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[lively instrumental music]

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[Oskar Groening speaks German]

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[interpreter] The main camp of Auschwitz

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was like a small town,

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with its gossiping and chatting.

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There was a canteen.

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There was a cinema.

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[cheery song in German]

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There was a sports club of which I was a member.

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It was all fun and entertainment,

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just like a small town.

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The special situation at Auschwitz

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led to friendships, of which I'm still

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saying today,

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I like to look back on with joy.

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[music continues playing]

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We were convinced by our world view

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that we had been betrayed by the entire world,

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and that there was a great conspiracy

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of the Jews against us.

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But surely when it comes to children,

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you must have realized that they couldn't possibly

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have done anything to you.

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The children, they're not the enemy at the moment.

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The enemy is the blood inside them.

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[news anchor] A former guard at the notorious

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Auschwitz concentration camp has gone on trial in Germany.

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Oskar Groening is charged

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with more than 300,000 counts of accessory to murder.

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Groening is now 93 years old.

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[thunder rumbling]

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[sorrowful music]

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[Bill Glied] My children grew up knowing our family

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had a secret,

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a burden.

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They would ask me why they don't have

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any grandparents,

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aunts, uncles.

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If I think about my Holocaust experience,

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those few minutes on the ramp in Auschwitz

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were really the defining moments

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in my life.

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[Hedy Bohm] Try to imagine that tomorrow

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someone comes and tells you,

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you have to leave your home,

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your parents are taken away,

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and you don't know if you ever see them and when.

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And eventually it's over and you live.

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And then you find out you're alone.

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You have no parents.

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You have no family.

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Is it over, ever?

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[Bill Glied] I first heard about Oskar Groening

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when Thomas Walther, who was a former judge

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and an advocate, a lawyer in Germany,

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approached me and told me that he would like

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to talk to me about my experience in Auschwitz

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in connection with a trial

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that is being held for Oskar Groening.

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I felt that, "What have I got to do

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with this particular person?

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I certainly didn't know him."

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I did a considerable amount of thinking.

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You know, first of all, I had to decide

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this question as to whether a 94-year-old man

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who did this terrible deed

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seventy years before is still guilty of the crime.

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[Bohm] The first time I've heard of Oskar Groening

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was from Thomas. He tried to convince me to come

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to Germany as a witness.

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At first, my gut reaction was, "To Germany? No way.

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Why would I go and put myself through

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all the memories and all the horrible feelings

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of being a 16-year-old slave again?"

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But Thomas was persistent.

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He said, "It's not only about Oskar Groening,

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and you and the past,

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it's about establishing a precedent for the future."

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[Thomas Walther] Groening is very old,

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but nobody was too old

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to be killed in Auschwitz.

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If you take part in killing as a 20-year-old man,

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then you can be prosecuted as a 50-year-old man,

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or also as a 90-year-old man.

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Look, for a long time,

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I feel that I have a responsibility

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as a survivor to make sure

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that this terrible event, the Holocaust,

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should not be forgotten.

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This trial is a defining moment

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in the history of the Holocaust.

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The fact that so many Nazi perpetrators

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went unpunished after the war...

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But Thomas told me

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it was not just about me and the past,

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it was also about setting a precedent

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for the future.

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And so I felt that I must be a witness

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at the trial.

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[Kai Feldhaus] Luneburg is a tiny city

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in the north of Germany.

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You got your occasional murder and you got

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your everyday trial business, but a trial of that size...

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Luneburg had never experienced anything like it

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and hardly any German city ever has.

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The trial took place in Luneburg

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because this is where Groening is living,

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and according to German law, you have to be tried

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by the court that is in the vicinity

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of where you live.

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So they set it up in a community center

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where they could house enough people,

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where they could house all these plaintiffs

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and all the lawyers,

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and all the media attention, and also have

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enough seats for public because public

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was supposed to come

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and see and, you know, follow the proceedings.

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[man 1 speaking German]

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They should pay for what they've done. They all knew.

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For the kind of crimes they committed

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and what they did to the Jews,

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that should be punished.

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[man 2 speaking German]

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The little ones are hanged and the big ones are let go.

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That's the way it is.

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To convict a 93-year-old man doesn't make sense.

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I think he's lived in fear of being

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caught for the past 50 years,

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and that he would eventually be exposed.

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He was more or less forced. He was a follower.

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And what were our fathers?

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Nobody talks about that anymore.

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They were also followers.

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Then one would have to hold many old judges accountable.

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Millions yelled, "Heil!" And nobody supposedly

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knew anything.

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[Hans-Jurgen Brennecke] When I was a child,

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nobody talked about the war in my surrounding.

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At school, we didn't hear a single word about the war.

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I had to learn when I was 16 and 17

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in some movies or in some books

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that there was a war that started in my country.

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Some liked to talk about the war,

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but only what they suffered during the war,

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or what heroes they were during the war.

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Nobody talked about the victims.

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And that was really hard for us to understand

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that we had so many criminals in our country,

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millions of them,

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and nobody explained to us what really happened.

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Both of my parents supported the Nazis.

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My mother just followed her husband.

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My father was a Nazi from the very beginning.

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He died '53, he committed suicide.

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Uh, he was still stuck to the old system of Nazi time.

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We have old fascists and new fascists of today.

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[indistinct chatter]

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One organization that helped in the Groening trial

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was the Anti-Fascist organization.

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As the title says,

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they fight against fascism.

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And it happened 70 years ago in our country,

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and it happens today.

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[all] Sieg Heil!

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[indistinct talking and shouting]

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[Brennecke] There was some disturbance

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from right-wing people.

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So, the lawyer, Thomas Walther,

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called six weeks before the Groening trial started here,

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that we can prepare ourselves

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and make a system of banners to keep away

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the Holocaust deniers from the survivors

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and their relatives.

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[both speaking German]

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-Is the text ready? -Yes, it's ready.

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There are people making the banners as we speak.

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[Astrid Steinert] I'm an Anti-Fascist.

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It's, uh,

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what kind of society I want to live.

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And we have a lot of racism here in Germany

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and lots of houses are burning

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because racist and fascist people

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are mobilizing against refugees,

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and lots of people get killed.

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And if we know our history, then...

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we can't do nothing now.

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So we have to act now too.

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What may be one of the last big Holocaust trials opened

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today in Germany.

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Under a new legal theory that death camp workers

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can be held accountable for the Holocaust,

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even if they didn't murder anyone

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with their own hands.

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The man being charged admits he was at Auschwitz

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but says he didn't kill anybody.

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He just took the victims' money.

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This court will now decide whether the so-called

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"Accountant of Auschwitz" is also guilty

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as an accessory to mass murder.

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The first day, 11 Holocaust deniers came.

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[people chanting and shouting in German]

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They shouted out loud and even shared

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some papers.

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"Justice for the survivors of Auschwitz"

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Our friends put up the banner

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to show that there will be justice for the survivors.

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[in German] It's a very difficult situation

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for the survivors

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to stand in line for two hours.

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Especially when they're confronted with

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fascists like Mr. Wulff or Mrs. Haverbeck.

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[Ursula Haverbeck] In Auschwitz

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there were no gassings.

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Auschwitz was not an extermination camp.

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Also, the commander's orders, the Reich's orders...

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We will stop the conversation.

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I told you earlier today you could face charges.

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-Yes, but the... -It does not matter.

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You'll be prosecuted and forced to leave.

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[indistinct chatter]

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I've had enough! I'm going over there

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to a public proceeding.

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And I said please don't criminalize us

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by talking to us.

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I want to go to the trial.

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The survivors and their relatives

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always had protection

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against our right-wing people.

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And that was important for us,

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and also very important for them.

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The first day, it was a frenzy,

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it was amazing.

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Everyone everywhere in Europe, all the major cities.

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[Glied] We started being mobbed,

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literally, by various TV cameras

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and journalists

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who wanted to know opinions

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and where we were standing on this issue.

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[Max Eisen] There's a lot of merits

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to have a person, even 70 years after,

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to bring him to court. Nobody should be able

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to get away with crimes against humanity,

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against Jews.

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[Eva Mozes Kor] "The survivor of Auschwitz,"

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sitting in a German court,

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surrounded by German judges and German attorneys,

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and being treated with respect.

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And that was in itself

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an interesting experience for me.

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At the time, I was good friends

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with Rainer Hoess, and Rainer Hoess

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is a big advocate against the neo-Nazis.

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I'm the grandson of Rudolf Hoess,

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the commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp.

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He was responsible for 1.1 to 1.3 million killings

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at Auschwitz.

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Hate is a powerful weapon, and it was

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in the Second World War, and it is today.

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The Groening trial, it is important

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for our growing youth.

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In the past, we only had the voices of the survivors,

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of the victims there.

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But nobody really listened to the perpetrators.

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[cameras clicking]

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[officer speaks German]

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Come out.

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[cameras clicking]

269
00:14:00,590 --> 00:14:02,592
They won't start without me.

270
00:14:05,261 --> 00:14:08,847
[reporter] Oskar, what do you expect from the trial?

271
00:14:14,479 --> 00:14:16,773
A verdict of not guilty, I don't know.

272
00:14:19,317 --> 00:14:21,486
-[reporter 1] Are you innocent? -[reporter 2]

273
00:14:19,317 --> 00:14:21,486
What are you thinking?

274
00:14:21,528 --> 00:14:23,363
Mr. Groening, don't say anything.

275
00:14:28,618 --> 00:14:32,622
[Glied] We were sitting in one section

276
00:14:28,618 --> 00:14:32,622
of the courtroom

277
00:14:32,664 --> 00:14:34,791
and opposite us

278
00:14:34,833 --> 00:14:39,170
this frail old man walking with a walker

279
00:14:39,212 --> 00:14:41,381
-walked in. -[cameras clicking]

280
00:14:43,633 --> 00:14:46,427
I felt cold looking at this man.

281
00:14:46,469 --> 00:14:51,140
The whole thing was a surreal type of experience.

282
00:14:51,182 --> 00:14:53,560
That's the only way I can describe it.

283
00:14:53,601 --> 00:14:56,730
[Bohm] I did feel sympathy for him.

284
00:14:56,771 --> 00:15:00,316
He looked like a pitiful old man.

285
00:15:00,358 --> 00:15:04,404
But that all changed the moment he sat down,

286
00:15:04,445 --> 00:15:06,823
and he looked around,

287
00:15:06,865 --> 00:15:09,325
and he put his arms like that.

288
00:15:10,034 --> 00:15:12,245
[cameras clicking]

289
00:15:12,286 --> 00:15:14,288
You know, I thought,

290
00:15:14,330 --> 00:15:16,875
"You are the same Nazi,

291
00:15:16,916 --> 00:15:20,879
the same person who thought you were gods,

292
00:15:20,920 --> 00:15:24,965
and we were vermin... still."

293
00:15:25,007 --> 00:15:27,844
So all my sympathy vanished at that point.

294
00:15:34,141 --> 00:15:36,185
[in German] Good morning.

295
00:15:36,227 --> 00:15:39,146
The trial made big headlines because Oskar Groening

296
00:15:39,188 --> 00:15:42,108
was one of the few, if not the first,

297
00:15:42,149 --> 00:15:45,194
Auschwitz accused who said that he will basically

298
00:15:45,236 --> 00:15:46,613
say something in court.

299
00:15:46,654 --> 00:15:50,533
He told what really happened, what he experienced

300
00:15:50,575 --> 00:15:52,493
during the time in Auschwitz.

301
00:15:53,453 --> 00:15:56,205
Most of them tell some lies,

302
00:15:56,247 --> 00:15:58,207
what they did during that time,

303
00:15:58,249 --> 00:16:01,001
but Mr. Groening told the reality.

304
00:16:01,043 --> 00:16:03,504
He told the truth about his time,

305
00:16:03,546 --> 00:16:05,131
and that was very special.

306
00:16:13,973 --> 00:16:15,850
[Feldhaus] He basically admitted

307
00:16:15,892 --> 00:16:18,352
that he collected goods, he collected the luggage

308
00:16:18,394 --> 00:16:20,438
of the people that would be brought to Auschwitz.

309
00:16:20,480 --> 00:16:23,566
He would skim through the luggage for valuables.

310
00:16:23,608 --> 00:16:27,194
He was one of the very few Nazi perpetrators that admitted

311
00:16:27,236 --> 00:16:29,614
in court that people were plundered of their belongings

312
00:16:29,656 --> 00:16:33,117
and didn't really expect them to be given

313
00:16:29,656 --> 00:16:33,117
back to them.

314
00:16:33,159 --> 00:16:36,955
So in the consequence, everyone working there

315
00:16:33,159 --> 00:16:36,955
knew people

316
00:16:36,996 --> 00:16:38,665
were brought there to die.

317
00:17:00,353 --> 00:17:01,688
[Alan Dershowitz] I think he's a symbol,

318
00:17:01,729 --> 00:17:04,983
and symbols often get unfairly targeted.

319
00:17:05,024 --> 00:17:08,402
Had he lived at a time or at an age

320
00:17:08,444 --> 00:17:12,198
where the real perpetrators had been effectively punished,

321
00:17:12,239 --> 00:17:13,908
probably nobody would have gotten to him,

322
00:17:13,950 --> 00:17:16,536
he would have been so low down on the list.

323
00:17:16,577 --> 00:17:18,579
The real issue is what did Germany do,

324
00:17:18,621 --> 00:17:22,082
not only during the war, but what did it do

325
00:17:18,621 --> 00:17:22,082
after the war.

326
00:17:22,124 --> 00:17:25,085
And what it did after the war is disgraceful.

327
00:17:33,052 --> 00:17:35,388
[soft music playing]

328
00:17:40,685 --> 00:17:43,229
Here. "Do not bend."

329
00:17:43,270 --> 00:17:45,439
Ha! Look what I got here.

330
00:17:45,481 --> 00:17:48,442
This one do not bend, that's fan mail.

331
00:17:48,484 --> 00:17:50,778
There's a picture in here and I have to sign it.

