Original subtitles

Sharpen the long knives

Sharpen the long knives

Sharpen the long knives On the paving stone

So that they go better

So that they go better

So that they go better Into the Jewish belly

As boys we thought nothing of singing these songs.

Isn't that terrible?

I once flew over Buchenwald with my squadron.

We intentionally flew low,

so we could see into the camp.

And we asked ourselves,

"What is happening in Buchenwald?"

And we heard things that you could scarcely believe.

I was on leave with my brother-in-law.

He told me that he had witnessed

Germans from various units

shooting Jews in huge pits and burying them.

He showed us the photos.

I said, "Is this Germany?"

This is a provincial commuter town.

This place makes me feel really aggressive. I don't know why.

How is your father?

He's well. He's better than I am.

"Nazi Party Census."

Here it says "Blood Order."

-Blood Order. -Or is it crossed out?

-What is a Blood Order? -I don't know.

"I was made an SS Stormtrooper on January 30, 1936."

"On January 10, 1940, I was dispatched

to the SS officers’ school in Dachau."

"I passed with fairly good results."

"Promoted to SS Sergeant Major on March 1, 1940."

It sounds rather brutal.

Are you seeing this for the first time?

Yes, I didn't know any of this.

I didn't even know he'd been posted to Dachau.

We were raised in this manner, "Children may only speak when spoken to."

"They are not allowed to ask questions."

What is a Blood Order?

-Blood bath? -Blood Order.

It was a political decoration

for participating in the 1923 Munich Uprising.

-Did you take part in that? -No.

You would have only been nine.

And when were you sworn in at the Feldherrnhalle?

In 1935.

The bells rang all over Germany.

It's hard to imagine that after Hitler's seizure of power,

the bells rang everywhere in Germany.

My mother voted for Hitler.

My father also voted for Hitler in 1932.

Because of unemployment and inflation.

My older brother

was already a convinced Nazi in 1932.

In 1932, he was 11 years old.

I remember how he showed me his brass knuckles with spikes.

"Today, we're going to smash the Communist HQ."

And he photographed Insterburg citizens who frequented Jewish shops.

And then these pictures were exhibited at the Insterburg Town Hall.

Pictures of people buying from Jewish shops.

I attended the local primary school in 1933, at the age of six.

The teacher was a local party operative.

He raised us according to the Nazi doctrine.

In the morning, we had to stand up, and say, "Heil Hitler."

He practically raised me to be a Nazi, against my parents' wishes.

I trusted my teacher more than I trusted them.

Our teacher asserted

a strong control over us.

This is my Hitler Youth membership card.

I joined the Jungvolk at the age of ten

and I received this.

I joined on 1st May, 1937.

Before I even turned ten years old.

I just couldn't wait.

When you're ten, 12 years old, what do you want?

You want to be part of a group and get out of the house.

We could do sports.

We were allowed to play tennis on the marine sports field.

We were allowed to use the pool.

We were allowed to play on the lawn in the park.

Before that, everything had been forbidden.

My mother was active in the Frauenschaft.

That was the women's organization.

When we went for walks on Sunday, when I was little,

my father always put on his uniform.

And then we went for a walk.

My mother didn't like this at all.

Women didn't have a uniform,

but he made sure that she wore the Frauenschaft badge on her coat

so that everyone could see

that they supported Nazi ideology.

I would have liked to have gotten involved,

but Father said no.

And in the summer of 1933,

they finally said yes.

And I got a brown shirt

and black trousers for my birthday.

And that was in Stendal, when we visited my grandparents.

They bought the uniform from a Jewish store.

We did things that we enjoyed.

But that faded.

And when we moved up

to the Hitler Youth at the age of 14…

participation was mandatory.

I was in a communications unit,

where we trained as radio operators at the age of only 15 or 16.

My leader was drafted into the military,

and then suddenly, I was a Hitler Youth leader.

They found me a bit girlish.

I wasn't the right kind of leader for the Hitler Youth.

We did boxing in the afternoon.

We weren't allowed to stop until there was blood flowing.

At the end of the week, the leader spoke to me.

