devil's advocate
May. 27th, 2006 08:19 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dream_labyrinthYesterday night, there was a movie about Mengele on TV.
I always hated the feeling of collective guilt so many Germans think appropriate when dealing with the Third Reich.
I am deeply impressed by the lives of those who dared to oppose, openly like the White Rose or Stauffenberg, or not so open like Schindler.
I know myself well enough to know I wouldn't have the strength to do that. I would be one of the many who keep their heads down and try to survive without loading too much guilt on themselves.
I don't think badly of those who didn't oppose Hitler because I think I can understand why they didn't.
I am usually willing to see the human beings behind all the lesser wheels in the machinery.
But Josef Mengele...
The film starts with the lawyer, Peter Rohm, getting kidnapped by a right-winged publisher and brought to South America where he meets an old man. Rohm has for years collected materials about Josef Mengele to write a book, but hasn't been able to actually write anything because he still can't understand why. The old man, who claims to be Mengele, gives him the choice to either leave or ask whatever question he has. Rohm asks some questions but doesn't get any satisfying answers, so leaves.
Getting off the plane in Germany, he is faced by a bunch of journalists, the police, and finds out than the man claiming to be Mengele was on the plane with him and now tells the journalists who he is and that Rohm is going to defend him in his trial.
At first, he wants to refuse, but eventually he relents. His main aim is trying to understand, but he also believes that everybody has the right to a trial, even a man like Mengele.
That the man really is Mengele is proven by scans of his scull and questioning him about his biography. He's old, but still pretty healthy for his age, and so is put on trial.
The indictment is huge. He's accused of sending people into the gas chambers, of experimenting on them, of vivisections, of killing people to dissect them, of throwing a baby into an oven alive, of injecting chemicals into the eyes of children - and while all that is read, outside in front of the court building neo-nazis demonstrate and claim that Auschwitz was not an extermination camp, and left-winged protesters fight them, resulting in 30 injured protesters and policemen.
Witnesses are heard who tell their stories - a man who tells about children who were sewn together back to back and died of the infection of their wounds, a woman who tells how both she and her daughter were sterilised and her daughter died shortly after the surgery, a woman telling how Mengele opened her spine to get to the marrow, without anaesthesia, a man who was crippled during the experiments. And Rohm tries to defend Mengele. Mengele claims that he killed people so they wouldn't have to die a long, horrible and painful death in the camp. He claims that those people were as good as dead anyway. He claims that what he did was generally accepted as the medical practice of his time, that it cannot and should not be measured by today's moral standards. Rohm questions a doctor who explains how euthanasia is practiced today to spare people pain, he tries to point out that Mengele might not be personally responsible for what he is accused of, he tries to make the witnesses contradict themselves to show they're not trustworthy.
As Mengele, on the first day of the trial, did say that Auschwitz was indeed an extermination camp, the people who got him to Germany and protected him (and his lawyer) turn against him. His doctor almost kills him, but Mengele finds out what he's trying to do and tells him he's made a list of the people who helped and protected him and that in case of his death, that list will be made public. So the doctor doesn't kill him, and is killed later by a car bomb that also injurs the lawyer's wife who is a journalist and writes articles the neo-nazis aren't happy about.
One witness if Rohm's mother. She worked in a mental institution for two years, later deleted those years from her resume and pretended it never happened. Mengele knows her and tells Rohm about it. He confronts his mother and she explains how she gave injections to two patients who died in the following night and how she felt guilty about it, even though in her case she didn't know what medication she was giving, she was just learning to be a nurse.
She also tells about a chamber that was installed in one of the rooms, operating for two weeks. In those two weeks several patients died and the whole building smelled of chemicals. The plumber who installed the pipe system in that chamber is questions, he said he didn't know what it was for until he disassembled it and had to bring it to Auschwitz, he just did what he was told. He almost breaks down crying in court.
The district attorney asks Rohm's mother whether she feels guilty. And she looks at him, totally surprised, and says "Yes..." in a tone that implies "... of course".
In his pleading, Rohm first summarizes what he's said during the trial - but doesn't say what verdict he wants. And when the judge asks him, he sits down and says something completely else.
He explains that all he wanted was an explanation, that he tried to understand Mengele's actions from the viewpoint of the time in which they happened - but that Mengele was still the worst sort of criminal he had ever seen and that while the trial had not brought any sort of enlightenment concerning his motives, except the ones he was charged of, it did who to Rohm how easily he was lured into believing there must be a morally acceptable explanation and that Mengele wasn't the monster he appeared to be. And then Rohm pleads for the highest possible sentence.
He leaves Mengele, who has this totally scary monologue, claiming that he didn't do anything wrong, that he is innocent, and that he did it for the best and that today's medicine only is as advanced as it is because of what he and his mentors did, and his last line is "Don't you see something of yourself in me?"
I have the same feeling I had when I read The Wave. I am sick and scared of myself, of humans in general, because we are able to do that sort of thing and not one achievement of our oh so highly developed civilization can really stop us.
And I am scared because I can't claim I would have done everything I could do stop people like Mengele, and it makes me afraid of the things I myself might do. If the morals and ethics and learning of thousands of people didn't prevent the Holocaust, what would my values and learning prevent me from doing?
I always hated the feeling of collective guilt so many Germans think appropriate when dealing with the Third Reich.
I am deeply impressed by the lives of those who dared to oppose, openly like the White Rose or Stauffenberg, or not so open like Schindler.
I know myself well enough to know I wouldn't have the strength to do that. I would be one of the many who keep their heads down and try to survive without loading too much guilt on themselves.
