How others will see it. Obviously, this is not a film for everyone, or for every occasion. But is is essential for historians of the era, and important for those who want to learn more about the dark side of man, as well as the will to survive.
How I felt about it. Steven Spielberg was the executive producer of The Last Days, and this pure documentary is nearly as fascinating as the better-known Schindler's List, a docu-drama directed by Spielberg. A small group of English-speaking Holocaust survivors are patiently interviewed, so that their remarkable stories can be told.
Imagine a group of people isolated because of their ethnicity, and shipped against their will to a forced labor camp, where most of them quickly perish under deplorable circumstances.
You think I'm discussing the Holocaust. But I'm also referring to the African slave trade of the eighteenth century. And, to an extend, the Trail of Tears endured by American Indians during the 19th century.
The point is, man's inhumanity to man is nothing new. Given the slaughter of Armenians in Turkey, or more recent massacres in Rwanda, even the scale of the Holocaust is challenged by other racial genocides.
What was different about the Holocaust? It happened to an educated Western people. It was planned with remarkable efficiency and calculation. The evil behind the plan wasn't exceptional. It was the organization that made it so deadly, since the power of the state of Germany was behind it.
How did it happen? Slowly. Their rights as citizens were stripped. They were herded into a ghetto, then shipped to a concentration camp, where they slowly died from malnutrition, if they weren't selected for death beforehand. The weakest were culled out first, because they were not expected to live long enough for their turn to come. The crematoriums only had so much capacity.
The mass slaughter of the European Jews was unknown to the rest of the people, who merely thought that the Jews had been forced out of town. And they were glad to see them go. Propaganda had drilled into their minds that the Jews were inferiors and traitors.
History shows again and again that if a people are told that they are better and merit superior rights, this "information" is readily accepted as fact. As I write this in 2007, the favorite American targets for minority exclusion are Hispanic immigrants and Muslims. Many people remain eager to believe that they are better, and given the pandering of politicians, only the court system holds out real hope for minority rights.
But Americans are hardly worse than anyone else. History also proves that when suffering races finally achieve the power they have long been denied, they want revenge instead of equality. The Nelson Mandelas are overwhelmed by the politicians and generals who prefer personal power to a peaceful and equitable co-existence. Hope lies in the individual, who seeks to to persevere despite relentless prosecution. If he or she survives, the hardships endured cannot be avenged, because the greatest strength of all is to go forward with prosecution in return.