[Music] The identification of Bart after more than 30 years in the GDR was already difficult to sell to the public, especially the French public.

If two more men had been added, there would have been a storm of indignation and outrage.

Nothing should tarnish the self-image of the anti-fascist GDR.

[Music] West Germany, the 1960s.

Students demonstrate also against what they regard as the country’s overly lenient treatment of its Nazi past.

At the Sedi party conference in 1968, Biata class feld then aged 29 slapped chancellor and ex-Nazi party member K giser in the face.

That was a symbolic act and it was the basis for the actions later on.

In the early 1970s, Bata Klfeld tracks down former SS Halpur Claus Barbie in South America.

He now calls himself Klaus Altman and works in Bolivia as a businessman and adviser to the country’s military rulers.

[Music] There are even studies on this that make it clear that the torture practices used immediately after the coup in Bolivia can be traced back to Claus Barbie.

These really were torture practices that we also see in France.

So in that regard, the military dictatorships, in this case, Bolivia, made use of this knowledge from former SS functionaries.

In a tape recording, Klaus Barbie tells his SS comrade Carl Wolf about Classfeld’s efforts.

Glassfeld.

See from Bata Clausfeld informs a French journalist, but Barbie feels safe.

On French television, he denies his identity.

I am not Barbie.

As I have already said, I am Klaus Alman.

And the Munich public prosecutor will certainly have the chance to send these documents to the Bolivian authorities.

When a democratically elected government comes to power in Bolivia in 1983, Barbie is arrested and extradited to France.

Barbie expelled from Bolivia to France.

I think that is for me German, not Jewish.

It is the result of a long fight in Leon, the scene of his crimes.

Barbie stands trial in 1987.

Biata Klfeld follows the proceedings.

For me, it was the first time we came into the hall.

He was very indignant about having been extradited.

And I think he also said all my problems started when this woman came to LA car.

Yes.

The trial is of national importance for France.

Claus Barbie is sentenced to life imprisonment.

He dies in 1991 in prison.

[Music] For dictators and right-wing extremists, the SS retains its importance even after 1945.

Otto Scozini, for example, does not have to fear prosecution because he is protected by dictator Franco in Spain.

Hitler’s SS man for special operations.

[Music] In Madrid, undetected, the SS man can celebrate the past with like-minded people.

From Spain, Scorzini helps to maintain a network of SS veterans.

He is said to be the head of a powerful underground troop, the organization of former SS members, or Odessa for short.

Is the SS continuing its existence underground, gathering its forces for the time of revenge? [Music] In the early 1970s, the alleged minutes of a meeting emerge.

A secret Odessa meeting with about 100 men.

In the end, the story turns out to be a myth.

There was de facto a network of former SS functionaries who also cooperated, acted, and communicated across different countries.

But this large scale Odessa organization never existed.

Ria in Latapia in the Baltic states once oppressed by the Soviet army.

The SS still has many admirers today.

Here SS veterans who fought against the Soviets celebrate every year on March 16th.

[Music] A reinterpretation of history.

Nazis as heroes because they fought communists.

After the German invasion of Latvia in 1941, 160,000 Latvians enter German service.

Most of them fight in the Vafaness voluntarily.

They too swear allegiance to Hitler.

Latvian SSmen participate in the Holocaust and commit war crimes.

In Ria, Latvian and German Jews are harassed in the ghetto.

In 1941, around 30,000 are murdered in just 2 days.

Latvians wearing SS uniforms are among the perpetrators.

At the annual commemoration ceremonies, this is of no importance.

Alongside the elderly veterans, the younger generation also marches, right-wing extremist youths side by side with former SSmen.

They allow anybody to celebrate and commemorate the war if they fought against the Soviet Union.

Of course, many of those who fought against the Soviet Union were in fact Nazis or SS divisions, the Latian SS division.

Now I think the problem with this is although the Soviet Union occupied these countries partly Russianized them treated them unfairly suppressed local elites and of course in at least in Stalin’s time had a reign of terror.

This is not the same as the Nazi plans for these areas.

The Nazis general plan for the east envisaged 50 to 85% of the people of these countries being exterminated and you cannot say that of the Soviet Union.

So I think it’s a misapprehension about history and about the past.

But how can the legacy of the SS be dealt with? [Music] In the spring of 1985, the Bitberg military cemetery made headlines.

2,000 fallen soldiers of the Second World War are buried here, including 49 Buffessmen.

US President Ronald Reagan and Chancellor Helmouth Cole want to honor the victims here together.

The planned visit triggers weeks of public controversy in the US.

Holocaust survivors and Jewish associations call on the SS president not to go to Bitberg.

[Music] Mr.

President, don’t go to Pittsburgh to forgive and forget to sanitize the Nazis of their crimes to wipe clean the butchers bay and go.

Thank you very much.

The president is unimpressed.

On May 5th, 1985, he and Cole visit the Colmas Hur Military Cemetery together with two former World War II generals.

[Music] 40 years after the end of the Second World War, the intention is to send a worldwide sign of reconciliation from Bitberg.

