Deaths-Head Revisited
- Episode aired Nov 10, 1961
- TV-PG
- 25m
A former German SS captain returns to Dachau concentration camp and begins reminiscing on the power he enjoyed there, until he finds himself on trial by those who died at his hands.A former German SS captain returns to Dachau concentration camp and begins reminiscing on the power he enjoyed there, until he finds himself on trial by those who died at his hands.A former German SS captain returns to Dachau concentration camp and begins reminiscing on the power he enjoyed there, until he finds himself on trial by those who died at his hands.
- SS Capt. Gunther Lutze
- (as Oscar Beregi)
- Victim
- (uncredited)
- Victim
- (uncredited)
- Victim
- (uncredited)
- Narrator
- (uncredited)
- …
- Victim
- (uncredited)
- Victim
- (uncredited)
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaThe title, a little wordplay of the novel "Brideshead Revisited" (Evelyn Waugh, 1941), refers to the "Totenkopf" or Death's Head symbol used by the SS during World War II depicting a skull and crossbones. It is distinguished from similar traditions of the skull and crossbones and the Jolly Roger by the positioning of the bones directly behind the skull.
- GoofsThis episode was set in 1962, 17 years after the end of the war and Dachau is shown as abandoned. However, after the war it remained open, first as a prison and then as a refugee camp until the mid-1960s.
- Quotes
[closing narration]
Narrator: There is an answer to the doctor's question. All the Dachaus must remain standing. The Dachaus, the Belsens, the Buckenwalds, the Auschwitzes - all of them. They must remain standing because they are a monument to a moment in time when some men decided to turn the Earth into a graveyard. Into it they shoveled all of their reason, their logic, their knowledge, but worse of all, their conscience. And the moment we forget this, the moment we cease to be haunted by its remembrance, then we become the gravediggers. Something to dwell on and to remember, not only in The Twilight Zone but wherever men walk God's Earth.
- ConnectionsReferenced in Everybody Wants Some!! (2016)
"Death-Heads Revisited" is a truly powerful episode. And, given its thematic and message, it's perhaps even the most meaningful and important "Twilight Zone" episode of the whole series. Fifteen years after the end of WWII, and having cowardly fled to South America instead of facing justice, SS-Captain Gunther Lutze can't resist returning to Dachau; - the concentration camp where he sardonically enjoyed torturing and murdering thousands of Jewish prisoners. But suddenly the tables are turned, and the sadist finds himself on trial when former prisoner Alfred Becker appears in front of him.
The plot of this episode honestly isn't very original, nor even that special, but the personal involvement, and the moral at the end, turns it into one of the best. "Why does the camp of Dachau still exist?" Serling righteously states in his narrative conclusion that horrible historic places like these MUST remain intact, if only to remind future generations about the horror mistakes of mankind's past. Having recently visited the concentration camp site of Auschwitz, I can only agree.
- Coventry
- Jul 15, 2020
Details
- Runtime25 minutes
- Color
- Aspect ratio
- 1.33 : 1