Unearthing Hitler's Hidden Holocaust: National Geographic Channel Sheds Light
on One of the Darkest and Least-Known Chapters of Nazi Terror
Revealing Look at WWII Mass Killings That Set the Stage for the More Notorious
Death Camps
WASHINGTON, July 13 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Stripped naked, lined up at the
edge of a ditch and gunned down. Village by village, family by family, bullet
by bullet. Before the gas chambers and ovens of the notorious death camps,
this was the barbaric protocol used by the Nazis to murder an estimated 1.5
million Jewish men, women and children at hundreds of Eastern European sites
during World War II. Many of these mass graves still remain unknown, but
through careful investigation many are just now yielding their all too
terrible secrets.
On Sunday, August 2, 2009, the National Geographic Channel journeys back to
Nazi Europe to tell the story of Hitler's Hidden Holocaust -- the killing
frenzy of Hitler's extermination brigades, known as the Einsatzgruppen or
"action groups." Woven together with harrowing testimonials from survivors,
witnesses and experts, this one-hour special presents in chilling detail --
with photographic evidence and rare video footage -- how Nazi soldiers
planned, documented and committed these horrific crimes. It was the same
routine: Go into a town, round up Jewish families, take them to a ditch and
shoot them, often in front of curious spectators.
Hitler's Hidden Holocaust brings this gruesome chapter to light by returning
to some of the known killing sites across Eastern Europe -- communities where
the faces and stories of the victims miraculously survived through photos and
film. "It's hard to look at these things, and that's why we must look at
these things. They unleash within us a feeling of shame -- shame not because
we were the perpetrators but shame because we're a member of the same
species," says Professor Michael Berenbaum of American Jewish University.
Featured interviewees include: Father Patrick Desbois, Yahad-In Unum; Dr.
David Marwell, Museum of Jewish Heritage; Dr. Peter Black, U.S. Holocaust
Memorial Museum; Richard Rhodes, author of "Masters of Death"; Ben Ferencz,
lead prosecutor of 1947 Einsatzgruppen trials; among others.
For more information, visit natgeotv.com/hitler.
Hitler's Hidden Holocaust is produced by Creative Differences Productions for
National Geographic Channel.
SOURCE National Geographic Channel
Christie Parell, +1-202-496-2124, CParell@fratelli.com, for National
Geographic Channel; or Chris Albert of National Geographic Channel,
+1-202-912-6526, CAlbert@natgeochannel.com
