Listed as among the top UK films of 2021 by The Guardian, Getting Away with Murder(s) opens with expansive aerial footage of Auschwitz as it pulls us into a comprehensive exploration of the individuals who perpetrated the worst crime against humanity in history: the architects and officers who took the lives of eleven million people during the Holocaust and the reasons that most of them were never held accountable for their actions.
Aerial footage of concentration camps and memorial sites are common in the film, which also features testimonies and interviews with Holocaust survivors, archival footage and images from the Holocaust itself and from the famous Nuremberg trials and other trials against Nazi officers, and interviews with leading scholars, experts, lawyers, and children of survivors. Many of these interviews take place at sites of mass extermination, including entire villages that were razed to the ground by the Nazis.
This documentary film, from director David Wilkinson, is unlike any other Holocaust documentary and is an important contribution to the canon of media regarding the Holocaust, genocide, and crimes against humanity. Furthermore, it brings the important issue of justice after genocide forward in a way that is relevant for the world today. It is clear that the filmmaking team left no stone unturned as the film provides an expansive account of Nazi crimes and recounts the litany of reasons that most individuals responsible were not brought to justice.
With Antisemitism and hate crimes on the rise and even some heads of state around the world overseeing crimes against humanity in their own countries or in other sovereign nations, Getting Away with Murder(s)' deep dive into the various reasons that so few of the individuals (99% in fact) responsible for the Holocaust were put on trial and held accountable for their actions invites viewers to reflect on the world we live in and to examine the importance of justice in response to crimes committed on this scale.
The documentary is nearly three hours long, which might be a challenge for some classroom settings, but the film could easily be integrated through the use of various segments and clips, if necessary. For college classrooms engaged in a deep study of the Holocaust, Genocide, Human Rights Law, and similar topics, dedicating complete and full time to the documentary will provide opportunities for thoughtful discussion, further study, and potential student research projects. High school students also have much to gain from the film (most likely shown in segments) but educators should prepare students for the graphic and violent images that they will see through archival footage and photographs from concentration camps and mass extermination sites (some of which include nudity, which educators could easily avoid because the breadth of information and footage available is so extensive).
For legal students especially, the film is an incredibly rich resource detailing the various legal barriers that prevented accountability and action while also highlighting the relationship between the justice system and public opinion as well as the harsh reality that, as Wilkinson states so eloquently, "justice has a price tag." Another point of interest for legal studies is the way the film traces the introduction of the terms "crimes against humanity" and "genocide," which the events during the Holocaust required to be brought into legal tenants in order for individuals to be tried. Importantly, the film highlights some of the key figures involved in the efforts to reach justice for Holocaust survivors, such as Simon Wiesenthal, a Holocaust survivor himself.
There are many exceptionally powerful moments in the film, especially as Holocaust survivors bear witness to their experiences, share insight about testifying against Nazi officers, and suffer as, too often, those who wielded terror were acquitted for a wide array of reasons explored in depth in the film.
Significantly, Wilkinson provides important historical context so that viewers understand that the Holocaust was connected to a tradition of Antisemitism in much of Europe. Another important contextual contribution is the way the film connects the struggle to bring Nazi perpetrators to justice with the Cold War as well as nation-state concerns over international justice movements that might call into question their own atrocities, as was the case with U.S. individuals concerned that trials in Europe could lead to action against the U.S. for lynching in the South.
I've studied genocide for more than 10 years and was impressed that the film brought to light many instances of mass death that in all of my years of study, I still had not learned about. Honoring the lives lost in such instances is an important contribution of the film as is the way the film details the many groups targeted by the Nazis. The film's expansive detailing of Nazi terror serves to underscore the importance of knowing this history so as to not repeat it.
A recurring device in the film includes detailed profiles of various Nazi officers and party officials. In these profiles, we learn of their direct actions and, sometimes of the number of deaths they were personally responsible for, as well as their life outcome, whether they escaped to new lives after World War II (often in South America), committed suicide, were brought to trial or, in the case of at least two or three individuals, were seen as valuable for their military and state intelligence skills and were then employed by other governments, including supporting the oppressive reign of terror in Syria seeking to impose its own reign of terror. Some simply lived freely in Europe, often living between 85 and 100.
The film closes with Philip Rubenstein, former director of the All Party Parliamentary War Crimes Group, sharing the words of Joseph Roth from The Wandering Jews published in 1927:
When a catastrophe occurs, people at hand are shocked into helpfulness. Certainly, acute catastrophes have that effect. It seems that people expect catastrophes to be brief. But chronic catastrophes are so unpalatable to neighbors that they gradually become indifferent to them and their victims, if not downright impatient. The sense of order, regularity, and due process is so deeply ingrained in people that they are only willing to entertain the opposite— emergency, madness, chaos, confusion — for a brief period. Once the emergency becomes protracted, helping hands return to pockets, the fires of compassion cool down.
Rubenstein puts forth to us, the viewers, the challenge that he feels Roth was setting forth to his readers in 1927, which is, in Rubenstein's words, "to be alive to the suffering of others and to care what happens to others." In short, to refuse to be indifferent.
That is this film's powerful call and legacy. It calls us to act when others are suffering, to speak up when there is injustice, to listen and learn from the past. It demands that we honor, remember, and teach the past so that we can create a better future.