were also to be the means of the Final Solution." "In the occupied east, new camps were specially built and old ones equipped with new industrial capacity." "They were to be machines to kill human beings by the million, utilise the by-products, dispose of the waste." "The camps were sited on railway routes to facilitate transportation." "Eichmann chartered rolling stock from the state railways." "The biggest camp was built astride the main railway line from Cracow to Vienna, in the outskirts of the Polish town of Oswiecim " "Auschwitz." "In summer 1942, Himmler visited Auschwitz to inspect progress, to see for himself how things were getting on." "Work was under way." "Manufacturers' tenders had been called for, choices made." "Plans and architects' drawings for the new combined gas chambers and crematoriums were ready, with their carefully designed chimneys and specially patented furnaces." "Outside, construction workers - slave labourers - were striving to keep to their schedules in the warm summer weather." "The gassing would be done with poisoned pellets developed from a commercial pesticide, Zyklon B." "The pellets were shaken through a roof grille." "Exposed to the air, they gave off cyanide gas." "In the occupied territories, the roundups began." "In some countries - this is Holland - no stampede." "The Jews gathered for resettlement in orderly fashion, the order of their going worked out by their community leaders." "Behind it all, the SS and the Gestapo." "Jews everywhere were told - and they were ready to believe - they were being transported for resettlement." "In the starving ghettos of the east, those who volunteered to go got bread." "To escape starvation, they willingly paid railway fares for the journey." "Bewildered, under armed guard, they walked to the station." "The cattle trucks were waiting." "There were soldiers on the platform." "They climbed aboard." "(translator) The minute we got in, the minute they closed it on us with a bolt, terrible cries began inside in Polish, Yiddish, German - pleading, requests:" ""There's no air." "We're suffocating."" ""Suffocating." "Suffocating."" "Here suddenly you had a hell on wheels, and people suddenly stopped to be preoccupied either with the past or with the future, but with surviving the journey." "(translator) The first to faint were children, women, old men and women." "They all fell down like flies, exactly like flies." "Father was standing next to me." "All of a sudden, I see that he is falling." "He has collapsed." "I cried, "Father, Father!"" "Then I found a piece of wood on the floor of the wagon." "I got up and began to beat with the piece of wood." "It was a club or something." "I began to beat the people who were standing around me in the wagon so that they would make room for Father, so that Father could get up." "I remember that I didn't care about the suffering of others, their cries, their threats, only that Father should get up." "We had read the name of Auschwitz on the label on the trucks - in the trucks or the wagons." "Trucks." "But nobody of us knew what Auschwitz meant." "(man) I could see two rows of barbed wire which were obviously electrical." "And then I saw a row of people with carbines and a row of dogs - very disciplined dogs." "And I was more amused than uneasy." "I didn't think they would shoot me because I couldn't see a reason." "(translator) The car was opened." "They undid the bolt." "The first moment it was opened, there was a sudden gust of air." "It was good." "We began to throw out the dead bodies." "But all of a sudden, there were voices:" ""Raus, raus." "Schnell, schnell, schnell."" ""Quick, quick." "Out, out, out."" "I was afraid then for the first time, and you know why?" "There were flames until the sky and a strange smell." "The smell I remember from home when my mother burns on Friday a chicken." "(narrator) On the platform to greet them, an SS reception committee." "New arrivals were divided into two columns." "A quick medical inspection by the camp doctors." "Those fit to work were put to one side." "In the other column, all the rest - the old, the sick," "the lame, pregnant mothers, women with children." "Some suspect the worst." "Most have no idea." "(Rudolf Vrba) The idea of a mother being told, after this terrible journey, that her children are going to be gassed was an utter outrageous idea in her mind, because after all that she'd suffered," "here comes a gangster who wants to increase her suffering." "So she was tempted to go immediately to the next neat officer and say, "This man says, sir, that my children are going to be gassed."" "And he says, "Madam, do you think we are barbarians?"" "(narrator) Those to be gassed were told they would be deloused in the showers before starting work, then they would rejoin their families." "They waited their turn, sometimes for hours." "(translator) Höblinger said to me, "You are interested in the actions?"" "I said, "Yes, very interested indeed."" "He said, "I'll take you with me this evening."" "The new arrivals had to get undressed." "When a certain number had gone inside, they shut the doors." "And that happened three times." "Every time, Höblinger had to go out to his ambulance and they took out a tin." "One of the SS Blockführers did that." "Then he climbed up the ladder and at the top there was a round hole, and he opened a little iron door and held the tin there and shook it." "And then he shut the little door again." "Then a fearful screaming started up." "Approximately, I would reckon, after about ten minutes, it slowly went quiet." "I said