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For educational purposes

After being judged at the Nuremberg trials, the majority of those responsible for the murder of nearly 1.5 million Jews would walk free in the 1950s.

The time of reckoning comes. Soviet trials continued in the east, while in Nuremberg, in 1947, some leaders of the Nazi death commandos were tried.

In the new context of the Cold War, to spare German public opinion from feeling unfair, death sentences were commuted to lighter sentences.

Of the 24 EZG leaders tried at Nuremberg, only 4 were executed, most of those responsible for the murder of nearly a million and a half Jews were released in the 1950s.

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12:39What was the страш of when they were, when they were out, when they were out of the house?
12:45Then they were scary.
12:47They were not people, they were monsters.
12:52They went to any house, any house.
12:56All that was, they took them.
12:59The Germans, a grandmother in the house, there was a great big tree.
13:04All Germans went to this tree, sat down, sat down, and sat down.
13:08Our grandmother came out and said,
13:15''Kamrad, what is this?''
13:18And on the river, in the village of Piski, there was a strong fire.
13:25Something was burning.
13:27And he looked and said,
13:30''Kamrad, this is our kamrad, who threw a cigarette in the house.''
13:35And it was burning.
13:47In the spring of 1944, SS divisions operating in Eastern Europe were sent to the Western Front.
13:55In Italy, France, and Belgium, units for whom violence and mass murder were routine,
14:01brought along the methods they had practiced on the Eastern Front.
14:09In Tulle and Orador-sur-Glane, in France, the Das Reich division,
14:14which had participated in Einsatzgruppe B extermination operations,
14:19perpetrated the type of massacre that was daily fare in the Bielorussian hinterlands.
14:25642 people were brutally murdered, and the village was burned to the ground.
14:34And yet, the Nazi extermination machine continued, ineluctably.
14:39The gas chambers and furnaces operated until the final hours before the German retreat.
14:46Many of those who had not been gassed perished during the death marches.
14:51Henri Zajdenwerger, then a prisoner at Stutthof death camp, survived this ordeal.
14:57I remember, on the road, those who were not able to follow, they were attacked.
15:02They were in the forest, they were attacked, they remained there.
15:07And then, I remember also, I had my feet enveloped in a big paper cement.
15:13I walked with it, and I ate snow.
15:16I didn't want to think about what would happen later.
15:21I lived at the moment, at the moment, at the moment.
15:36I lived at the moment, at the moment.
15:37I thought, there's another minute, I'm still alive, that's essential.
15:40And I lived like that, in short sight.
15:44In the Crimea, Otto Ohlundorf's Einsatzgruppe,
15:48flanked by a militia of Tartar killers,
15:51had exterminated the Jews of Simferopol at Kilometer 11.
15:57Over 10,000 people between December 9th and 13th, 1941.
16:12Three years later, while the Germans were beating a retreat,
16:16a final action was carried out on March 13, 1944.
16:21I was born in Ukraine, in a Jewish family.
16:26My father is a Jewish family, my mother is a Ukrainian.
16:29It was 8 April 1939.
16:31I was a loving family.
16:33My parents were taught together in school.
16:36There was a big love.
16:38There were no Jews, no Jews, no Russians, no Jews, no pioneers, no Jews, no Jews.
16:43There were no rebels.
16:47No Jews, no foreigners, no Europeans, no Russians, no Americans.
16:52There were no rebels against this marriage.
16:54David Meyrovich and Kizilstein, Rosalia Abramovna.
16:59This is my father and my grandmother.
17:01They were tragically dead in 1941.
17:05In 1941, on December 10, in Simferopol,
17:11the German army entered.
17:13After the murder of her father and her Jewish grandparents,
17:16Nina Lizitsinas survived concealed by a priest.
17:20When he was hanged by the Nazis for rescuing Jews,
17:22she hid in her grandparents' cellar.
17:25Her false certificate of Aryan background was no help
17:28when she was denounced by a neighbor
17:29in the last days of the German occupation.
17:32And on April 13, 1944,
17:37I went to the house.
17:39I was already sick.
