Germany’s Postwar Labyrinth of Lies: A Movie Review

September 29, 2015Aron Hirt-Manheimer

Editor's note: This post contains plot spoilers.

Until the publication of Daniel Goldhagen’s Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust in 1996, it was generally believed that the Holocaust was primarily perpetrated by hardcore Nazis. Not so, wrote Goldhagen: “Perfectly ordinary Germans” from all walks of life voluntarily, willingly, and zealously brutalized and murdered Jews as part of the so-called Final Solution.

Now, a powerful new German language film, Labyrinth of Lies, directed by Giulio Ricciarelli, dramatizes Germany’s postwar second generation’s awakening to this truth in the early 1960s.

Johann Radmann (Alexander Fehling), an idealistic young German traffic court prosecutor, learns for the first time about the existence of Auschwitz after a survivor recognizes a former death camp guard who now teaches at a local school. When the young prosecutor insists that the guard, Charles Schultz, be investigated, the chief prosecutor assures Johann that he will refer the matter to the education department. Johann later visits the school and sees Schultz in the playground. When he complains, the chief prosecutor warns, “All you will achieve is opening old wounds that were just starting to heal.”

Johann’s most prized possession is a photo of himself with his father, who died in combat. Its inscription – “Always do the right thing” – becomes Johann’s guiding principle; any deviation from veritas (truth) would be tantamount to dishonoring his father’s good name.

Johann’s unswerving quest for truth impresses Prosecutor General Fritz Bauer (Gert Voss), a Jewish concentration camp survivor who puts him in charge of investigating Schultz and other former Auschwitz guards. He tells Johann, “The Germans must see the crimes that were committed, not just by Hitler and Himmler, but by completely ordinary people who did it voluntarily, out of conviction. They are the ones we are trying. One big trial. This is the way to do it. And this is your task.”

At an Allied documentation center in Germany closed to the public, Johann is met by a dismissive American military officer who tells him he need not bother looking for perpetrators because, “You were all Nazis… your father was a Nazi.”

Johann replies incredulously, “No, he hated Nazis.”

The American responds, “Everyone became a resistance fighter in 1945.”

Johann is permitted access to files of 8,000 former Auschwitz guards, including that of Dr. Josef Mengele, who determined the fate of arrivals at Auschwitz and conducted brutal experiments on twins. Aided by two assistants, Johann then interviews survivors of the death camp in attempt to link the suspects with specific crimes. Despite continued resistance from the chief prosecutor, police, and intelligence officials, Johann’s quest for justice is unyielding – until he’s confronted with a shocking revelation.

His mother, whom he resents for marrying a former Nazi, informs him that his deceased father had also been a member of the Nazi Party. When Johann returns to the documentation center, he confirms this dreaded truth.

Haunted by the question of what he might have done in his father’s shoes, Johann is no longer sure of what is the right thing to do: to be an accomplice in a massive cover-up or to expose the labyrinth of lies.

Labyrinth of Lies, Germany’s Oscar selection, opens in theaters on September 30, 2015.

Aron Hirt-Manheimer is the Union for Reform Judaism’s editor-at-large.

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