
The SS (2002)
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Matthias Haedecke — Camera Operator
Episodes 2
Heydrich
As head of the SS Security police, Reinhard Heydrich rose with meteoric speed to control the murder squads operating in Poland and Russia with brutal efficiency. He took charge of the 'final solution to the Jewish problem', becoming a central figure in the horrors of the Holocaust. Interviews with Gestapo victims Ralph Giordano, Emile Brune, Hermann Laupsien, Czech Resistance member and writer Pavel Kohout and Heydrich's SS contemporaries Franz Wimmer-Lamquet and Boris von Drachenfels are also featured.
Read MoreDeath's Head
This episode looks at the Death's Head Battalion, whose members were identified by the badge with a skull on the right lapel of their uniform. They underwent rigorous training to abolish every trace of human emotion and independent thought, leaving them willing tools of the unimaginable crimes committed in its name. Interviews with Nuremberg Chief Prosecutor Benjamin Ferencz; former Auschwitz inmate and author of People in Auschwitz Hermann Langbein; Holocaust survivors Heinz Junge, Kazimir Smolen, Helmuth Szprycer and Hans Frankenthal as well as SS men Hans Münch and Harry Seidel.
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