Simon Schama: The Road to Auschwitz

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2025

Documentary
History

Summary

In his most personal film to date, historian Simon Schama confronts the enormity of the Holocaust and the catastrophe experienced by its victims. In a journey that ends with his first visit to Auschwitz, he travels across the continent to explore how the Holocaust was far more than a Nazi obsession that played out in gas chambers, but a European-wide crime of complicity

Review

David Butcher

Simon Schama spells out that death camps were only one part of the Holocaust. Years before Auschwitz and places like it institutionalised the process, there were mass killings of Jews across Europe.

This was the so-called Holocaust of Bullets from 1941 onwards: Schama visits Lithuania to see sites of mass beatings and shootings, often carried out with the help of local people. The film builds up to Schama’s first trip to Auschwitz. It ends with the words of a survivor, Marian Turski: “Auschwitz did not fall from the sky. Evil comes step by step.”

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rolenamePresenterSimon SchamaDirectorHugo MacgregorProducerJyoti MehtaExecutive producerNicholas KentExecutive producerCharlotte SacherEditorRichard Wilkinson

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