He said, "You don't have what it takes to be a Hitler Youth leader."

"You're too soft."

From the ages of 10 to 14, there was the "Jungvolk" organization.

At 14, you joined the Hitler Youth.

For the girls, there was the "Jungmaedel" and then the BDM.

The Association of German Girls.

A blue skirt, a white blouse, and a knot made of leather.

It was a triangular neckerchief, that was held together with the knot.

There were these social evenings, where we would meet.

Those were evenings where we spoke about Nazism, about the Führer…

Sometimes we'd talk about parts of Hitler's Mein Kampf.

We didn't support the Party.

But we liked the uniform.

We went along with it because we enjoyed it.

Putting on the uniform and going on marches

or we'd sing, and so on.

Oh, that was lovely!

They were hiking songs, ones you still sing today.

It was lovely.

Raise the flag!

The ranks tightly closed

The SA marches with calm, steady step

Comrades shot by the Red Front And reactionaries

March in spirit within our ranks

We had the task of standing guard in front of a Jewish department store.

And us little boys, I was just nine,

we had to line up in front of this Jewish shop

and we had to link arms.

We weren't allowed to let anyone through.

My friend said, "Let's go in there."

"There's got to be something there."

"I think you can recognize the Jew by…"

"The Jew smells."

"You can smell the Jew."

Between Slawentzitz and Ujest,

there was a Jewish cemetery.

There were at least 100 graves there.

So, there must have been a Jewish community there

at some point.

We were in the Jungvolk and Hitler Youth.

And that's when the Jew-baiting started.

We would often go to the Jewish cemetery.

We went there at midnight, at the witching hour.

It was a test of courage.

JEW

The Jews weren't popular, were they?

This had consequences.

Why weren't the Jews popular?

Apparently because they…

They were into deal-making, and they had hooked noses.

We learned to read using the normal alphabet book.

But we also had a Jew-themed alphabet book.

It was published by Streicher, who had also published the Nuremberg Race Laws.

And this book had a caricature of a Jew

for each letter of the alphabet.

I remember one in particular.

It showed a butcher's shop that was…

really greasy and filthy.

It showed a disgusting Jew,

one with dirty long hair and a hat, behind the counter.

And next to him, there was a blonde German girl

with a white apron.

The Jew had his hand where it shouldn't be.

The Jews were to blame for everything.

We were a village of 175 people.

We had no electricity.

The mobile Nazi Film Unit came to show us films, like Suess the Jew.

They showed Nazi films in the smallest villages.

You can't imagine today what kind of pressure there was.

That was my grandmother.

-Is that the Jewish grandmother? -Yes.

That is the Jewish generation. That's her.

And that's her mother.

Yes.

My older brother was a convinced Nazi.

And much later, he realized

that our father was also a Jew, in accordance with Jewish tradition.

His mother was Jewish.

But he didn't make that public.

He kept that a secret.

And when my brother realized that our father was a Jew…

He wanted to be racially pure.

When he realized that according to both the Jewish and Nazi rules…

that our father was actually Jewish,

a process of rethinking began.

There were no Jews in our village.

My parents had contact with a Jew who came from Friedeberg-Ostbahnhof.

He bought the skins that we sold him on slaughtering days.

I always went to Woldenberg with him to get my hair cut.

His name was Piefke.

And, one day, he didn't show up.

I asked, "Where is Piefke?"

They told me that he had emigrated.

Originally, it was a perfectly normal hospital for psychiatric patients.

And it remained one,

but the Fascists turned part of it into an Extermination Center.

It was all kept very secret.

But word got around

that buses were arriving in Bernburg with darkened windows

heading in the direction of the Sanatorium,

as the Bernburgers called it.

Every few days, black smoke would rise, and it smelled sweet.

From this, many people concluded that people's bodies were burned there.

People arrived and were murdered. The furnaces are still there today.

It was talked about a little, in very hushed tones.

It was dangerous to talk about it.

It was only whispered about in private.

It was November 9th.

1938.

The SS was sworn in on that date every year.

The SS from all over Germany congregated in front of the Feldherrnhalle.

