Would you have taken a different path? A new documentary features interviews with Germans who participated in Nazi atrocities. Most of them say they were just doing their job.
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Elderly Nazis open up for the first time
Would you have taken a different path? A new documentary features interviews with Germans who participated in Nazi atrocities. Most of them say they were just doing their job.
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Asked why they went along with the massacres, some claim not to have known. Others admit that the atrocities were no secret, but insist that they were powerless. Only a few confront their responsibility.
Hans Werk was taught Nazi doctrine at school. At ten years old, he joined the Hitler Youth, and later the SS. Today he weeps as he pleads with students not to repeat his mistakes: "I am ashamed. Don't let yourself be blinded", he says.
Karl-Heinz Lipok did not leave school intending to participate in genocide: he simply wanted to avoid compulsory labour service. But when his parents took him to see a careers adviser, he set out on a path that would make him complicit in some of the worst crimes in history.
Lipok recalls the careers adviser's words: "First he must complete his labour and military service. That's two and a half years. Or you could send him to Oranienburg, to the Death's Head Unit."
This unit was a division of the SS. It was responsible for overseeing the concentration camps where millions of Jews were murdered. Lipok spent the war guarding the camp at Dachau. There, he watched as prisoners were tortured and killed.
This is one of many similar stories traced by the documentary The Final Account. It contains interviews with elderly Germans about their memories of Nazi rule.
None of the interviewees were involved in planning. Yet each was close to the horror in one way or another.
The Holocaust is often described as history's greatest sin. Yet, as this documentary shows, it was carried out and supported by ordinary people.
This ordinariness has haunted writers and researchers ever since. The philosopher Hannah Arendt came up with the phrase "the banality of evil". It described how unremarkable people can be responsible for horrific acts. Fellow Holocaust survivor Primo Levi agreed: "Monsters exist," he wrote, "but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are the common men... ready to believe and act without asking questions."
Whatever the reason people had for complying, the number of people in Nazi Germany who resisted was very small. "These heroes you expect to find," as one interviewee says - "there aren't many of them."
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Would you have taken a different path?
Yes: There can be no excuses for participating in evil, no matter what the dangers of speaking out. You cannot claim to be a decent person unless you pass this test.
No: We are no different from these people: when evil comes and those in power preach hate, it is infinitely easier to submit to it than resist. It's deluded to insist you are any more morally pure.
Or... You don't need to engage in hypotheticals to know whether you would turn a blind eye to evil: the Holocaust was unique, but cruelty and injustice are alive and well. If you consider yourself a resistance hero, then walk the talk.
Keywords
Hitler Youth - A Nazi organisation for Germans from the ages of 10 to 18, which promoted the Nazis racist and violent ideology alongside athletics competitions and social gatherings. Membership was made compulsory in 1936.
Genocide - The annihilation of a people, either through killing of its members, or through the suppression of its culture.
Oranienburg - A town close to Berlin which was the site of a concentration camp.
SS - Short for the Schutzstaffel, a paramilitary organisation in Nazi Germany that directly served Hitler and his party.
Dachau - Opened in 1933, this concentration camp operated for longer than any other in Nazi Germany. It was not specifically designed to carry out massacres, like Auschwitz, but tens of thousands died there nonetheless.
Hannah Arendt - A Jewish German political philosopher who escaped a concentration camp and fled to America. She wrote extensively about Nazism.
Primo Levi - A respected scientist before the war, Levi was sent to Auschwitz in 1944. He survived and became a writer, most famous for describing and reflecting on his experience of the Holocaust.
Elderly Nazis open up for the first time
Glossary
Hitler Youth - A Nazi organisation for Germans from the ages of 10 to 18, which promoted the Nazis racist and violent ideology alongside athletics competitions and social gatherings. Membership was made compulsory in 1936.
Genocide - The annihilation of a people, either through killing of its members, or through the suppression of its culture.
Oranienburg - A town close to Berlin which was the site of a concentration camp.
SS - Short for the Schutzstaffel, a paramilitary organisation in Nazi Germany that directly served Hitler and his party.
Dachau - Opened in 1933, this concentration camp operated for longer than any other in Nazi Germany. It was not specifically designed to carry out massacres, like Auschwitz, but tens of thousands died there nonetheless.
Hannah Arendt - A Jewish German political philosopher who escaped a concentration camp and fled to America. She wrote extensively about Nazism.
Primo Levi - A respected scientist before the war, Levi was sent to Auschwitz in 1944. He survived and became a writer, most famous for describing and reflecting on his experience of the Holocaust.