Jenseits des Krieges

In the autumn of 1995 the travelling exhibition ‘Vernichtungskrieg, Verbrechen der Wehrmacht 1941 bis 1944’ passed through Vienna. Owing to this exhibit it became widely known that not only members of the SS, but also conscripts of the Wehrmacht perpetrated the systematic extirpation of ‘Untermenschen’ on the Eastern Front. The Austrian filmmaker Ruth Beckermann, who previously made films about the fate of the Jews and resistance fighters, made the spontaneous decision to make a film at this controversial exhibition. For five weeks she interviewed visitors, many of whom, as Beckermann had already hoped, turned out to be former soldiers of the Wehrmacht divisions involved. These witnesses‘ divergent and often very emotional stories not only bring the past to life, but also enable Beckermann to make a lucid diagnosis of the present.