Final Account follows a chronological thread, from the Kristallnacht pogrom in ’38 that saw Jewish synagogues, homes and business destroyed. He whittled their number down in the edit suite and those we meet on screen are compelling.There are no expert historians guiding us through, just German and Austrian citizens remembering their heyday. The director interviewed around 300 people during his long quest to understand what happened. One sings a charming children’s song about sharpening the knife to put in a Jewish belly and recalls how bells rang throughout Germany when Hitler came to power. These are regular people once enchanted by Nazism, now living in comfortable retirement in cosy houses or salubrious nursing homes. Holland, whose maternal grandparents died in the Holocaust, is intent on showing us ordinary folk, functionaries not monsters.
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