17:41I had my eye tuberculosis.
17:43I had my leg tuberculosis.
17:45I was sick.
17:47I literally cried.
17:47I was pissed.
17:49I was dying.
17:49I was temperatureed from the house.
17:53The police were taken away from the entrance.
17:59We were taken away from the river.
18:04Our troops were in a river.
18:08And this gentleman came into the house.
18:14She kept the child in their hands. Who they were, what they were, how many people were in a row.
18:19They brought an open car. There were a lot of people, almost full of people.
18:24They were thrown out of various policemen, officers and Jews.
18:30They were thrown out and killed. I don't remember anything.
18:50I came in a night, in a row.
18:56I fell out of a row, I don't know how many hours.
18:59I came in 11 hours, when the sun was shot.
19:04I came to the house to the people.
19:06There was no dog, no one was lying.
19:08No one was lying.
19:09I came to the house.
19:12They opened the house.
19:13They opened the house.
19:14They were all curses.
19:16They were recognized as criminals.
19:18They were all human blood.
19:20They quickly...
19:21There was a hot water.
19:23There was a cocktail.
19:24They bought me.
19:26They cut all the curses, to go to the partyzans.
19:31Because they knew that the Germans should be burning with people this village.
19:36So they didn't have any witnesses of their assault.
19:41Because they were nearby, in the village.
20:10Because they wereenza euros.
20:34The Battle of Berlin sounded the death knell of Nazism.
20:43The Third Reich, intended to last 1,000 years, was crushed by Allied bombing.
21:04On April 2nd, 1945, a few weeks before he killed himself in his bunker, Hitler wrote,
21:10In a world where the moral order is increasingly contaminated by the Jewish poison,
21:15a people immunized against it will someday recover its superiority.
21:20From this point of view, eternal gratitude will be due to National Socialism,
21:24because I have exterminated the Jews in Germany and Central Europe.
21:49Even before the German surrender, Nazi henchmen were seized and brought to justice.
21:54In 1943, the town of Kharkov, freed by the Soviets,
21:59held the first trial of the Nazi killers and their collaborators.
22:03Such courts became common all over Eastern Europe.
22:06On Soviet territory, the trials were held at a frenetic pace in the decades after the war.
22:18We were attacked by the Russians.
22:21We were attacked by the Russians.
22:21Only we were not desolated.
22:22It was very cold.
22:24We came into the gates in the gate.
22:27We entered and we were at a very small tent,
22:31in which you were able to hold its its exit.
22:34We had to fight the fight.
22:38I closed my eyes, closed my fingers,
22:40I pushed my muscles down to the fire.
22:44It seemed to me that I had a whole life,
22:46but I fell on the troops,
22:48and I was not killed.
22:52After a while, when the shooting was stopped,
22:56I heard that the Germans were down,
23:00in the air,
23:03and killed all of them.
23:07Many people were dead,
23:10many people were dead,
23:12many people were dead,
23:13they were dead,
23:14and killed all of them.
23:17I fell on the floor,
23:19I was scared,
23:20I was scared,
23:23I felt that there was an end.
23:26I decided to stop.
23:28I was scared,
23:29and I started to get down.
23:32I was scared,
23:37I was scared,
23:37but I felt that I was scared.
23:39I was scared,
23:40but I was afraid of being scared.
23:41When I left to get a few breathes,
23:44I decided to shoot,
23:46I was scared,
23:47as if I was scared,
23:49I felt that I was killed.
23:49and then,
23:49I was killed.
23:53I started to get down.
23:55but I didn't know that it was very dark.
24:00I had to go to the left hand,
24:04I was scared,
24:06I was scared.
24:10I stood up.
24:11I was scared,
24:12I was scared,
24:13after several breaths,
24:14I got out of the air,
24:16I was scared,
24:17I was scared,
24:17I was in the middle of the ground.
24:22It was dark.
24:25But it was dangerous to fall,
24:27because from the top to the bottom
24:29they were flying,
24:31they were flying in the storm.
24:34They could get into me,
24:36so I was very careful.
