The Accountant of Auschwitz (2018) | Full Documentary

[Music] [Music] the main Camp of aitz was like a small town with its gossiping and chatting there was a canteen there was a cinema there was a sports club of which I was a member it was all fun and entertainment just like a small town the special situation at aitz led to friendships of which I'm still saying today I like to look back on with joy [Music] we were convinced by our worldview that we had been betrayed by the entire world and that there was a great conspiracy of the Jews against us in K but surely when it comes to Children you must have realized that they couldn't possibly have done anything to you kinder the children they're not the enemy at the moment the enemy is the blood inside them a former guard at the notorious aitz concentration camp has gone on trial in Germany Oscar gruning is charged with more than 300,000 counts of accessory to murder grunning is now 93 years old [Music] my children grew up knowing our family at a secret a burdened they would ask me why they don't have any grandparents Aunts Uncles if I think about my Holocaust experience those few minutes on the ramp in aitz were really the defining moments in my life try to imagine that tomorrow someone comes and tells you you have to leave your home your parents are taken away and you don't know if you ever see them and when and eventually it's over and you live and then you find out you're alone you have no parents you have no family is it over ever I first heard about Oscar gring when Thomas Walter was a former judge and an advocate a lawyer in Germany approached me and told me that he would like to talk to me about my experience in aitz in connection with a trial that is being held for Oscar gring I felt that what have I got to do with this particular person I certainly didn't know him did a considerable amount of thinking you know first of all I had to decide this question as to whether a 94 year old man who did this terrible deed 70 years before before we still guilty of the crime at the first time I've heard of Oscar gring was from Thomas he tried to convince me to come to Germany as a witness that first my gut reaction was to Germany no way why would I go and put myself through all the memories and all the horrible feelings of being a 16y old slave again but Thomas was persistent he said it's not only about Oscar ging and you and the past it's about establishing a president for the future gring is very old but nobody was too old to be killed in aitz if you take part in killing as a 20-year-old man then you can be prosecuted as a 50y old man or also as a 90-year old man look for a long time I feel that I have a responsibility as a Survivor to make sure that this terrible event the Holocaust should not be forgotten this trial is a defining moment in the history of the Holocaust the fact that so many Nazi perpetrators went unpunished after the war but Thomas told me it was not just about me and the past it was also about setting a precedent for the future and so I felt that I must be a witness of the [Music] trial Lun is a tiny City in the north of Germany you got your occasional murder and you got your everyday trial business but a trial of that size lunor had never experienced anything like it and hardly any German City ever has the trial took place in lunber because this is where ring is living and according to German law you have to be tril by the court that is in the vicinity of where you live so they set it up in a community center where they could house enough people where they could house all these plaintiffs and all the lawyers and all the media attention and also have enough seats for public because public was supposed to come and see and you know follow the [Music] proceedings [Music] feel when I was a child nobody talked about the war in my surrounding at school we didn't hear a single word about the war I had to learn when I was 16 and 17 in some movies or in some books that there was a war that started in my country some like to talk about the war but only what they suffered during the war or what Heroes they were during the war nobody talked about the victims and that was really hard for us to understand that we had so many criminals in our country millions of them and nobody explained to us what really happened both of my parents supported the Nazis my mother just followed her husband my father was in Nazi from the very beginning he died 53 he committed suicide uh he was still stuck to the old system of Nazi time we have old Fist and new fion of today one organization that helped in the grining trial was the anti-fascist organization as the title says they fight against fascism and it happened 70 years ago in our country and it happens today there was some disturbance from right-wing people so the lawyer valta called 6 weeks before the groning trial started here that we can prepare ourselves and make a system of banners to keep away the Holocaust denials from the survivors and their relatives is the Tex fascist it's a what kind of society I want to live and we have a lot of racism here in Germany and lots of houses are burning because uh racist and and fascist people are mobilizing against refugees and lots of people get killed and uh if we know our history then we can't do nothing now so we we have to act now too what may be one of the last big Holocaust trials open today in Germany under a new legal theory that death camp workers can be held accountable for the Holocaust cost even if they didn't murder anyone with their own hands the man being charged admits he was at aitz but says he didn't kill anybody he just took the victim's money this court will now decide whether the so-called accountant of aitz is also guilty as an accessory to mass murder the first day 11 Holocaust denias came they shouted out loud and even shared some papers our friends put up the banner to show that there will be Justice