Through the memory of British POW's held in forced labour at IG Farben's Auschwitz plant, this article provides unique, even "privileged," insight into an important aspect of the Holocaust. Confronted with palpable evidence of Nazi criminality, the British extended a helping hand to the Jewish inmates in Auschwitz, sounded the alarm about their mass murder to the International Red Cross and to the British government and challenged the Nazi racial hierarchy imposed at Auschwitz