It was night, and we marched there in rank.

And then came Hitler, Himmler, and so on.

To the left, above the Residenz, next to the Feldherrnhalle,

there was the glow of a fire.

It didn't mean anything. It was just a fire somewhere.

We returned to our barracks.

And the next day, we found out what it was.

It was Kristallnacht.

I had no idea.

That fire was the synagogue.

The Party ordered the schools to take the children there.

They said the children should see it.

What was the motive?

They did not belong to our ethnic group, apparently. I don't know the reason.

They said the children should see it.

Can you remember your reaction?

I was too young then.

Fourteen?

But look, it wasn't in our neighborhood.

And, honestly, we didn't really leave our neighborhoods.

-Hello, Karl. -Hi, Gisela.

"From 1829

until its destruction on November 10, 1938,

this was the center of Weener's Jewish community."

"A synagogue from 1829 to 1938."

"A school from 1853."

"Rabbi and Teacher's House from 1887."

I can't read the Jewish text.

So there was a Jewish community here?

Yes. In Weener.

Who burned all of this down?

People from the SA.

We were on Fasanenstrasse

and we saw that the synagogue was on fire.

The fire brigade stood in front of it, but they did nothing. Nothing at all.

We were astonished that they didn't intervene.

They just let it burn down.

I only understood why

a long time later.

They were only there to make sure that the neighboring houses

would not catch fire.

But that was only the beginning of the hounding of the Jews.

I didn't really care that the synagogue was burned down.

I wasn't sorry about that.

I didn't feel any pity for the Jews.

So for you, it wasn't a crime?

No, not for me…

Well, hold on! That's a crime.

One would almost have to say yes. However, I didn't consider it a crime.

It was all the same to me.

But if you look at it…

from a legal perspective, one would have to consider it a crime,

because it was the destruction of other people's property.

So the one who destroys it would be a criminal.

But I didn't feel that way.

We didn't have any civilian clothes.

We were always in uniform, from morning till evening.

And when you are in uniform the whole year round,

that leaves a mark.

You have no time to consider yourself a civilian.

In the Nazi Political Academy,

it was important that graduates enter every profession.

There should be people everywhere who could play an elite role in Nazism.

Everyone hoped to be drafted as early as possible,

to become a soldier and go to war.

Many of us volunteered for the Waffen-SS.

This was being part of elite. We wanted to continue being part of the elite.

The Family Tree.

SS Lieutenant, Karl Heinrich Lübbert Hollander. Believer.

With a swastika, see?

This shows that you are Aryan?

Of good stock. Yes.

You couldn't become an officer in the SS otherwise?

No.

That was a prerequisite.

What was your rank?

SS-Oberstrumführer, First Lieutenant in the end.

I went to the SS

because I heard that they trained you hard.

I was an athlete.

I did athletics, wrestling, boxing,

football, hiking, skiing.

I liked sports. I liked it tough.

I signed up for the SS on March 15th.

The SS was the elite corps. They had the best tanks.

And we got excited. Well, I did anyway.

My father wasn't too excited about it.

I did it without his knowledge.

I believed in it, and I wanted to die a hero's death.

I had written my farewell letter to my parents.

"When I fall, you should be proud. You should not wear black."

Nonsense like that.

Today, you wonder how that could happen.

My parents took me to a career counselor.

The man said, "First, he must complete his Labor and Military Service."

That's two and a half years.

Or you could send him to Oranienburg,

to the Death's Head Unit.

They'll take him at 16.

And then he won't have to do any Labor Service.

I saw a man there once.

I said, "I know him."

"He once bought stamps from me for charity."

And I wanted to go over.

He hadn't done anything!

My comrade held me back and said,

"You idiot! Haven't you noticed what's going on?"

That was a Mr. Warschauer.

But why did they send him to Sachsenhausen?

I can't tell you that. Being a Jew was probably enough.

Yes. Locking the man up was a disgrace.

We did not agree with that, as you can imagine.

But when you're caught up in it, you keep your mouth shut.

At 16.

I'm sorry. But that's the truth.

And then I heard screams outside.