332
00:17:52,154 --> 00:17:53,781
Here.

333
00:17:53,823 --> 00:17:56,325
He wants me to sign the pictures for him.

334
00:17:56,367 --> 00:17:57,785
Ah, this is a rare one.

335
00:17:59,119 --> 00:18:01,664
I stood on the headquarters.

336
00:18:01,706 --> 00:18:03,290
Ah, that's also a rare one.

337
00:18:04,918 --> 00:18:07,587
I landed on the beaches of Normandy.

338
00:18:07,628 --> 00:18:09,964
I was a member of General Patton's army.

339
00:18:10,006 --> 00:18:13,593
We pursued the Germans back across France,

340
00:18:13,634 --> 00:18:15,386
back into Germany.

341
00:18:15,428 --> 00:18:17,889
And by that time, I was assigned

342
00:18:17,931 --> 00:18:20,767
as a war-crimes investigator.

343
00:18:20,808 --> 00:18:23,603
I believe I was the first war-crimes investigator

344
00:18:23,644 --> 00:18:25,187
in the United States Army.

345
00:18:25,980 --> 00:18:29,149
The problem I faced

346
00:18:29,191 --> 00:18:31,819
as the chief prosecutor at Nuremberg

347
00:18:31,861 --> 00:18:33,947
was what do I ask for?

348
00:18:34,781 --> 00:18:37,075
Here were 3000 men

349
00:18:37,116 --> 00:18:40,202
who every day went out and murdered in cold blood

350
00:18:40,244 --> 00:18:42,204
thousands of people,

351
00:18:42,246 --> 00:18:44,707
including children shot, one shot at a time.

352
00:18:45,792 --> 00:18:48,335
And I felt that I...

353
00:18:49,879 --> 00:18:52,506
could not possibly do justice

354
00:18:52,548 --> 00:18:55,760
to the million people who had been killed.

355
00:18:55,802 --> 00:18:58,596
But if I could establish a rule of law

356
00:18:58,638 --> 00:19:01,933
which could protect humankind in the future,

357
00:19:01,975 --> 00:19:04,602
that would make this trial more meaningful

358
00:19:04,644 --> 00:19:09,356
than whatever I would do with these handful

359
00:19:04,644 --> 00:19:09,356
of murderers.

360
00:19:09,398 --> 00:19:11,943
This document, which I haven't

361
00:19:09,398 --> 00:19:11,943
had in my hands

362
00:19:11,985 --> 00:19:15,321
since 1948 maybe,

363
00:19:15,362 --> 00:19:17,073
it's a list of my defendants

364
00:19:17,115 --> 00:19:19,325
in the Einsatzgruppen Trial at Nuremberg.

365
00:19:19,366 --> 00:19:22,536
And I had prepared a list showing the names

366
00:19:22,578 --> 00:19:26,373
of the defendants, the position they occupied.

367
00:19:22,578 --> 00:19:26,373
For example,

368
00:19:26,415 --> 00:19:29,877
Ohlendorf, commanding officer of Einsatzgruppen D,

369
00:19:29,919 --> 00:19:32,546
killed 90,000.

370
00:19:32,588 --> 00:19:34,841
All of them pleaded not guilty!

371
00:19:34,882 --> 00:19:39,261
Nobody came in and said, I did anything.

372
00:19:34,882 --> 00:19:39,261
Oh, my goodness, no!

373
00:19:39,303 --> 00:19:43,474
They said this was necessary to carry out Hitler's orders.

374
00:19:43,516 --> 00:19:46,519
And there was a war going on, what do you want us to do?

375
00:19:46,560 --> 00:19:49,229
I had 22 defendants selected by me

376
00:19:49,271 --> 00:19:52,692
out of 3000 mass murderers who murdered over

377
00:19:49,271 --> 00:19:52,692
a million people!

378
00:19:52,733 --> 00:19:55,361
And I could prove it! I had all their top-secret

379
00:19:55,402 --> 00:19:59,073
contemporaneous documents. No question about the facts.

380
00:19:59,115 --> 00:20:02,535
I wanted top people, planners,

381
00:20:02,576 --> 00:20:04,578
people who had high command,

382
00:20:04,620 --> 00:20:08,875
responsible positions. Their specific assignment was

383
00:20:08,916 --> 00:20:11,169
to murder, in cold blood,

384
00:20:11,210 --> 00:20:13,921
every single Jewish man, woman and child

385
00:20:13,963 --> 00:20:15,464
they could lay their hands on.

386
00:20:16,966 --> 00:20:18,634
And I knew

387
00:20:18,676 --> 00:20:22,388
that picking 22 defendants out of 3000 men

388
00:20:22,429 --> 00:20:24,306
is only a poor sampling

389
00:20:24,348 --> 00:20:28,019
for the ridiculous reason that we only had

390
00:20:24,348 --> 00:20:28,019
22 seats in the dock.

391
00:20:29,770 --> 00:20:31,898
Did we seek to do justice?

392
00:20:31,939 --> 00:20:33,482
Of course not.

393
00:20:33,524 --> 00:20:37,319
Because we'd still be there trying Nazis to this day.

394
00:20:37,361 --> 00:20:39,947
So you try to make a statement of principle.

395
00:20:39,989 --> 00:20:42,825
The principle is don't do this, it's a crime against humanity.

396
00:20:42,867 --> 00:20:45,452
Stop doing it! If you insist upon doing it,

397
00:20:45,494 --> 00:20:47,329
we'll try to catch you if you're a leader

398
00:20:47,371 --> 00:20:49,707
and put you away so you won't do it again,

399
00:20:49,749 --> 00:20:52,793
and others will be deterred from doing it.

400
00:20:52,835 --> 00:20:55,213
And so, when the presiding justice,

401
00:20:55,254 --> 00:20:58,758
Michael Musmanno, opened the trial, he said...

402
00:20:58,799 --> 00:21:02,970
We're now ready to hear the presentation

403
00:20:58,799 --> 00:21:02,970
by the prosecution.

404
00:21:03,012 --> 00:21:07,516
I then went on to say, "Vengeance is not

405
00:21:03,012 --> 00:21:07,516
our goal..."

406
00:21:07,558 --> 00:21:10,811
...nor do we seek merely a just retribution.

407
00:21:12,855 --> 00:21:14,941
We ask this court

408
00:21:14,982 --> 00:21:18,652
to affirm by international penal action

409
00:21:18,694 --> 00:21:23,116
man's right to live in peace and dignity,

410
00:21:23,157 --> 00:21:25,534
regardless of his race or creed.

411
00:21:27,327 --> 00:21:29,288
The case we present

412
00:21:29,329 --> 00:21:32,166
is a plea of humanity...

413
00:21:32,208 --> 00:21:35,253
"...to law." Because really,

414
00:21:35,294 --> 00:21:37,671
that's what I was trying to accomplish.

415
00:21:40,299 --> 00:21:42,551
[Eli Rosenbaum] Nuremberg was a trial

416
00:21:40,299 --> 00:21:42,551
that marked

417
00:21:42,593 --> 00:21:47,265
the beginning of international criminal law as we know it.

418
00:21:47,306 --> 00:21:50,059
Notorious Nazi criminals tried at Nuremberg

419
00:21:50,101 --> 00:21:52,103
included Hermann Goering...

420
00:21:54,230 --> 00:21:55,397
Rudolf Hess,

421
00:21:56,816 --> 00:21:58,192
many, many others.

422
00:21:58,234 --> 00:22:01,445
But the trials themselves were not well received

423
00:22:01,487 --> 00:22:06,617
by the German public. They were perceived

424
00:22:01,487 --> 00:22:06,617
to be victor's justice.

425
00:22:06,659 --> 00:22:10,412
Nobody feels like sitting and thinking

426
00:22:06,659 --> 00:22:10,412
about their crimes.

427
00:22:10,454 --> 00:22:11,664
They want to move on.

428
00:22:11,705 --> 00:22:13,249
And some of that is legitimate.

429
00:22:13,291 --> 00:22:16,335
This is a country that has been turned into rubble.

430
00:22:16,376 --> 00:22:20,714
And it becomes a question of rebuilding,

431
00:22:16,376 --> 00:22:20,714
brick by brick.

432
00:22:20,756 --> 00:22:24,302
So the last thing people want to do is sit around

433
00:22:20,756 --> 00:22:24,302
and talk about their crimes

434
00:22:24,343 --> 00:22:27,138
and their guilt and how they devastated Europe.

435
00:22:27,180 --> 00:22:28,306
[music playing]

436
00:22:31,767 --> 00:22:33,727
[announcer] At the Hall of Justice in Nuremberg,

437
00:22:33,769 --> 00:22:37,606
history's greatest trial nears its fateful close.

438
00:22:37,648 --> 00:22:41,527
The outcome was most of the defendants were convicted.

439
00:22:41,568 --> 00:22:43,737
There were a few acquittals.

440
00:22:43,779 --> 00:22:47,992
Some of the defendants were sentenced to die,

441
00:22:43,779 --> 00:22:47,992
and they were executed.

442
00:22:50,953 --> 00:22:54,707
The new German government, as it was formed,

443
00:22:54,748 --> 00:22:56,250
lobbied intensively

444
00:22:56,292 --> 00:22:59,045
to bring the trials to an end, and lobbied

445
00:22:59,086 --> 00:23:01,755
to have people who were convicted at Nuremberg,

446
00:23:01,797 --> 00:23:05,343
even people who were sentenced to death

447
00:23:01,797 --> 00:23:05,343
at Nuremberg, released.

448
00:23:06,468 --> 00:23:07,970
And most of them were.

449
00:23:08,012 --> 00:23:11,932
After the Second World War, the German system didn't fail

450
00:23:11,974 --> 00:23:13,684
to prosecute Nazi war criminals,

451
00:23:13,726 --> 00:23:16,436
it deliberately decided not to prosecute them

452
00:23:16,478 --> 00:23:19,481
because many of the judges were Nazi war criminals.

453
00:23:19,523 --> 00:23:23,152
There is evidence that a very high percentage

454
00:23:23,194 --> 00:23:24,195
of German judges,

455
00:23:24,237 --> 00:23:25,905
particularly West German judges

456
00:23:25,946 --> 00:23:30,034
between 1945 and 1967 were Nazis.

457
00:23:30,076 --> 00:23:31,535
Uh, I don't say former Nazis,

458
00:23:31,577 --> 00:23:35,622
I say Nazis. People who sympathized

459
00:23:31,577 --> 00:23:35,622
with the Nazis.

460
00:23:35,664 --> 00:23:39,459
[Wittmann] The Ministry of Justice

461
00:23:35,664 --> 00:23:39,459
are like 99% former Nazis.

462
00:23:39,501 --> 00:23:41,712
And they are the ones who are

463
00:23:41,754 --> 00:23:44,840
creating and defining the new legal system.

464
00:23:44,882 --> 00:23:48,177
They were sitting in judgement of themselves.

465
00:23:48,219 --> 00:23:51,347
And obviously, the result was terrible,

466
00:23:48,219 --> 00:23:51,347
terrible injustice.

467
00:24:07,071 --> 00:24:09,531
[indistinct shouting]

468
00:24:56,620 --> 00:24:58,289
[Wittmann] So it's a terrible, terrible record

469
00:24:58,331 --> 00:25:01,041
where almost nobody is convicted.

470
00:25:01,083 --> 00:25:02,542
And again, there's no political will for it.

471
00:25:02,584 --> 00:25:05,338
The vast majority of Germans find these trials

472
00:25:05,379 --> 00:25:08,048
kind of cathartic and perfect

473
00:25:08,090 --> 00:25:11,385
because they show the horrors of places like Auschwitz,

474
00:25:11,427 --> 00:25:14,763
they nail a few, you know, bad apples to the wall,

475
00:25:14,805 --> 00:25:17,850
and the rest of them look like innocent people

476
00:25:17,891 --> 00:25:20,269
who didn't deserve to be punished anyway,

477
00:25:20,311 --> 00:25:23,189
because they're not really dangerous outside of

478
00:25:20,311 --> 00:25:23,189
the camp setting.

479
00:25:23,230 --> 00:25:26,900
And this is where, for me, these trials

480
00:25:23,230 --> 00:25:26,900
are such a disaster.

481
00:25:26,942 --> 00:25:28,902
[Rosenbaum] Every country, just about,

482
00:25:28,944 --> 00:25:32,114
has difficult parts of its past

483
00:25:32,156 --> 00:25:35,575
that it, uh, struggles to...

484
00:25:35,617 --> 00:25:38,078
to come to grips with.

485
00:25:38,120 --> 00:25:41,832
That's true in the United States

486
00:25:38,120 --> 00:25:41,832
still, I would say,

487
00:25:41,874 --> 00:25:45,044
with respect to slavery and its aftermath.

488
00:25:45,085 --> 00:25:47,213
It was certainly true in Germany

489
00:25:47,254 --> 00:25:50,174
with respect to Nazi genocide

490
00:25:50,216 --> 00:25:52,634
and crimes against humanity.

491
00:25:52,676 --> 00:25:54,928
Imagine a population

492
00:25:54,970 --> 00:25:58,057
in which a significant percentage

493
00:25:58,098 --> 00:26:01,185
of the fathers, brothers, sons

494
00:26:01,227 --> 00:26:03,521
took part in these crimes.

495
00:26:03,561 --> 00:26:06,190
Later on, in ensuing decades,

496
00:26:06,232 --> 00:26:09,860
grandfathers all over Germany had done this.

497
00:26:09,902 --> 00:26:12,821
It was very difficult for the German public

498
00:26:12,863 --> 00:26:15,491
to accept the idea

499
00:26:15,533 --> 00:26:18,785
of large-scale prosecutions, and I don't think there was

500
00:26:18,827 --> 00:26:21,497
great enthusiasm among prosecutors either.

501
00:26:21,539 --> 00:26:22,998
I'd say in 1945,

502
00:26:23,040 --> 00:26:26,419
there were probably around 800,000 members of the SS.

503
00:26:26,460 --> 00:26:28,045
And that's what we're dealing with.

