{"id":32020,"date":"2019-03-08T03:53:15","date_gmt":"2019-03-08T11:53:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=32020"},"modified":"2019-03-06T12:25:35","modified_gmt":"2019-03-06T20:25:35","slug":"accountant-in-seattle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2019\/03\/08\/accountant-in-seattle\/","title":{"rendered":"Accountant in Seattle"},"content":{"rendered":"

Auschwitz survivor Eva Kor forgives former SS officer Oskar Gr\u00f6ning. (photo from TLNT Productions)<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

The Accountant of Auschwitz<\/em> is more than the latest documentary to successfully convey the horrors of antisemitic genocide to an audience 75 years removed from those events. It exemplifies the emergence of a coterie of young filmmakers eager to tell the stories of the Holocaust to their peers and to future generations.<\/p>\n

For Toronto director Matthew Shoychet and producer Ricki Gurwitz, the trial of nonagenarian SS officer Oskar Gr\u00f6ning in his Lower Saxony hometown in 2015 provided the entry point to explore an ambitious array of historical, legal and moral concerns. The approach they chose for their debut feature documentary, however, was as important as the facts and the message.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe way we put it together with the editors, we knew we didn\u2019t want to play it chronologically,\u201d the 32-year-old Shoychet explained. \u201cThe film opens with fast-paced, happy music with animation, then right into the trial, then back. You\u2019re challenging the audience, but in a fresh, exciting way. You don\u2019t see many Holocaust films that are told that way.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Accountant of Auschwitz<\/em> screened at the Vancouver Jewish Film Festival last fall and is part of the Seattle Jewish Film Festival, which opens March 23.<\/p>\n

Shoychet\u2019s path to The Accountant of Auschwitz<\/em> was unusual in that his family was not directly affected by the Holocaust. He was interested in films about the Holocaust, but he wasn\u2019t instilled with the kind of painful personal history that was (and still is) the catalyst for many filmmakers.<\/p>\n

In 2013, Shoychet went on the March of the Living to Poland and Israel, where he received his first close-up exposure to the Final Solution and Holocaust education. A friend he made on that trip went to work for the Neuberger Holocaust Education Centre in Toronto, and that contact led to Shoychet directing the short film Anne Frank: 70 Years Later<\/em> (2015), which screened at Auschwitz-Birkenau and the University of Warsaw.<\/p>\n

Shoychet joined that year\u2019s March of the Living as a chaperone, where he met Bill Glied, a Serbian native who\u2019d been deported from Hungary to Auschwitz in 1944. When Glied remarked that he was going to Germany to testify at Gr\u00f6ning\u2019s trial, Shoychet and Gurwitz put a pitch together to the Government of Ontario, the Rogers Documentary Fund, CBC\u2019s Documentary Channel and a couple of private investors.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt came together fast,\u201d said Shoychet, who arrived on the scene in L\u00fcneburg, Germany, in the midst of the trial.<\/p>\n

\"photo<\/a>
For Toronto director Matthew Shoychet, the trial of SS officer Oskar Gr\u00f6ning in 2015 provided the entry point to explore an ambitious array of historical, legal and moral concerns. (photo from TLNT Productions)<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Gr\u00f6ning\u2019s job, as The Accountant of Auschwitz<\/em> makes clear, wasn\u2019t loading Zyklon B into the gas chambers or machine-gunning Jews. Thanks to a change in German law, it is no longer necessary to prove that a Nazi pulled the trigger. His presence at the scene and involvement in crimes is sufficient to decide guilt.<\/p>\n

\u201cOskar was on the ramp [when the trains arrived and where selections occurred], taking suitcases and calming chaos,\u201d Shoychet said. \u201cBut it was all part of the mass murder operation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Among the issues that The Accountant of Auschwitz<\/em> takes on is the purpose and value of trying a 94-year-old man for war crimes. The film makes a convincing argument on multiple grounds, beginning with the extent of the cover-up that took place in Germany after the war.<\/p>\n

\u201cNinety-nine percent of the judges in West Germany from 1945 to 1967 were members of the Nazi party,\u201d Shoychet noted. \u201cHardcore believers. Of the 800,000 SS officers, 100,000 were investigated between 1945 and today, just over 6,000 were brought to trial and 124 received life sentences.\u201d<\/p>\n

That paltry number minimizes the scale of the crimes and serves to bury the past. The film asserts that Gr\u00f6ning\u2019s confirmation under oath of his work at Auschwitz was a public and irrefutable rebuttal to Holocaust deniers and other antisemites.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven if you say he\u2019s too old \u2013 and even the survivors say they don\u2019t care if he goes to prison \u2013 for history\u2019s purposes, the fact that a Nazi perpetrator is sitting in a German courtroom with German judges, saying, \u2018Yes, these things happened, I was there,\u2019 that makes the trial worthwhile,\u201d Shoychet said.<\/p>\n

A loquacious interview subject, even on the phone from Israel, where he had presented The Accountant of Auschwitz<\/em> at the Jerusalem Jewish Film Festival a few months ago and was presently working on a project of the One Family Fund (he\u2019s a board member), Shoychet confided that the process of making his feature doc debut was one of learning as he went. For example, until he went to Germany, he had never heard of John Demjanjuk, a Ukrainian who had been convicted of crimes at Sobibor yet consistently denied any involvement. Demjanjuk\u2019s tangled tale, which, among other things, raises the subject of putting an elderly man on trial, ended up being a 20-minute segment in the film.<\/p>\n

The Accountant of Auschwitz<\/em> is rife with revelations and messages, but one gets the sense in talking with Shoychet that his main goal was conveying his own experiences of discovery, discussion, inspiration and outrage \u2013 with respect to Nazis and survivors, as well as contemporary justice-seekers and neo-Nazis \u2013 to viewers his own age.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere may not be an ISIS fighter who will be deterred by a 94-year-old Nazi being prosecuted,\u201d Shoychet allowed. \u201cIt\u2019s making the connection of the past to the present. Trying to take a younger person and put them in the shoes of the survivors.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shoychet\u2019s affinity for provoking questions and debate among the audience bodes well for his next efforts behind the camera.<\/p>\n

\u201cI never actually thought I would make a documentary,\u201d he said with a trace of bemusement. \u201cMy passion is scripted narratives.\u201d<\/p>\n

For tickets to The Accountant of Auschwitz<\/em> and the film festival schedule, visit seattlejewishfilmfestival.org<\/a>. For another perspective on the impact of Gr\u00f6ning\u2019s trial, see jewishindependent.ca\/witnessing-her-history<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Michael Fox <\/strong>is a writer and film critic living in San Francisco.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Auschwitz survivor Eva Kor forgives former SS officer Oskar Gr\u00f6ning. (photo from TLNT Productions) The Accountant of Auschwitz is more than the latest documentary to successfully convey the horrors of antisemitic genocide to an audience 75 years removed from those events. It exemplifies the emergence of a coterie of young filmmakers eager to tell the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":32021,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[787],"tags":[2892,6010,4242,53,5371,8766,8769,8767,8768],"class_list":["post-32020","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tv-film","tag-auschwitz","tag-documentary","tag-history","tag-holocaust","tag-justice","tag-matthew-shoychet","tag-oskar-groning","tag-seattle-jewish-film-festival","tag-sjff"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32020","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32020"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32020\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32021"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}