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 YouthA 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., 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 genocideThe annihilation of a people, either through killing of its members, or through the suppression of its culture.: 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 OranienburgA town close to Berlin which was the site of a concentration camp., to the Death's Head Unit."

This unit, a division of the Nazi SSShort for the Schutzstaffel, a paramilitary organisation in Nazi Germany that directly served Hitler and his party., was responsible for overseeing the concentration camps where millions of Jews were murdered, along with many others who the Nazis considered "not worthy of life". Lipok spent the war guarding the camp at DachauOpened 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., watching as prisoners were hanged, shot, starved and beaten with whips.

This is one of many similar stories traced by the documentary The Final Account, in which the filmmaker Luke Holland interviews elderly Germans about their memories of Nazi rule.

None of the interviewees were involved in planning the Holocaust and none confesses to carrying out the killing. Yet each was close to the horror in one way or another: bookkeepers, freight administrators for the trains going to Auschwitz, villagers who visited prison camps to go to the dentist or the cinema.

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 ArendtA Jewish German political philosopher who escaped a concentration camp and fled to America. She wrote extensively about Nazism. coined the phrase "the banality of evil" to describe how unremarkable people can be responsible for horrific acts. Fellow Holocaust survivor Primo LeviA 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. 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".

Post-war psychologists explored this phenomenon through studies like the Milgram ExperimentA 1961 study in which subjects were instructed to give increasingly powerful electric shocks to people who were in visible distress. The people receiving the shocks were actors, but the test subjects did not know that. The majority continued giving the shocks even when they became potentially fatal. and the Stanford Prison ExperimentIn this infamous 1971 study, students were asked to simulate a prison environment: some played guards, others students. The roles were assigned randomly. Yet within days, the guards were behaving so abusively that the experiment had to be stopped.. These seemed to show that apparently decent people would willingly cause great harm when given positions of power.

Yet some, such as the historian Deborah Lipstadt, argue that the idea that evil is "banal" gives those responsible an excuse. Recent psychology research has also cast doubt on the validity of the Milgram and Stanford experiments and questioned the idea that ignorance and obedience are to blame. "People do great wrong," one survey concludes, "not because they are unaware of what they are doing but because they consider it to be right".

Whatever the reason, the number of people in Nazi Germany who spoke out or resisted was very small. "These heroes you expect to find," as one interviewee says - "there aren't many of them."

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.