504
00:26:28,087 --> 00:26:31,257
The Germans between 1947

505
00:26:31,298 --> 00:26:36,178
and up to the present investigate over 100,000

506
00:26:31,298 --> 00:26:36,178
of these people.

507
00:26:36,220 --> 00:26:40,015
Of those, they bring about 6,200 to trial.

508
00:26:40,057 --> 00:26:42,976
Of that, the convictions

509
00:26:43,018 --> 00:26:46,021
for perpetrating murder is 124.

510
00:26:46,063 --> 00:26:50,192
124 life sentences of over 6,000 people tried.

511
00:26:50,234 --> 00:26:55,155
I still have nightmares about that famous photograph

512
00:26:50,234 --> 00:26:55,155
of the German soldier

513
00:26:55,197 --> 00:26:57,157
shooting the mother and her baby,

514
00:26:57,199 --> 00:26:59,993
and imagining this man lived a full and complete life,

515
00:27:00,035 --> 00:27:02,246
and died with his own grandchildren

516
00:27:02,288 --> 00:27:04,873
and great-grandchildren surrounding him thinking

517
00:27:02,288 --> 00:27:04,873
he was a wonderful man.

518
00:27:04,915 --> 00:27:08,419
That's the legacy of the Holocaust in Germany,

519
00:27:08,461 --> 00:27:10,754
not the few war crime trials.

520
00:27:14,467 --> 00:27:17,094
[Edith Raim] I think what's happening now is

521
00:27:17,136 --> 00:27:19,930
that the judges or the prosecutors

522
00:27:19,972 --> 00:27:22,266
want to make good for

523
00:27:22,308 --> 00:27:25,352
the mistakes that were made in the past,

524
00:27:25,394 --> 00:27:27,645
like in the 1960s and 1970s.

525
00:27:27,687 --> 00:27:30,232
And I think coming to terms

526
00:27:30,274 --> 00:27:32,859
with the past can be done in a different way.

527
00:27:34,570 --> 00:27:36,780
[Peter Singer] It's difficult to say

528
00:27:34,570 --> 00:27:36,780
what good can be done

529
00:27:36,822 --> 00:27:41,285
by punishing someone for a crime they committed

530
00:27:36,822 --> 00:27:41,285
70 years ago.

531
00:27:41,327 --> 00:27:43,745
The further question that I think has to be raised,

532
00:27:43,787 --> 00:27:47,207
because of the time period, is, if you punish a man

533
00:27:47,249 --> 00:27:51,878
of 93 for something that he did when he was 23,

534
00:27:51,920 --> 00:27:55,424
are you still punishing the person who did the crime?

535
00:27:55,466 --> 00:27:57,675
Everything about him

536
00:27:57,717 --> 00:28:01,763
in terms of what makes one a criminal has changed.

537
00:28:01,805 --> 00:28:03,557
He had grown up in a family

538
00:28:03,599 --> 00:28:06,352
that was very nationalist,

539
00:28:06,393 --> 00:28:09,146
he absorbed the ideology of the Nazis

540
00:28:09,188 --> 00:28:11,148
as a teenager, a young man,

541
00:28:11,190 --> 00:28:14,318
and joined the Hitler Youth, then volunteered for the SS.

542
00:28:15,110 --> 00:28:16,820
So we're in a way

543
00:28:16,862 --> 00:28:20,324
punishing someone for what a different person,

544
00:28:20,366 --> 00:28:22,326
a different personality,

545
00:28:22,368 --> 00:28:25,912
somebody with different characteristics did.

546
00:28:25,954 --> 00:28:27,498
[Wittmann] It is too little too late.

547
00:28:27,540 --> 00:28:29,749
This needed to be done a long time ago.

548
00:28:29,791 --> 00:28:32,628
But how ridiculous is it that they're doing it now

549
00:28:32,670 --> 00:28:34,838
when these people are all in their 90s?

550
00:28:35,589 --> 00:28:37,508
[phone ringing]

551
00:28:40,010 --> 00:28:41,220
Good afternoon.

552
00:28:41,261 --> 00:28:43,305
I'm in my 98th year.

553
00:28:43,347 --> 00:28:46,975
If I committed an illegal act, I could expect to go to jail.

554
00:28:47,017 --> 00:28:50,521
If I committed an illegal act where there was no statute

555
00:28:47,017 --> 00:28:50,521
of limitations,

556
00:28:50,563 --> 00:28:53,148
as is the case with crimes against humanity,

557
00:28:53,190 --> 00:28:54,358
you go to jail.

558
00:28:54,400 --> 00:28:56,360
Age is no defense.

559
00:28:56,402 --> 00:28:58,445
And they have to know that the criminal

560
00:28:58,487 --> 00:29:00,447
will be pursued as long as necessary

561
00:29:00,489 --> 00:29:04,868
to try to bring whatever justice is possible

562
00:29:00,489 --> 00:29:04,868
under the circumstances.

563
00:29:04,910 --> 00:29:07,954
How did it happen that here he was

564
00:29:07,996 --> 00:29:10,583
in his own hometown for 70 years,

565
00:29:10,624 --> 00:29:14,420
and nobody did anything about it?

566
00:29:14,461 --> 00:29:16,714
All this is happening because it's doable now.

567
00:29:18,298 --> 00:29:21,552
40 years ago, 50 years ago, it was very far from doable.

568
00:29:21,594 --> 00:29:24,971
For many, many years, the German judicial system

569
00:29:25,013 --> 00:29:27,807
used the wrong legal frame

570
00:29:27,849 --> 00:29:31,687
to try to digest the crimes of the Holocaust.

571
00:29:31,729 --> 00:29:35,315
They had to prove that the suspect

572
00:29:35,357 --> 00:29:39,361
had committed a specific crime against a specific victim

573
00:29:39,403 --> 00:29:42,656
and had done so motivated by racial hatred.

574
00:29:43,949 --> 00:29:46,410
And as you can imagine, it's not easy to prove.

575
00:29:46,452 --> 00:29:49,288
If you couldn't prove that someone had engaged

576
00:29:49,329 --> 00:29:51,915
let's say in some kind of hands-on act of killing,

577
00:29:51,957 --> 00:29:54,460
then you simply couldn't convict.

578
00:29:54,501 --> 00:29:58,171
Which is one of the reasons why many, many, many guards

579
00:29:58,213 --> 00:30:01,174
who we might wish had been convicted

580
00:30:01,216 --> 00:30:03,385
couldn't have been, because in a sense,

581
00:30:03,427 --> 00:30:06,805
the Germans failed to create an adequate legal idiom,

582
00:30:06,846 --> 00:30:09,516
an adequate theory that would permit

583
00:30:09,558 --> 00:30:11,518
these guards to be convicted.

584
00:30:11,560 --> 00:30:13,937
That changed pretty dramatically

585
00:30:13,979 --> 00:30:16,189
with Demjanjuk.

586
00:30:16,231 --> 00:30:17,983
[Zuroff] Because of the Demjanjuk case,

587
00:30:18,024 --> 00:30:20,860
all of a sudden, the prosecution

588
00:30:18,024 --> 00:30:20,860
in Germany changed

589
00:30:20,902 --> 00:30:21,861
the rules of the game.

590
00:30:21,903 --> 00:30:23,196
Without the Demjanjuk case,

591
00:30:23,238 --> 00:30:25,115
there wouldn't have been a Groening case.

592
00:30:25,157 --> 00:30:28,327
[Rosenbaum] John Demjanjuk, originally Ivan Demjanjuk,

593
00:30:28,368 --> 00:30:31,330
immigrated to the United States

594
00:30:28,368 --> 00:30:31,330
around 1950

595
00:30:31,371 --> 00:30:33,457
claiming to be a refugee.

596
00:30:33,499 --> 00:30:36,001
[camera clicking]

597
00:30:36,042 --> 00:30:37,294
Interestingly,

598
00:30:37,336 --> 00:30:40,547
on his US visa application,

599
00:30:40,589 --> 00:30:45,093
he listed as his residence from some time in the 1930s

600
00:30:45,135 --> 00:30:47,137
to 1943

601
00:30:47,179 --> 00:30:51,183
"Sobibor, Poland."

602
00:30:51,224 --> 00:30:55,479
Sobibor is a word that should send a chill up the spine

603
00:30:55,521 --> 00:30:57,523
of every person on this planet.

604
00:30:58,898 --> 00:31:01,401
One normally thinks of there having been

605
00:31:01,443 --> 00:31:04,237
six Nazi death camps,

606
00:31:04,279 --> 00:31:05,989
extermination camps.

607
00:31:06,031 --> 00:31:10,243
That is places that existed solely to murder people.

608
00:31:10,285 --> 00:31:12,538
Those would be Majdanek,

609
00:31:12,579 --> 00:31:15,290
Sobibor, Chelmno,

610
00:31:15,332 --> 00:31:17,959
Belzec, Treblinka,

611
00:31:18,001 --> 00:31:20,796
and Auschwitz-Birkenau.

612
00:31:20,838 --> 00:31:23,799
Unfortunately, the people processing visa applications

613
00:31:23,841 --> 00:31:27,260
for the United States in 1950 had not heard

614
00:31:27,302 --> 00:31:31,264
of Sobibor, and so the word meant nothing to them.

615
00:31:31,306 --> 00:31:33,767
And Demjanjuk received his visa.

616
00:31:33,809 --> 00:31:36,812
He worked in Ford as a machinist.

617
00:31:36,854 --> 00:31:39,690
He put together, kind of, a perfectly respectable

618
00:31:39,732 --> 00:31:42,442
mid-western life, until around the mid '70s.

619
00:31:42,484 --> 00:31:44,737
[clamoring]

620
00:31:44,778 --> 00:31:47,364
American prosecutors became aware

621
00:31:47,406 --> 00:31:49,700
that he had lied on immigration forms.

622
00:31:49,742 --> 00:31:53,704
And this started an investigation

623
00:31:49,742 --> 00:31:53,704
which really turned into

624
00:31:53,746 --> 00:31:57,541
probably the most convoluted and lengthiest criminal case

625
00:31:57,583 --> 00:31:59,626
to arise out of the Holocaust.

626
00:32:00,419 --> 00:32:02,128
When the Americans started

627
00:32:02,170 --> 00:32:04,923
investigating Demjanjuk, they had discovered

628
00:32:04,964 --> 00:32:08,677
an ID of Demjanjuk's that the SS had issued,

629
00:32:08,719 --> 00:32:11,597
which indicated that he had been assigned

630
00:32:11,638 --> 00:32:14,266
to work at the Sobibor death camp.

631
00:32:14,307 --> 00:32:17,519
But when the Americans started interviewing,

632
00:32:17,561 --> 00:32:20,773
uh, various death camp survivors,

633
00:32:20,814 --> 00:32:23,983
they found that a number of survivors identified

634
00:32:24,025 --> 00:32:26,862
Demjanjuk not as a guard at Sobibor,

635
00:32:26,904 --> 00:32:29,197
but as a guard at Treblinka.

636
00:32:32,200 --> 00:32:34,953
[reporter] John Demjanjuk goes on trial in Jerusalem,

637
00:32:34,994 --> 00:32:37,956
accused of being the Nazi concentration camp guard

638
00:32:37,997 --> 00:32:39,750
known as Ivan the Terrible.

639
00:32:39,792 --> 00:32:43,670
[woman] It's described simply as "Criminal Case 373,

640
00:32:43,712 --> 00:32:47,048
the State of Israel versus Ivan Demjanjuk."

641
00:32:47,090 --> 00:32:50,009
-[horn honking] -Israel's last

642
00:32:47,090 --> 00:32:50,009
war-crimes trial

643
00:32:50,051 --> 00:32:52,554
convicted Adolf Eichmann, the administrator

644
00:32:52,596 --> 00:32:55,557
of Nazi Germany's Final Solution.

645
00:32:55,599 --> 00:32:57,142
25 years later,

646
00:32:57,183 --> 00:32:59,895
another man leaves the same cell

647
00:32:57,183 --> 00:32:59,895
in Ayalon prison,

648
00:32:59,937 --> 00:33:03,816
to make the 80km trip to a Jerusalem courtroom,

649
00:33:03,857 --> 00:33:07,444
perhaps to meet the same fate on the gallows.

650
00:33:07,486 --> 00:33:08,654
[speaks in foreign language]

651
00:33:08,695 --> 00:33:11,364
Hello everybody. I'm not 'Ivan the Terrible.'

652
00:33:11,406 --> 00:33:14,033
[woman] John Demjanjuk is on trial

653
00:33:11,406 --> 00:33:14,033
for his life.

654
00:33:15,034 --> 00:33:16,077
[man] How are you today?

655
00:33:16,119 --> 00:33:19,581
Good, thank you! I'm good all the time.

656
00:33:25,921 --> 00:33:27,673
[interpreter] They would have shoved me

657
00:33:27,714 --> 00:33:30,509
straight alive into a pit full of blood.

658
00:33:30,550 --> 00:33:33,052
You weren't there. I was there!

659
00:33:33,094 --> 00:33:35,221
Ask him! Ask him! Let him tell you!

660
00:33:35,263 --> 00:33:37,766
Let him tell you what he would have done to me.

661
00:33:40,519 --> 00:33:41,561
Stand up, John.

662
00:33:46,191 --> 00:33:47,818
Look at me.

663
00:33:47,860 --> 00:33:49,068
Put that away!

664
00:33:49,110 --> 00:33:50,529
[in English] I wasn't there.

665
00:33:50,570 --> 00:33:52,405
[interpreter] Mr. Rosenberg...

666
00:33:54,658 --> 00:33:56,535
[interpreter in English] Please... sit down.

667
00:33:56,576 --> 00:33:59,663
The public is requested to keep to its seat.

668
00:33:59,705 --> 00:34:02,457
[reporter] John Demjanjuk continued

669
00:33:59,705 --> 00:34:02,457
to try to convince the court

670
00:34:02,499 --> 00:34:06,461
he is not "Ivan the Terrible," the SS officer who helped kill

671
00:34:06,503 --> 00:34:09,506
850,000 Polish Jews.

