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Wednesday, July 08, 2009
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
MEDIA CONTACTS:
Russell Howard, National Geographic Channel, 202-912-6652, RHoward@natgeochannel.com
Chris Albert, National Geographic Channel, 202-912-6526, CAlbert@natgeochannel.com
TV: Dara Klatt, National Geographic Channel, 202-912-6720, Dara.Klatt@natgeochannel.com
Radio: Johanna Ramos Boyer, 703-646-5137, Johanna@jrbcomm.com
Print: The Fratelli Group, 202-822-9491, Christie Parell, CParell@fratelli.com or Licet Ariza, LAriza@fratelli.com
Digital: Minjae Ormes, 917-539-7646, minjae@minjaeormes.com
Photos: Lauren Jones, National Geographic Channel, 202-912-6708, ljones@ngs.org
UNEARTHING HITLER'S HIDDEN HOLOCAUST:
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC CHANNEL SHEDS LIGHT ON ONE OF THE DARKEST AND LEAST-KNOWN CHAPTERS OF NAZI TERROR
Revealing Look at WWII Mass Killings That Set the Stage for the More Notorious Death Camps
"They were killing hundreds of thousands of people one bullet at a time ... It took time. It was trouble. They had a terrible logistics problem. So the Einsatzgruppen specifically preceded the death camps and were ... the reason for the invention of the death camps."
-- Richard Rhodes, Author of Masters of Death
Hitler's Hidden Holocaust Premieres Sunday, August 2, 2009, at 10 p.m. ET/PT,
Preceded by Great Escape: The Final Secrets at 9 p.m. ET/PT
(WASHINGTON, D.C. - JULY 8, 2009) Stripped naked, lined up at the edge of a ditch and gunned down. Village by village, family by family, bullet by bullet. Before the gas chambers and ovens of the notorious death camps, this was the barbaric protocol used by the Nazis to murder an estimated 1.5 million Jewish men, women and children at hundreds of Eastern European sites during World War II. Many of these mass graves still remain unknown, but through careful investigation many are just now yielding their all too terrible secrets.
"It's hard to look at these things, and that's why we must look at these things. They unleash within us a feeling of shame -- shame not because we were the perpetrators but shame because we're a member of the same species," says Professor Michael Berenbaum of American Jewish University.
On Sunday, August 2, 2009, at 10 p.m. ET/PT, the National Geographic Channel (NGC) journeys back to Nazi Europe to tell the story of Hitler's Hidden Holocaust -- the killing frenzy of Hitler's extermination brigades, known as the Einsatzgruppen or "action groups." Woven together with harrowing testimonials from survivors, witnesses and experts, this one-hour special presents in chilling detail -- with photographic evidence and rare video footage - how Nazi soldiers planned, documented and committed these horrific crimes. It was the same routine: Go into a town, round up Jewish families, take them to a ditch and shoot them, often in front of curious spectators.
The Einsatzgruppen were mobile units of Hitler's Third Reich, tasked with carrying out these mass murders throughout German-occupied Eastern Europe, beginning prior to the implementation of the more efficient, industrialized death camps. When the war ended, many of these graves of bodies piled high were never discovered, often because they were located in what was then the Soviet Union. The Einsatzgruppen consisted of German personnel who would recruit local police and townspeople to assist with identifying the Jews and marching them to be killed -- men first. "The fiendish thinking behind this strategy was that if they killed the women and children first, the men would be more likely to fight because they'd have nothing left to lose," says Peter Black, senior historian at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Hitler's Hidden Holocaust brings this gruesome chapter to light by traveling back to some of the known killing sites across Eastern Europe -- communities where the faces and stories of the victims miraculously survived through photos and film.
We revisit Eishyshok, Lithuania, in late summer 1941 to take viewers step-by-step through the horror of the two-day slaying of 3,446 members of the Jewish community that had lived there for some 700 years. The dramatic "then and now" images of the sleepy town become a window into a haunting past, as we hear chilling testimonials from some of the few remaining survivors. Zvi Michaeli vividly recounts being shot at as a young boy, and falling into the mass grave with his father and brother, who did not survive. In an agonizing interview, he says, "My father's arm around me with his hands on my neck. And machine guns started ... I fall down. I feel, I remember. He pushed me down ... I didn't see him falling down on me. But he was the closest down on me ... holding and blood spilling. Seconds, it stops. Quiet."