I don't think badly of those who didn't oppose Hitler because I think I can understand why they didn't.
I am usually willing to see the human beings behind all the lesser wheels in the machinery.
But Josef Mengele...
The film starts with the lawyer, Peter Rohm, getting kidnapped by a right-winged publisher and brought to South America where he meets an old man. Rohm has for years collected materials about Josef Mengele to write a book, but hasn't been able to actually write anything because he still can't understand why. The old man, who claims to be Mengele, gives him the choice to either leave or ask whatever question he has. Rohm asks some questions but doesn't get any satisfying answers, so leaves.
Getting off the plane in Germany, he is faced by a bunch of journalists, the police, and finds out than the man claiming to be Mengele was on the plane with him and now tells the journalists who he is and that Rohm is going to defend him in his trial.
At first, he wants to refuse, but eventually he relents. His main aim is trying to understand, but he also believes that everybody has the right to a trial, even a man like Mengele.
That the man really is Mengele is proven by scans of his scull and questioning him about his biography. He's old, but still pretty healthy for his age, and so is put on trial.
The indictment is huge. He's accused of sending people into the gas chambers, of experimenting on them, of vivisections, of killing people to dissect them, of throwing a baby into an oven alive, of injecting chemicals into the eyes of children - and while all that is read, outside in front of the court building neo-nazis demonstrate and claim that Auschwitz was not an extermination camp, and left-winged protesters fight them, resulting in 30 injured protesters and policemen.
Witnesses are heard who tell their stories - a man who tells about children who were sewn together back to back and died of the infection of their wounds, a woman who tells how both she and her daughter were sterilised and her daughter died shortly after the surgery, a woman telling how Mengele opened her spine to get to the marrow, without anaesthesia, a man who was crippled during the experiments. And Rohm tries to defend Mengele. Mengele claims that he killed people so they wouldn't have to die a long, horrible and painful death in the camp. He claims that those people were as good as dead anyway. He claims that what he did was generally accepted as the medical practice of his time, that it cannot and should not be measured by today's moral standards. Rohm questions a doctor who explains how euthanasia is practiced today to spare people pain, he tries to point out that Mengele might not be personally responsible for what he is accused of, he tries to make the witnesses contradict themselves to show they're not trustworthy.
As Mengele, on the first day of the trial, did say that Auschwitz was indeed an extermination camp, the people who got him to Germany and protected him (and his lawyer) turn against him. His doctor almost kills him, but Mengele finds out what he's trying to do and tells him he's made a list of the people who helped and protected him and that in case of his death, that list will be made public. So the doctor doesn't kill him, and is killed later by a car bomb that also injurs the lawyer's wife who is a journalist and writes articles the neo-nazis aren't happy about.
One witness if Rohm's mother. She worked in a mental institution for two years, later deleted those years from her resume and pretended it never happened. Mengele knows her and tells Rohm about it. He confronts his mother and she explains how she gave injections to two patients who died in the following night and how she felt guilty about it, even though in her case she didn't know what medication she was giving, she was just learning to be a nurse.
She also tells about a chamber that was installed in one of the rooms, operating for two weeks. In those two weeks several patients died and the whole building smelled of chemicals. The plumber who installed the pipe system in that chamber is questions, he said he didn't know what it was for until he disassembled it and had to bring it to Auschwitz, he just did what he was told. He almost breaks down crying in court.
The district attorney asks Rohm's mother whether she feels guilty. And she looks at him, totally surprised, and says "Yes..." in a tone that implies "... of course".
In his pleading, Rohm first summarizes what he's said during the trial - but doesn't say what verdict he wants. And when the judge asks him, he sits down and says something completely else.
He explains that all he wanted was an explanation, that he tried to understand Mengele's actions from the viewpoint of the time in which they happened - but that Mengele was still the worst sort of criminal he had ever seen and that while the trial had not brought any sort of enlightenment concerning his motives, except the ones he was charged of, it did who to Rohm how easily he was lured into believing there must be a morally acceptable explanation and that Mengele wasn't the monster he appeared to be. And then Rohm pleads for the highest possible sentence.
He leaves Mengele, who has this totally scary monologue, claiming that he didn't do anything wrong, that he is innocent, and that he did it for the best and that today's medicine only is as advanced as it is because of what he and his mentors did, and his last line is "Don't you see something of yourself in me?"
I have the same feeling I had when I read The Wave. I am sick and scared of myself, of humans in general, because we are able to do that sort of thing and not one achievement of our oh so highly developed civilization can really stop us.
And I am scared because I can't claim I would have done everything I could do stop people like Mengele, and it makes me afraid of the things I myself might do. If the morals and ethics and learning of thousands of people didn't prevent the Holocaust, what would my values and learning prevent me from doing?
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no subject
Date: 2006-05-27 07:46 am (UTC)Just because you happened to be born in Germany does not mean you are predisposed to wanting to kill Jewish people, or Turkish people, or Mongolian people, or any other people. I know for a fact that my distant ancestors owned slaves and probably did their part to steal land from Native Americans. Do I feel bad about it? Yes. Was it long before I was born? Yes.
It's stuff like th Holocaust, the extermination of Armeanians by the Turnks, what happened under Pol Pot, that makes me pessimistic about humanity. I think we all have to work hard to try and be good, becuase we all to easily become sucked up what our culture says is "the right thing to do"
Sorry if I'm not making sense. It's after 3:00am here and I've had a bit of beer.
no subject
Date: 2006-05-27 08:19 am (UTC)