24:39I managed to fall to one of the high walls of the wall
24:43and it was very difficult to go to the top of the wall.
24:52Rīgā, Apgabala Virtsnieku namā,
24:5526. janvārī,
24:56sākās tiesa sprāva
24:58par Vācu fašistisko iebrucēja ļaundarībām.
25:02Apsūdzē pēc Friedrichs Piechka,
25:04SS Obergruppenführers policijas ģenerāls,
25:07bijušais SS Karistēku un policijas augstākais vadītājs,
25:11Baltijas...
25:11Skaidi redzams,
25:13ka tā prāve netiek vēsts
25:15pēc starptautiskajiem likumiem.
25:17Tas ir kara tribunāls,
25:21spriedums un iznākums
25:23apriori jau bija iepriekš zināmas.
25:26Tas taču bija skaidrs.
25:29Bet...
25:32Mēs jau arī negaidījām,
25:37ka tā būs tiesa,
25:40ar kādu tur smalkumu.
25:41Kāda tur var būt vainas pierādīšana.
25:46Kad...
25:48Kad visi zināja, ka viņš ir ne tikai rumbulas autors,
25:53viņš ir arī Babi Jāra autors.
25:56Viņš ir dienvidu Ukrainā un dienvidu Krievijā organizējis
26:00vislabāk organizētās un visplašākās ebreja akcijas,
26:08iznīcināšanas akcijas.
26:11Mašīna piebrauc uz zem karātavam,
26:13zem cilpas,
26:15un tie divi karavīri piepacēle to notiesātu,
26:21un iebāza galvu cilpā.
26:23Pēdējā iekelna kustība.
26:26Viņš visādi kustināja galvu,
26:30lai paildzinātu vēl pēdējos dzīves smirtus.
26:36Šievātu fašistis iebrucēja kāre un slepkavoja tūkstošu tūkstošiem
26:41mūsu tautas dēlus un meitas.
26:43Mūsu cimto zemi viņi pārklāja ar veselu karatavu mežu.
26:46Tagad nu bendēm pašiem jāsaņem karatavu cilta,
26:50un pienācis viņu kauna pilnais gals,
26:53lai iznīkst uz visiem laikiem brūnais pašas mamēris,
26:57lai tas nekad vairs nespēja apdraudēt brīvību vīrošās padomju tautas.
27:02Viņš vēl gribēja dzīvot.
27:05Pa to liecināja viņa izturēšanās tiesā.
27:09Viņš taču iesniedz apžēlošanas lūgumu,
27:14to vajadzētu vispār publicēt,
27:16lai viņam dāvā dzīvību,
27:18ka viņš izpirkšot,
27:20cik simti tūkstošu dzīvības viņam būtu bijis jāizspērk,
27:25ka viņš izpatiks pirkšot savus slikto darbus,
27:28nezināju, ar ko viņš viņas izpirks.
27:30Es domāju, nu, lielāku sakāvi,
27:38idejīsku sakāvi,
27:40un nazisms nevarēja piedzīvot,
27:42kā Jeklis raksta lūgumu augstākai pēstresa,
27:48augstākai padomai,
27:49lūgdams saglabāt viņam dzīvību.
27:55About 2,300 Jews were made harmless in a similar way.
28:04In Western Europe,
28:06Nazi criminals were judged at the Nuremberg trials.
28:09After he had condemned Goering and the top leaders of the regime,
28:13Benjamin Ferensch,
28:14the young American prosecutor
28:15who found the Einsatzgruppen Reports in Berlin,
28:18convinced the tribunal to add a trial
28:21dedicated to the crimes of the death commandos on the Eastern Front.
28:25It opened on September 15, 1947.
28:28To hear these charges of international crimes
28:31and to adjudge them in the name of civilization.
28:35We had the list.
28:37I knew who they were.
28:38We captured their roster.
28:41We immediately sent the information out
28:43to all of the POW camps.
28:45Anybody who's on this list,
28:49please report to headquarters.
28:50Some of the men we already had in custody
28:53for the International Military Tribunal trial.
