Getting Away with Murder(s)

"Getting Away with Murder(s)" : Is a phenomenal breakthrough documentary In that it starts playing with form, length and approach. I can not recommend David Nicholas Wilkinson's documentary highly enough. The film is about how 99% of Nazi genocide planners walked away, scot free, after WWII. It is not only moving, harrowing and instinctively powerful, it is a timely reminder of modern secret histories, and how governments rewriting the past allows atrocities to continue in to the future. It is David's most critically acclaimed work after decades of independent integrity within our film industry and is making Critic's several best films list for 2021. As a documentary maker myself I say it sets a new high bar for British documentaries.

Although this documentary rigorously explored the lack of justice for the millions of victims of the Nazis in minute detail, it finished with a warning about mass murderers today being emboldened by a similar refusal to dispense full retribution today, mentioning the most recent offenders of modern times. This list ends with RUSSIA. Considering the genocide taking place in Ukraine as I write, this film could not be more pertinent to right now.

I was lucky enough to see this documentary at Broadway cinema in Nottingham during its opening UK tour. I knew it was going to be a long film, followed by a Q&A with the Director, and Malka Levine, who is a survivor of the Holocaust, and also appears in the film. I can honestly say that I've never experienced a documentary like it before, unparalled for it its depth and intensity. From beginning to end it asks important questions and highlights layers of injustice on injustices that have never been highlighted before in the myriad of Holocaust documentaries that have been produced since the end of World War II. Like all films on this subject, it is at times harrowing and disturbing, but this is a documentary that had to be made, and deserves to be watched. It is without question an important piece of cinematic work.

I had known for a couple of years that Mr. Wilkinson was in the throes of trying to get this documentary made, though the original conception I believe was eighteen years old altogether. I had done some 'magpie' research regarding The Holocaust myself and had questioned the how and why's of how a whole nation seemingly had turned into a huge killing machine and similarly the virus of Nazism had been transmitted across Europe, so much so that thousands of others had been either been recruited or volunteered themselves for the most terrible of crimes against humanity. The 'mystery' of the how's and whys are revealed here in this most extensive and painful documentary. It makes for difficult viewing and lays out as clearly as it can the whole gamut of what happened and the reasons why millions of innocent Jews and others were eliminated and how only 1 percent of those responsible were ever put on trial. You will have to watch it for yourselves to untangle the whole terrible web of horror and the equally terrible injustice not given to the Jewish people after the war. One thing you can take away from it is the warning that we have so often been given. How ordinary men (for these were not monsters) turned their back on their fellow man, murdered innocent men women and children for a toxic belief in the hateful dogma of the other being inferior and different to you and amounting to no more than the life of a beetle you would crush beneath your feet and that these same people could then return back to civilian life and allowed to live out their lives, a luxury not afforded to their victims.

Dear Mr Wilkinson,

This is the most important document on the holocaust in recent years that I am aware of, and I try to keep up on the trickle that is left.

It is too easy to feel that we have seen what there is to be seen, felt what there is to be felt, and learned what there is to be learned about what is less than a generation away from being a breathless memory.

So I am very grateful for those who know remembering is a discipline akin to work. And have what is needed to maintain a steady gaze at the past, or even the gumption to unearth parts of it we have yet to look at.

A very well made and honestly intended film about how causes linger after their effects, and the vigilance we must keep.