I saw this movie on Tisha B’av, a Jewish holiday, concerned about commemorating and mourning the destruction of the first and second Temples and the deaths of numerous martyrs of Jeiwsh history. It was a bad date to pick to see a movie about the last days of Hitler and the people in his shelter in Berlin, April 1945. The movie is based on the memories and shot from the point of view of the dictator’s young secretary. One reason it was a bad day to view is because it made me think about whether it is right for me to spend time on learning more about the nazis, while there is so much I am not familiar enough in the history of the Jews, my own tradition. I don’t want to define myself, my Jewish identity in a negative way as it relates to antisemitism and the Shoah. I wish I could watch movies with this level of details and accuracy about the destruction of the Temple(s) and also about their erection. The other problem rose from the fact that this movie depicted the leaders of nazi Germany as people. By now they became symbols and it is somewhat a taboo to see them as human beings. Taboo in the sense that because of the blood and murder they are associated with I cannot and do not want to see them as people with feelings, passions, and conflicting motivations. I much prefer to view them only as the monsters as they were. I am attached to and emotionally invested in keeping this perspective. This film keeps them monsters. It is clear that these were mentally sick and evil people. But not uniformly, there is depth to the characters. Some were truly committed to killing innocents. On the other hand the Speer, the architect and Schenck, the doctor were just doing their job and rather well. This is the question that the interview segment with the real secretary (in her old age) at the end poses: to what extent one is an accomplice if participated in an inhuman system even if one doesn’t know the extent of the crimes. She gave the answer that she should have spent more effort on learning about it even back then.I learned of course a lot about the nazi leaders, that last day of the wars from this movie. I hope that this knowledge is accurate. It seemed to me that real historian work was put in researching the movie. I also learned from the summary of the lives of the people involved how many of them lived till the 1980s or even 2000. And how many of them got out of prison after 20-30 years. That was news to me. I don’t regret that I saw this movie, because it made me face some of my own monsters and provoked some thoughts. For these reasons I can recommend it. It is also a well-done film with minimal sentimentalism towards either direction.