I put the table under the window

and then a stool on top of that,

so I could look through the window.

And then I saw it.

I saw how people were beaten.

With bullwhips.

And others were hanging,

with their hands tied behind their backs.

The stool was pulled from under their feet

and they screamed until they were unconscious.

And if an officer had asked you to do it?

If an officer had asked me to pull the stool away,

the stool would have gone flying.

No doubt about it.

"On January 10, 1940,

I was ordered to attend the SS Officers Training School in Dachau."

"I passed the exam with fairly good results."

"The school was next to the concentration camp."

My question would be whether you knew that Jews were interned in Dachau.

No.

We didn't know that.

You didn't know that?

For us, they were political prisoners.

If someone says that they didn't know about concentration camps,

that is just not true.

The concentration camp inmates went to work in their prison uniforms.

There were two or three guards, depending on how many prisoners there were.

Everybody saw this.

I was stationed at Dachau on April 1, 1938.

There were also Jews there.

I know this, because our local police commander was there.

He was also a Jew.

And he was taken there. I even saw him.

-In the camp. -In Dachau?

Well, yes. I saw him on his way to work.

When Adolf Hitler came to power,

all of those who had opposed him were arrested overnight.

They were put into concentration camps, and killed.

The intellectual leadership of the resistance was gone.

And anyone who still protested was promptly killed.

Killed. So people were scared.

I can't explain it any other way.

These heroes you expect to find, there aren't many of them.

I was 14 years old.

I was the nanny for an SS family for six years.

I looked after the children

because their mother worked in the concentration camp.

We took the children there sometimes,

when they wanted to see their mother.

-Yeah. -She never came home.

She normally slept over there.

She worked nights in the canteen.

I also went to the cinema at the camp.

The prisoners filled my teeth.

They fixed my teeth.

So, your dentist was there?

Yes, prisoners were my dentists.

Prisoners were your dentists?

Yeah, they fixed my teeth. They were very nice prisoners.

The Kapos, and so on. They were nice.

Only the poor Jews were killed straight away.

When they arrived, they were immediately taken to the gas chamber.

They burned them immediately.

They killed so many people.

In Mauthausen, there were the "Death Stairs,"

to avoid a detour.

Because the camp was at the top of the hill

and the quarry was at the bottom.

They built the "Death Stairs" to speed up the journey.

The steps were of different heights

and when it rained,

some would slip and fall,

or they would drop their stone

and injure somebody else's foot.

Many lost their lives. There were many accidents.

Did you see that too, back then?

Yes.

And then there was another steep wall

and some were pushed down, either by Kapos or by the SS.

They were pushed over the steep slope.

Twenty meters of free-fall onto rocks.

Nobody survived that.

These are tomatoes.

I don't have anything green.

I don't think that matters.

Smell this.

Is it local?

Homemade, yesterday.

That was taken for my card, for the bunker site.

I was a wages clerk.

I did the payroll for the German workers.

I only submitted the hours for the foreign workers,

because the concentration camp prisoners didn't get paid.

There were groups of laborers in Kap Horn

and here at the Valentin Bunker, where they built submarines.

Kap Horn was surrounded by water on three sides.

On one side, there were pontoons,

boats that the concentration camp inmates were herded onto

and then taken to the steel works.

Us Germans were not supposed to go there.

But I went there once.

And I saw how these people stood on the boat,

packed in tightly, like matches.

To this day, I'm ashamed that humans could do this to other humans.

The Kapo came from a sub-camp of the Neuengamme concentration camp.

He had a group of 15 or 20 men,

and these 15 or 20 men

had to be brought back to the concentration camp, dead or alive.

They dragged them along.

Just so he could hand over the same number of men he had taken.

So, at the end of the shift,

the same number of people had to be brought back, even if they were dead.

Yes, even if they could barely walk.

How do you know that?

I saw it happen.

Our hut was only 20 meters away from the bunker.

But as a bookkeeper, I had nothing to do with it.

They were unloaded from the trains

and then they had to walk five or six kilometers to the camp.

When they walked past in their wooden clogs,

it sounded like a threshing machine.

