Free Thinking - Holocaust
Arts & Ideas
BBC
4.2 • 599 Ratings
🗓️ 27 January 2015
⏱️ 46 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Rana Mitter talks to Richard J Evans' about his new book The Third Reich in History and Memory which reflects on how racist theories of Empire, promulgated over centuries, provided fertile ground for nazi theorists. They are joined by fellow-historians Jane Caplan and David Cesarani, to survey how history has explored this period and discuss the question, was the Final Solution unique in the history of genocide. Also in the studio, Andre Singer, Director of the documentary, Holocaust: Night Will Fall and the Polish cultural historian and writer, Eva Hoffman.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, it's a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that is some level of genius. It also helps |
| 0:21.2 | that it's a long time ago, right? It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream |
| 0:26.1 | van plays music when it's out of ice cream. Listen to evil genius on BBC Sounds. |
| 0:32.3 | 70 years ago today, Soviet troops liberated the Nazi labor and extermination camps at Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland, |
| 0:39.9 | where over a million people, most of them Jews, were killed. One of those who survived the camp was |
| 0:45.6 | Elie Wiesel, who would go on to become a prominent writer and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. |
| 0:51.1 | A few years ago, I interviewed Elie Wiesel, and I asked him what lessons he had drawn from his own |
| 0:56.2 | experience. His answer, one word, indifference. Indifference. We suffered from the indifference of the world, |
| 1:05.6 | almost as much as from the atrocities committed by the killers. They could have been stopped. |
| 1:11.7 | All that followed, actually, could have been stopped at one point or another. |
| 1:15.7 | If Roosevelt and Churchill and Stalin had come out immediately to condemn what they knew |
| 1:20.6 | and we didn't was happening in examination camps, |
| 1:23.9 | I think Germany would have learned not to go on. |
| 1:28.2 | Eli Wiesel. |
| 1:29.2 | Since 2006, the United Nations has declared that the 27th of January, |
| 1:34.1 | January universally, marks Holocaust Memorial Day, |
| 1:37.9 | as part of a continuing global effort to ensure that the human capacity for genocide is never forgotten. |
| 1:46.9 | One powerful antidote to indifference is knowledge. And later, I'll be talking to a writer and filmmaker whose documentaries and memoirs |
| 1:52.7 | have sharpened cultural memories of that terrible period, Eva Hoffman and Andrei Singer. |
| 1:58.1 | But first of all, I want to ask, how of the research and debates by historians |
| 2:03.0 | about the origins and causes of the Holocaust revitalised our understanding over time? Well, to answer |
| 2:09.6 | that, I have with me three of Britain's most prominent researchers on Nazism and the Holocaust. |
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