for the survivors inz [Music] the survivors and their relatives always had protect protection against our right-wing people and that was important for us and also very important for [Music] them the first day it was a frenzy it was amazing from everywhere in Europe all the major cities we started being mobbed literally by various TV cameras and journalists who wanted to know opinions and where we were standing on this issue there's a lot of Merit to have a person even 70 years after to bring him to court nobody should be able to get away with crimes against humanity against Jews the Survivor of AIT sitting in a German Court surrounded by German judges and German attorneys being PR with respect and that was in itself an interesting experience for me at the time I was good friend with Riner HSE and Riner HSE is a big Advocate against the neo-nazis I'm the grandson of uh Rudolf H the commandant of the aitz Concentration Camp he was responsible for 1.1 to 1.3 million killings at oits hate is a powerful weapon and it was in the the second world war and is today the gring trial it is important for our growing youth in the past we only had the voices of the survivors of the victims there but nobody really listened to the [Music] perpetrators now [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] fres [Music] we were sitting in one section of the courtroom and opposite us this frail old man walking with a walker walked in I felt cold looking at this man the whole thing was a surreal type of experience that's the only way I can describe it I did feel sympathy for him he looked like a pitiful old man but that all changed the moment he sat down and he looked around and he put his arms like that you know I thought you are the same NY the same person who thought you were gods and we were verman still so all my sympathy vanished at that point the trial made big headlines because Oscar gruning was one of the few if not the first AZ accused who said that he will basically say something in court he told what really happened what he experienced during the time in aitz most of them tell some lies what they did during that time but Mr Greening told the reality he told the truth about his time and that was very [Music] special he basically admitted that he collected Goods he collected the luggage of the people that would be brought to aitz he would skim through the luggage for valuables he was one of the very few Nazi perpetrators that admitted in court that people were plundered of their belongings and didn't really expect them to be given back to them so in a consequence everyone working there knew people who were brought there to [Music] die [Music] I think he's a symbol and symbols often get unfairly targeted had he lived at a time or in an age where the real perpetrators had been effectively punished probably nobody would have gotten to him he would have been so low down on the list the real issue was what did Germany do not only during the war but what did it do after the war and what it did after the war is [Music] disgraceful here do not Bend H look what I got here this one do not bend that fan mail there's a picture in here and after to sign it yeah wants me to sign the pictures for him oh this is a rare one this third Army Headquarters that's also a rare one I landed on the beaches of Normandy I was a member of General Patton's Army we pursued the Germans back across France back into Germany and by that time I was assigned as a war crimes investigator I believe I was the first war crime investigator in the United States Army the problem I faced as the chief prosecutor at nberg was what do I ask for here were 3,000 men who every day went out and murdered and Cold Blood thousands of people including children shot one shot at a time and I felt that I could not possibly do justice to the million people who had been killed but if I could establish a rule of law which could protect humankind in the future that would make this trial more meaningful than whatever I would do with these handful of murderers this document which I haven't had in my hands since 1948 maybe it's a list of my defendants in the Ein house group in Tri at Newberg and I had prepared a list showing the name of the defendants the position he occupied for example Oland commanding officer of einot SCP and D killed 90,000 all of them pleaded not guilty nobody came in and said I did anything oh my goodness no said this were necessary to carry out Hitler's orders and there was a war going on what do you want us to do I had 22 defendants selected by me out of 3,000 mass murders who murdered over a million people I could prove it I had all their top secret contemporan documents no question about the facts I wanted top people planners people who had high command responsible positions their specific assignment was to murder in Cold Blood every single Jewish man woman and child they could lay their hands on and I knew that picking 22 defendants out of 3,000 men is only a PO of sampling for the ridiculous reason that we only had 22 seats in the dock did we seek to do justice of course not because we'd still be there trying Nazis to this day so you try to make a statement of principle the principle is don't do this it's a crime against humanity stop doing it if you insist upon doing it we'll try to catch you if you're a leader and put you away so you won't do it again and others will be deterred from doing it so when the presiding Justice Michael mov opened the trial he said we are now ready to hear the presentation by the prosecution I then went on to say vengeance is not our goal nor do we seek merely a just retribution we ask this court to affirm by International penal action man's right to live in peace and dignity regardless of his race or Creed the case we present is a plea of humanity to law because really that's what I was trying to accomplish the civilian population nberg was a trial that marked