[Music] But the dead SSmen prevent that.

The visit to Bitborg showed that at least people in the west and in Germany too didn’t understand what it was all about.

The moment you bring in members of the Vafan SS who are buried there just like ordinary soldiers, it means that something has gone wrong here.

Something went wrong with both Cole and Reagan.

And it was good that people protested against these things.

Many Vafones soldiers are not personally involved in crimes, but the uniform they wear stands for terror and for the murder of millions.

Former membership of the SS is becoming more and more of a burden in democratic Germany.

The subject is often either talked down or avoided altogether.

Hans Martin Schlier, president of the employers association, joined the SS in 1933 as a huber.

He was murdered by left-wing terrorists in 1977.

[Music] Actor H Tapert.

His past in the SS only became known after his death.

Nobel Prize winner Ga Graass only admits to his membership in the Vafaness in his late 70s.

He is allowed to keep his Nobel Prize.

[Music] Actor Hardy Krueger was also drafted into the Vafaness in March 1945 at the age of 16.

Cannon foder for the last days of the war.

Just like thousands of others in the vehtom or vafaness.

[Music] The central office in Ludvigsburg examines the extent to which SSmen were personally guilty.

This still leads to legal proceedings against people who are now very elderly.

I certainly don’t think the investigations against Nazi perpetrators are wrong.

I think they’re still necessary in terms of history and legal history.

I think it was an urgently needed step that these sentences passed over the last 10 years were passed along.

After the turn of the millennium, the central office also sets its sights on a Ukrainian who immigrated to the USA after the war.

John Deyanuk is said to have been a supervisor in the Soviore extermination camp in 1943 as part of the so-called Traviki prisoners of war who performed guard duty and auxiliary work for the SS.

The central office in Ludvigsburg accuses Demyanuk of having participated in the murder of at least 29,000 people.

In 2009, the now 89year-old is found guilty by the Munich Regional Court for being an accessory to murder, a novelty in legal history.

Anyone who served in an extermination camp or in a concentration camp in which systematic extermination took place was on general duty was guilty of what happened even if they did not kill directly.

Guilty of being an accessory to murder.

That is a factor that could probably not have been presented in that way 40 or 50 years ago in the Federal Republic.

[Music] After the Demanyuk verdict, trials are possible against all SS members who were on duty in the camps.

Small cogs in the murder machinery.

Today, senior citizens, many without insight or remorse.

[Music] [Music] Between 1945 and 2005, almost 14,000 Nazi perpetrators stand trial in West Germany.

About half of them are found guilty and mostly given prison sentences of between 6 months and 1 year.

[Music] We had heard less from the circles of those affected of the victims about it being absolutely necessary to enforce the sentence.

But it is important that the criminal law is recognized.

We are not an ungracious state.

We do not prosecute anyone who can no longer stand trial or who’s no longer capable of defending himself.

This gets investigated very closely.

There is no exemption from punishment once you are 90 years old.

Some old SS veterans are still celebrating today.

Right-wing extremist parties like Dedritique pay homage to them as contemporary witnesses.

Here they have a ready audience for their historical views.

The flow of history remains even with the last war and I maintain that the problems have remained almost the same and that the second world war is not yet over.

Suddenly eyewitness evenings with former SS people can now take place and the internet transports that.

That means they’re becoming visible again and their views are spreading.

The trivialization and even the denial of the Holocaust are visible once again due to people who give themselves a certain voice, a special voice because they say, “I was there.

” Yesterday’s right-wing extremists as role models for the right-wing extremists of today.

The Sword and Shield Festival in Ostritz, Saxony.

Sword and Shield, SS for short.

The security service for the festival is provided by the group Araba.

T-shirts feature a logo of two crossed hand grenades, the emblem of the SS Striard de Levanganger, notorious for numerous war crimes.

Symbols banned in Germany are plastered over [Applause] white power rock.

[Music] There’s a spiritual infiltration going on here that can be described as fruitful.

And in that respect, I am of course already a credible representative for the young people.

As a member of the life generation and as one who’s never made cheap concessions to the zeitgeist, right-wing rock festivals are considered fertile locations for recruitment.

For example, for the Azov regiment, paramilitary volunteer battalion ultra-ist which fights against pro-Russian separatists in the Ukraine conflict.

In 2017, there is said to be 2,500 mercenaries in its ranks, including Germans.

The sign of recognition is a wolf trap symbol, like the SS dispositional troop once wore.

A special troop of the US Marines also seem to have few qumss.

The scout snipers used the SS double runes as an unofficial emblem.

When other nations use the symbols of the Nazis, stupidity knows no bounds.

The SS show what people are capable of.

The deepest abyss in German history.

SS.

The SS is seen as the core of the Nazi regime.

Or so it seems in the culture of remembrance.

But there always has to be a warning here.

If we merely look back on the memory of the SS, we ignore the fact that a whole people cooperated with the SS with this part of national socialism.

The deadly lie of the battle of the races leads to the crime against humanity.

The SS sees itself as an elite.

In truth, it is an instrument of mass murder, a historical disgrace.

[Music]

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