I watched this movie yesterday with my youngest son. It is the telling of how Germany began the process of confronting their behavior during WWII. It did not happen with the Nuremberg Trials. In fact in the years after the war, most Germans did not know about the concentration camps and the behavior of soldiers towards others, the unspeakable small and large cruelties that they undertook each and everyday. This is the story of Johann Rachmann, an ambitious and righteous young prosecutor who follows up a complaint that a guard at Auschwitz is teaching at a local school, which is against the law, but at the time completely overlooked. When he sees that in fact the teacher was not removed, he digs deeper and no one wants to hear what he has to say.
The next step is to delve into the archives that the Americans have on Nazi crimes. Almost everyone tells him not to, but never the less, he persists. What he finds drives him mad, but he eventually brings people to trial, which lasts for almost 2 years, and ends with the beginning of a new reckoning. Very painful to watch but magnificently done.
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