"Here they come again," we'd say to one another.

Most people benefited from it.

They could work here and earn money.

And those who earned money here were okay with it.

You mean, they made a profit out of it?

You could find advantages in it, yes.

They benefited from it?

Yes.

In some way, the concentration camp had an effect on all of us.

Local shops benefited too, of course.

The butcher shops, the bakeries,

and all of the grocers.

Your grandfather was a delivery man?

Yes, he was a delivery driver.

With a cart and horses.

He collected goods from the train station in Bergen

and he took them to the camp.

The prisoners, were they hiding here somewhere?

Yes, they hid in the hayloft at night, or in the pigsty.

Or on top of the pigsty.

I mean, they are big buildings.

Either we discovered them in the morning or they came to us.

Well, they were hungry.

Yeah.

And then what happened to them?

Well, they were picked up.

Here in the barracks, they were a bit… What do I know?

Or taken to the concentration camp. They took them to the camp.

And who picked them up?

Guards, you know.

But how did the guards know that people were hiding here?

Well, we would discover them and then report it.

At least, that is how I remember it.

-Did you make a phone call or…? -Yes, yes, yes.

Do you know what happened to these prisoners?

No, nobody knows what happened.

My father was a railway man.

My father was also head of the cargo department.

This is why our apartment was at the train station.

It was interesting, because when the trains came,

we could see clearly what was happening.

What were his duties?

Well, it was to register these trains.

Let's say there was a freight train loaded with people

and it was headed for Auschwitz.

It had to be registered on the paperwork at the freight yard,

where all the trains went.

They cut down all the trees for about ten kilometers

and they put up the factories there in no time.

Massive camps of prisoners and Jews, and so on.

They were unloaded at the freight yard

and they were marched to their respective camps.

Every day,

I saw guards escorting Jews from work

back to the camp.

Sometimes, they had to carry one of their fellows

because they could not walk anymore.

They put them on some kind of stretcher.

I saw that quite often.

My father knew where the people were going.

No one ever came back. They must have gone somewhere.

Sometimes my father would come home and say,

"They dispatched Jews again today."

To Auschwitz.

People would say, quietly,

"They are driven up to the chimney there."

I still have the smell

of the crematorium in my nose.

When you saw the smoke rising up,

it was like when you burn car tires.

Then we would say, "They have put some more in."

They would put at least three people on there at a time,

on a metal grille.

As the skin burned, it produced a lot of smoke.

You could smell it two kilometers away.

PLATFORM 17

Are you all from Ebensee?

Yes, we were all born in Ebensee.

-All of you? -Yes, all of us.

What did you know about the concentration camp during the war?

How much did you know?

We knew nothing! At least, I didn't. I can't speak for the others.

I knew nothing.

Everything about the camps was covered up.

You understand? It was all hushed up. Suppressed.

People would talk about it quietly,

but not out loud!

Well, it was awful.

My old neighbor, he moved to Poland.

He told me so much because he was in the concentration camp, and survived.

He survived.

They were hungry.

So many of them starved to death.

The camp inmates worked in the tunnels?

Those who still could.

Often they had to carry them back on stretchers,

when they couldn't take any more.

No food. They were finished.

Yes, it was so many.

What happened to those who could no longer work?

-They were burned. -Yes, exactly. Every time.

The ovens were fired up.

You could see the smoke from the ovens.

You knew what was going on.

Those were horrific times.

And they beat them to the end.

In the labor camps, they beat them to the end.

Then it was over.

So you think that the people here

knew what was going on?

No one would admit it

out of fear of being taken there as well.

People would say, "Don't say anything or you'll end up in the camp too."

They noticed.

Everyone knew but no one said anything!

The day before the Americans came,

there was a lot of smoke and it smelt awful.

They burned them all.

The ones who were worn out.

They burned them all. I remember that.

I always sat by the window, so I saw a lot.

The Jeep drove up there.

-The Americans. -Yes.

They opened the gate.

Imagine how people rejoiced when they came!

-How they screamed! -How they screamed!

But for joy! They were cries of joy.

They were so glad.

