The Meeting: An Auschwitz Survivor Confronts an SS Physician by Bernhard Frankfurter

Author:Bernhard Frankfurter [Frankfurter, Bernhard]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: history, Holocaust
ISBN: 9780815655534
Google: jQtIEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Syracuse University Press
Published: 2021-10-22T00:10:37.299523+00:00

THERE ARE NO MORE WORDS LEFT . . .

Here the filmmaker interjects himself into the dialogue:

DIRECTOR: Dr. Münch, what would you tell people who are today saying that the Holocaust never happened, that Auschwitz is a lie and a fraud?

MÜNCH: If someone says Auschwitz is a lie or a fraud, then I refuse to say much to that person. I say the facts are clear and obvious, and no one can doubt them, and more I do not say to such a person. Whoever clings to such issues that are being published God knows where, you well know that he is malicious and has a personal agenda, to want to cover up such facts that cannot be silenced.

DIRECTOR: Dr. Münch, what would happen if you found yourself in a similar situation today?

MÜNCH: If someone would suggest that I could be in a similar situation, I would answer him that it would be unimaginable that such an event could happen to me again. However, I am almost certain that it could happen to other people who have never heard of the Holocaust, let alone experienced it. Because looking at the world during these last fifty years, I have determined that man has not learned from the past, that his nature is destructive when he gets into a position of power, which from our vantage point today looks dangerous. It is possible that again entire nations, or at least large masses of people, could be fascinated by such power and be moved to deeds that could be compared to Auschwitz. That is the personal conclusion I draw from what I see and hear around me today.

DIRECTOR: Dr. Münch, you have repeatedly asserted that between your emotions—those things in your heart, in your gut, and your soul—and the things that you can put into words about Auschwitz, there is a big gap. Can you possibly explain to Mrs. Ostermann what it means, not to be able to express these things?

MÜNCH: I must stress once more, I cannot express in detail what it is that makes it so hard for me to express my emotions about my Auschwitz experiences. But perhaps it might be connected to the fact that in a man, unlike a woman, the emotions of the heart are sometimes blocked by the brain, which builds a sort of cover over the emotions, and a situation might arise where one begins to doubt oneself. The older one gets, and I do find that in myself, the stronger the tendency to a transfiguration of the past seems to creep in. That tendency is built into all of us: some things become overpowered by the intellect, and when the emotions then come to the fore, they appear altered somehow. I can only talk of my own conclusion, and I simply cannot express it any more precisely. I cannot give you an unequivocal answer to this. If ever I would be in such a situation again, I, of course, would know from past experience how

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