The concentration camp of Auschwitz was liberated by the Red Army on January 27, 1945. Until today, Auschwitz is considered synonymous with the Holocaust. This documentary tells the story of a typical day in 1944 from the viewpoint of victims and perpetrators.
It is based on a unique document which is kept in the Israeli memorial site of Yad Vashem. The Auschwitz Album is a collection of photographs intended to chronicle the “work” of the SS. Nearly all 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, their “selection,” i. e. 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 laborers.