As the killings were all too often well attended by the general public, many souvenir photographs were taken by spectators and German soldiers -- some of whom would proudly send them home to loved ones. In a home video of a mass shooting, taken by an off-duty officer in Latvia during the summer of 1941, we witness all of the actors in this grotesque drama -- the terrified victims as they're marched to their death; the shooters in uniform, some of whom are smoking almost in boredom; and the crowds of curious bystanders, including women, children and one pet dog. And these were not the murders of strangers -- "they're witnessing their neighbors, their teachers, their pharmacists, their physicians ... people with whom they've grown up, whom they looked up to perhaps, [all being killed]" says Dr. David Marwell, director of the Museum of Jewish Heritage.
We also return to the site of the largest known massacre of its kind -- which claimed 33,771 lives at "Babi Yar" outside Kiev, in September 1941 in the midst of the Jewish high holiday season, as documented by rare color photographs of clothing piles taken by a German officer. By the time of that operation, even the Germans realized that this extermination methodology was impractical. Berenbaum says, "There were three major problems with this killing operation that were problems not for the victims but that were problems for the perpetrator. The first, it was public. The second was that it was too personal. And then, finally, the problem with this was it was a waste of bullets."
Lastly, Hitler's Hidden Holocaust follows Father Patrick Desbois, a Roman Catholic priest, in his quest to find still unknown killing sites throughout Ukraine and document the crimes through witness accounts. He also offers to unburden those now-elderly townspeople who watched the atrocities with their own eyes, and continue to be haunted by horrific memories to this day. He recounts a heart-wrenching interview with one Ukrainian woman on her deathbed, who told him, "I was still living here when I was a child, and I still wonder why they killed 1,000 Jews in front of my window." He says, "Without any memoir, she's the only witness. That's also a great fear what we have. The last witnesses sometimes are in their bed dying as a mass grave is just in front of the house ... Who will know? Nobody."
For more information, visit natgeotv.com/hitler.
Immediately prior to the premiere of Hitler's Hidden Holocaust, tune in for another World War II-era program:
Great Escape: The Final Secrets
Premiering Sunday, August 2, 2009, at 9 PM ET/PT
It's been romanticized in Hollywood movies as one of the great stories of heroism during World War II, but the even more impressive truth behind the "Great Escape" remained shrouded in mystery ... until now. In an era long before satellites and instant communication, a small top-secret military installation outside Washington, D.C. -- known as MIS-X -- maintained secret contact with American POWs held in more than 60 Nazi prison camps, and helped to arm their insurrections inside enemy lines. Using coded communications, expert intelligence and daring escape plans, these brave men devised ingenious methods of fighting a covert war from behind bars, even orchestrating the largest attempted prison break of World War II when 76 Allied soldiers tunneled out in a "great escape" from at a camp in Poland. MIS-X officers and former prisoners divulge how they smuggled radios, cameras, maps and money into the camps -- a scheme that put the POWs in jeopardy of being shot for espionage, and ultimately led to the destruction of all MIS-X records at the end of the war. Now, 65 years later, we lift the veil on one of WWII's best-kept secrets.
Hitler's Hidden Holocaust is produced by Creative Differences Productions for National Geographic Channel. Executive producer, director and writer is Erik Nelson. For National Geographic Channel, executive producer is Kathleen Cromley; senior vice president of production is Michael Cascio; and executive vice president of content is Steve Burns.
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National Geographic Channel
Based at the National Geographic Society headquarters in Washington, D.C., the National Geographic Channel (NGC) is a joint venture between National Geographic Ventures (NGV) and Fox Cable Networks (FCN). Since launching in January 2001, NGC initially earned some of the fastest distribution growth in the history of cable and more recently the fastest ratings growth in television. The network celebrated its fifth anniversary January 2006 with the launch of NGC HD which provides the spectacular imagery that National Geographic is known for in stunning high-definition. NGC has carriage with all of the nation's major cable and satellite television providers, making it currently available in nearly 70 million homes. For more information, please visit natgeotv.com.
