Denial on trial

>> Concentration camp perpetrators take the stand
in the German documentary Verdict on Auschwitz

by MALCOLM FRASER

In 1964–65, a Frankfurt court held a trial for 22 men charged with murder and other crimes for their involvement with the Auschwitz extermination camp. German directors Rolf Bickel and Dietrich Wagner made Verdict on Auschwitz, a documentary on the trial, in 1993; for whatever reasons, only today is it showing on these shores.

The average ADD-generation viewer has internalized a firm but vague, Coles Notes version of the Holocaust, starting with Hitler’s Triumph of the Will motivational speeches and various History Channel clips, moving on to Schindler’s List and concluding with the grim footage taken by the armies who liberated the camps. It’s thus both enlightening and disturbing to learn just how long and painstaking a process it was for the truths we take for granted today (fans of Ernst Zundel and David Irving notwithstanding) to be revealed.

The Frankfurt trials took place 20 years after the end of the war, and the defendants, who’d either been in hiding under assumed identities or living unapologetically out in the open, used a simple defence strategy: faced with overwhelming evidence against them, they either denied everything, pleaded convenient lapses of memory or shrugged that they were just following orders.

From a cinematic point of view, the filmmakers have their work cut out for them, as the Frankfurt trials were only recorded in audio. Much of the testimony is played back over slow-moving shots of the empty courtroom, a device that most likely wouldn’t work with less weighty material, but that takes on a certain poignancy in this case with the knowledge that today, even most of the Auschwitz survivors are gone.

The film was originally made for TV, and is broken up into three sections, entitled The Investigation, The Trial and The Verdict. A small complaint: Inexplicably, the tail credits for each section are included; surely they could have been cut out for this theatrical release. Overall, though, the film is crucial viewing for those interested in a more detailed look at this period in history. In fact, even at three hours of often-difficult viewing, it left this viewer wanting to find out even more.

VERDICT ON AUSCHWITZ OPENS
THIS FRIDAY, MARCH 2

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