Final Account
In 2008, filmmaker Luke Holland began an ambitious project- he decided to speak to the last generation who formed the Nazi Party in Germany during WWII. All of his subjects were born in the early 1920s, and began in the Hitler Youth programs before either becoming members of the SS, or involved in some capacity in the exploitation, and eventual extermination, of Jews in the Holocaust. Throughout much of the film, we hear them discuss growing up in Germany at that time, during the rise of Hitler to power, and eventually transitioning into the worst parts of the Shoah, as they would grow up to work in camps as guards, or supervisors. Their words give us as clear an idea of what it was like to be growing up in Germany in the time of Hitler as any film has likely given us.
One of the things Holland does not really address in his film- and “Final Account” doesn’t miss it- is how Germany as a country has tried to reckon with the atrocities done in their name by the Nazis in WWII. It’s one thing that us in the United States have never fully done with regards to slavery, or the genocide of the Native Americans, and I could not help but think, during “Final Account,” is that one of the reasons we’ve never really been able to is because no one alive now can give us a clear picture of what it was like in documentaries such as the ones we’ve gotten about the Holocaust. That’s not an excuse for our inaction, mind you, but maybe, hearing first-person accounts of those events on film, we could have seen the people who lived through those times discuss them in their own words, more people would understand why just “getting over it” is not the answer when it comes to pains that reverberate through generations that follow. Since America had white supremacy written into its founding documents, however, that might be a tougher nut to crack, though.
I have never watched “Shoah,” the epic documentary by Claude Lanzmann about the Holocaust- it’s 9 1/2 hour running time has always been intimidating to me, as I’m sure it might be to others. “Final Account” is more condensed at 94 minutes, but no less impactful in how Holland gives us modern interviews with his subjects, archival film footage and photos, as well as what some of these locations look like now. He has a clear through line of events, and each interview subject gives us another piece of the puzzle. There is not a single Holocaust survivor interviewed- that is not Holland’s movie; his movie is to show us what authoritarian governments bring out in people who are not given a choice in how they serve their country, and how the every day discrimination of Jews in Hitler’s Germany became something more insidious with events like Kristallnacht in 1938, and finally leading up to a meeting in 1942 where the “Final Solution” was discussed. Holland actually stages another type of meeting in the same building in 2011, with a member of the SS speaking to students at the time. Whatever you think the meeting might be like going into that scene, I promise you it probably turns out differently than you think it will.
That meeting sets the stage for the third act of “Final Account,” where descriptions what it was like for these subjects transform into complicated questions of their personal culpability in what happened. This is the heart of Holland’s movie, and seeing his interviewees return, and equivocate on their individual responsibility for what happened during that time is chilling, and also frustratingly human. From one, we get straight-up denial about the scope of the Holocaust. From another, we get “that’s up to God to decide” rather than any personal accountability. From another, they recount how they saw a Nazi soldier actually admit they were a Nazi to a US soldier, and they wonder if they would have done the same. It’s one thing for us to be able to hold ourselves accountable for wrongs perpetrated against another individual, but one thing “Final Account” makes unnervingly clear is how, even after living a long life afterwards, it’s harder for some of us to take responsibility for our part in larger tragedies. After all, many of these people had to join the Party, and they were just following orders.
I’m curious if God will accept that as a reason for any of these people when they pass on. We shouldn’t, but we should also allow them some grace, if only for sharing with us their experiences during this film.
