From 1963 to 1965, twenty-two men, all former members of Hitler's SS who had served as officials at the Auschwitz death camp during World War II, were rounded up and put on trial in Frankfurt, Germany, for so-called "crimes against humanity" - a euphemistic phrase that is all too feeble in describing the unspeakable atrocities these incarnations of evil perpetrated on their fellow human beings. The documentary "Verdict on Auschwitz," made for German television in 1993 but not released theatrically in the United States until early 2007, provides a gripping, soul-searing account of that trial.
The 175-minute movie is divided into three sections that run roughly an hour apiece and cover slightly different aspects of the trial. The first, entitled "The Investigation," focuses on the German government's efforts in the late 1950's and early 1960's at tracking down many of the key Nazi leaders who had either fled the country (many to South America) or were living prosperous and quiet lives under assumed names in the very same country where they had perpetrated their crimes. Part I also details the early stages of the trial which included taped testimonies from a number of the survivors (over 350 in total), as well as from "outsiders" who visited the camp on "official" business. Because cameras were not allowed in the courtroom after the first fifteen minutes of the trial, these audio tapes, in many cases, have become our sole connection with the participants in the drama. These voices, like ghosts echoing down the corridors of time, provide a chilling first hand account of the atrocities. In addition to the recordings, the film includes interviews with a number of the participants in the trial, newsreel footage of the camp both before and after its liberation by Russian forces, and, perhaps most chillingly, shots of Auschwitz as it appears today (or more accurately, in 1993), its dilapidated, abandoned buildings serving as mute, ghostly witnesses to the most mind-numbing human tragedy of the 20th Century.
The second part, labeled simply "The Trial," chronicles in greater detail the testimony and documentation the prosecution used to bolster its case over the two-year course of the trial (the Nazis were nothing if not efficient in recording their actions for posterity). The third part - "The Verdict" - wraps up the case with the closing statements by both the prosecution and the defense as well as final statements by the men on trial. Even though the "verdict" seems preordained from the start, there's no denying that there is an intensely purgative effect for both the victims and the rest of us in seeing these human monsters exposed for what they are and finally brought to justice, even if the sentences do not seem exactly commensurate with the gravity of the crimes.
Like any work of art that attempts to come to grips with the horrors of that period, "Verdict on Auschwitz" can go only so far in providing answers for an event for which no satisfactory answers could ever truly be found. Why in this particular place? Why at that specific time? And how could such seemingly rational, "civilized" individuals - most mere businessmen with wives and children of their own - forsake all sense of common decency and humanity, and coldly and methodically participate in the wide scale torture and wholesale extermination of so many of their fellow human beings? We will surely never know the answers to these questions, but a movie like "Verdict on Auschwitz" serves as a painful but invaluable reminder that such things have happened in the past and they could very well happen in the future (as they clearly are in various parts of the world at this very moment). The lesson of "Verdict on Auschwitz" is that we ignore such reminders at our peril.
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