Recently on Disney+ I watched this five part series. It was dubbed into English, not altogether smoothly and I felt that some of the translation and inflections were muddled, but getting past that the premise of the film was intriguing.
A young woman in her twenties, a proficient translator (German/Polish), is called upon to translate for people called as witnesses in a trial. It’s 1963, decades have passed, but the weight of war is still very heavy within the German communities.
It was intriguing from the perspective of, how did the German people explain the horrors of war and living in Europe during the war, to their children. Just take a moment, the fragility of your personal safety, the fragility of your associations, the vehemence of the power of indoctrination and dictatorship of the Reich forcing intelligent people into utterly horrific situations. The cold fingers of suspicion and mistrust everywhere.
The Frankfurt Trials were beginning to uncover and bring into the light the actions of those in charge at Auschwitz and Birkenau, the mass executions, the mass gassing, the branding and the unethical torturous ‘medical research’ callously inflicted upon those interred there.
Apart from hearing the testimonies of the survivors, and visiting the concentration camp, there is the defensive attitude of the defendants. Away from the trial, the stench and stain of the past is far reaching, her parents run a successful restaurant but from time to time a customer appears who her parents refuse to serve, without explanation. She is being courted by a successful young man whose father has secrets too. Sins of the past follow their future.
The hardest bitterest truth to discover is her own. As a small child (she became 24 in 1963, so born at the start of World War II) these snap shot memories slowly fit into place, changing her core truths and trusts.
It was well scripted and acted, if a little bumpy at times, not too too many subtle nuances that were crucial to catch. It was thought provoking and informative without being gory or showy.
This was one of those shows, as with many based on true story dramas, that you cannot say was entertaining or suspenseful but it was a very good watch.
Just Me, Nobody Special 
daryan12
December 17, 2023 at 4:58 pm
A few of the various BBC documentaries have touched on this. Basically, the German population (and most of the rest of Europe, its not like anti-antisemitism was uniquely German) were aware of what was going on. They’d heard the rumours & put two and two together.
In fact the local nazi offices were often swamped with reports from citizens acting on their own initiative snitching on one another (not least because if you wanted to hurt someone you didn’t like, the best way to do that was report them to the Gestapo).
The most chilling story, a Jewish guy after the war went back to see the house he used to live in. The Polish man who lived in it, said he was only back looking for his Jew gold & they should split it. The Jewish man politely left, but returned a few years later to find the house derelict. According to neighbours, the occupier had destroyed the house as he frantically searched for the Jew gold (which obviously didn’t exist). So its not like these prejudices disappeared in 1945.
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snowbird
January 1, 2024 at 9:30 pm
You’ve sold this I’ll look out for it.xxx
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