the beginning of international criminal law as we know it notorious Nazi criminals tried at nberg included to Herman guring [Music] Rudolph Hess many many others but the trials themselves were not well received by the German public they were perceived to be Victor's Justice nobody feels like sitting and thinking about their crimes they want to move on and some of that is legitimate this is a country that has been turned into rubble and it becomes a question of rebuilding Brick by Brick so the last thing people want to do is sit around and talk about their crimes and their guilt and how they devastated Europe at the Hall of Justice in norenberg History's Greatest trial nears its faithful close the outcome was most of the uh defendants were convicted there were a few acquittal uh some of the defendants were sentenced to die and they were executed the new ger government as it was formed lobbied intensively to bring the trials to an end and lobbied to have people who were convicted at nberg even people who were sentenced to death at nberg released and most of them were after the second world war the German system didn't fail to prosecute Nazi war criminals it deliberately decided not to prosecute them because many of the judges were Nazi war criminals there is evidence that a very high percentage of German judges particularly West German judges between 1945 and 1967 were Nazis uh I don't say former Nazis I say Nazis people who sympathize with the Nazis the ministry of Justice are like 99% former Nazis and they are the ones who are creating and defining the new legal system they were sitting in Judgment of themselves and obviously the result was terrible terrible Injustice [Music] it [Music] it so it's a terrible terrible record where almost nobody is convicted and again there's no political will for it the vast majority of Germans find these trials kind of cathartic and perfect because they show the horrors of places like aitz they nail a few you know bad apples to the wall and the rest of them look like innocent people who didn't deserve to be punished anyway because they're not really dangerous outside of the camp upsetting and this is where for me these trials are such a disaster every country just about as difficult parts of its past that it uh struggles to to come to grips with uh that's true in the United States still I would say with respect to slavery and its aftermath it was certainly true in Germany uh with respect to Nazi Genocide and crimes against humanity imagine a population in which a significant percentage of the fathers Brothers sons took part in these crimes uh later on ensuing decades grandfathers all over Germany had done this it was very difficult for the German public to accept the idea of large-scale prosecutions and I don't think there was great enthusiasm among prosecutors either i' in 1945 there were probably around 800,000 members of the SS and that's what we're dealing with the Germans between 1947 and up to the present investigate over 100,000 of these people of those they bring about 6,200 to trial of that the convictions for perpetrating murder is 124 124 life sentences of over 6,000 people tried I still have nightmares about that famous photograph of the German soldier shooting the mother and her baby and imagining this man lived a full and complete life and died with his own grandchildren and great-grandchildren surrounding him thinking he was a wonderful man that's the legacy of the Holocaust in Germany not the few War crime [Music] trials I think what's happening now is that the judges or the prosecutors want to make good for for the mistakes that were made in the past like in the 1960s and 1970s and I think coming to terms with the past can be done in a different way it's difficult to say what good can be done by punishing someone for a crime they committed 70 years ago the further question that I think has to be raised because of the time period is if you punish a man of 93 for something that he did when he was 23 are you still punishing the person who did the crime everything about him in terms of what makes one a criminal has changed he had grown up in a family that was very nationalist he absorbed the ideology of the Nazis as a teenager or young man and joined the Hitler Youth then volunteered to the SS so we're in a way punishing someone for what a different person a different person ity somebody with different characteristics did it is too little too late this needed to be done a long time ago but how ridiculous is it that they're doing it now when these people are all in their '90s good afternoon I'm in my 998th year if I committed an illegal act I could expect to go to jail if I committed a legal act where there was no statute of limitations as is the case with crimes against humanity you go to jail AG is no defense and they have to know that the criminal will be pursued as long as necessary to try to bring however Justice is possible under the circumstances how did it happen that here he was in his own Hometown for 70 years and nobody did anything about it all this is happening because it's doable now 40 years ago 50 years ago it was very far from doable for many many years the German judicial system used the wrong legal frame to try to digest the crimes of the Holocaust they had to prove that the suspect had committed a specific crime against the specific victim and had done so motivated by racial hatred and as you can imagine it's not easy to prove if you couldn't prove that someone had engaged let's say in some kind of Hands-On Act of Killing kill then you simply couldn't convict which is one of the reasons why many many many guards who we might wish had been convicted couldn't have been because in a sense the Germans failed to create an adequate legal idiom an adequate theur that would permit these guards to be convicted that changed pretty dramatically with Deo because of the demu case all of a sudden the