672
00:34:10,632 --> 00:34:12,133
[male interpreter] I am innocent,

673
00:34:12,175 --> 00:34:13,927
innocent, innocent!

674
00:34:13,969 --> 00:34:15,512
[female interpreter] We sentence him

675
00:34:15,554 --> 00:34:19,182
for the aforementioned crimes, the punishment of death

676
00:34:19,224 --> 00:34:21,894
as stipulated in section one of the Nazi

677
00:34:21,935 --> 00:34:24,563
and Nazi collaborators law.

678
00:34:24,604 --> 00:34:27,691
I'm not the Ivan the Terrible! I'm a good man!

679
00:34:27,733 --> 00:34:29,526
After he was sentenced to death,

680
00:34:29,568 --> 00:34:31,904
there was a rather long

681
00:34:31,945 --> 00:34:35,032
and drawn out appellate phase that happened to coincide

682
00:34:35,073 --> 00:34:37,116
with the unraveling of the Soviet Union.

683
00:34:37,158 --> 00:34:39,703
[man] Mr. Gorbachev,

684
00:34:39,745 --> 00:34:41,621
tear down this wall!

685
00:34:41,663 --> 00:34:42,915
[crowd cheering]

686
00:34:42,956 --> 00:34:45,625
[woman] As the old Soviet Union fell apart,

687
00:34:45,667 --> 00:34:48,086
their archives opened up.

688
00:34:48,127 --> 00:34:49,796
[Douglas] They discovered, that in fact,

689
00:34:49,838 --> 00:34:51,840
the Israelis had the wrong guy,

690
00:34:51,882 --> 00:34:53,967
that Demjanjuk had not been

691
00:34:54,009 --> 00:34:56,845
"Ivan the Terrible of Treblinka."

692
00:34:56,887 --> 00:34:58,764
In fact, "Ivan the Terrible" had been

693
00:34:58,805 --> 00:35:01,892
this entirely different Ukrainian

694
00:34:58,805 --> 00:35:01,892
named Ivan Marchenko.

695
00:35:03,894 --> 00:35:05,311
It really showed you

696
00:35:05,353 --> 00:35:08,147
the limits of structuring these trials

697
00:35:08,189 --> 00:35:11,359
around the eyewitness testimony of survivors,

698
00:35:11,401 --> 00:35:13,820
because these survivors, they were positive

699
00:35:13,862 --> 00:35:15,989
that Demjanjuk was their former tormentor,

700
00:35:16,031 --> 00:35:17,699
and they were wrong.

701
00:35:19,242 --> 00:35:21,620
I miss my wife.

702
00:35:21,661 --> 00:35:23,997
I miss my family.

703
00:35:24,039 --> 00:35:26,124
I miss my grandchildren.

704
00:35:26,165 --> 00:35:28,167
I want to go home.

705
00:35:28,209 --> 00:35:31,463
[Douglas] As a result of this case

706
00:35:28,209 --> 00:35:31,463
of mistaken identity,

707
00:35:31,504 --> 00:35:34,800
he was acquitted. But the mistaken identity

708
00:35:34,841 --> 00:35:38,971
also indicated that he wasn't entirely free of guilt.

709
00:35:44,851 --> 00:35:47,437
[Rosenbaum] In my country, Demjanjuk worked

710
00:35:47,479 --> 00:35:50,315
on an assembly line for the Ford Motor Company.

711
00:35:50,356 --> 00:35:52,734
And I suspect if you had asked Demjanjuk

712
00:35:52,776 --> 00:35:55,320
at that time, "What do you do

713
00:35:52,776 --> 00:35:55,320
for a living?"

714
00:35:55,361 --> 00:35:57,238
He would have said,

715
00:35:57,280 --> 00:36:00,742
"I build cars." Even though, I assume,

716
00:36:00,784 --> 00:36:02,577
he did one little operation,

717
00:36:02,619 --> 00:36:05,789
tightened one bolt or something.

718
00:36:02,619 --> 00:36:05,789
He did not ever build

719
00:36:05,831 --> 00:36:08,041
an entire car himself.

720
00:36:08,083 --> 00:36:10,919
But that's what he did for a living.

721
00:36:08,083 --> 00:36:10,919
They were building cars.

722
00:36:12,337 --> 00:36:14,380
At places like Auschwitz,

723
00:36:14,422 --> 00:36:16,008
Sobibor,

724
00:36:16,049 --> 00:36:19,719
what the SS personnel there did for a living

725
00:36:19,761 --> 00:36:24,891
was kill innocent human beings.

726
00:36:24,933 --> 00:36:27,060
There was nothing else going on there.

727
00:36:28,227 --> 00:36:30,605
Today, a federal court in Cleveland

728
00:36:30,647 --> 00:36:34,359
stripped John Demjanjuk of his US citizenship,

729
00:36:34,400 --> 00:36:36,903
finding that he served the Nazis

730
00:36:34,400 --> 00:36:36,903
during World War II

731
00:36:36,945 --> 00:36:39,739
as an armed guard at the Sobibor death camp.

732
00:36:39,781 --> 00:36:43,160
Our efforts were inspired by the courage

733
00:36:39,781 --> 00:36:43,160
of the survivors,

734
00:36:43,201 --> 00:36:45,328
who, in recounting for us

735
00:36:45,370 --> 00:36:48,665
their nightmarish experiences of more than half

736
00:36:45,370 --> 00:36:48,665
a century ago,

737
00:36:48,707 --> 00:36:51,250
were willing to reopen psychic wounds

738
00:36:51,292 --> 00:36:53,628
that of course have never fully healed.

739
00:36:53,670 --> 00:36:57,340
What very few people know is that after ten years

740
00:36:57,382 --> 00:37:01,553
of litigation against Demjanjuk in the United States,

741
00:37:01,594 --> 00:37:04,389
when we had gotten courts to revoke his citizenship

742
00:37:04,430 --> 00:37:06,683
and order him deported,

743
00:37:06,725 --> 00:37:08,226
we went to the German government

744
00:37:08,267 --> 00:37:10,603
and asked Germany to accept him,

745
00:37:10,645 --> 00:37:12,898
and Germany said "No."

746
00:37:12,939 --> 00:37:14,983
As Germany and other governments of Europe

747
00:37:15,025 --> 00:37:17,610
have routinely done in our cases.

748
00:37:17,652 --> 00:37:19,988
Uh, enormously frustrating.

749
00:37:20,030 --> 00:37:22,115
I then met Thomas Walther

750
00:37:22,157 --> 00:37:23,533
and Kirsten Goetze,

751
00:37:23,575 --> 00:37:27,120
and we brainstormed how there might be a way

752
00:37:27,162 --> 00:37:30,665
to get Demjanjuk indicted in Germany.

753
00:37:30,707 --> 00:37:33,126
[Walther] There was a very important connection

754
00:37:33,168 --> 00:37:36,213
to the US Office of Special Investigations

755
00:37:36,254 --> 00:37:38,757
with Eli Rosenbaum in Washington.

756
00:37:39,632 --> 00:37:42,761
He always told me that

757
00:37:42,802 --> 00:37:46,723
he cannot understand why we in Germany

758
00:37:46,765 --> 00:37:50,727
do not prosecute these guards

759
00:37:50,769 --> 00:37:54,731
who are watching that nobody can escape

760
00:37:54,773 --> 00:37:56,691
from a killing place.

761
00:37:56,733 --> 00:38:01,071
[Rosenbaum] Those camps existed to carry out

762
00:37:56,733 --> 00:38:01,071
crimes against humanity,

763
00:38:01,113 --> 00:38:03,156
crimes of persecution.

764
00:38:03,198 --> 00:38:05,366
I gave him the example. I said,

765
00:38:05,408 --> 00:38:07,368
"Thomas, look, we're sitting here in my office.

766
00:38:07,410 --> 00:38:11,372
If you decide to chase me around my office

767
00:38:11,414 --> 00:38:13,458
with a knife to kill me,

768
00:38:13,499 --> 00:38:16,335
and you have a cohort who is outside the office

769
00:38:16,377 --> 00:38:19,756
holding the door closed, so that I cannot escape,

770
00:38:19,798 --> 00:38:23,927
under those circumstances, both you and your cohort

771
00:38:23,969 --> 00:38:26,138
will be found guilty in my country

772
00:38:26,179 --> 00:38:28,723
of first-degree murder." And I said,

773
00:38:28,765 --> 00:38:33,519
"I cannot imagine that the law is any different in Germany."

774
00:38:33,561 --> 00:38:37,482
[Kirsten Goetze] These camps had no other

775
00:38:33,561 --> 00:38:37,482
reason than to kill people.

776
00:38:37,523 --> 00:38:40,902
There is no question that this person

777
00:38:40,944 --> 00:38:45,282
is responsible and part of the whole killing process.

778
00:38:45,323 --> 00:38:47,117
[Rosenbaum] The guards in death camps

779
00:38:47,159 --> 00:38:49,535
like Auschwitz-Birkenau, Sobibor,

780
00:38:49,577 --> 00:38:52,580
they knew what was going on there, and they made sure

781
00:38:52,622 --> 00:38:54,874
that the victims did not escape.

782
00:38:54,916 --> 00:38:58,211
Ultimately, Thomas and Kirsten did the legal research

783
00:38:58,253 --> 00:39:01,506
and ascertained that there was case law,

784
00:39:01,547 --> 00:39:03,008
and brought the Demjanjuk case.

785
00:39:05,635 --> 00:39:06,803
[indistinct chatter]

786
00:39:08,763 --> 00:39:10,140
[groaning]

787
00:39:13,768 --> 00:39:17,563
[Zuroff] This is a very wonderful day

788
00:39:13,768 --> 00:39:17,563
for justice today.

789
00:39:17,605 --> 00:39:21,193
The fact that this person, who was an active participant

790
00:39:21,234 --> 00:39:23,653
in the mass murder of 29,000 Jews

791
00:39:23,695 --> 00:39:26,906
in the Sobibor death camp, is finally going

792
00:39:26,948 --> 00:39:30,243
to stand trial for those crimes

793
00:39:26,948 --> 00:39:30,243
is extremely important.

794
00:39:30,285 --> 00:39:33,412
We are extremely, extremely pleased,

795
00:39:30,285 --> 00:39:33,412
and I think

796
00:39:33,454 --> 00:39:36,124
that the American and German authorities

797
00:39:36,166 --> 00:39:38,043
deserve a tremendous amount of credit

798
00:39:38,084 --> 00:39:40,003
for their perseverance in this case.

799
00:39:50,847 --> 00:39:53,058
[beeping]

800
00:40:03,818 --> 00:40:06,363
[man 1] Um, target. I'm on the wrong side of the car.

801
00:40:09,448 --> 00:40:10,950
-[man 2] He's walking. -[man 1] Yeah.

802
00:40:16,039 --> 00:40:17,415
[clattering]

803
00:40:20,335 --> 00:40:22,170
[woman] It looks rather innocent,

804
00:40:22,212 --> 00:40:25,006
an elderly man walking and talking,

805
00:40:25,048 --> 00:40:27,800
but that man is John Demjanjuk,

806
00:40:27,842 --> 00:40:29,802
the alleged Nazi death camp guard,

807
00:40:29,844 --> 00:40:32,305
who claims he's too ill and too frail

808
00:40:32,347 --> 00:40:35,141
to be deported to Europe to go on trial.

809
00:40:35,183 --> 00:40:37,894
Federal prosecutors submitted these videos

810
00:40:37,936 --> 00:40:40,188
to the US Circuit Court of Appeals.

811
00:40:40,230 --> 00:40:43,149
They were taken a few days before he was detained.

812
00:40:46,819 --> 00:40:47,946
[indistinct chatter]

813
00:40:50,156 --> 00:40:52,951
[Douglas] One of the things the Demjanjuk

814
00:40:50,156 --> 00:40:52,951
tried to do in Munich,

815
00:40:52,992 --> 00:40:55,036
is he tried to basically

816
00:40:55,078 --> 00:40:57,414
create the impression of being incompetent.

817
00:40:57,455 --> 00:40:59,665
[dramatic classical music]

818
00:40:59,707 --> 00:41:01,500
[inaudible]

819
00:41:03,295 --> 00:41:04,796
He actually engaged

820
00:41:04,837 --> 00:41:07,340
in a rather dramatic theatrical performance

821
00:41:07,382 --> 00:41:09,342
in which he tried to convince everyone

822
00:41:09,384 --> 00:41:11,303
that he was kind of on death's door.

823
00:41:11,344 --> 00:41:13,012
-[cameras clicking] -Oh!

824
00:41:13,054 --> 00:41:17,016
Oy, oy, oy, oy, oy, oy, oy!

825
00:41:17,058 --> 00:41:19,394
First of all, the problem is that Demjanjuk himself,

826
00:41:19,436 --> 00:41:21,938
I think, put on a great act today, and he's gonna

827
00:41:21,980 --> 00:41:24,941
do everything possible to try and create

828
00:41:24,983 --> 00:41:28,569
an impression that he's simply incapable of standing trial.

829
00:41:28,611 --> 00:41:30,947
[Zuroff] If you've seen the footage

830
00:41:28,611 --> 00:41:30,947
of the Demjanjuk trial,

831
00:41:30,989 --> 00:41:32,698
he looked like a total zombie,

832
00:41:32,740 --> 00:41:34,700
like he didn't have a clue what was going on.

833
00:41:34,742 --> 00:41:36,953
And what most people don't know

834
00:41:34,742 --> 00:41:36,953
is that the minute

835
00:41:36,995 --> 00:41:38,955
the trial sessions ended every day,

836
00:41:36,995 --> 00:41:38,955
he was up and around,

837
00:41:38,997 --> 00:41:40,957
walking around, joking around

838
00:41:38,997 --> 00:41:40,957
with the people.