28:56We had about 10 million Nazi Party files that we captured.
28:59We just selected a few sample cases
29:02to prove to the world beyond doubt what had happened
29:06and to hold accountable a few of the leaders
29:09who were responsible for those crimes.
29:12Most of them had doctor degrees.
29:14Many of them were lawyers.
29:16Some of them, one of them in particular,
29:18had two doctor degrees, Dr. Dr. Rush.
29:21I had a special affection to put him on trial.
29:24His lawyer came to see me.
29:26He was, of course, indicted for that crime
29:28without reference to Bobby Yar.
29:30We just knew it was in the area of Kiev, from his report.
29:34His lawyer came to see me.
29:36And he said, we have to drop the case against Rush.
29:41And I said, why?
29:42He said, because he's sick.
29:44He can't stand trial.
29:45I said, what does he have?
29:46He said, he has Parkinson's disease.
29:48I said, what's Parkinson's disease?
29:51He said, he's shaking all the time.
29:55I said, if I kill that many people, I'd be shaking too.
30:08He died.
30:11I don't know in which direction he moved,
30:14but I think it was a just result, immediate justice.
30:19Blowville was his chief, General SS.
30:23But Blowville, by the time he got around to it,
30:26after Stalingrad, and they thought, hey,
30:29there may be a day of reckoning,
30:30he tried to conceal the evidence of his crime
30:33by digging him up and blowing him up
30:34so there would be no evidence available.
30:36It didn't help him.
30:38How do you plead to this indictment?
30:40Guilty or not guilty?
30:44You may be seated.
30:48Judge Spake will now question the following defendants.
30:52And then, for the ridiculous reason,
30:54we limited the number of defendants to 24.
30:58In fact, two of them dropped out,
31:00one for death and one for suicide.
31:01We had 22.
31:02And the reason it was limited for 22 or 24,
31:06out of 3,000 mass murderers,
31:08was we didn't have any more seats in the courtroom.
31:11The psychological profile was probably very much the same,
31:14but the argumentation in the courtroom was different.
31:19Some of them lied outrageously.
31:23Outrageously.
31:25Was?
31:26Juden erschossen?
31:28Das hörst zum ersten Mal.
31:30Which meant, I hear now for the first time
31:33that Jews were killed.
31:37Some said we were only obeying superior orders.
31:41This was standard.
31:42Others said I wasn't there.
31:43I could play one against the other.
31:45And the evidence given in court was mostly a pack of lies.
31:51But the mentality was all the same.
31:54These were loyal German Nazi fanatics
31:58who believed in what they were doing,
32:00who thought what they were doing was right.
32:03The best explanation for the justification for what they did
32:06was given by Otto Ohlendorf.
32:08Ohlendorf was an intelligent man,
32:10Dr. Otto Ohlendorf,
32:13father of five children, general in the SS,
32:15and a fairly honest man.
32:18He explained why he did this.
32:21And it's important to know the mentality of mass murderers.
32:25If you want to stop mass murderers,
32:28you must know what motivates them.
32:30How do their minds work?
32:32And Ohlendorf was the perfect man to explain that to me,
32:36and I drew it out of him,
32:37and the judges drew it out of him as well.
33:02To which army was group D attached?
33:19Where did group D operate?
33:23Where did group D operate?
33:24Gruppe D operierte in der südlichen Ukraine.
33:39And he said, we did it in self-defense.
33:43I said, what do you mean, self-defense?
33:46Nobody attacked Germany.
33:47Germany attacked Poland, Russia, France, Belgium,
33:52Holland, Sweden, Norway.
33:53Where is your self-defense?
33:55Uh-huh, he said.
33:56But I knew, we knew that Soviet Union intended to attack us,
34:03and therefore we had to attack them first to preempt an attack against us.
34:09And why did you kill all the Jews?
34:11Well, everybody knows the Jews were sympathetic to the Bolsheviks,
34:14and so you had to kill them too.
34:17And why did you kill all the children?
34:20Well, if we eliminated the parents, the children would grow up,
34:25and they would be enemies of the Reich as well.
