I've read a lot of books about the Holocaust since I was a kid. Each book seemed to contribute another small piece of horror to an already overwhelmingly horrible database of knowledge. This film, through the eyewitness accounts, has shown me some things that had really seemed inconceivable to me in the past.
There are two different interview that come to mind. The first involved some Polish farmers around either Chelmo or Treblinka (I've forgotten which one). The second involved some Polish townspeople near one of the extermination camps.
The interview with the Polish farmers was in Part 1. The part of the interview that really disturbed me (besides the horror of the killings that went on there) was the attitudes of a few of the men they interviewed. They talked about how horrible it was, etc. but their facial expressions and general attitudes were happy. They were saying the right things, but they were smiling and laughing with each other as they remembered the trains pulling up with people waiting to be killed. It doesn't seem possible that someone would be able to smile and joke around as they remembered this.
The second interview that disturbed me was one where some Polish townspeople near one of the extermination camps (maybe Chelmo?) where gathered around a survivor who had returned to the area. They were happy to see him and talked about his beautiful singing as a boy and how wonderful it was to see him. Then at the end of that part of the interview, as they are still standing around him, the interviewer asks them why they think the Holocaust happens. Then, as this survivor continues to smile uneasily, the townspeople start going on about how the Jews died in the Holocaust because they had killed Jesus. One man told a "true story" about how a group of Jews were gathered in the village square and while they were waiting for the Nazis to take them away, their rabbi announces that they deserved this because they had taken the blood of the innocent Christ on their heads. This man really believed this story was true. The people really believed the theory behind it was true. And, the whole time that they're talking about this, the survivor is standing and smiling uncomfortably in the middle of them. It is bad enough to read about this stuff and wonder how people can possibly believe some of the ridiculous, yet very dangerous, things about the Jews. It is another thing altogether to actually listen to people spouting off these things that they obviously believe deeply. And all this is after witnessing some of the most horrible things people can witness.
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