to Höblinger, "Can we get nearer when they're taken out?" We went closer." "They opened the door - that was the prisoners' squad who did that - then a blue haze came out." "And I looked in and I saw a pyramid." "They'd all climbed on top of each other until the last one stood on the top." "All one on top of the other." "It was a pointed heap." "It all came up to a point." "And then the prisoners had to go in and tear it apart." "They had to tug and pull very hard to disentangle all these people." "Then we went back to the hall and it was the turn of the last lot to undress - the ones who'd managed to hang back a bit all the time." "The prisoners had to check where small children had been hidden and covered up." "They pulled them out and opened the doors quickly again and whoosh, they threw all the children in and slammed the doors." ""Oh, ugh!" "I'm going to be sick," I said." ""I've never seen anything like it in my life." "It's absolutely terrible."" "Imagine, when they threw the children in, how the people inside screamed because then they suddenly realised what was happening." "And I said, "Karl, can we leave soon?" "I can't stand it any more."" "And he said, "You do get used to anything in time."" "(narrator) A few - the strong, the young - would work till they died." "Some would die of exhaustion, some were beaten to death, some, too weak to work another day, were gassed in their turn." "And prisoners had other uses - medical experiments." "Some, their hearts broken, chose to die on the electrified wire." "Outside that wire, SS men, free to go home to their families at the end of the day's work." "And I remember when we passed 10,000 naked women on a frosty morning, already sorted out, you see, and put on the lorries." "And they knew - they were all prisoners already - and they knew that they are now going to the gas chamber, and they were quiet." "Somehow, people were accustomed to live with the moment, with the knowledge that death will come." "But when the motors started - you know, this noise - this created a panic between the women, and a terrible noise went up from those lorries, you see." "The death cry of thousands of young women who were already reduced to skeletons, and their... their futile attempts, which they knew by any logic that they can't succeed, to jump out from the lorries which take them to the gas chambers" "which are only, perhaps, less than a mile away, and which were already stoked and the fire was coming out from the chimneys." "This means everything was prepared." "This was the moment when the rabbi's son spoke to his God:" ""God, show them your power."" ""This is against you."" "And nothing happened." "And then he said, "There is no God."" "(translator) We used to say, "Where is the world?" "Where is the United States?"" ""Where is Russia?"" ""Do they know what is happening here in the extermination camps at all?"" "There had, of course, been only too much evidence of the persecution of the Jews, before the war began, in Hitlerite Germany." "And then, as the war progressed, some horrifying reports began to come out." "At first it was very difficult, naturally, to assess their accuracy." "They were, indeed, so horrible that it was hard to believe they could be true." "(narrator) Among the working prisoners, a resistance movement." "They smuggled out photographs with a plea to the great powers for help." "The evidence was so extensive, one could hardly fail to give it credit, and we decided that one of the things we must do was to make a joint statement in each of our capitals at the same time," "declaring what our information was and what this horror was that was being perpetrated, and also making plain our detestation of it and our determination that those responsible for it should be punished when the war was over." "And that we got agreement upon after some negotiation, and it was near the end of 1942 when I made the statement in the House of Commons with, I must say, a dramatic effect far exceeding anything that I'd expected." "And the Speaker - a very fine speaker, Algy FitzRoy - he got up and he said," ""It is for the House to rise if it so wishes to express its feelings."" "And the whole House got up." "Lloyd George came to me afterwards and said:" ""In all my years in parliament, I have never seen anything like this."" "He was deeply impressed, and so was I." "Well, that was something that we could do." "(narrator) In April 1943, the Jews in the Warsaw ghetto rose, led by young men and women who knew the truth about resettlement, and determined to fight." "They had pitifully few arms." "They fought bravely." "It took the Germans 33 days to crush the ghetto." "The survivors were marched off to share the fate of those who had gone, unresisting, before them." "Theresienstadt." "The Nazi cover story - resettlement in the east - was elaborately documented." "This propaganda film made in 1943 was designed to show the German public and the International Red Cross what conditions in the resettlement camps were really like." "By the time this film was released, most of the people seen here were already dead in the gas chambers at Auschwitz." "By 1944, the Germans were losing the war." "The SS speeded up the rate of killing." "The railway tracks now led straight to the gas chambers." "And still the trains rolled in from Italy, from Greece, from Hungary." "(translator) They took us to Crematoria III and IV." "There we saw hell on this earth - large piles of dead people," "and people dragging these bodies to a long pit, about 30 metres in length and 10 metres in width." "There