prosecution in Germany changed the rules of the game without the deuk case there wouldn't have been a gred case John deuk originally Ivan deuk immigrated to the United States around 1950 claiming to be a refugee interestingly on his US Visa application he listed as his residents from sometime in 1930s to 1943 soore comma Poland so so war is a word that should send a chill up the spine of every person on this planet one normally thinks of there having been six Nazi death camps extermination camps that is places that existed solely to murder people those would be mid Donan soore h no B sets trinka and ashit Bergen unfort fortunately the people processing Visa applications for the United States in 1950 had not heard of soit war and so the word meant nothing to them and T yanuk received his Visa he worked in Ford as a machinist he put together kind of a perfectly respectable Midwestern life until around the Mid '70s American prosecutors became aware that he had lied on immigration forms and this started in an investigation which really turned into probably the most convoluted and lengthiest criminal case to arise out of the Holocaust when the Americans started investigating deuk they had discovered an ID of Dean's that the SS had issued which indicated that he had been assigned to work at the soo board death camp but when the Americans started interviewing uh various death camp survivors they found that a number of survivors identified deuk not as a guard at saor but as a guard at trinka John deuk goes on trial in Jerusalem accused of being the Nazi concentration camp guard known as Ivan the Terrible it's described simply as criminal case 373 the state of Israel versus Ivan de yanuk Israel's last war crimes trial convicted Adolf akman the administrator of Nazi Germany's Final Solution 25 years later another man leaves the same cell in ion prison to make the 80 kilm trip to a Jerusalem courtroom perhaps to meet the same Fate on The Gallows everybody John deuk was on trial for his life today good thank you I'm good alar they would have shoved me straight alive into a pit full of blood you weren't there I was there ask him ask him let him tell you let him tell you what he would have done to [Music] me Mr pleas sit down the public is requested to keep to its seat John deuk continued to try to convince the court he is not Ian the terrible the SS officer who helped kill 850,000 polish Jews I am innocent innocent innocent sentence him for the aforementioned crimes the punishment of death as stipulated in section one of the Nazi and Nazi Collaborators law I'm not the IR and the terrible I'm a good man after he was sentenced to death there was a rather long and drawn out app pellet phase that happened to coincide with the unraveling of the Soviet Union Mr gorbachov teared down this wall as the old Soviet Union fell apart their archives opened up they discovered that in fact the Israelis had the wrong guy that Dean had not been Ivan the Terrible of trinka in fact Ivan the Terrible had been this entirely different Ukrainian named Ivan marchenko it really showed you the limits of structuring these trials around the eyewitness testimony of survivors because these survivors they were positive that Dean was their former Tormentor and they were wrong I miss my wife I miss my family I miss my great kid I want to go home as a result of this case of mistaken identity he was acquitted but the mistaken identity also indicated that he wasn't entirely free of [Music] guilt in my country deuk worked on an assembly line for the Ford Motor Company and I suspect if you had asked IM yanuk at that time what do you do for a living he would have said I build cars even though I assume he did one little operation tighten one bolt or something he did not ever build an entire car himself but that's what he did for a living they were building cars at places like aitz soore what the SS personnel there did for a living was Kill innocent human beings there was nothing else going on there today a federal court in Cleveland stripped John deuk of his US citizenship finding that he served the Nazis during World War II as an armed guard at the sober board death camp our efforts were inspired by the courage of the survivors who in recounting for us their nightmarish experiences of more than half a century ago were willing to reopen psychic wounds wounds that of course have never fully healed what very few people know is that after 10 years of of litigation against de yanuk in the United States when we had gotten courts to revoke his citizenship and Order him deported we went to the German government and asked Germany to accept him and Germany said no as Germany and other governments of Europe have routinely done in our cases uh enormously frustrating I then met Thomas wter and Christen gson and we brainstormed how there might be a way to get januk indicted in Germany there was very important a connection to the US office of special investigations with Eli rosenbom in Washington he always told me that he cannot understand why we in Germany do not prosecute these Gods who are are watching that nobody can escape from a killing Place those camps existed to carry out crimes against humanity crimes of persecution I gave him the example I said Thomas look we're sitting here in my office if you decide to chase me around my office with a knife to kill me and you have a cohort who was outside the office holding the door closed so that I cannot Escape under those circumstance ances both you and your cohort will be found guilty in my country of first-degree murder and I said I cannot imagine that the law is any different in Germany these camps had no other reason than to kill people there is no question that this person is responsible and part of the whole killing process the guards in death camps like ashit Buren now soort they knew what was going on there and they made sure that the victims did not Escape