The townspeople got scared,

thinking that they would break into the houses or something.

But this didn't happen.

And suddenly, all the SS guards were gone.

There were none to be seen, from one moment to the next.

They would ring your doorbell

late at night,

and your whole flat would be searched.

Was someone there?

-Your friend? -Yes, my boyfriend.

He was with the SS, and they would have caught him.

But he was not from Ebensee.

No, he was not from Ebensee.

I see.

Your husband, was he a Nazi?

No.

Your husband was an SS camp guard?

If I hadn't hidden him for nine months,

they would have arrested him.

But they didn't get him.

For the German people, the Waffen-SS were at the peak of the nation.

Not just physically, but spiritually too.

An elite.

Yes, it's still there.

Whenever I have surgery, I tell them about it.

I've had quite a few operations.

It's somewhere there. Here, look.

Now you should be able to see it.

What was your blood group?

O.

It's interesting that this was only done with the Waffen-SS.

You'd think that they would have done this to all the soldiers.

To help everyone.

But there was an awareness of an elite,

and that was the Waffen-SS.

They came and said, "Show us your arm."

It was supposed to be your blood group, in case you were wounded.

But many also said that they did it to mark us forever.

The Waffen-SS had nothing to do with…

the terrible

and brutal treatment of Jews and dissidents,

or the concentration camps.

The SS had nothing to do with it whatsoever.

Nothing in the slightest. We were always front-line soldiers.

We were never involved in actions behind the front.

Always at the front, eye to eye with the enemy.

Nothing else.

I have no regrets and I will never regret being with that unit.

Truly not.

A camaraderie like that…

You could rely on every man, one hundred percent.

There was nothing that could go wrong.

That was the beauty of it.

That was the beauty of it.

Yes.

There were SS units who fought on the front line,

and they were merciless.

They shot whole villages.

Nothing was left standing.

People lay around like dead flies.

That too, was the SS units.

The Russians had already been driven out,

but with the civilians…

they did what they liked with them.

There were more dead than alive.

The living received us, they begged, "Please, please…"

The Russians were generally taken prisoner, with some exceptions.

I don't know about percentages,

but I saw exceptions where the ordinary soldiers,

not the elite troops, they drove away with their tanks…

and were shot.

They were buried in a mass grave.

They had to dig their own graves when we put them in there.

I wasn't there.

When they were forced to dig it, they knew they would be shot.

Did they talk to each other?

Not at all. There was a deathly silence.

We were in the Pripyat swamps.

A doctor and three medical orderlies.

And…

And we were attached to a Hungarian SS unit.

And they allegedly found ammunition in a village.

We watched as they began

to set the houses on fire.

The people flooded out of their homes.

There was thick smoke everywhere.

It was like a film.

It was a dark night,

and these troops were on their rather small horses.

They were riding back and forth, shooting like savages.

It was like a cowboy film.

In the middle, there was a house that was larger than the rest.

It may have belonged to the mayor.

And when the people ran into this house, that house was also set on fire.

When the people inside could no longer stand the heat and smoke,

they ran out of the house.

Machine guns had been set up outside,

and as the people ran outside, they were just cut down.

The whole village was wiped out.

Women and children and men

who were just…

Yeah

They would have been burned alive if they had stayed in there,

and if they came out, they were shot.

What was the role of the medical personnel?

We had no role there. We never got the chance.

If a grenade had been thrown

and it had injured a few Hungarian SS officers, then perhaps…

-If the SS men had been hurt-- -Yes.

Why did your officer not write a report?

I don't know, I can't say.

Perhaps, they didn't want a report.

What do you mean?

If it isn't in the archives, it does not exist.

And then we withdrew further with the tank

and we drove through a village which was engulfed in flames.

And I didn't know that this…

I didn't know about the "scorched earth" order.

Hitler instigated a "scorched earth" policy.

It was the Führer's order

that no house fall into the hands of the Russians.

He hoped the Russian advance could be slowed down that way.

Yes, it was cruel, but I did not care who was burned.

You said that you are ashamed to be German? Is that correct?

No, I didn't say that.

