Final Account

Excellent documentary. It's affirmed what I always wondered - How did they not know? They did know. Maybe not at first or until after witnessing one incident or another, but by slow degrees they knew what was happening to the Jews. As one man said after Hitler took power many from the intellectual leadership who opposed him were murdered & the rest were fearful for our own lives. It's easy for us to judge them, to say I would have done etc. Would I risk/ sacrifice the lives of our loved ones to save a neighbor? I'd like to think so, but I fear I would not have done much.

I know this is the kind of piece of media, a historical document that has storytelling intertwined inextricably as I oral stories do have more power sometimes, that isn't really applicable tk star ratings, but I'll give it this anyway simply for the reasons that this director (who's grandparents died in the camps) has a strong sense in the editing of how to pace these interviews with the B roll of the camps and the cities surrounding them (for once a drone shot that has a thematic purpose), and what he gets in the interviews shows that he knows how to ask the right questions and make it about what they knew or are still in the deepest depths of denial. There are those who take full responsibility and there's a very interesting theme of jow culpability leads to guilt and what it means to be German today, and this is best highlighted in that conference room scene (at the same place where the Final Solution idea was put forward, January 20th 1942). There are also one or two chronic deniers and double talkers are confounding, and yet it speaks to how reckoning with one's national identity and one's own sense of self can be very muddy. And it's especially important now for Americans to watch a film like this as it speaks to our own countries past horrors (this last week with the Tulsa massacre at 100 years made that clear). Hard to watch but just as hard not to.

World War II was one of the most impactful wars in history, and as such, there have been countless documentaries about the leadup, the war itself, and the fallout.

But this one is different: it tracks down people who were alive and involved in pre-war Germany around Kristallnacht and asks them how they felt about the times and how they feel about those times now.

One would instantly expect they would all express remorse that they were led astray by a deceitful demagogue, that it was horrible and evil in retrospect. And to be sure, some of them do. But a surprising number of them do not.

None of those outright say the Holocaust was a GOOD thing, but they are evasive: they keep claiming that they had no idea it was going on. While they wax nostalgic about the excitement of being part of Nazism, which they saw as a nationwide movement that empowered their nation, they also often make asides showing their bigotry towards Jews is still very much alive 70 years later. While few of them saw the war as a happy memory, almost all of them see the pre-war Germany as a golden age and Hitler as a fine leader. It's disturbing.

The teens and young adults involved WWII will not be around much longer. That is why it is important to capture these kind of interviews to show that not only did the Holocaust happen, but the complicity with it was as well.

If you want to understand the motivation of middle-ranking perpetrators of the Holocaust and other Nazi crimes then this is an accessible route. An invaluable educational resource which deserves to be seen widely.

The last living Nazi's, some of which are still in denial, others/most are proud to have fought in the war, most are ashamed of the murders and one or two who are not ... I was left with a lump in my throat.