Auschwitz - One Day

The concentration camp of Auschwitz was liberated by the Red Army on January 27, 1945, and it is still considered synonymous with the Holocaust. Based on a unique document kept in the Israeli memorial site of Yad Vashem, this documentary tells the story of a typical day in 1944 from the viewpoints of victims and perpetrators. The Auschwitz Album is a collection of photographs intended to chronicle the 'work' of the SS. Nearly all the photos were taken in just a few days during the final week of May 1944. They capture the harrowing routine of mass murder in the so-called extermination camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau - the arrival of the Jewish victims in overcrowded cattle cars, and their 'selection' - separating those considered fit to work from those destined for the gas chambers. They show how they were robbed of their possessions, and how those who were not killed right away were turned into shaven, uniformed slave labourers.