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Source: https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/final-account-film-review-venice-2020
Elderly Nazis Discuss Involvement in Holocaust in New Documentary
(Hollywood Reporter) Deborah Young - British filmmaker Luke Holland's new documentary, "Final Account," includes interviews with German Wehrmacht soldiers, SS officers and prison camp guards who downplay Hitler's crimes of genocide. It's sobering to see how very few take responsibility for their personal role in killing their Jewish neighbors, and the hardest thing to hear are their justifications. Even former SS officers declare themselves not guilty, while proudly showing off their medals. All of Holland's efforts to make his subjects own up to being implicated in horrendous crimes go unheeded. Ordinary German and Austrian farm workers are made to admit that when Jewish escapees from the camp next door tried to hide on the farm, they were the ones who betrayed them. In a peaceful Austrian retirement home, elderly women recall the smell of the crematorium and burning flesh.