My wife has an abiding interest in the history of the holocaust and brought this documentary to my attention, although it was made over twenty years ago. This is the story of the largely successful attempt at annihilation by the Nazis of the Hungarian Jewish population in 1944. That date of course is significant as anyone with a basic knowledge of World War 2 would surely know that by that time Germany was clearly losing the war on many fronts and moreover its own High Command knew it. But as the testators here make clear, for Hitler it seemed the war had two aims, the first the military domination of Europe but the second, less credited, being the extinction of the Jewish race. He proved arguably more successful at the latter, sad to say. Rather than divert resources into fighting the Allied Forces on the battlefield, the Fuhrer insanely remained committed to his other vision of racial extermination.
The story is movingly told from the viewpoints of a number of now elderly men and women still alive at the time of filming, all of them survivors of Auschwitz, Birkenald, Bergen-Belsen and other death camps. I refuse to let myself be emotionally fatigued by these horrific eye-witness testimonies of the atrocities carried out daily by their then German masters, no matter how often I see and hear them, all graphically illustrated by contemporary photography and verite footage which even so can only hint at the daily atrocities perpetrated on the prisoners.
We learn that the non-Jewish Hungarian public turned on their fellow citizens immediately the Germans invaded, siding with the occupying Nazis. There is also a chilling interview with an aged Auschwitz doctor who I wouldn't trust an inch as he baldly announces that he was acquitted of war crimes but who today exhibits no emotion or apparent regret for what was perpetrated in the camp, even when confronted by the sister of just one of the thousands who were killed on his watch.
The film, co-produced by Steven Spielberg, tells its horrendous story from its calm, pre-occupation beginning to its barbarous conclusion, ending up with a number of the survivors returning to the scenes of their worst nightmares, equally demonstrating their indomitable survival instinct coupled with a haunted sense of never-ending loss for their loved ones. Tellingly, none are asked their opinions about the German people although I was surprised, confirmed atheist that I am, that so many of them exonerated their God who had seemingly remotely and uncaringly presided over this ultimate example of inhumanity by his own creation.
It has always to be remembered, in addition, that this awful slaughter occurred in other countries the Germans invaded, as well as to think that, unbelievably and shamefully, there are Holocaust deniers out there who would refute what is so heartbreakingly and convincingly related here. As other recent commenters have said, they look to be in the majority here or perhaps are bringing some latter-day political agenda of their own to disrespect the honesty of this film.