ultimately Tomas and Kristen did the legal research and ascertained that there was case law and brought the Deo case this is a very uh wonderful day for justice today the fact that this person who was an active particip in the mass murder of 29,000 Jews in the so Bo death camp he's finally going to stand trial for those crimes is extremely important we are extremely extremely pleased and think that the American and German authorities deserve tremendous amount of credit for their perseverance in this [Music] case I'm tior I'm on the wrong side of the car he's walking yeah it looks rather innocent an elderly man walking and talking but that man is John deuk the alleged Nazi death campg guard who claims he's too ill and too frail to be deported to Europe to go on trial Federal prosecutors submitted these videos to the US Circuit Court of Appeals they were taken a few days before he was [Music] detained one of the the things that Dean tried to do in unic is he tried to basically um create the impression of being incompetent he actually engaged in a rather dramatic theatrical performance in which he tried to convince everyone that he was kind of on death's [Music] door first of all the problem is that zuk himself I think put on a great today and he's going to do everything possible to try and create an impression that he's simply incapable of standing trial if you've seen the footage of the Dem yuk trial he looked like a total zombie like he didn't have a clue what was going on and what most people don't know is that the minute the trial sessions ended every day he was up and around walking around joking around with the people it has been a common ruse in Nazi cases for decades to claim either medical incapacity or mental health incapacity to Contin with the trial some courts have fallen for those ruses others have not but it is a very very common Ploy I always say that if there were an Oscar given for the best performance by a Nazi Walker midle then mayuk would have gotten it for [Music] 2010 we now know that in fact he was rather healthy at the time and he did successfully survive his trial in a verdict decades in the making a German court has found 91-year-old John Dem yanuk guilty of accessory to murder in the case of more than 28,000 Jews in Nazi occupied Poland John Dem yanuk is is just a scapegoat for the Germans that he has to pay for all the mistakes they made in the past and that's not Justice what was very important about the trial in Germany was in a way it was the exact opposite of the Ivan the Terrible trial Ivan the Terrible trial focused on the particular pathologies of a very brutal guard the trial in Munich was really the first trial to come along and say we don't really care if you were cruel or not your job description was basically facilitating an act of extermination and that's why we're going to hold you guilty in a court of law you were an accessory to murder because by definition that was your job description the following year deuk died in Germany while his case was on appeal but the president of Court agreeing that someone who served as a guard at a death camp shared complicity in the killings that took part there inspired shall we say German prosecutors to prosecute other guards prosecutors in Germany are reopening hundreds of Investigations into former Nazis so why has it taken so long to bring these people to trial and this is the uniqueness and significance of the demu conviction basically what the court in Munich said in May was if you served as an armed SS guard at a pure death camp you're automatically guilty of accessory to murder this gave the German prosecution a new lease on life now the question then was how many of these people are alive after the yanuk verdict the central office here started to look again at all the six death camps we put together all these puzzle pieces in order to get an image who was involved in a crime yeah there it is right [Applause] here Germany's making up forward with what it's got there's slim Pickins these days for Nazi war criminals many of them are dead and many of the survivors are dead it's not as if the German government has its choice of a wide variety of players to go after now I got a tip from Simon vithal in the early 1980s Mr vithal told me that there was a Nazi named Harold spanis who was living in Canada but his whereabouts were unknown and pulus took part in the massacre of more than 5,000 Jews and roma in a village in lvia he wasn't hard to find I found him gardening in Willowdale which ironically enough is a as a great many Jewish people who live there but just before the authorities could act and before my article exposing him came out pulus died there is this real Rush then to find people anyone but as you can imagine they're all extraordinarily old there are very few of them who are still fit to stand trial so there is this feeling that now before it's too late we need to do everything we can to bring every last Nazi to trial as the long list of people that they believed were Nazi war criminals became smaller an accountant from aitz was singled out he was put under the spotlight because of an interview that he did for the BBC where he openly admitted and described in detail the crimes that were being committed in alitz you were part of the largest killing Factory in history you were working there you personally contributed to the killing of around 1 million people don't you think you should have stood trial no I don't think so uh does Al you imply with your question that just being a member of a large group of people who lived in a Garrison where the destruction of the Jews took place is enough to make you a criminal he was an accomplice he knew what he was doing but what he didn't know was that the interview with the BBC would ultimately sparked the investigation because at that time before de yanuk guards were not seen as being list and for decades he lived peacefully