839
00:41:40,999 --> 00:41:42,959
It has been a common ruse in Nazi cases

840
00:41:43,001 --> 00:41:47,130
for decades to claim either a medical incapacity

841
00:41:47,172 --> 00:41:49,466
or a mental health incapacity

842
00:41:49,507 --> 00:41:51,759
to continue with the trial.

843
00:41:53,803 --> 00:41:55,805
Some courts have fallen for those ruses,

844
00:41:55,847 --> 00:41:57,849
others have not.

845
00:41:59,309 --> 00:42:02,437
But it is a very, very common ploy.

846
00:42:02,479 --> 00:42:04,605
[Zuroff] I always say that if there was an Oscar given

847
00:42:04,647 --> 00:42:07,692
for the best performance by a Nazi war criminal,

848
00:42:07,733 --> 00:42:10,069
Demjanjuk would have gotten it for 2010.

849
00:42:10,111 --> 00:42:12,947
[Demjanjuk] Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh! Oh!

850
00:42:12,989 --> 00:42:15,408
-Oh! -[recorded applause]

851
00:42:16,701 --> 00:42:18,995
We now know that in fact he was

852
00:42:19,037 --> 00:42:20,997
rather healthy at the time, and he did

853
00:42:21,039 --> 00:42:23,208
successfully survive his trial.

854
00:42:23,249 --> 00:42:25,584
In a verdict decades in the making,

855
00:42:25,626 --> 00:42:29,172
a German court has found 91-year-old John Demjanjuk

856
00:42:29,214 --> 00:42:31,299
guilty of accessory to murder

857
00:42:31,341 --> 00:42:33,343
in the case of more than 28,000 Jews

858
00:42:33,385 --> 00:42:35,387
in Nazi-occupied Poland.

859
00:42:35,428 --> 00:42:38,681
John Demjanjuk is just a scapegoat

860
00:42:38,723 --> 00:42:40,558
for the Germans.

861
00:42:40,599 --> 00:42:44,854
He has to pay for all the mistakes

862
00:42:40,599 --> 00:42:44,854
they made in the past,

863
00:42:44,896 --> 00:42:46,939
and that's not justice.

864
00:42:46,981 --> 00:42:50,609
What was very important about the trial in Germany

865
00:42:50,651 --> 00:42:54,030
was in a way it was the exact opposite

866
00:42:54,072 --> 00:42:55,990
of the Ivan the Terrible trial.

867
00:42:56,032 --> 00:42:57,783
Ivan the Terrible trial focused

868
00:42:57,825 --> 00:43:00,745
on the particular pathologies

869
00:43:00,786 --> 00:43:03,373
of a very brutal guard.

870
00:43:03,415 --> 00:43:05,624
The trial in Munich

871
00:43:05,666 --> 00:43:08,627
was really the first trial to come along and say,

872
00:43:08,669 --> 00:43:11,005
"We don't really care if you were cruel or not.

873
00:43:11,047 --> 00:43:14,633
Your job description was basically facilitating

874
00:43:14,675 --> 00:43:17,762
an act of extermination, and that's why we're going

875
00:43:17,803 --> 00:43:20,639
to hold you guilty in a court of law."

876
00:43:20,681 --> 00:43:24,561
You were an accessory to murder

877
00:43:20,681 --> 00:43:24,561
because, by definition,

878
00:43:24,602 --> 00:43:27,272
that was your job description.

879
00:43:27,313 --> 00:43:31,067
[Rosenbaum] The following year, Demjanjuk died in Germany

880
00:43:31,109 --> 00:43:33,528
while his case was on appeal.

881
00:43:33,570 --> 00:43:36,614
But the precedent of court agreeing

882
00:43:36,655 --> 00:43:39,158
that someone who served as a guard

883
00:43:39,200 --> 00:43:41,411
at a death camp shared complicity

884
00:43:41,453 --> 00:43:43,496
in the killings that took part there

885
00:43:43,538 --> 00:43:46,249
inspired, shall we say, German prosecutors

886
00:43:46,291 --> 00:43:49,043
to prosecute other guards.

887
00:43:49,085 --> 00:43:51,670
[reporter] Prosecutors in Germany

888
00:43:49,085 --> 00:43:51,670
are reopening hundreds

889
00:43:51,712 --> 00:43:54,340
of investigations into former Nazis.

890
00:43:54,382 --> 00:43:57,552
So why has it taken so long to bring these people to trial?

891
00:43:57,594 --> 00:43:59,637
This is the uniqueness and significance

892
00:43:59,678 --> 00:44:01,514
of the Demjanjuk conviction.

893
00:44:01,556 --> 00:44:05,518
Basically what the court in Munich said in May was,

894
00:44:01,556 --> 00:44:05,518
if you served

895
00:44:05,560 --> 00:44:08,854
as an armed SS guard at a pure death camp,

896
00:44:08,896 --> 00:44:11,899
you're automatically guilty of accessory to murder.

897
00:44:11,941 --> 00:44:15,194
This gave the German prosecution

898
00:44:11,941 --> 00:44:15,194
a new lease on life.

899
00:44:15,236 --> 00:44:18,114
Now the question then was, how many of these people

900
00:44:15,236 --> 00:44:18,114
are alive?

901
00:44:24,703 --> 00:44:26,956
[Jens Rommel] After the Demjanjuk verdict,

902
00:44:26,998 --> 00:44:29,959
the central office here started

903
00:44:30,001 --> 00:44:32,170
to look again

904
00:44:32,211 --> 00:44:34,464
at all the six death camps.

905
00:44:36,466 --> 00:44:39,344
We put together all these puzzle pieces

906
00:44:39,385 --> 00:44:41,095
in order to get an image

907
00:44:41,137 --> 00:44:43,764
who was involved in a crime.

908
00:44:43,806 --> 00:44:46,058
Yeah. There it is, right here.

909
00:44:48,894 --> 00:44:52,607
[Jeff Ansell] Germany is making up for it

910
00:44:48,894 --> 00:44:52,607
with what it's got.

911
00:44:52,649 --> 00:44:55,527
There's slim pickings these days

912
00:44:52,649 --> 00:44:55,527
for Nazi war criminals.

913
00:44:55,568 --> 00:44:59,656
Many of them are dead. And many of the survivors

914
00:44:55,568 --> 00:44:59,656
are dead.

915
00:44:59,696 --> 00:45:01,658
It's not as if the German government

916
00:44:59,696 --> 00:45:01,658
has its choice

917
00:45:01,698 --> 00:45:04,327
of a wide variety of players to go after.

918
00:45:05,578 --> 00:45:08,456
Now I got a tip from Simon Wiesenthal

919
00:45:08,498 --> 00:45:10,958
in the early 1980s.

920
00:45:11,000 --> 00:45:16,255
Mr. Wiesenthal told me that there was a Nazi

921
00:45:11,000 --> 00:45:16,255
named Haralds Puntulis,

922
00:45:16,297 --> 00:45:18,257
who was living in Canada,

923
00:45:18,299 --> 00:45:20,468
but his whereabouts were unknown.

924
00:45:20,510 --> 00:45:23,388
And Puntulis took part in the massacre

925
00:45:23,429 --> 00:45:26,140
of more than 5,000 Jews and Roma

926
00:45:26,182 --> 00:45:29,686
in a village in Latvia. He wasn't hard to find.

927
00:45:31,020 --> 00:45:32,146
I found him,

928
00:45:32,188 --> 00:45:34,399
gardening in Willowdale,

929
00:45:34,440 --> 00:45:36,484
which ironically enough,

930
00:45:36,526 --> 00:45:39,612
has a great many Jewish people who live there.

931
00:45:39,654 --> 00:45:41,573
But, just before the authorities could act,

932
00:45:41,614 --> 00:45:45,117
and before my article exposing him came out,

933
00:45:45,159 --> 00:45:46,743
Puntulis died.

934
00:45:46,785 --> 00:45:49,746
There is this real rush then to find people, anyone.

935
00:45:49,788 --> 00:45:53,459
But as you can imagine, they're all

936
00:45:49,788 --> 00:45:53,459
extraordinarily old.

937
00:45:55,794 --> 00:45:59,424
There are very few of them who are still fit

938
00:45:55,794 --> 00:45:59,424
to stand trial.

939
00:45:59,465 --> 00:46:02,343
So there is this feeling that now,

940
00:46:02,385 --> 00:46:05,971
before it's too late, we need to do

941
00:46:02,385 --> 00:46:05,971
everything we can

942
00:46:06,013 --> 00:46:08,140
to bring every last Nazi to trial.

943
00:46:12,103 --> 00:46:14,021
[Ansell] As the long list of people

944
00:46:14,063 --> 00:46:16,691
that they believed were Nazi war criminals became smaller,

945
00:46:16,733 --> 00:46:19,860
an accountant from Auschwitz was singled out.

946
00:46:19,902 --> 00:46:22,321
He was put under the spotlight

947
00:46:19,902 --> 00:46:22,321
because of an interview

948
00:46:22,363 --> 00:46:25,241
that he did for the BBC, where he openly admitted

949
00:46:25,283 --> 00:46:27,118
and described in detail

950
00:46:27,159 --> 00:46:31,372
the crimes that were being committed in Auschwitz.

951
00:46:31,414 --> 00:46:35,000
[interviewer] You were part of the largest

952
00:46:31,414 --> 00:46:35,000
killing factory in history.

953
00:46:35,042 --> 00:46:36,419
You were working there.

954
00:46:36,461 --> 00:46:38,296
You personally contributed

955
00:46:38,337 --> 00:46:41,507
to the killing of around one million people.

956
00:46:41,549 --> 00:46:43,718
Don't you think you should have stood trial?

957
00:46:44,594 --> 00:46:46,429
[speaks German]

958
00:46:46,471 --> 00:46:47,972
[interpreter] No, I don't think so.

959
00:46:51,392 --> 00:46:54,353
You imply with your question that just being a member

960
00:46:54,395 --> 00:46:57,022
of a large group of people who lived in a garrison

961
00:46:57,064 --> 00:46:59,400
where the destruction of the Jews took place

962
00:46:59,442 --> 00:47:01,778
is enough to make you a criminal.

963
00:47:07,158 --> 00:47:10,119
He was an accomplice. He knew what he was doing.

964
00:47:10,161 --> 00:47:13,414
[man] But what he didn't know was that the interview

965
00:47:10,161 --> 00:47:13,414
with the BBC

966
00:47:13,456 --> 00:47:15,500
would ultimately spark the investigation,

967
00:47:15,541 --> 00:47:17,960
because at that time, before Demjanjuk,

968
00:47:18,002 --> 00:47:21,172
guards were not seen as being complicit.

969
00:47:21,213 --> 00:47:23,299
And for decades, he lived peacefully

970
00:47:23,341 --> 00:47:25,842
in a small town outside of Luneburg.

971
00:47:25,884 --> 00:47:28,179
They got Groening. They went after him.

972
00:47:33,768 --> 00:47:34,811
No.

973
00:47:36,771 --> 00:47:39,148
Carla has prepared my lunch.

974
00:47:39,190 --> 00:47:42,527
So we'll let her prepare it when she's ready to serve it.

975
00:47:46,614 --> 00:47:50,117
-Okay. You gonna eat? -Hi, Benji.

976
00:47:50,159 --> 00:47:53,162
-Good morning! -Hi, Benji.

977
00:47:53,204 --> 00:47:56,749
There are many trials being carried on now,

978
00:47:53,204 --> 00:47:56,749
which are remarkable.

979
00:47:56,791 --> 00:48:01,379
Old people who have managed to evade justice

980
00:47:56,791 --> 00:48:01,379
for many years.

981
00:48:01,420 --> 00:48:03,756
It doesn't make a very big difference

982
00:48:03,798 --> 00:48:07,635
whether they spend some time in jail or not.

983
00:48:07,677 --> 00:48:10,471
On the principle, it does make a difference.

984
00:48:10,513 --> 00:48:12,807
They should know that they're not going

985
00:48:10,513 --> 00:48:12,807
to get away with it.

986
00:48:12,849 --> 00:48:16,268
We'll pursue them wherever they are as long as necessary

987
00:48:16,310 --> 00:48:19,063
and try to have them explain their actions.

988
00:48:23,108 --> 00:48:25,361
If you know that he was a guard in a camp

989
00:48:25,403 --> 00:48:27,405
which killed your father, your mother, your grandfather,

990
00:48:27,446 --> 00:48:30,408
don't you have to have some consideration

991
00:48:30,449 --> 00:48:33,077
for the victims, rather than the perpetrator?

992
00:48:34,161 --> 00:48:35,371
[indistinct chatter]

993
00:48:36,831 --> 00:48:39,751
[Hans Holtermann] Our argument about the case

994
00:48:39,792 --> 00:48:43,755
was that the things that Mr. Groening did in Auschwitz

995
00:48:43,796 --> 00:48:47,049
actually were not some kind of support

996
00:48:47,091 --> 00:48:49,218
of killing the people who had been

997
00:48:49,260 --> 00:48:52,137
transported to Auschwitz at that time.

998
00:48:52,179 --> 00:48:54,348
Of course he supported the system,

999
00:48:54,390 --> 00:48:56,267
but not the killing itself.

1000
00:48:56,308 --> 00:48:58,728
[Goetze] Many SS members here in Germany,

1001
00:48:58,770 --> 00:49:01,272
in former trials, they often said,

1002
00:49:01,313 --> 00:49:02,565
"Well, I didn't kill them!

1003
00:49:02,607 --> 00:49:05,234
They were killed by a... by a machine."

1004
00:49:05,276 --> 00:49:09,071
His position as a subordinate was quite clear.

1005
00:49:09,113 --> 00:49:10,782
He was not a high ranking officer.

1006
00:49:10,823 --> 00:49:14,452
He was not in a sort of position to give orders.

1007
00:49:14,493 --> 00:49:18,456
This is the question. Who is responsible?

1008
00:49:21,542 --> 00:49:23,502
Groening was a cog in the wheel,

1009
00:49:23,544 --> 00:49:27,964
but the wheel couldn't have turned without that cog.

1010
00:49:28,006 --> 00:49:30,217
Individual killing is not a requisite.

