The Memory of Justice

An American Army de-Nazification officer in post-World War II Berlin talks about his problems in assessing the behavior of German actors who had been expected to work for the Nazi war machine when they were not performing.

Surprisingly, there were four different reponses, the officer recalls in "The Memory of Justice," Marcel Ophuls' provocative 4 1/2 hour documentary.

Some actors just didn't like dirtying their hands with factory work, some anti-Nazis quietly stayed away, the confirmed Nazis showed up to do their duty , and some anti-Nazis went to their war jobs so that no one could accuse them of taking favors from the government. The American officer's task was to resolve their de-Nazification cases with "justice."

That was a comparatively minor issue in the enormity of the problems facing the victors, the vanquished and the survivors.

"The Memory of Justice" is a searching, complex and disturbing probe into questions that were raised at and by the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal: the most perplexing questions of guilt, individual responsibility and justice.

For the first time in history, an international tribunal — eight judges representing the four Allied powers — pondered the evidence against 23 men who had been accused of major responsibility for unprecedented war crimes, crimes against humanity and against peace. Conspicuous by their absence were Hitler, Himmler, Goebbels, Martin Bormann and the head of the Krupp industrial cartel.

Ophuls does not dwell at length on the trial itself, although the old newsreel clips of the defendants retain a grisly fascination: Goering, his paunch and his drug habit gone, but obviously holding fast to his totally cynical view of the trial; Hess, gaunt, shallow and puritanical.

Scenes at the dock are intercut with interviews with two of the defendants still alive: Albert Speer, the architect whose upper-class demeanor saved him from the death sentence, and the bitter, pinched Admiral Karl Doenitz, still gruffly refusing to recognize any guilt or responsibility.

Yet, Doenitz's distaste at this interloper Ophuls' questions seems a more accurate reflection of his true state of mind than Speer's urbane assumption of a modest share of guilt. One grows impatient with the length of time Ophuls devotes to this smoothie who is now living off the royalties of his memoirs. Nevertheless, Ophuls does ruffle that calm surface when he recalls Speer's recruitment of concentration camp slave labor for German industries.

The "ordinary" Germans Ophuls interviews seem to have an equally difficult time recalling life under Hitler.

A German Jewish actor returns to Germany eager to confront one Nazi face to face, but can't find any. Another actor sardonically tells him he was the only Nazi; his was the sole voice at all those mass rallies.

The white-haired widow of a German general who finally committed suicide rather than execute some Catholic anti-Nazis offers a succinct comment on German culture: "It lacks moral courage."

How can one judge the moral courage of others in the face of state power like the Third Reich? Ophuls, son of a German Jewish refugee, presses questions on his own attractive blonde German wife, a former member of Hitler Youth, whose father served in the German army. Finally, she murmurs defensively: "He wasn't exceptional. Why does everyone have to be exceptional?"

The second part of the film deals with the relevance of Nuremberg to Algeria, Hiroshima and Vietnam. There is a conversation with Daniel Ellsberg, angry that in all the documents in the Pentagon Papers no one in the military ever questioned the legality or morality of the Vietnam war, but only searched for "practical" solutions. A former French soldier questions the murderous orders he received in Algeria.

Dr. Howard Levy, court-martialed for refusing to train medical men for Vietnam, discusses the Nuremberg defense of individual responsibility that he used at his own trial - and lost.

On subjects as vast and controversial as these, it would be impossible for a 4 1/2 hour documentary , culled from 90 hours of film, to satisfy everyone. "The Memory of Justice" does not have the dramatic impact of "The Sorrow and the Pity," Ophuls monumental film on French collaboration and resistance. He is not trying to achieve any easy catharsis, but to force people to think about the meaning of Nuremberg in relation to their own lives and times.

San Francisco Chronicle June 15 1977