in a small town outside of lunberg they got gruning they went after no car prepared my lunch so we'll let her prepare it when she's ready to serve it okay you're going to eat good morning hi Benji there are many trials being carried on now which are remarkable old people who have managed to evade Justice for many years it doesn't make a very big difference uh whether they spend some time in jail or not uh on the principle it does make a difference they should know that they're not going to get away with we'll pursue them wherever they are as long as necessary and try to have them explain their actions if you know that he was a God in a camp which killed your father your mother your grandfather don't you have to have some consideration for the victims rather than the perpetrator our argument about the case was that the think that Mr gring did in aritz actually were not some kind of support of killing the people who had been transported to aitz at that time of course he supported the system but not the killing itself many SS members here in Germany in former trials they often said well I didn't kill them they were killed by a by a machine his position as a subordinate was was quite clear he was not a high ranking officer he was not in a sort of position to give orders this is the question who is responsible gring was a cog in the wheel but the wheel couldn't have turned without that Cog individual killing is not a requisite there is no evidence that Hitler personally killed anybody at aitz or any Jew everybody who was aware of what was going on at aitz is both morally and legally guilty the chef less than the person who poured the gas into the chambers the accountant less than the guard but he made choices throughout and he is responsible for his choices R was not just an accountant he's known as the bookkeeper of aitz and the bookkeeper of aitz uh creates I think a somewhat misleading image it uh suggests that he could have been just squirel away in some little Shack adding up numbers he came to aitz specifically as a bookkeeper but it took much more than bookkeeping he also had to look after the system and he was seen on the ramp this is the ramp where it's kind of in the collective or popular imagination from films like Schindler's List this is when the SS are sorting people out saying these people are being exterminated immediately and this small group is actually entering the prison population of the camp if you look at something like aitz why weren't more of the guards prosecuted well aitz was a hybrid Camp he was part slave labor camp and it was part death camp if these guards were just associated with the slave labor aspect then you wouldn't necessarily know that they actually were involved with the killing and if you didn't know they were involved with the killing you couldn't prosecute them for anything under German law in the case of grck we know that grck was at aist for a long time he was there for 2 years but if you look at the indictment the indictment focuses only on a 3month period during the 3-month period that's when the trains were arriving with these hundreds of thousands of Jews from Hungary in this case the Hungarian action is the crime from the 60s of May until the 11th of July there has been killed 300,000 Jews if we can prove that gring has been on one day in this time on the ram then he is guilty of the whole crime the witnesses arrived on a certain day at a certain hour during this Hungarian action important is that the bit es talk about what happened with their families that they speak about their sadness they speak about the loss tomorrow uh bill you have to testify speak slowly but fluently and don't think about the faces of the judges this is a special thing as far as I'm concerned it's a a very important emotional thing the criminal department of justice has made a lot of faults very heavy faults and I invite the German justice system to come back in a better way the time came for us to testify at the trial I sat down in front of the presiding judge thas Walter sat next to me and then the judge asked me to describe what happened when I arrived to ashit B Canal train stopped after while all of a sudden the doors were opened everybody out get out of the b car leave your Parcels in there you'll get them later it was a space filled with people running around some in striped pajamas and a lot of soldiers with rifles dogs on leash that were straining against the police and barking at us the people pouring out from the wagons thousands of people babies crying mothers holding them they started screaming the man and boys into one colume 5 in a row fast fast I grabbed the hold of my dad's hand and stood there and my mom and my sister and aunts my grandma or in the other colume with the women they was cre scaming and yelling people were so traumatized so scared so there is that Nazi yelling in German twins twins my poor mother hesitantly said is that good and the na yes so my mother said yes that moment another Nazi came pulled my mother to the right we were pulled to the left we were crying she was crying I didn't really understand that this would be the last time that we would see her my mother with my siblings my grandparents and my aunt they were told to go to the left I know that they were taken into the gas chamber of catoria 2 my father and uncle and I we were selected for slave labor we were processed our clothes were taken away our hair was shaped and the next morning we were given a tattooed number and striped outfits and I became a slave labor working for a German R mangala Used 1,500 sets of twins in his various experiments take a set of twins inject one with a disease when that one die you kill the other one and then you get the results of how the disease work after one of those injections I became very ill with a very high fever next morning mangala came in with four other doctors he looked at my fever chart and then