I am ashamed today that I joined this organization,

that I was proud to serve in the Leibstandarte,

and that I was proud to bear this tattoo.

And that our leader, the hero, hid in his bunker like a coward,

and shot himself to escape responsibility.

Adolf and his clique brought us disaster.

They caused us to lose our homeland.

And I lost my honor.

-And what? -My honor!

But you were full of honor and pride back then.

-What was I? -If you'd kept your honor…

You are ashamed now that you had the honor of standing for your fatherland?

-I don't understand. -No, he's ashamed that…

I'm ashamed of the crimes that were committed.

To stand up for the fatherland is something completely different.

Everybody goes soft on camera.

Think about it.

The majority cheered when they bombed London and Coventry.

Even knowing that women and children were killed.

These are the consequences of letting ourselves be seduced.

-No. -Of course that's the result.

The concentration camps in Germany, the destruction of Warsaw…

Wherever you go today, you have to feel ashamed!

Anybody in this room with a weakness of character

will now think, "Shit, I'm German. What am I going to do now?"

That's what you're doing right now.

You are judging people, even though you've just said that it's not our fault.

Somebody with a weakness of character will think,

"Oh no, I am German. I must be ashamed my whole life."

Why don't you show your face?

Why are you such a coward?

Look at the camera, and say what you think.

You won't do that.

Then I'll get a criminal conviction, and be persecuted by the state.

I say you are one of them!

Why are you hiding?

Because I'll be made out to be a criminal.

-Why? You won't be… -Of course I will.

That's rubbish.

In your eyes, I'm a criminal, just like your old comrades.

Then I would have to be afraid that Nazis will set my house on fire.

What nonsense.

-Shouldn't I? -I don't believe it, really.

When I speak so openly.

You should be afraid that some Albanian stabs you on the public transport.

You should be afraid of that, not of your own kind.

I'm getting agitated but, really, one should stay calm.

Yeah, but you're not doing it, either.

That's enough.

I belonged to a murderous organization.

What else was it?

What else was it?

Innocent women--

One can think that one's actions are wrong,

that they're very wrong.

But innocent women? Or because they were Jewish or Gypsies?

Or because they were weak, physically, or because they were sickly?

They were killed with an injection. Euthanasia.

I remember a man called Franz Lemke.

We used to tease him as a kid.

One day, he was gone.

It turned out that they injected him in Landsberg. Gone.

We were told that those who were "unworthy of life"

had to be destroyed.

"Unworthy of life."

We carried it out to perfection.

We planned it at the Wannsee Conference, here in this very house,

around a table just like this one.

In comfort, over some coffee.

They decided how the Jews, women and children, were to be killed.

By this horrid method. I cannot be proud of that.

I am ashamed of that.

It cannot be taken for granted

that a Jew would want to talk to an SS man like me,

a man who was convinced that what Adolf did was right.

Think about what that means.

I met 23 old German Jews.

Germans. Their fathers were in the war.

An old Jewish lady over 80 years old told me,

"My father was in the First World War. He received medals."

"He did not want to believe that the Nazis would kill him."

"He refused to flee Germany."

You can imagine what happened.

This was too much for me.

I believe that.

But I believe it is important to talk to young people like you.

I ask only this of you: Do not allow yourself to be blinded.

Are you still proud today

that you were a member of the Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler?

Of course.

Not just anybody could join it.

You mean it was…?

An elite.

You could say that.

Are you willing to accept that the Leibstandarte was involved

in the murder of the Jews and others?

How can you say that this is an elite in a moral sense?

They weren't involved in those murders.

But the SS?

Maybe. I don't know.

I never witnessed it.

Will you acknowledge

that the SS was a criminal organization?

-No. -You won't accept that?

I won't accept that.

I would sully myself if I were to admit to that.

And I don't want that.

The entire SS was recognized as a criminal organization

at the Nuremberg trials.

But not by a German court.

So, I will not accept that.

So, you are saying that the reports that came out later

about the murder of the Jews in the extermination camps…

-It's said to be six million. -That's a joke.

One million, maybe a little more, in Auschwitz.

Yes.

I don't believe it.

