Watch a moving, drone's-eye tour of Auschwitz, 70 years after liberation

(Image credit: BBC)

published 27 January 2015

Steven Spielberg will be among the boldface names attending Tuesday's memorial service marking the 70th anniversary of the Soviet liberation of Auschwitz, the largest Nazi concentration camp. In a speech in Krakow on Monday night to some of the 300 Holocaust survivors also in Poland for the commemoration, Spielberg said that one important way to fight resurgent anti-Semitism is by "preserving places like Auschwitz so people can always see for themselves how hateful ideologies can become tangible acts of murder."

Assuming you didn't make it to Auschwitz for the service yourself, the BBC has a cinematic visual tour of the concentration camp and its pure-death-camp cousin, Birkenau (or Auschwitz II), that wouldn't look out of place in a Spielberg film, complete with aerial shots (from a drone) and soaring, melancholy soundtrack. The tour shows the railroad tracks that brought a million people to their deaths between 1940 and 1945, the converted Polish army barracks of Auschwitz and ruins of Birkenau's wooden bunkhouses, a courtyard where the Nazis frequently executed prisoners, and the cruel, mocking inscription above the death camp's welcome gate: "Work sets you free." —Peter Weber

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.