I followed the Denjanjuk ordeal in the 80s and 90s. It was one of the most fascinating stories of my lifetime. This documentary is well done through the initial episodes.
The problem starts in the final episode. The filmmakers are ignorant of the history of post-Nazi Europe. Not every person affiliated with the Nazi Party was a believer in genocide. There was powerful coercion for prominent Germans to join the party. Their families were threatened. The were sent to camps.
Germany lost the war. It doesn't mean that every German who supported the war effort was a war criminal. If so, there would have been 10s of millions in prison. It was a very dark time for humanity, The Nazis committed countless atrocities but so did the Soviets. We don't know what people like John Denjanjuk experiences during WW2. Ukraine was ravaged by Stalin AND Hitler. Most of these people just wanted to live out their lives in peace. The anecdotes from Denjanjuk's coworker were speculative and not very credible.
The filmmakers needed to be more careful about believing the KGB about anything. The KGB was involved is all sorts of evil in the decades after the war. The Israeli Supreme Court seemed to understand this more than the filmmaker did. As far as I'm concerned, the Soviets and the Nazis were BOTH pure evil. They forced people to do unmentionable things to their fellow man. Do research on Stalin's purges and starvation of over a million Ukrainians during the 1930s.
This is the sort of propaganda that pervades Netflix these days. It needs to be called out.
The problem starts in the final episode. The filmmakers are ignorant of the history of post-Nazi Europe. Not every person affiliated with the Nazi Party was a believer in genocide. There was powerful coercion for prominent Germans to join the party. Their families were threatened. The were sent to camps.
Germany lost the war. It doesn't mean that every German who supported the war effort was a war criminal. If so, there would have been 10s of millions in prison. It was a very dark time for humanity, The Nazis committed countless atrocities but so did the Soviets. We don't know what people like John Denjanjuk experiences during WW2. Ukraine was ravaged by Stalin AND Hitler. Most of these people just wanted to live out their lives in peace. The anecdotes from Denjanjuk's coworker were speculative and not very credible.
The filmmakers needed to be more careful about believing the KGB about anything. The KGB was involved is all sorts of evil in the decades after the war. The Israeli Supreme Court seemed to understand this more than the filmmaker did. As far as I'm concerned, the Soviets and the Nazis were BOTH pure evil. They forced people to do unmentionable things to their fellow man. Do research on Stalin's purges and starvation of over a million Ukrainians during the 1930s.
This is the sort of propaganda that pervades Netflix these days. It needs to be called out.