I will not believe it. It can't be.

Today they say…

Excuse me, but it's the Jew who puts it that way.

The scale of it that is claimed today,

I deny that too.

I deny it. It didn't happen.

I can't imagine that, back home,

so many horrible things happened.

I don't know.

After the war, the majority of those under Nazism regularly said

firstly, "I didn't know about it,"

secondly, "I didn't take part in it,"

and, thirdly, "If I had known, I would have acted differently."

Everybody tried to distance themselves

from the massacres committed under Nazism,

especially those committed during the final years.

And that's why so many said, "I wasn't a Nazi."

An SS officer was lying next to me.

And an American officer came to his bed and he asked him,

"Are you a Nazi?"

And he said, "Yes, I am."

The American officer shook this SS officer's hand and said,

"You're the first German to admit that he was a Nazi."

"It's a pleasure to meet you."

Later, I asked myself what I would have said…

to this American officer, if he had asked me, "Are you Nazi?"

Probably the same as everybody else.

"I was forced to," "I had to join the Hitler Youth," and so on.

I wouldn't have said I was a Nazi.

We were, at the very least, complicit in other people's crimes.

We can't be accused of being active perpetrators.

We didn't do that.

We didn't beat or imprison anyone or anything like that.

But we went along with it.

How can you claim that you didn't imprison anyone

when you were a camp guard, a member of the SS Death's Head.

A valid question.

A very valid question.

That's when complicity begins to turn into guilt.

That's why I got out.

At what point does complicity make you a perpetrator?

Complicity begins by going there in the first place

and not turned around straight away.

We didn't dare.

Nobody walked away.

Let's say there was an order to exterminate the Jews.

If I was a policeman or a soldier…

I would be forced

to help round up the Jews

and take them to a concentration camp.

So what does that make me?

If I go voluntarily, I am definitely a perpetrator.

But if I am ordered to do it?

Am I already a perpetrator if I say, "Jews, move along?"

I don't know. I can't answer that question.

What else could I have done?

If I had refused, I could have been put up against the wall and shot.

Did you yourself ever hear of this happening?

No, never.

There is no record of it in the literature, either.

I never heard of it.

If you had received such an order, what would you have done?

Yes, that is a good question.

If 99 men had said "yes" before me,

I might have agreed to it as well.

The main responsibility for the mass murder of Jews in World War II--

In the Second World War, the blame remains with the Germans.

It is the stigma they will bear for the rest of their lives.

But I don't feel part of the collective guilt of the Germans.

So who is to blame for these atrocities?

God will be the judge of that.

-Put the good Lord aside. -No.

I would like to hear your opinion.

Yes, but--

The good Lord doesn't sit opposite me.

-No, but my opinion-- -I can't ask him the question.

That means I'd like you to…

But I feel-- I'm ashamed as a German.

Because something so cruel happened in the German name.

With such meticulousness.

With such bookkeeping accuracy.

When it comes to judging,

I would differentiate between those who did it and…

Actually, they were all perpetrators.

They were all perpetrators.

The concentration camp guard…

would you consider him a perpetrator?

Well, yes. I was one of them.

I feel like a perpetrator.

I've always said that we didn't know, but in the end, we are perpetrators too.

We let it happen.

We should have got to the bottom of it.

So, in the end, we are perpetrators too.

Do I consider myself a perpetrator?

That's such a broad question.

I wouldn't have been a perpetrator…

if I had had the courage

to say "no" at any point.

So, you could say that by not doing that, I am a perpetrator.

That's an easy answer, of course.

But I can't be convicted as a perpetrator,

because, really, I was an ideological perpetrator and not a…

But let's finish now, shall we?

So, you are not willing to blame Hitler?

No.

So, to you, Hitler was not responsible?

I will not blame him.

You will not blame him?

Do you still honor him?

I certainly do. The idea was correct.

And the murder of the Jews, was that also correct?

That's what Hitler--

-No, I don't share that opinion. -Sorry?

I don't share the opinion that they should have been murdered.

They should have been driven out to another country,

where they could rule themselves.

That would have saved a great deal of grief.