The Lucky ones: allied airmen and Buchenwald

A sensitive documentary account of the experiences of several World War II veterans out of the 168 survivors of the Nazi concentration camp, Buchenwald. Upon their capture by the Gestapo in the early 1940s, these young men were sent not to a prisoner-of-war camp, as set out in international law, but transferred to the Buchenwald concentration camp, most notorious for its crematoriums and human medical experiments. Fifty years on, these men; allied airmen that were mostly recruits of 19 to 21 years of age from Canada, Australia, Britain, New Zealand and the United States; present their personal stories of the horror they witnessed and experienced and the certainty of imminent death or torture that met them everyday in the months they spent there. Their reflective and moving testimony follows their lives before, during and after Buchenwald and unflinchingly confronts the difficulty of life after the war carrying the indelible marks of the atrocities they survived, about which they feared no one would believe. Combining these interviews and commentaries with rare archival footage, photographs and insights from friends and family of the veterans this documentary captures a distinct part of the crimes against humanity in World War II and Holocaust history.