1011
00:49:30,259 --> 00:49:33,846
There is no evidence that Hitler personally

1012
00:49:30,259 --> 00:49:33,846
killed anybody

1013
00:49:33,888 --> 00:49:36,515
at Auschwitz, or any Jew.

1014
00:49:36,557 --> 00:49:38,851
Everybody who was aware

1015
00:49:38,893 --> 00:49:41,646
of what was going on at Auschwitz

1016
00:49:41,687 --> 00:49:44,148
is both morally and legally guilty.

1017
00:49:44,189 --> 00:49:46,776
The chef, less than the person

1018
00:49:46,818 --> 00:49:49,862
who poured the gas into the chambers.

1019
00:49:49,904 --> 00:49:53,157
The accountant, less than the guard.

1020
00:49:53,198 --> 00:49:55,409
But he made choices throughout

1021
00:49:55,451 --> 00:49:57,328
and he is responsible for his choices.

1022
00:49:57,369 --> 00:49:59,413
Groening was not just an accountant.

1023
00:49:59,455 --> 00:50:01,998
He's known as the "Bookkeeper of Auschwitz"

1024
00:50:02,040 --> 00:50:04,168
and the "Bookkeeper of Auschwitz"

1025
00:50:02,040 --> 00:50:04,168
creates,

1026
00:50:04,209 --> 00:50:06,170
I think, a somewhat misleading image.

1027
00:50:06,211 --> 00:50:09,465
It suggests that he could have been just squirrelled away

1028
00:50:09,507 --> 00:50:12,760
in some little shack adding up numbers.

1029
00:50:12,802 --> 00:50:18,808
He came to Auschwitz specifically as a bookkeeper.

1030
00:50:18,850 --> 00:50:21,936
But it took much more than bookkeeping.

1031
00:50:21,978 --> 00:50:23,813
He also had to look after the system.

1032
00:50:23,855 --> 00:50:26,607
And he was seen on the ramp.

1033
00:50:26,649 --> 00:50:29,443
[Douglas] This is the ramp where

1034
00:50:26,649 --> 00:50:29,443
it's kind of in the collective

1035
00:50:29,485 --> 00:50:32,989
or popular imagination from films like Schindler's List.

1036
00:50:33,029 --> 00:50:36,742
This is when the SS are sorting people out,

1037
00:50:36,784 --> 00:50:39,912
saying these people are being exterminated immediately,

1038
00:50:39,954 --> 00:50:42,623
and this small group is actually entering

1039
00:50:42,665 --> 00:50:45,918
the prison population of the camp.

1040
00:50:45,960 --> 00:50:48,044
If you look at something like Auschwitz,

1041
00:50:48,086 --> 00:50:50,589
why weren't more of the guards prosecuted?

1042
00:50:50,631 --> 00:50:54,176
Well, Auschwitz was a hybrid camp.

1043
00:50:54,218 --> 00:50:57,137
It was part slave labor camp,

1044
00:50:57,179 --> 00:50:59,557
and it was part death camp.

1045
00:50:59,598 --> 00:51:01,767
If these guards were just associated

1046
00:51:01,809 --> 00:51:03,811
with the slave labor aspect,

1047
00:51:03,853 --> 00:51:06,522
then you wouldn't necessarily know

1048
00:51:06,564 --> 00:51:10,066
that they actually were involved

1049
00:51:06,564 --> 00:51:10,066
with the killing.

1050
00:51:10,108 --> 00:51:12,444
And if you didn't know they were involved

1051
00:51:10,108 --> 00:51:12,444
with the killing,

1052
00:51:12,486 --> 00:51:16,448
you couldn't prosecute them for anything under German law.

1053
00:51:16,490 --> 00:51:18,074
In the case of Groening,

1054
00:51:18,116 --> 00:51:22,454
we know that Groening was at Auschwitz for a long time.

1055
00:51:22,496 --> 00:51:24,164
He was there for two years.

1056
00:51:24,206 --> 00:51:25,917
But if you look at the indictment,

1057
00:51:25,958 --> 00:51:29,628
the indictment focuses only on a three-month period.

1058
00:51:29,670 --> 00:51:31,255
During this three-month period,

1059
00:51:31,296 --> 00:51:34,550
that's when the trains were arriving

1060
00:51:34,592 --> 00:51:39,638
with these hundreds of thousands

1061
00:51:34,592 --> 00:51:39,638
of Jews from Hungary.

1062
00:51:39,680 --> 00:51:41,515
[Walther] In this case,

1063
00:51:41,557 --> 00:51:45,728
the Hungarian Action is the crime.

1064
00:51:45,770 --> 00:51:48,146
From the 16th of May

1065
00:51:48,188 --> 00:51:51,191
until the 11th of July,

1066
00:51:51,233 --> 00:51:55,613
there has been killed 300,000 Jews.

1067
00:51:55,654 --> 00:51:59,951
If we can prove that Groening has been

1068
00:51:59,992 --> 00:52:04,496
on one day in this time on the ramp,

1069
00:52:04,538 --> 00:52:08,084
then he is guilty of the whole crime.

1070
00:52:09,752 --> 00:52:12,713
The witnesses arrived on a certain day

1071
00:52:12,755 --> 00:52:16,884
at a certain hour during this "Hungarian Action."

1072
00:52:16,926 --> 00:52:20,805
Important is that the witnesses talk about

1073
00:52:20,846 --> 00:52:23,557
what happened with their families,

1074
00:52:23,599 --> 00:52:26,393
that they speak about their sadness,

1075
00:52:26,435 --> 00:52:28,353
they speak about the loss.

1076
00:52:29,939 --> 00:52:34,150
Tomorrow, Bill, you have to testify.

1077
00:52:34,192 --> 00:52:36,946
Speak slowly, but fluently.

1078
00:52:36,988 --> 00:52:40,616
And don't think about the faces of the judges.

1079
00:52:40,658 --> 00:52:43,368
This is a special thing as far as I'm concerned.

1080
00:52:43,410 --> 00:52:47,456
It's a very important, emotional thing.

1081
00:52:47,498 --> 00:52:50,084
The criminal department of justice

1082
00:52:50,126 --> 00:52:53,129
has made a lot of faults,

1083
00:52:53,169 --> 00:52:54,797
very heavy faults.

1084
00:52:54,839 --> 00:52:57,675
And I invite the German justice system

1085
00:52:57,716 --> 00:52:59,760
to come back in a better way.

1086
00:53:04,556 --> 00:53:07,810
[Glied] The time came for us to testify at the trial.

1087
00:53:09,394 --> 00:53:13,149
I sat down in front of the presiding judge.

1088
00:53:13,189 --> 00:53:15,609
Thomas Walther sat next to me,

1089
00:53:15,651 --> 00:53:19,237
and then the judge asked me to describe what happened

1090
00:53:19,279 --> 00:53:21,824
when I arrived to Auschwitz-Birkenau.

1091
00:53:25,119 --> 00:53:26,745
Then train stopped.

1092
00:53:26,787 --> 00:53:29,707
After a while, all of a sudden, the doors were opened.

1093
00:53:29,748 --> 00:53:32,168
"Everybody out! Get out of the boxcar!

1094
00:53:32,208 --> 00:53:34,712
Leave your parcels in there! You'll get them later."

1095
00:53:35,713 --> 00:53:36,797
[Bohm] It was a space

1096
00:53:36,839 --> 00:53:40,051
filled with people running around,

1097
00:53:40,092 --> 00:53:42,427
some in striped pajamas

1098
00:53:42,469 --> 00:53:45,931
and a lot of soldiers with rifles.

1099
00:53:45,973 --> 00:53:49,351
Dogs on leash that were straining against the leash

1100
00:53:49,393 --> 00:53:51,103
and barking at us.

1101
00:53:51,145 --> 00:53:54,272
The people pouring out from the wagons,

1102
00:53:54,314 --> 00:53:56,274
thousands of people,

1103
00:53:56,316 --> 00:54:00,487
babies crying, mothers holding them.

1104
00:54:00,529 --> 00:54:05,159
They started screaming, "Men and boys into one column.

1105
00:54:05,201 --> 00:54:07,870
Five in a row, fast! Fast!"

1106
00:54:07,912 --> 00:54:10,288
I grabbed a hold of my dad's hand

1107
00:54:10,330 --> 00:54:14,877
and stood there, and my mom, my sister and aunts,

1108
00:54:14,919 --> 00:54:18,422
my grandma were in the other column

1109
00:54:14,919 --> 00:54:18,422
with the women.

1110
00:54:18,463 --> 00:54:20,632
They were screaming and yelling.

1111
00:54:20,674 --> 00:54:23,761
People were so traumatized, so scared.

1112
00:54:25,721 --> 00:54:29,433
[Kor] So there is that Nazi yelling

1113
00:54:25,721 --> 00:54:29,433
in German, "Twins! Twins!"

1114
00:54:29,474 --> 00:54:32,853
My poor mother hesitated and said, "Is that good?"

1115
00:54:33,729 --> 00:54:36,356
And the Nazi nodded "yes."

1116
00:54:36,398 --> 00:54:38,817
So my mother said, "Yes."

1117
00:54:38,859 --> 00:54:41,277
At that moment another Nazi came,

1118
00:54:41,319 --> 00:54:45,241
pulled my mother to the right, we were pulled to the left.

1119
00:54:45,281 --> 00:54:47,868
We were crying, she was crying.

1120
00:54:47,910 --> 00:54:50,454
I didn't really understand

1121
00:54:50,495 --> 00:54:54,708
that this would be the last time

1122
00:54:50,495 --> 00:54:54,708
that we would see her.

1123
00:54:54,750 --> 00:54:58,629
[Eisen] My mother, with my siblings,

1124
00:54:54,750 --> 00:54:58,629
my grandparents and my aunt,

1125
00:54:59,671 --> 00:55:02,216
they were told to go to the left.

1126
00:55:02,258 --> 00:55:06,220
I know they were taken into the gas chamber

1127
00:55:02,258 --> 00:55:06,220
of Krematoria II.

1128
00:55:06,262 --> 00:55:09,765
My father and uncle and I, we were selected

1129
00:55:06,262 --> 00:55:09,765
for slave labor.

1130
00:55:09,807 --> 00:55:12,308
We were processed. Our clothes were taken away,

1131
00:55:12,350 --> 00:55:14,686
our hair was shaved. And the next morning,

1132
00:55:14,728 --> 00:55:17,773
we were given a tattooed number

1133
00:55:14,728 --> 00:55:17,773
and striped outfits.

1134
00:55:17,815 --> 00:55:21,986
And I became a slave labor working for a German Reich.

1135
00:55:24,488 --> 00:55:28,784
[Kor] Mengele used 1,500 sets of twins

1136
00:55:28,826 --> 00:55:31,996
in his various experiments.

1137
00:55:32,037 --> 00:55:33,789
Take a set of twins,

1138
00:55:33,831 --> 00:55:35,415
inject one with a disease.

1139
00:55:35,457 --> 00:55:37,584
When that one dies, you kill the other one,

1140
00:55:37,626 --> 00:55:41,505
and then you get the results of how the disease works.

1141
00:55:41,546 --> 00:55:45,134
After one of those injections,

1142
00:55:41,546 --> 00:55:45,134
I became very ill

1143
00:55:45,176 --> 00:55:47,343
with a very high fever.

1144
00:55:47,385 --> 00:55:48,887
Next morning,

1145
00:55:48,929 --> 00:55:52,057
Mengele came in with four other doctors.

1146
00:55:52,099 --> 00:55:55,644
He looked at my fever chart and then he declared,

1147
00:55:55,686 --> 00:55:59,439
laughing sarcastically he said, "Too bad.

1148
00:55:59,481 --> 00:56:03,110
She's so young, she has only two weeks

1149
00:55:59,481 --> 00:56:03,110
to live."

1150
00:56:03,152 --> 00:56:06,155
But after two weeks, my fever broke.

1151
00:56:06,197 --> 00:56:07,948
I survived,

1152
00:56:07,990 --> 00:56:11,869
and I was released and reunited

1153
00:56:07,990 --> 00:56:11,869
with my twin sister

1154
00:56:11,910 --> 00:56:13,120
and the other twins.

1155
00:56:20,336 --> 00:56:22,754
[Bohm] While I was looking around,

1156
00:56:22,796 --> 00:56:25,507
trying to make sense of what I'm looking at,

1157
00:56:25,549 --> 00:56:29,053
I realized all of a sudden that I was alone

1158
00:56:29,094 --> 00:56:32,430
and my mother was several rows ahead of me,

1159
00:56:32,472 --> 00:56:34,933
and I started rushing through the crowds

1160
00:56:34,975 --> 00:56:36,560
to catch up to her.

1161
00:56:36,601 --> 00:56:39,730
And all of a sudden I was stopped.

1162
00:56:39,771 --> 00:56:42,024
A rifle in front of me,

1163
00:56:42,066 --> 00:56:46,486
and a young German soldier telling me,

1164
00:56:46,528 --> 00:56:49,823
"Nein! Over there! To the right!"

1165
00:56:49,865 --> 00:56:54,078
I said, "No, no, my mother is there,

1166
00:56:49,865 --> 00:56:54,078
I want to go with her!"

1167
00:56:54,119 --> 00:56:56,080
And he just kept the rifle there

1168
00:56:56,121 --> 00:56:59,791
and said, "No! You go there!"

1169
00:56:59,833 --> 00:57:03,712
And then I cried out after my mom,

1170
00:57:03,754 --> 00:57:06,006
and she turned.

1171
00:57:06,048 --> 00:57:09,634
And I don't know what I expected,

1172
00:57:09,676 --> 00:57:14,390
but she just looked at me and didn't say a word.

1173
00:57:14,430 --> 00:57:16,975
And then turned around and kept on going.

1174
00:57:18,643 --> 00:57:20,020
And I never saw her again.

1175
00:57:21,438 --> 00:57:25,192
That was, I think, the hardest thing

1176
00:57:26,610 --> 00:57:28,404
that ever happened to me.