he declared laughing sarcastically he said too bad she's so young she has only two weeks to live but after two weeks my fever broke I survived and I was released and reunited with my twin sister and the other [Music] twins while I was looking around trying to make sense of what I'm looking at I realized all of a sudden that I was alone and my mother was several rows ahead of me and I started rushing through the crowd to catch up to her and all of a sudden I was stopped a rifle in front of me and I young German Soldier telling me nine over there to the right I said no no my mother is there I want to go with her and he just kept the rifle there and said no you go there and then I uh cried out after my mom and she turned and I don't know what I expected but she just looked at me and didn't say a word and then turned around and kept on going and I never saw her again that was I think the hardest thing that ever happened to [Music] me even now I have trouble talking about it and for over half century I couldn't what happened to my mom mom and my sister I don't don't know but I've never seen them again never say goodbye to them they just disappeared from my life that [Music] moment oh here here is my father gleed Alexander 1899 petat Yugoslavia murdered in cord in Germany here is my sister Gano 1936 subita Yugoslavia murdered in aitz [Music] Poland here is my mom lead Miriam 1907 yasaran Hungary murdered in aitz Poland oh my God all of these are gleeds are relatives uncles and ants of [Music] mine [Music] for he spoke about this whole situation as there was this bug on the ground and I stepped on it to see the faces of the survivors after gring spokes it it was a terrible situation when he explained some some stories out of his work like the the crying suit Kings [Music] and he said the crying stopped that was I think that was it almost killed me I just couldn't believe it he said that wasn't [Music] nice and later on they asked him what would you have done well maybe shoot him that would have been the nice thing for him I accept the fact that they were brainwashed but there comes a point where no matter how much you're brainwashed when you see a baby being picked up and smashed against the door and you say this is fine this is okay this is acceptable you can't accept that I mean he was giving this information willingly I mean he he was asked did a Jew had a chance to leave this place alive he says absolutely not and that affected me a lot so he was an adult he was resp responsible for his actions not everybody who joined the Hitler Youth ended up joining the SS not everybody who joined the SS ended up being a guard in aitz leading people to their death as far as following orders what one often hears is I had to take part in these crimes because had I not done so uh the Germans would have executed me or sent me to a death camp one of the most remarkable statistics to emerge out of the Holocaust is the number of ss officers or even senior German officers who suffered serious life-threatening consequences as a result of opting out that number is exactly zero not one instance has ever been found in which it was confirmed that someone who disobeyed criminal orders was subject to severe punishment much less execution he was following orders but he had to know at some level of Consciousness that it can't be legal to murder infants babies the elderly to murder people who are his age now he had to know that that was not only wrong but in some ultimate sense illegal you know listening to groing I got very upset because the things that he brought forward uh voluntarily I mean he was a big talker all I would want him to say is I'm sorry that alone I think would have been it the age of 94 would have meant everything as far as as far as I was concerned just those two words somebody will have to make a judgment and I think they're going to consider our testimonies and we'll see what [Music] happens I did not know how the interaction with him would be I did not know how he would be able to answer my questions but nevertheless I testified and I said right there in a German Court clear and Loud that I forgave him because I forgave all the Nazis and I forgave everybody who hurt [Music] me [Music] it's outrageous what you did it's absolutely outrageous I felt like the floor opened up and I fell right down into a basement she kept on repeating the fact that these people are friends of hers and I said my God this woman must be crazy or what forgiving those who tortured her and killed so many so cruy she's able to forgive maybe she needs that forgiveness in order to go on to be to stay mentally normal and what was even more shocking that people in the audience whoever they were they were clapping this forgiveness thing and um judge said not in my court IFA Moses you know her story you know she was a twin she is in every sense of the world she is a victim as all the other victims and she should be treated like this Saturday I was coming back to United States the court session was over and he was still sitting at his desk so I went up to Oscar gral to your fellow Nazis to make statement because see they don't believe us they see oh we are Jews we want to accomplish something but you this is your good job to make a was a bad are you feeling okay an Embrace between two people is touching people around the world we begin tonight with an amazing story a trot woman is at the center of international attention this after a courageous act of kindness that took social media by storm she was the most famous person in going to because the world's press were all around her everybody CAU onto this forgiveness business you see the biggest gesture you can imagine you hug the monster you hug part of the machine that killed your family that almost killed you so it was a gesture of forgiving but there was big media headlines and big a big outcry if she should do that if that is too much if one can