5-star review for Caravan’s new Holocaust documentary

Caravan’s latest film, How the Holocaust Began, has been called ‘haunting, vital television’ in a 5-star review from The Times.

In the documentary, historian James Bulgin reveals the origins of the Holocaust in the German invasion of the Soviet Union, exploring the mass murder, collaboration and experimentation that led to the Final Solution. It premiered on BBC Two & iPlayer on Monday 23rd January.

Extracts of critic reviews:

★★★★★ – Carol Midgley, The Times
“If you watched How the Holocaust Began last night, a devastating but brilliant account of the chaotic, improvised origins of Hitler’s genocide in eastern Europe, it’s likely you didn’t sleep very well. Every single detail was horrific, obviously, but the account of the experimental killing site in a Polish forest, set up to establish more efficient ways to murder en masse without ‘traumatising’ Nazi soldiers too much, showed that, even now, the Nazis can still surprise you with their evil.”

★★★★ – Anita Singh, The Telegraph
“Hitler’s Einsatzgruppen death squads carried out many of these murders. But the chilling truth presented here was that they did not – in fact, could not – act alone. They needed not just the tacit support of the civilian population, but their active participation. It is crucial that we understand how the Holocaust was able to develop; blaming it all on the Nazis is to turn a blind eye to the darker side of human nature.”