THE LAST DAYS

THE LAST DAYS: A documentary by Steve Spielberg

(Transcript)

Bill Basch: There is one thing that has puzzled me and has puzzled the world: that the Germans

dedicated manpower and trains and trucks and energy towards the destruction of the Jews to the

last day. Had they stopped 6 months before the end of the world and dedicated that energy

towards strengthening themselves, they may have carried on the war a little longer. But it was

more important to them to kill the Jews than even winning the war.

During World War II, as Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany conquered nation after nation, European

Jews were stripped of their rights, forced into ghettos, deported to concentration camps, and

murdered.

Even in 1944, when it became clear that Germany would lose the war, Hitler and his supporters

didn’t give up their war against the Jews.

His forces urgently pursued the killing of the largest remaining Jewish population in Europe –

the Jews of Hungary.

This is the story of five Hungarian survivors during the last year of World War II.

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