An Encounter With the Past

Lanzmann interviews Dr. Franz Grassler, former Nazi and deputy director of the Warsaw ghetto. He films the scene from outside Grassler's home, without his subject's knowledge.

So it was clear even then...

No! Extermination wasn't clear. Now we see the result.

Extermination isn't so simple. One step was taken, then another, and another, and another...

Yes.

But to understand the process, one must...

I repeat: extermination did not take place in the ghetto, not at first. Only with the evacuations...

Evacuations?

The evacuations to Treblinka. The ghetto could have been wiped out with weapons, as was finally done after the rebellion. After I'd left. But at the start... Mr. Lanzmann, this is getting us nowhere. We're reaching no new conclusions.

I don't think we can.

I didn't know then what I know now.

You weren't a nonentity.

But I was!

You were important.

You overestimate my role.

No. You were second to the commissioner of the Warsaw "Jewish district."

But I had no power.

It was something. You were part of the vast German power structure.

Correct. But a small part. You overestimate the authority of a deputy of twenty-eight then.

You were thirty.

Twenty-eight.

At thirty you were mature.

Yes, but for a lawyer who got his degree at twenty-seven, it's just a beginning.

You had a doctorate.

The title proves nothing.

Did Auerswald have one too?

No. But the title's irrelevant.

Doctor of Law... What did you do after the war?

I was with a mountaineering publishing house. I wrote and published mountain guide books. I published a mountain climbers' magazine.

Is climbing your main interest?

Yes.

The mountains, the air...

Yes.

The sun, the pure air...

Not like the ghetto air.

(The preceding was excerpted from Shoah (Pantheon, 1985.)