I watched the first episode on the recommendation of this thread.
There is some strong overlap between
The Accountant of Auschwitz (
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=12757) (2018) and this
Devil Next Door (2019). Both are not just attempts to rub the genie-lamp of "long-hiding Nazis finally brought to justice" and related themes. They share more in common than that: Both heavily feature some of the same characters, the FBI's Eli Rosenbaum and Lawrence Douglas (both Jewish) are commentators throughout "Accountant" and are also here on "Devil Next Door." Both "Accountant" and "Devil" even prominently feature the Demjanjuk case itself -- which is a surprise in the case of "Accountant" given its nominal subject is Oskar Gröning, about whom they work hard to avoid and go into a long tangent about Demjanjuk.
I write this after only seeing the first portion of "Devil Next Door," but I will dare to say that in some ways "Accountant of Auschwitz" and "Devil Next Door" are even the same documentary. Just with different lengths, slightly different focuses, and some different (some same) talking-heads. But editorially there is also a detectable difference in that "Devil" gives far more White-Christians a voice than does "Accountant;" almost all of the commentators/interviewees in "Accountant" are Jewish (and low-info viewers watching "Accountant" will not know they are seeing a cast of Jews all reinforcing each other's views, though they might suspect something like that with what how they all gang up on Eva Mosez Kor). But we see anti-communist Mark O'Connor and Pat Buchanan others depicted fairly sympathetically and in their own words.
In a word, in "Devil," we see the voices of what we can, in general terms, call the Anti-Holocaust side. These are not Revisionists, as such -- or at least I noticed no mention of actual Revisionists/Deniers or Revisionist arguments so far, though scholarly Revisionism was certainly current and making breakthroughs during the period in question (and as for Pat Buchanan we know he was a Holocaust-disbeliever about this time). But nevertheless we see people against this emerging hegemonic Holocaust-as-social-force, standing up against it to the extent they are able. The documentary frames this as Ukrainians in America supporting a Ukrainian, which is a part but not all of the pro-Demjanjuk side. There were people against this new prime-directive for Western culture and politics, this hegemonic social force, the quasi-religion that demands sacrifices in blood, from the start and through the years it was making gains by leaps and bounds.
This is one part of Holocaust Studies that I sense is neglected, a kind of social history of the anti-Holocaust side. I have to use the phrasing "anti-Holocaust" because I know of no better phrase; they were not necessarily Revisionists.
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Primary-source footage on 1980s-era Holocaust-pusher vs. anti-Holocaust public attitudesAs I say, one of the most interesting things to see in "Devil Next Door" is footage of contemporary reaction to events going on. There is too much to list. The scenes of people reacting at the time flash by and are used by the documentarians to build mood more than anything. Few would be expected to examine them closely. But really the 1980s/90s Holocaust protest footage and film clips are "primary sources" in the Holocaust-as-social-phenomenon.
Most of us now were either not either alive or not cognizant of events in the 1980s when the Demjanjuk arrest happened and so on. One is struck by the big difference in reactions you would get later. There was pushback. All adults or even late teenagers during the years Demjanjuk was in the news in the 1980s will have remembered the time before the breakthrough of the Holocaust in the late 1970s. But they got steamrolled. Those of us who came later had no personal memory of it.
One representative case which for some reason particularly struck me was a brief clip from a Cleveland News Channel 5 reporter talking about the case on a local evening news broadcast. The anchor is identified on screen as
Roger Morris. Hardly any kind of big player in the grand scheme of history and politics, much less the 'Big H' historical drama. In fact there is very little on Roger Morris the Cleveland local-TV-newsman online. All I find is a 1980s-era novelty board game featuring the personalities of this local-news station; his face survives on one of the cards:
I think it's fair to expect that what this news-reader says represents something like mainstream centrist opinion of the time. Morris says this:
What we are looking at is a case which may be unprecedented in international scope. A naturalized American charged with war crimes in a 28-page indictment. It is the biggest case since Adolf Eichmann was convicted back in 1962, and it may well be the last war-crimes case to come out of the Holocaust.
The documentary gives no date to the broadcast but judging from the "26-page indictment" clue we can date it to on or shortly after
September 29, 1986. That day, an Associated Press story mentions that Israel had, the same day, indicted Demjanjuk (by then in their custody) with an indictment of 26 pages in length. (This was nine years after the first mention anywhere by anyone of Demjanjuk as a potential war-criminal "hiding" in Cleveland, an AP story dated late August 1977.)
WEWS ABC Channel 5's Roger Morris news segment on Demjanjuk says the upcoming mid-1980s trial "may well be the last war-crimes case to come out of the Holocaust." Yes, it feels highly ironic viewed from 2021 and not just because Demjanjuk was subject himself was subject to several trials, and also not just because the cavalcade of Nazi war-criminals were still being "hunted" and put on trial even (absurdly) well into the 2010s and presumably ongoing now in the 2010s.
I think this little statement is a useful piece of primary-source evidence (among many) on people's attitudes towards the Holocaust at the time. 'Centrist' opinion in 1986 really believed the Holocaust was all over, some loose ends tied up but never to be reopened again. What a surprise they would be in for that thirty-five years later, there are still Nazi trials going on! Even in the 2010s the exact same headlines were still coming out: "New Nazi trial! This one may be the last WWII war-crime trial we ever see." The larger surprise, or lesson, is that the Holocaust cemented its cultural hegemony. People did not expect it. Anyone who predicted in the mid-1980s that "this Holocaust talk is only going to get bigger and bigger and they'll still be trying men in their nineties in the 2010s and 2020s," would be dismissed as a crazy crank.
The documentarians cut to some lengthy scene-setting and mood-music after newsman Roger Morris' line. They, too, must have sensed the importance of the line, though maybe they missed the irony.
