There is a remarkable scene toward the end of the new documentary “Final Account,” a collection of eyewitness testimonies from elderly Germans and Austrians who remember the Nazi regime (and, to various degrees, were part of it).
In the sequence, a former Waffen-SS officer sits down with a group of students in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee — the site of the infamous Wannsee Conference, where Nazi officials met in 1942 to map out the parameters of the Final Solution. The officer, Hans Werk, speaks of the tremendous shame he feels for himself and his country to have orchestrated the genocide of 6 million Jews.