GERMAN 3252 Lecture Notes - Lecture 19: Simon Wiesenthal, Hitler Youth, Tuvia Bielski
5 Dec 2016
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Document Summary
Film was alternately, harshly received when it came out in. 1998, meaning some people (critics, viewers, holocaust survivors) embraced it, and others (including steven. Spielberg) thought the film was a horrible thing. In this memoir, wiesenthal encounters (as a prisoner in a concentration camp) a dying ss soldier, karl, who is young. Karl grew up with an anti-nazi father, and out of karl"s childhood rebellion, he joined the. Nazi youth, and next thing he knows, he"s basically liquidating a population as they come out of burning houses, and he is haunted by this. Karl is not some fanatical, hardened nazi who has been killing jews for years; if he were, it wouldn"t be difficult to not forgive him. Karl is young and not a convinced antisemite. We can almost understand how he got to where he did, whereas it"s obviously harder to understand how hitler became who he was. What"s troubling is that understanding and excusing go hand-in-hand.