1177
00:57:36,412 --> 00:57:41,333
Even now I have trouble talking about it.

1178
00:57:41,375 --> 00:57:44,378
And for over half a century, I couldn't.

1179
00:57:47,881 --> 00:57:50,675
[Glied] What happened to my mom

1180
00:57:47,881 --> 00:57:50,675
and my sister,

1181
00:57:50,717 --> 00:57:53,887
I don't know.

1182
00:57:53,929 --> 00:57:57,724
But I've never seen them again,

1183
00:57:53,929 --> 00:57:57,724
never said goodbye to them.

1184
00:57:57,766 --> 00:58:01,186
They just disappeared from my life at that moment.

1185
00:58:20,247 --> 00:58:22,333
Oh, here.

1186
00:58:22,374 --> 00:58:24,793
Here is my father. "Glied, Alexander,

1187
00:58:24,835 --> 00:58:28,505
1899, Petrovac, Yugoslavia.

1188
00:58:28,546 --> 00:58:30,841
Murdered in Kaufering, Germany."

1189
00:58:33,385 --> 00:58:36,972
Here is my sister. "Glied, Aniko, 1936,

1190
00:58:37,014 --> 00:58:39,557
Subotica, Yugoslavia.

1191
00:58:39,599 --> 00:58:41,893
Murdered in Auschwitz, Poland."

1192
00:58:47,107 --> 00:58:50,861
Here is my mom. "Glied, Miriam, 1907,

1193
00:58:50,902 --> 00:58:53,030
Jaszkarajeno, Hungary.

1194
00:58:53,071 --> 00:58:55,157
Murdered in Auschwitz, Poland."

1195
00:58:56,283 --> 00:58:58,660
Oh, my God.

1196
00:58:58,702 --> 00:59:02,664
All of these Glieds are relatives...

1197
00:59:04,082 --> 00:59:06,126
uncles and aunts of mine.

1198
00:59:20,474 --> 00:59:22,934
[indistinct chatter]

1199
00:59:53,257 --> 00:59:55,509
He spoke about this whole situation as

1200
00:59:55,551 --> 00:59:59,471
"there was this bug on the ground,

1201
00:59:59,513 --> 01:00:01,390
and I stepped on it."

1202
01:00:01,432 --> 01:00:04,101
To see the faces of the survivors

1203
01:00:04,142 --> 01:00:06,144
after Groening spoke...

1204
01:00:07,062 --> 01:00:09,022
it was a terrible situation

1205
01:00:09,064 --> 01:00:12,276
when he explained some stories

1206
01:00:09,064 --> 01:00:12,276
out of his work.

1207
01:00:13,193 --> 01:00:15,195
Like the crying suitcase.

1208
01:00:46,393 --> 01:00:49,187
[Eisen] And he said, "The crying stopped."

1209
01:00:49,229 --> 01:00:52,149
And that was... I think that was,

1210
01:00:52,190 --> 01:00:55,152
it almost killed me. I just couldn't believe it.

1211
01:00:55,193 --> 01:00:56,987
He said, "That wasn't nice."

1212
01:00:59,156 --> 01:01:02,367
And later on they asked him, "What would you have done?"

1213
01:01:03,535 --> 01:01:05,078
"Well, maybe shoot him.

1214
01:01:06,871 --> 01:01:10,667
That would have been the nice thing for him."

1215
01:01:10,708 --> 01:01:12,919
[Glied] I accept the fact that they were brainwashed,

1216
01:01:12,961 --> 01:01:14,421
but there comes a point

1217
01:01:14,463 --> 01:01:16,632
where no matter how much you are brainwashed,

1218
01:01:16,673 --> 01:01:18,800
when you see a baby being picked up

1219
01:01:18,842 --> 01:01:20,927
and smashed against a door, and you say,

1220
01:01:20,969 --> 01:01:24,139
"This is fine. This is okay. This is acceptable."

1221
01:01:24,181 --> 01:01:25,765
I can't accept that.

1222
01:01:25,807 --> 01:01:30,145
I mean, he was giving this information... willingly.

1223
01:01:30,187 --> 01:01:32,564
I mean, he was asked,

1224
01:01:32,606 --> 01:01:35,942
"Did a Jew have a chance to leave this place alive?"

1225
01:01:37,735 --> 01:01:39,488
He says, "Absolutely not."

1226
01:01:40,864 --> 01:01:43,659
And that affected me a lot, so...

1227
01:01:45,494 --> 01:01:47,745
[Dershowitz] He was an adult.

1228
01:01:47,787 --> 01:01:50,207
He was responsible for his actions.

1229
01:01:50,248 --> 01:01:52,876
Not everybody who joined the Hitler Youth

1230
01:01:52,917 --> 01:01:56,213
ended up joining the SS. Not everybody

1231
01:01:52,917 --> 01:01:56,213
who joined the SS

1232
01:01:56,254 --> 01:01:58,256
ended up being a guard at Auschwitz,

1233
01:01:58,298 --> 01:02:00,008
leading people to their death.

1234
01:02:00,050 --> 01:02:03,595
As far as following orders, what one often hears is,

1235
01:02:03,637 --> 01:02:06,264
"I had to take part in these crimes,

1236
01:02:06,306 --> 01:02:08,642
because had I not done so,

1237
01:02:08,684 --> 01:02:11,019
uh, the Germans would have executed me

1238
01:02:11,061 --> 01:02:12,604
or sent me to a death camp."

1239
01:02:12,646 --> 01:02:15,148
One of the most remarkable statistics

1240
01:02:15,190 --> 01:02:18,151
to emerge out of the Holocaust

1241
01:02:18,193 --> 01:02:21,154
is the number of SS officers,

1242
01:02:21,196 --> 01:02:24,074
or even senior German officers,

1243
01:02:24,115 --> 01:02:28,370
who suffered serious life-threatening consequences

1244
01:02:28,412 --> 01:02:30,330
as a result of opting out.

1245
01:02:31,373 --> 01:02:34,418
That number is exactly zero.

1246
01:02:34,459 --> 01:02:37,879
Not one instance has ever been found

1247
01:02:37,921 --> 01:02:39,673
in which it was confirmed

1248
01:02:39,715 --> 01:02:42,593
that someone who disobeyed criminal orders

1249
01:02:42,634 --> 01:02:44,219
was subject to severe punishment,

1250
01:02:44,261 --> 01:02:46,221
much less execution.

1251
01:02:46,263 --> 01:02:49,182
[Dershowitz] He was following orders,

1252
01:02:46,263 --> 01:02:49,182
but he had to know

1253
01:02:49,224 --> 01:02:53,061
at some level of consciousness

1254
01:02:49,224 --> 01:02:53,061
that it can't be legal

1255
01:02:53,103 --> 01:02:56,940
to murder infants, babies, the elderly,

1256
01:02:56,981 --> 01:02:59,067
to murder people who are his age now.

1257
01:02:59,109 --> 01:03:01,737
He had to know that that was not only wrong,

1258
01:03:01,778 --> 01:03:04,281
but in some ultimate sense, illegal.

1259
01:03:07,576 --> 01:03:10,954
You know, listening to Groening,

1260
01:03:07,576 --> 01:03:10,954
I got very upset,

1261
01:03:10,995 --> 01:03:16,627
because the things that he brought forward voluntarily...

1262
01:03:16,668 --> 01:03:18,086
I mean, he was a big talker.

1263
01:03:18,128 --> 01:03:21,506
All I would want him to say is, "I'm sorry."

1264
01:03:23,133 --> 01:03:25,343
That alone I think would have been,

1265
01:03:25,385 --> 01:03:28,513
at the age of 94, it would have

1266
01:03:25,385 --> 01:03:28,513
meant everything,

1267
01:03:28,555 --> 01:03:31,099
as far as I was concerned.

1268
01:03:31,141 --> 01:03:33,851
Just those two words.

1269
01:03:33,893 --> 01:03:35,646
Somebody will have to make the judgment,

1270
01:03:35,687 --> 01:03:39,816
and I think they are going to consider our testimonies

1271
01:03:39,857 --> 01:03:41,652
and we'll see what happens.

1272
01:03:46,573 --> 01:03:49,867
[indistinct chatter]

1273
01:03:49,909 --> 01:03:53,121
I did not know how the interaction

1274
01:03:49,909 --> 01:03:53,121
with him would be.

1275
01:03:54,914 --> 01:04:00,629
I did not know how he would be able

1276
01:03:54,914 --> 01:04:00,629
to answer my questions,

1277
01:04:00,671 --> 01:04:03,715
but nevertheless I testified,

1278
01:04:03,757 --> 01:04:07,385
and I said right there in a German court,

1279
01:04:03,757 --> 01:04:07,385
clear and loud,

1280
01:04:07,427 --> 01:04:11,014
that I forgave him, as I forgave all the Nazis,

1281
01:04:11,055 --> 01:04:13,266
and I forgave everybody who hurt me.

1282
01:04:22,651 --> 01:04:24,736
It's outrageous what she did, it's absolutely outrageous.

1283
01:04:24,778 --> 01:04:26,488
I felt like the floor opened up

1284
01:04:26,530 --> 01:04:28,657
and I fell right down into a basement.

1285
01:04:28,699 --> 01:04:30,617
She kept on repeating the fact

1286
01:04:30,659 --> 01:04:32,910
that these people are friends of hers.

1287
01:04:32,952 --> 01:04:36,164
And I said, "My God. This woman must be crazy

1288
01:04:32,952 --> 01:04:36,164
or what?"

1289
01:04:36,206 --> 01:04:40,752
Forgiving those who tortured her

1290
01:04:40,794 --> 01:04:44,088
and killed so many, so cruelly...

1291
01:04:44,130 --> 01:04:45,632
She's able to forgive.

1292
01:04:45,674 --> 01:04:47,718
Maybe she needs that forgiveness

1293
01:04:47,759 --> 01:04:50,011
in order to go on, to be...

1294
01:04:50,053 --> 01:04:52,472
To stay mentally normal.

1295
01:04:52,514 --> 01:04:55,058
And what was even more shocking,

1296
01:04:52,514 --> 01:04:55,058
the people in the audience,

1297
01:04:55,099 --> 01:04:57,728
wherever they were, they were clapping

1298
01:04:57,769 --> 01:05:00,522
this forgiveness thing,

1299
01:05:00,564 --> 01:05:04,568
and the judge said, "Not in my court."

1300
01:05:04,609 --> 01:05:08,279
[Rothmann] Eva Mozes, you know her story.

1301
01:05:04,609 --> 01:05:08,279
You know she was a twin,

1302
01:05:08,321 --> 01:05:09,947
and she is...

1303
01:05:09,989 --> 01:05:12,534
in every sense of the word, she is a victim,

1304
01:05:12,576 --> 01:05:14,536
as all the other victims,

1305
01:05:14,578 --> 01:05:17,288
and she should be treated like this.

1306
01:05:17,330 --> 01:05:20,500
[Kor] Saturday, I was coming back

1307
01:05:17,330 --> 01:05:20,500
to the United States.

1308
01:05:20,542 --> 01:05:22,753
The court session was over.

1309
01:05:22,794 --> 01:05:25,213
And he was still sitting at his desk.

1310
01:05:25,255 --> 01:05:27,965
So, I went up to Oskar Groening.

1311
01:05:52,908 --> 01:05:56,620
[Patrece Dayton] An embrace between two people

1312
01:05:52,908 --> 01:05:56,620
is touching people

1313
01:05:56,661 --> 01:05:57,704
around the world.

1314
01:05:58,872 --> 01:06:01,583
We begin tonight with an amazing story.

1315
01:06:01,625 --> 01:06:03,794
A Terre Haute woman is at the center

1316
01:06:03,835 --> 01:06:05,962
of international attention.

1317
01:06:06,003 --> 01:06:08,799
This after a courageous act of kindness

1318
01:06:08,840 --> 01:06:11,551
that took social media by storm.

1319
01:06:16,222 --> 01:06:19,267
[Eisen] She was the most famous

1320
01:06:16,222 --> 01:06:19,267
person in Luneburg

1321
01:06:19,309 --> 01:06:21,436
because the world's press were all around her.

1322
01:06:21,478 --> 01:06:25,231
Everybody caught onto this forgiveness business,

1323
01:06:21,478 --> 01:06:25,231
you see.

1324
01:06:25,273 --> 01:06:27,150
[Feldhaus] The biggest gesture you could imagine.

1325
01:06:27,191 --> 01:06:29,193
You hug the monster,

1326
01:06:29,235 --> 01:06:31,738
you hug part of the machine that killed your family,

1327
01:06:31,780 --> 01:06:32,906
that almost killed you,

1328
01:06:32,948 --> 01:06:35,325
so it was a gesture of forgiving,

1329
01:06:35,366 --> 01:06:38,202
but there was big media headlines and big outcry

1330
01:06:38,244 --> 01:06:40,664
if she should do that, if that is too much,

1331
01:06:40,705 --> 01:06:44,208
if one can forgive part of the Nazi machine

1332
01:06:44,250 --> 01:06:46,043
or if it just should not be forgiven.

1333
01:06:46,085 --> 01:06:50,465
She has succeeded in infuriating

1334
01:06:50,507 --> 01:06:53,760
practically every other survivor around,

1335
01:06:53,802 --> 01:06:55,052
and for good reason.

1336
01:06:56,346 --> 01:06:58,264
[Kor] By forgiving,

1337
01:06:58,306 --> 01:07:02,226
I removed whatever happened to me.

1338
01:07:04,103 --> 01:07:06,063
She asked me many times in the past,

1339
01:07:06,105 --> 01:07:08,358
"You have to forgive your grandfather."

1340
01:07:08,399 --> 01:07:11,987
And I said no, I can't forgive him.

1341
01:07:12,028 --> 01:07:15,114
Not with all that stuff he put on our shoulders.

1342
01:07:15,991 --> 01:07:18,159
But she has to deal with it.

1343
01:07:18,201 --> 01:07:19,870
She has to stand it.