forgive part of the Nazi machine or if it just should not be forgiven she has succeeded in infuriating practically every other Survivor around and for good reason by forgiving I removed whatever happened to me she asked me many times in the past and said you have to forgive your grandfather said no I can't forgive him not with all the stuff he put on our shoulders but he has to deal with it she has to stand it so it's up to her if that's the way for Eva to live with it I accept it the best way to defeat an enemy is to make him a friend I believe that I defeated Oscar gring by making him a friend gring right after the war decided to marry the Widow of his brother he had two children and and of course he lived a peaceful life and he enjoyed life a very important thing for Mr Greening was in the middle of the80s he was meeting somebody who was collecting stems like he himself did they were talking about the Nazi crimes and um the other person denied the Holocaust he found it insufferable that this guy was going around saying that the Holocaust didn't happen he was an out he could tell you that it happened he wanted to actually come along and tell people look I was there I know that these crimes were committed he made some interviews to the German news magazine spegel and to the BBC before these interviews nobody knew Mr [Music] gring [Music] he exposed himself and that was a positive thing to do clearly a courageous thing to do so I think that's a very important extenuating circumstance and to me that would have been sufficient reason to not prosecute [Music] Mr gring made a long statement about the things he did in aitz and uh he confessed that uh in a moral way he's guilty in the Holocaust in the end um the decision whether he's guilty or not uh has to be taken by the court and that cannot be made by Mr [Music] [Music] gruning oh I think the testimony of Oscar green is very very important he is a handson participant Observer who puts the lie to all the Holocaust deniers who say there were no gas Chambers there were no crematorium that there was no zyon he puts the lie to all of that he was there he saw it with his own eyes and yet the Holocaust deniers can't accept the reality of what he's saying and he deserves some credit for having testified to the truth of what he saw the truth of the matter is you know in 1945 at the end of the war and the discovery of the camps and the horror of the Nazis crimes the phrase never again was coin the only problem is there's nothing behind it in other words there have been so many tragedies similar but not equal to the Holocaust over the years that this never again basically is absolutely meaningless it's too dangerous today the world is different it's changing our capacity to kill is getting completely out of hand we see the wars that have taking place now in Syria we talk about Isis it's nothing new part of the reason you had cases like Rwanda and Cambodia and the bafra and gur and Bas and all these things is that it's not at all clear that if you participate in such crimes you'll actually pay for it again and again and again and again people got away with it that's that's terrible it's absolutely terrible without history there is no memory without memory there is no future if we don't learn from the past we repeat the same mistakes again will us will not [Applause] us if we can send a powerful message that there is no statute limitations on genocide it could have an impact on preventing individuals from risking prosecution even at the end of their lives [Music] he wanted groaning desperately to be convicted of this terrible Act but I have come to the conclusion that I don't want to see him go to jail I feel that the important thing is that he should be convicted and he should go back to this town where he lived for 70 years where everybody knew what he did and where he was and people should see him walk on the street and say there goes Oscar groning the man who got convicted in the murder of 300,000 people well he is all we have and if we want to establish at president a new law that in the future will not allow guilty to escape on technicalities we do it through [Music] him an extraordinary moment in Germany when the sins of World War II finally caught up with a man known as the accountant of btz he was convicted and sentenced to four years in prison in what is likely one of the last Nazi trials we will ever [Music] witness it was [Music] emotional the fact that he only got four years I think with the same effort the judge could have given him 100 years I don't expect that he's ever going to be in a jail this is for future generations for all those people who are still murdering people because they different color different tribe different religion it is for them to know that judgment no matter how long it will take we'll catch up with [Music] them [Music] my being a witness was like putting a bouquet on a non-existent grave of my parents I feel that my loved ones who were murdered finally got some justice that my murdered mother and father now perhaps can rest in peace I feel tremendous Elation in the fact that I am sitting in a German court with my daughter with my granddaughter which proves that we like the Eternal Phoenix Rise Again from the Holocaust ashes that we can [Music] survive [Music] [Music]

Channel: Quiver Distribution

Views: 265,766

Keywords: The Accountant Of Auschwitz, Holocaust Documentary, Oskar Gröning, War Crimes Trial, Auschwitz, WWII History, Nazi Germany, Concentration Camps, Documentary Film, Justice, Human Rights, Historical Responsibility, War Crimes, Legal Proceedings, Ethical Dilemmas, Survivor Stories, Holocaust Remembrance, Memory and History, Legal Justice, WWII Memories, full documnetary, wwII documentary, documentary auschwitz, historical documnetary, Jeff Ansell, Hedy Bohm

Id: gmarFypO6oo

Length: 78min 8sec (4688 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 05 2024