Benutzer:Btvwiki/Ordinary Men: The "Forgotten Holocaust"
Ordinary Men: The "Forgotten Holocaust" is a German documentary film by director Manfred Oldenburg and producer Leopold Hoesch from 2021. The film was broadcast on ZDF on January 25, 2022 and is available on the streaming platform Netflix since September 15, 2023.
Content
[Bearbeiten | Quelltext bearbeiten]75 years after the end of the Nuremberg Military Tribunals, the documentary takes a look at another trial that made history. The Einsatzgruppen trial in Nuremberg against members of four death squads from the Security Police and SD, the SS security service, is considered the largest murder trial in history.
Six million Jews were murdered during the Second World War. Three million people died in the death camps, two million were killed in systematic mass shootings. A fact that is hardly known today. The perpetrators were face to face with their victims. They shot men, women and children - day after day, obediently and assiduously, as if it was a normal job. Tens of thousands of Germans belonged to the mobile commandos of the Einsatzgruppen and police battalions. The film takes a look at who these men were and how they were able to commit such crimes, what the few survivors reported and how they escaped the mass murder.
Author Manfred Oldenburg traces the path of one of the murder battalions on the basis of written records, original documents, film footage and photos as well as scenic reconstructions. Historians and social psychologists comment on it.
Benjamin Ferencz plays a central role in the film. The American jurist made history, was chief prosecutor in Nuremberg against leading members of the so-called "Einsatzgruppen". An in-depth interview with Ferencz, who is now one hundred and one years old, forms a guide for the film.
Production and distribution
[Bearbeiten | Quelltext bearbeiten]The film is a co-production of Broadview Pictures and ZDF. Since September 15, 2023, the film is available on the streaming platform Netflix.