was a huge fire there made of trees." "On the other side, fat was being taken out of this pit with a bucket." "We immediately had to begin working." "Four people would take hold of one dead person." "But the SS came and said, "No." "Each one of you will take one."" "He showed us how with a simple walking stick." "One was to take the body under the chin, put the stick on the neck and drag the body to the pit," "like you would drag a rag or a piece of wood." "At the edge of the pit, were still more people who pushed the dead into the pit." "Some of our group threw themselves and jumped into the pit alive." "They apparently thought it better to be burned alive rather than do such a job." "There were only four or five SS men altogether." "They were so well-organised that there were just four or five of them with us." "But there were electric fences, and beyond this fence there were SS guards." "Escape was impossible." "After a week, they suddenly took me one night to Crematorium I." "There, the whole job was more mechanical." "All around, there were water installations as if for showers." "Everyone crowded around these showers." "They still didn't know." "Some who did not dare to believe that they were going to be poisoned." "They would put about two thousand, two and a half thousand people in there." "If there wasn't room, the small children would be thrown on top of the people's heads." "There were invalids." "They would take out their service cards showing that they had fought in WWI with all kinds of distinctions and medals which they had from that time." "They shouted, "We fought for Germany, now they're going to burn us, kill us."" ""This is impossible." "We protest against such a thing."" "But everyone just laughed at them." "They didn't take it seriously, these SS men." "They laughed at the whole thing." "There were invalids I helped to undress as they couldn't do it by themselves." "There were many of us who helped." "I would talk to these people." "There were cases where I saw acquaintances." "My heart wouldn't let me walk over to them to let them recognise me." "No one who hasn't gone through such a thing can imagine the will to live, what a moment of life is." "Every person, without exception, is capable of doing the worst things just to live another minute." "Many women miscarried during the poisoning." "People hit each other." "People scratched with their nails." "There were fingernail marks on people." "Everyone wanted to survive, but it was impossible there." "We went in to take out all the corpses." "We took them up by lifts to the ovens." "Near the ovens upstairs, there was a man who removed gold teeth and false teeth." "They would shave the women's hair and look for valuables in the most intimate of places, especially on the women." "In the oven, it took 15 minutes to burn them." "Only a few ashes were left from all those corpses." "(narrator) The industry of death had useful by-products." "Women's hair was packed in bales, gold teeth melted down, artificial limbs and spectacle lenses recycled for the German war machine." "It all helped." "In July 1944, the Russians liberated Lublin in eastern Poland." "Close by, they found the extermination camp at Majdanek, where tens of thousands had died." "The proofs of horror were all too clear." "Only 170 miles away, the ovens of Auschwitz were busier than ever." "(translator) There were two shifts at work, from six in the morning to six at night." "I was present when they brought the Gypsies one night for burning, for poisoning." "It was a terrible sight." "There were cries to the sky." "The cries in the bunker, in the crematorium, in the gas chamber, were horrible." "Horrible." "I still wonder today how God didn't hear these cries." "(narrator) The German army was now retreating on all fronts, leaving fire and destruction behind." "It tried to destroy evidence of the camps, pulling up railway lines, dismantling equipment." "Yet even now, Himmler urged the master race to fight on." "Defeat was unthinkable, their task unfinished." "(translator) Eichmann said at that time six million people had been killed, four million in concentration camps and similar setups, and two million by shooting - Einsatzkommandos." "And he told me at that time..." "It was fantastic, really." "I had thought a lot of people had been killed, but six million?" "Well, he said - and just imagine, that was still too few for Himmler." "Himmler said to me, "'There must be more than that.'"" "And he set up his own statistics unit - today, one would say computer people - who were to check up on this." "(narrator) The Russians reached Auschwitz in January 1945." "The Germans had moved most of the surviving prisoners back west, into Germany." "Some, too old or too sick to be moved, remained." "And there were the relics and belongings of those who had been brought here." "Then rescuers reached the camps in Germany itself, where, by now, the survivors of the extermination camps had been abandoned." "They found the stench of rotting corpses, cholera, typhus." "Many who were rescued were too weak to survive." "Some lived to bear witness." "(translator) When the Americans entered, I weighed 42 kilos." "I was skin and bones." "I walked around the camp naked." "I had a belt with a plate, spoon and revolver." "This was all my property after the liberation." "I bless every day that I continue to live, because every day that I live is pure profit." "I could say that today I'm 27 years old." "The years before the camp don't count, as I was dead in the camp and reborn after the liberation."