User Reviews

The movie did a very good job detailing the mass murder of Jews in Eastern Europe. The incorporation of genuine accounts of eyewitnesses, collaborators, and SS soldiers was very interesting. The ending of the movie was somewhat misleading, however, because they made some inaccurate statements about the Nuremberg Trials. They said that out of 14 Nazis sentenced to death by the Allies only 4 were actually executed while the others were all released in 1958 in an American attempt to create a better relationship with west Germany in the context of the Cold War. While it's true that neither West Germany nor the USA attempted to bring all Nazi criminals to justice, these claims were inaccurate. About 2 dozen Nazis were sentenced to death and then executed. Many others remained in prison until their death. Rudolph Hess died in prison in 1987. The assertion that some Nazi auxiliary police went back to work as policemen was true, as revealed in their investigations (investigations that produced very few indictments) in the 1960s. Most of these people never paid for their crimes. To the contrary, many tried to generate something akin to sympathy to them, as if they were actually victims themselves. There are many who treat them as heroes or victims. This is especially true in post soviet countries, and in 1950s Germany. In the movie, one of the Ukrainian eyewitnesses sounded almost sympathetic to the Ukrainian perpetrators. "I understand they were upset with Soviet rule", trying to rationalize their behavior. This is still the case today. You can't bring up the Holocaust in these countries without opening yourself to attacks by provoking people to deflect from the Holocaust by comparing the Holocaust to Stalin. This movie specifically didn't really try to humanize the perpetrators, despite showing how systemically psychologically weakened the SS were as a result of their crimes (though providing no accounts of any trauma or psychological issues with the Ukrainian or Lithuanian collaborators). The accounts provided in this movie were of highly disturbing behavior by Nazi executioners. The most disturbing scene in the movie was from the personal video collection of a Nazi executioner burning his little sister's dolls while on leave in Germany. The fact that the Nazis had nightmares and ptsd symptoms doesn't take away from their evilness and shouldn't garner them any sympathy. The Nazi leaders (who themselves had nightmares) treated these nightmares and psychological issues as a problem that interfered with their "job", not as indication that what they were doing was evil.

Extremely powerful documentary. Primarily French, but there are subtitles in several languages.

This film contains explicit images and videos, so viewer discretion is extremely advised. Not appropriate for children or the faint of heart.

A shameful testimony of the horrific actions of not only the Einsatzgruppen during WWII, but perhaps more significantly, of "common" citizens and their collaboration with the Nazis and Einsatzgruppen.