British director Luke Holland, who died in June, interviewed more than 300 elderly Germans and Austrians, including former members of the SS, for
Final Account
, which premiered Thursday at the Venice Film Festival.
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Luke Holland spent more than ten years hanging out with former Nazis and persuading them to testify for his film, which was much applauded by Lido audiences.
According to the
Hollywood reporter
, which qualifies the documentary as an “
exceptional
” work, this is undoubtedly the last time we will be able to hear the testimonies of “
direct participants in the horrors of the concentration camps
”.
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While many of them are wracked by remorse, some say they are on the contrary proud to have served in the SS "
where we could count on every man 100%
".
Some deny the Holocaust while others admit they knew about it.
"
Do not blame Hitler
," says one of them.
"
The idea was correct (but the Jews, editor's note) should have been expelled from the country
", instead of being killed.
According to producer Sam Pope, who is in Venice, interviews with civilians, especially women, question the idea that few ordinary people in Germany and Austria knew what was going on.
“
A well-known refrain is that it was only after the war that we found out about these crimes.
Over the course of these interviews, this possibility becomes more and more tenuous
", he affirms, before explaining:"
Even if you were not there or that you did not take part in it, you knew someone. one or had heard a rumor.
Your soldier brother would come home and tell you what he had seen
”.
"These powerful and perverse ideologies are still present"
One of the most shocking scenes in the film, however, comes from contemporary Germany, when an ex-SS is booed by young neo-Nazis accusing him of "
making them feel ashamed of being German
" by evoking his feeling of guilt.
This long exchange takes place in the house near Lake Wannsee, in the greater Berlin area, where the Final Solution was decided, namely the deportation and extermination of all Jews in the territories occupied by the Third Reich. .
"
These powerful and perverse ideologies are still present and gaining strength, not only in Germany and Austria but around the world,
" worries Sam Pope.
Luke Holland, who grew up speaking German and whose maternal family perished in the camps, refused to condemn his interlocutors, most of whom are in their nineties: “
The perpetrators (of massacres) are not born as they are, they are manufactures,
”he wrote.