Review: A chilling ‘Final Account’ by witnesses and perpetrators of World War II Nazi atrocities

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“Final Account� is a chilling and essential documentary featuring rare testimony from a wide range of elderly Germans and Austrians who witnessed or participated in — both wittingly and unwittingly — the atrocities of the Holocaust. It’s a fascinating look, yet again, at one of history’s most horrendous periods and explores the era’s eternal question: “Were you a perpetrator if you knew, but said or did nothing?�

Writer-director Luke Holland (“Good Morning, Mr. Hitler,� “I Was a Slave Labourer�), who died of cancer last June at age 71, grew up unaware that he was Jewish and that his maternal grandparents were killed in concentration camps. This long-withheld secret and need to explore his family history led him to arduously locate and interview everyday non-Jewish citizens who came of age as the Third Reich came into power — and the insidious, if often accepted, ways in which their lives were affected and shaped.

Holland’s subjects, in their 80s and 90s when shooting began in 2008 (most are now deceased), recount such things as how they blithely and inevitably became Hitler Youth (to some it had the air of a fun social club), their pride in serving as members of the SS and the Wehrmacht (Nazi Germany’s armed forces), and how they betrayed Jews who hid out on their farms. Some speakers here were concentration camp guards, others worked on the trains that transported Jews to these same camps. Many recollect the ghastly smell of burning flesh discharged from the crematoriums; others recall Kristallnacht, that fateful overnight in 1938 that saw hundreds of synagogues and thousands of Jewish businesses destroyed by Nazi forces.

The takeaway from many of these workaday observers: “Everyone tried to distance themselves from what happened and deny any participation.� In other words, a mass case of “see no evil, speak no evil� due to fear of Nazi reprisal — despite what they may have actually known. Still, for some, complicity admittedly turned to guilt.

Then there are those who contend that they were unaware of the hellish events that were taking place, guided — or blinded — by the Nazi propaganda machine and patriotic fervor. (The film also reminds us that Adolf Hitler’s rise occurred at a time of high unemployment and inflation.) Any parallels to recent history are, to say the least, disturbing.

But it’s hardly all “mea culpa,� “who knew?� or “we were just following orders.� Holland, often heard posing his questions off camera, lets several witnesses work their way to varying degrees of confession or incrimination. There’s one former SS member who still honors Hitler, says “the idea was correct,� and suggests that Jews shouldn’t have been murdered but, instead, forced to leave the country. (He also proudly shows off his war medals.) Another interviewee asserts that the death camps were good for nearby business owners so maybe profit trumped personal outrage. A third speaker doesn’t believe that 6 million Jews were killed — and we know he’s not alone.

Perhaps the film’s most disturbing moments unfold during a heated meeting between yet another ex-SS member and a group of teenage students. The onetime concentration camp employee, horrified by what he’d seen and done during the Holocaust, is taken to task by a few right-leaning students for not being prouder of his wartime actions. One of the kids seems angrier about Albanian immigrants than he does about Nazis. That this gathering happens at Berlin’s Wannsee House, where in 1942 Nazi leaders planned the “final solution� to annihilate the Jews of Europe, is almost unbearably ironic.

Hollander punctuates his talking-head interviews with vivid archival photos and footage plus stirring, present-day shots of the sites where many of the reported horrors took place. Although the film sometimes feels a bit static and might have benefited from a deeper dive into his subjects’ lengthy lives, it should be required viewing for the huge numbers of young adults who, recent surveys have shown, are either egregiously misinformed or completely unaware about the Holocaust. It forever bears repeating: Never forget.