Nazijäger - Reise in die Finsternis

No matter how much of WW2 you see, there's always some new angle that can just tear your heart out. I wasn't sure quite what to expect from this, maybe spy action, maybe clumsy moralizing? But by the end I will admit that this 57 yr old man was weeping like a child.

We start with what seems like a fairly conventional post-WW2 movie -- we have our Allied investigators looking into the backgrounds of various suspects, presumably ultimately to be tried for war crimes or otherwise punished. After twenty minutes or so things come into focus, we're going to be investigating specifically what happened to a group of twenty children.

But along the way the tone changes. We get flash-forward scenes, to real life in the present as we see the child actors in various situations, and two child survivors, now old adults, talking and walking around the camps. We get flash-back scenes, to during the war, as we see the children in the camp.

The contrast between all three situations is just unbearable, from the safety of now, to the at least tolerable situation after the war to the reality of life in the camps. No matter how often you see it and hear about it it, how can you not just burst into tears?

So yes, even if you have seen this sort of thing before, Schindler's list or, whatever, watch this one. It's a well-executed addition to the canon.