34:28So we were interested in the long-term security of our country,
34:33and therefore we had to kill the children too.
34:37As if to say it's perfectly logical to kill thousands of little children.
34:42Otto Ollendorf states that his estimate of the number killed
34:46by the Eins Gruppe D during the time that he was in charge was 90,000.
34:52And he comes to that conclusion from the reports.
34:56And that is what I understand he says today.
35:01I am not very concerned with this, Mr. President.
35:05And in this case not, as I said,
35:11that this number of 90,000 was killed as killed.
35:17But I can neither do that they were really killed,
35:22nor do that much less do that they were killed,
35:26because, in other words, I certainly know that
35:34from the Einsatzgruppen,
35:36there were foreign events,
35:38from the Einsatzgruppen,
35:40there were foreign events,
35:41there were foreign events.
35:43Therefore, I could only repeat that
35:47there were 90,000.
35:50There were 90,000.
35:50people had already been taken.
35:53Dr. Norbert Montenegro
35:53Ollendorf was a good example of the type of man who would do that.
35:58And he explained that he would have done it again,
36:00he would do it again.
36:01He believed that the Führer knew more than he did,
36:05and if it was necessary for the protection of Germany,
36:07he would do it again.
36:09And he was the father of five children,
36:11And because he was honest, I thought, well, I didn't want him to have the feeling that my personal intervention
36:18was vengeance as a Jew and glorifying, you know, getting even with this major general in the SS who killed
36:2990,000 Jews.
36:31I thought, well, he's a human being.
36:33He's got a family.
36:34He's got five children.
36:35Maybe he wants me to take some message to his wife or something like that.
36:39So I went down.
36:41To the death house, which is right below the courtroom, there's a little lift goes down, and there are the
36:47various cells.
36:49And they brought him out in a little cell with a heavy glass in between, a few holes in it.
36:56And I said, Herr Ollendorf, I spoke to him in German, he had been sentenced to death.
37:02We both knew he was a dead man.
37:05Is there anything I can do for you?
37:09And it was a human gesture.
37:12I didn't think in terms of clemency.
37:15It was just a human gesture.
37:17I thought he might say, well, tell my wife, my children, I love them, I'm sorry, something.
37:22He said, the Jews in America will suffer for this.
37:27It was threatening me.
37:32I said, goodbye, Mr. Ollendorf, in English.
37:35I turned around and walked away.
37:37The next time I saw, Ollendorf was on photograph of him dropping in the gallows and lying dead in a
37:44coffin.
37:45Those were the only words I ever exchanged with Ollendorf or with any of the defendants.
37:49The only words I ever wanted to exchange.
37:55Of the 24 Einsatzgruppe officers judged at Nuremberg, two were sentenced to jail for life, six to shorter terms and
38:0414 to death by hanging.
38:06Only four of them were actually executed.
38:09The 10 other death sentences were commuted to life imprisonment.
38:14And in 1958, all the prisoners were freed.
38:20Why do the sins are commuted to Nuremberg?
38:24They are commuted because the Americans, from 1947-48, have the interest, well understood,
38:32to have a strong Germany allied, strong and firmly linked in the occidental camp face to the cold war that
38:43is destined.
38:44Or, l'opinion allemande est extrêmement sensible à cette question de la justice et à cette question des procès de
38:52vainqueurs.
38:53Je vous rappelle qu'il y a un rejeu très fort entre l'imaginaire de sortie de guerre de 1945
39:00et celui de 1918.
39:01Des procès de criminels de guerre, il y en a eu à Leipzig, après la Première Guerre mondiale.
39:07Et peu ou prou, l'opinion allemande est extrêmement travaillée par des courants conservateurs qui voient dans ces procès à
39:17Nuremberg des procès de vainqueurs,
39:19des procès qui ne veulent que traiter la question de la culpabilité allemande.
39:24Or, les Américains veulent éviter une sortie de guerre à la 1918 et vont donc mettre en place une politique
39:31d'application des peines qui est extrêmement libérale.
