Schama’s Auschwitz film wins BAFTA

Sir Simon Schama has said winning the Bafta for The Road To Auschwitz will mean “a lot to the Jewish community” and has praised the BBC for being “brave enough” to commission it.

The historian won the Bafta award for best specialist factual at the ceremony in central London on Sunday.

The BBC documentary follows Sir Simon as he explores how the Holocaust was not just a Nazi obsession but a European-wide crime of complicity.

In his acceptance speech, Schama said: “It’s very hard actually to think, to describe what is correctly and rightly thought to be, the indescribable, the amount of slaughter human beings can inflict on others.”

Speaking at a press conference after collecting the accolade, Sir Simon said: “The Jewish community in this country is going through a terrible time right now and I’m very grateful that there’s a lot of public attention and media attention to it.

“There’s some feeling of ‘enough already about sufferings of the Jews to say about sufferings of others’.

“That’s quite right. Sufferings are sufferings. But this will mean a lot to the Jewish community, that this particular story gets told.”

Sir Simon also praised the broadcaster for giving the team “complete freedom” in creating the documentary.

He said: “I think the BBC is brave enough to think they won’t send viewers away if they try to be serious, providing those who are communicating with seriousness also realise they have an obligation to have the same power of grip that cinema has, or a great novel has, or a great poem has. And the BBC does have that safe.

“They absolutely gave complete freedom in a way which is strikingly different. There’s a tendency to frame things very topically. People who commission and produce documentaries often have a kind of sermon going on in their head and then they want the sermon to be preached. Whereas the glory of British creativity is actually it recoils from the framing sermon. You can’t do something self-indulgent.”