1344
01:07:19,911 --> 01:07:22,205
So it's up to her.

1345
01:07:22,246 --> 01:07:27,293
If that's the way for Eva to live with it, I accept it.

1346
01:07:27,335 --> 01:07:29,838
The best way to defeat an enemy

1347
01:07:29,880 --> 01:07:31,923
is to make him a friend.

1348
01:07:31,965 --> 01:07:35,593
I believe that I defeated Oskar Groening

1349
01:07:36,511 --> 01:07:38,179
by making him a friend.

1350
01:07:40,390 --> 01:07:42,642
[Goetze] Groening, right after the war,

1351
01:07:42,684 --> 01:07:45,562
decided to marry the widow of his brother.

1352
01:07:46,354 --> 01:07:48,105
He had two children,

1353
01:07:48,147 --> 01:07:50,525
and of course he lived a peaceful life

1354
01:07:50,567 --> 01:07:52,068
and he enjoyed life.

1355
01:07:52,109 --> 01:07:54,153
[Holtermann] A very important thing

1356
01:07:52,109 --> 01:07:54,153
for Mr. Groening

1357
01:07:54,195 --> 01:07:56,865
was in the middle of the '80s.

1358
01:07:56,907 --> 01:07:59,910
He was meeting somebody who was collecting stamps,

1359
01:07:59,951 --> 01:08:02,037
like he himself did.

1360
01:08:02,078 --> 01:08:04,330
They were talking about the Nazi crimes

1361
01:08:04,372 --> 01:08:07,834
and the other person denied the Holocaust.

1362
01:08:07,876 --> 01:08:10,795
He found it insufferable that this guy

1363
01:08:10,837 --> 01:08:12,756
was going around saying the Holocaust didn't happen.

1364
01:08:12,797 --> 01:08:14,883
He was in Auschwitz. He could tell you

1365
01:08:12,797 --> 01:08:14,883
that it happened.

1366
01:08:14,925 --> 01:08:17,969
He wanted to actually come along and tell people,

1367
01:08:18,011 --> 01:08:22,015
"Look, I was there, I know that these crimes

1368
01:08:18,011 --> 01:08:22,015
were committed."

1369
01:08:22,057 --> 01:08:26,102
[Holtermann] He made some interviews to the German

1370
01:08:22,057 --> 01:08:26,102
news magazine Spiegel

1371
01:08:26,143 --> 01:08:27,729
and to the BBC.

1372
01:08:27,771 --> 01:08:30,106
Before these interviews, nobody knew Mr. Groening.

1373
01:08:30,147 --> 01:08:31,482
[inaudible]

1374
01:08:53,004 --> 01:08:54,798
[Singer] He exposed himself.

1375
01:08:54,839 --> 01:08:57,634
And that was a positive thing to do,

1376
01:08:57,675 --> 01:08:59,552
clearly, a courageous thing to do.

1377
01:08:59,594 --> 01:09:02,680
So, I think that's a very important

1378
01:08:59,594 --> 01:09:02,680
extenuating circumstance.

1379
01:09:02,722 --> 01:09:04,808
And to me,

1380
01:09:04,849 --> 01:09:07,685
that would have been sufficient reason

1381
01:09:04,849 --> 01:09:07,685
to not prosecute him.

1382
01:09:07,727 --> 01:09:11,355
[in German] Mr. Groening, what do you say to those

1383
01:09:07,727 --> 01:09:11,355
who still deny the Holocaust?

1384
01:09:11,397 --> 01:09:14,818
Nothing. They are hopelessly lost.

1385
01:09:34,587 --> 01:09:37,715
[Holtermann] Mr. Groening made a long statement

1386
01:09:37,757 --> 01:09:39,342
about the things he did in Auschwitz,

1387
01:09:39,383 --> 01:09:42,345
and he confessed that in a moral way,

1388
01:09:42,386 --> 01:09:46,307
he is guilty in the Holocaust. In the end, um,

1389
01:09:46,349 --> 01:09:48,935
the decision whether he is guilty or not

1390
01:09:48,977 --> 01:09:50,770
has to be taken by the court,

1391
01:09:50,812 --> 01:09:53,982
and that cannot be made by Mr. Groening.

1392
01:09:54,024 --> 01:09:58,987
[in German] Groening is testifying.

1393
01:09:54,024 --> 01:09:58,987
He is not acting sick.

1394
01:09:59,029 --> 01:10:02,907
He is the same age as Demjanjuk

1395
01:10:02,949 --> 01:10:07,495
but he is not wearing a baseball cap

1396
01:10:02,949 --> 01:10:07,495
or lying in bed.

1397
01:10:07,537 --> 01:10:09,956
[Dershowitz] Oh, I think the testimony

1398
01:10:07,537 --> 01:10:09,956
of Oskar Groening

1399
01:10:09,998 --> 01:10:12,416
is very, very important.

1400
01:10:12,458 --> 01:10:16,212
He is a hands-on participant observer

1401
01:10:16,253 --> 01:10:19,423
who puts the lie to all the Holocaust deniers who say,

1402
01:10:19,465 --> 01:10:21,217
"There were no gas chambers,

1403
01:10:21,258 --> 01:10:24,137
there were no crematoria, there was no Zyklon."

1404
01:10:24,179 --> 01:10:25,763
He puts the lie to all of that.

1405
01:10:25,805 --> 01:10:26,764
He was there.

1406
01:10:26,806 --> 01:10:28,850
He saw it with his own eyes.

1407
01:10:28,892 --> 01:10:33,270
And yet the Holocaust deniers can't accept the reality

1408
01:10:33,312 --> 01:10:36,066
of what he's saying, and he deserves some credit

1409
01:10:36,107 --> 01:10:40,820
for having testified to the truth of what he saw.

1410
01:10:40,862 --> 01:10:43,156
The truth of the matter is, you know, in 1945,

1411
01:10:43,198 --> 01:10:45,825
at the end of the war and the discovery

1412
01:10:43,198 --> 01:10:45,825
of the camps

1413
01:10:45,867 --> 01:10:49,328
and the horror of the Nazis' crimes,

1414
01:10:49,370 --> 01:10:52,623
the phrase "never again" was coined.

1415
01:10:52,665 --> 01:10:55,168
The only problem is there's nothing behind it.

1416
01:10:55,210 --> 01:10:57,795
In other words, there have been

1417
01:10:55,210 --> 01:10:57,795
so many tragedies,

1418
01:10:57,837 --> 01:11:00,798
similar, but not equal to the Holocaust

1419
01:10:57,837 --> 01:11:00,798
over the years

1420
01:11:00,840 --> 01:11:04,635
that this "NEVER AGAIN" basically is absolutely

1421
01:11:00,840 --> 01:11:04,635
meaningless.

1422
01:11:04,677 --> 01:11:08,181
It's too dangerous today. The world is different,

1423
01:11:04,677 --> 01:11:08,181
it's changing.

1424
01:11:08,223 --> 01:11:11,267
Our capacity to kill is getting completely

1425
01:11:08,223 --> 01:11:11,267
out of hand.

1426
01:11:13,144 --> 01:11:16,606
We see the wars that are taking place

1427
01:11:13,144 --> 01:11:16,606
now in Syria.

1428
01:11:16,647 --> 01:11:20,026
We talk about ISIS. It's nothing new.

1429
01:11:20,068 --> 01:11:22,653
[Zuroff] Part of the reason you had cases like Rwanda,

1430
01:11:22,695 --> 01:11:25,782
and Cambodia, and Biafra, and Darfur, and Bosnia,

1431
01:11:25,823 --> 01:11:29,035
and all these things, is that it's not at all clear

1432
01:11:29,077 --> 01:11:31,370
that if you participate in such crimes,

1433
01:11:31,412 --> 01:11:35,583
you'll actually pay for them. Again and again

1434
01:11:31,412 --> 01:11:35,583
and again and again,

1435
01:11:35,625 --> 01:11:36,960
people got away with it.

1436
01:11:37,001 --> 01:11:39,170
And that's terrible. That's absolutely terrible.

1437
01:11:39,212 --> 01:11:41,798
Without history, there is no memory.

1438
01:11:41,839 --> 01:11:43,758
Without memory, there is no future.

1439
01:11:43,800 --> 01:11:45,676
If we don't learn from the past,

1440
01:11:45,718 --> 01:11:47,511
we repeat the same mistakes again.

1441
01:11:47,553 --> 01:11:50,765
[all chanting] Jews will not replace us!

1442
01:11:50,807 --> 01:11:53,768
Jews will not replace us!

1443
01:11:53,810 --> 01:11:56,813
[indistinct yelling]

1444
01:11:56,854 --> 01:12:01,358
[crowd chanting]

1445
01:12:01,400 --> 01:12:04,195
[Dershowitz] If we can send a powerful message

1446
01:12:04,237 --> 01:12:07,157
that there is no statute of limitations on genocide,

1447
01:12:07,198 --> 01:12:11,244
it could have an impact on preventing individuals

1448
01:12:11,286 --> 01:12:15,873
from risking prosecution, even at the end

1449
01:12:11,286 --> 01:12:15,873
of their lives.

1450
01:12:35,893 --> 01:12:38,062
[speaking in German]

1451
01:12:41,774 --> 01:12:43,943
I wanted Groening desperately

1452
01:12:43,985 --> 01:12:47,113
to be convicted of this terrible act,

1453
01:12:48,614 --> 01:12:50,200
but I have come to the conclusion

1454
01:12:50,241 --> 01:12:52,952
that I don't want to see him go to jail.

1455
01:12:55,371 --> 01:12:57,456
I feel that the important thing

1456
01:12:57,498 --> 01:12:59,083
is that he should be convicted,

1457
01:12:59,125 --> 01:13:01,585
and he should go back to this town,

1458
01:13:01,627 --> 01:13:03,796
where he lived for 70 years,

1459
01:13:03,838 --> 01:13:06,632
where everybody knew what he did,

1460
01:13:06,674 --> 01:13:08,384
and where he was.

1461
01:13:08,425 --> 01:13:10,970
And people should see him walk on the street and say,

1462
01:13:11,012 --> 01:13:12,972
"There goes Oskar Groening,

1463
01:13:13,014 --> 01:13:16,517
the man who got convicted in the murder

1464
01:13:13,014 --> 01:13:16,517
of 300,000 people."

1465
01:13:19,187 --> 01:13:21,147
[Bohm] Well, he is all we have.

1466
01:13:21,189 --> 01:13:24,359
And if we want to establish a precedent,

1467
01:13:24,400 --> 01:13:26,861
a new law that in the future

1468
01:13:26,903 --> 01:13:29,322
will not allow guilty

1469
01:13:29,364 --> 01:13:32,783
to escape on technicalities, we do it through him.

1470
01:13:33,409 --> 01:13:36,120
[suspenseful music]

1471
01:13:41,500 --> 01:13:43,544
An extraordinary moment in Germany

1472
01:13:43,586 --> 01:13:45,880
when the sins of World War II finally caught up

1473
01:13:45,922 --> 01:13:48,216
with a man known as the "Accountant of Auschwitz."

1474
01:13:48,258 --> 01:13:50,885
He was convicted and sentenced

1475
01:13:48,258 --> 01:13:50,885
to four years in prison,

1476
01:13:50,927 --> 01:13:53,888
in what is likely one of the last Nazi trials

1477
01:13:53,930 --> 01:13:55,098
we will ever witness.

1478
01:13:56,307 --> 01:13:58,726
[speaks German]

1479
01:13:58,768 --> 01:14:02,438
[in German] Of course the verdict is

1480
01:13:58,768 --> 01:14:02,438
not very surprising.

1481
01:14:02,479 --> 01:14:05,482
But we will re-examine the details of the case.

1482
01:14:06,109 --> 01:14:10,280
It was emotional.

1483
01:14:10,321 --> 01:14:12,115
[woman] Thank you.

1484
01:14:12,156 --> 01:14:15,034
The fact that he only got four years,

1485
01:14:15,076 --> 01:14:17,120
I think with the same effort,

1486
01:14:17,161 --> 01:14:19,205
the judge could have given him 100 years.

1487
01:14:19,247 --> 01:14:23,709
I don't expect that he is ever going to be in a jail.

1488
01:14:23,751 --> 01:14:26,503
[Bohm] This is for future generations,

1489
01:14:26,545 --> 01:14:28,839
for all those people

1490
01:14:28,881 --> 01:14:31,384
who are still murdering people

1491
01:14:31,426 --> 01:14:33,469
because they are different color,

1492
01:14:33,510 --> 01:14:36,055
different tribe, different religion.

1493
01:14:36,097 --> 01:14:39,309
It is for them to know that judgment,

1494
01:14:39,350 --> 01:14:41,352
no matter how long it will take,

1495
01:14:41,394 --> 01:14:42,603
will catch up with them.

1496
01:14:55,283 --> 01:14:59,495
My being a witness was like putting a bouquet

1497
01:14:59,536 --> 01:15:02,665
on the non-existent grave of my parents.

1498
01:15:02,706 --> 01:15:07,378
I feel that my loved ones who were murdered

1499
01:15:07,420 --> 01:15:11,299
finally got some justice.

1500
01:15:11,341 --> 01:15:14,677
That my murdered mother and father

1501
01:15:14,718 --> 01:15:17,263
[voice breaking] now, perhaps,

1502
01:15:17,888 --> 01:15:19,640
can rest in peace.

1503
01:15:32,278 --> 01:15:35,739
I feel tremendous elation

1504
01:15:35,781 --> 01:15:40,036
in the fact that I am sitting in a German court,

1505
01:15:40,995 --> 01:15:42,788
with my daughter,

1506
01:15:42,830 --> 01:15:44,874
with my granddaughter,

1507
01:15:44,915 --> 01:15:46,792
which proves that we,

1508
01:15:46,834 --> 01:15:50,629
like the eternal phoenix,

1509
01:15:50,671 --> 01:15:54,384
rise again from the Holocaust ashes,

1510
01:15:54,425 --> 01:15:56,093
that we can survive.