Simon Schama: The Holocaust, 80 Years On

The town of Kaunas was once home to a vibrant Jewish community, the second largest in Lithuania. But in the summer 1941, the German army and the local population began a violent persecution that would escalate throughout Europe. It was here that the Germans first discovered that others might actually want to support them in the mass murder of European Jews.

Historian Simon Schama speaks with Holocaust survivor Marian Turksi, who shares this message with the world: "Auschwitz did not fall from the sky. It comes step by step. Evil comes step by step. And therefore, you shouldn’t be indifferent. Let’s start with reducing hatred, and trying to understand other people."

Amid rising antisemitism around the world and 80 years after the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, Simon Schama traces the historical road of horror that culminated in the death camps. From Lithuania to Poland, the Netherlands and, finally, Auschwitz, Schama confronts the enormity of the Holocaust as both historian and 80-year-old Jew, to understand how it happened and in the hopes of never again.