New on Netflix: The Accountant of Auschwitz

in netflix •  5 years ago  (edited)

Making the rounds of having possibly too much World War 2 features, this particular program focuses on a relatively recent trial of Oskar Gröning, who served, as the title suggests, as a book-keeper in the famous German death camp in Poland with the SS.


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The trial took place a few years ago when a then 93-year old Oskar finally had war crimes charges brought against him. Unlike previous trials, Oskar did not deny being involved and was quite straight-forward in his testimony, even at the expense of sounding cruel and guilty by saying things such as "The children, they're not the enemy at the moment. The enemy is the blood inside them." Keep in mind that this was a statement made about the Nazi ideology in the 40's, and was not a reflection of his current feeling. However, it was probably not a great thing to say and can easily be used against a person.

I have one big problem with this special that in my mind make it very skippable. They don't really have much of a story here and that is evidenced in the fact that nearly 1/3 of the entire 1 hour special is dedicated to the story of John Demjanjuk, who was another SS operative that stood trial for warcrimes in Israel and later Germany. This person has nothing to do with Oscar. They never met - it is filler - nothing more. They also focus really heavily on the opinions of random people who were not necessarily tied to the case.

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a photo of 23-year old Oskar Gröning

The special raises a couple of interesting questions about involvement in military operations and there are no good answers unfortunately.

  • At what point does a person who is following orders and is in no way the architect of the objectives of said operations become guilty of war crimes?
  • If you were to refuse the orders of your superiors, what would happen to you? While there are no records of SS soldiers being severely punished (or executed) for refusing to obey orders this is either because no solider ever refused orders or because (and I feel this is more likely) these actions were hidden by the Nazis and the "dissidents" were not severely punished in order to prevent a sympathetic backlash among fellow soldiers.
  • Should a person who was at minimum complicit in murder be severely punished 70 years after the events took place?

After watching this special I'm afraid there doesn't seem to be any real conclusion, especially when people are calling for a life sentence for a 93-year old man.


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I watch these things because I am a bit of a World War 2 history buff, but to be honest, this is one of the least watchable specials that Netflix has on the topic (and I feel as though they have been releasing entirely too many of these.)

As the library of "good stuff to watch on Netflix" seems to dwindle as time goes by, I'm afraid I'm gonna have to add this to the stack of stuff that I wish I hadn't bothered to see. Basically, the end result is that Oscar was convicted of some relatively minor stuff and never saw a single day on the inside of a jail cell. Sorry for the spoiler, but this is one hour that i think you could spend on really anything else and it would be a better use of your time. This is especially true if you have already seen The Devil Next Door in which case you have already watched 20 minutes of this documentary.

My overall rating?


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you are correct, as was @cardboard. It was just a typo and i am fixing it now. Thank you for pointing out my mistake.

"Polish death camp" controversy
"Polish death camp" and "Polish concentration camp" are misnomers that have been a subject of controversy and legislation. Such terms have been used by news media and by public figures in reference to concentration camps that were built and run during World War II by Nazi Germany in German-occupied Poland.
When used in relation to the Holocaust or to the murder of Poles and other nationalities in German-operated facilities, these phrases refer to the camps' geographic location in German-occupied Poland. However, the expressions have also been seen as undermining Germany's responsibility for the Holocaust, and can be misconstrued as meaning "death camps set up by Poles" or "run by Poland".

famous Polish death camp

GERMAN DEATH CAMP

It was build to genocide Poles, Jews and other national/ethnic groups by German Nazis.

terrible mistake on my part buddy, i will edit it now. you are correct and thank you for pointing that out.

It's OK, nothing personal :) Thank you for correcting it. To be honest this mistake is still often made even by professional journalist and it's very important to always try to correct it. Have a great weekend :)

I was hoping for something decent. like you I love my war stuff and always on the lookout for something interesting. Waiting for the series World War 2 factories to come live in Mobdro as I see they have released 6 or 7 episodes and nothing available yet. Especially looking forward to the Krupps episode as they are still manufacturing things today.

Netflix does have some colorized footage series that was just dropped, or just became evident on my account anyway. That's pretty good stuff.

I have been watching it and some stuff I learned which was interesting. Didn't know the German army whilst doing the Blitzkrieg were on crystal meth for 3 days which made them invincible giving them a robotic/zombie mindset.

yeah, that was pretty crazy. I think we watched the same episode. Like stimpacks in StarCraft.

Those are some really interesting questions. I do think that sometimes complicity can be just as bad as the crime itself. As a pretty decent person I would like to think I would stand up against injustices even if it was at the expense of my career or life, but until I am actually in that situation I can't say that for 100%. It sounds like at the least they should have given the special a different name and at least focused on maybe three to five different cases to fill the time better.