39:34En effet, avec des gens comme Zahnberger qui ont été condamnés à mort, puis peines commues à perpétuité, puis cinq
39:41ans,
39:41et qui Zahnberger a dû sortir en 54, je crois.
39:45Donc il a fait six ans de prison alors qu'il a été condamné à la corde.
39:48Donc, nothing happened to the thousands of shooters.
39:52Nothing happened to commanders whom we didn't have in custody.
39:56Because as a practical matter, if we didn't have them, we couldn't stay on in Germany and continue to search
40:03for them.
40:03Years later, the Germans, as a result of some provocation, won't go into the detail,
40:08was set up at Centralstelle, or Central Office for the Prosecution of Nazi criminals.
40:14And I knew the people who were in charge of that, and they were good people.
40:17And they got dossiers of all of these Einsatzgruppen files that we had.
40:21We turned our files over to them and also to the state prosecution authorities.
40:26And they began a number of prosecutions.
40:29Ensuite, les officiers plus subalternes ont eux aussi été souvent inquiétés, énormément interrogés, parfois mis en examen.
40:39Mais il ne faut pas s'étonner que relativement peu d'enquêtes débouchent sur un procès,
40:46au sens où les Allemands opèrent le choix fondamental de poursuivre sans encourir le risque d'accusation de rétroactivité.
40:56Donc on ne pourchasse que pour, on opère des poursuites que pour meurtres et complicité de meurtres, hein.
41:02Le crime de guerre, le crime contre l'humanité n'existe pas en droit allemand dans les années 30,
41:07et donc ce ne sont pas des chefs d'accusation pertinent.
41:14Most of the thousands of German killers returned to jobs with the police, their pre-war occupation.
41:21Men who had operated at the heart of the Nazi death squads
41:25could be found directing traffic, investigating crimes,
41:28or writing reports in the offices of the West German Interior Ministry after the war.
41:33They were never bothered.
41:4965 years after the perpetration of the crimes against humanity on their soil,
41:55two decades after the collapse of the Soviet Empire,
41:58the countries of Eastern Europe seem to have come back to life.
42:11The devastation left by World War II, then the Soviet dictatorship,
42:16has nonetheless left indelible traces.
42:25The killers and their collaborators have done their time at the Gulag,
42:29at least those who were sent there.
42:30I swear by God, this heiligen eid,
42:34that in the fight against Bolshevism,
42:39with our force,
42:41will be fought until the last time at the end.
42:53Freed only recently from Communism,
42:55the Eastern European countries needed to regain their national pride,
42:59identified with nationalist movements for whom Russia was the first enemy.
43:05Some of these nationalists were the murderers
43:08who helped commit the genocide in the first years of the war.
43:12Today, the Galicia SS lie in sparkling new mausoleums,
43:17while most of the mass graves where thousands of Jews were murdered
43:21are in a state of total neglect.
43:28This gathering in modern-day Lviv
43:31honours both the UPA, a Ukrainian nationalist militia,
43:35and the Galicia SS,
43:37both of which lent armed thugs to the pogroms of June 1941.
43:43Lithuania has no intention of trying its elderly citizens
43:47for crimes against humanity.
43:55The implosion of Soviet power
43:57has led to such lawlessness and humiliation in Russia
44:00that neo-Nazi groups have sprung up.
44:02They randomly seize and kill people from ethnic minorities,
44:06using methods similar to those of the Einsatzgruppen.
44:09Missouri is a part of the Polish nation.
44:24Missouri is a part of the European Union
44:25in Russia.
44:26The European Union is a part of the European Union
44:33in Russian.
44:35But the Jewish communities who live for centuries
44:37on the Ukrainian plains, in the Baltic cities, and in the Bielorussian countryside,
44:43their Yiddish culture, rich and lively until the cataclysm of June 1941,
44:49all the farmers, tailors, factory workers and poets,
44:53they have disappeared forever.
45:36For more information, visit www.fema.org
45:55For more information, visit www.fema.org
46:30For more information, visit www.fema.org
46:37www.fema.org
46:43For more information, visit www.fema.org
46:43For more information, visit www.fema.org
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