0:00

Deal brings global payroll,

0:02

HR, IT, and compliance

0:04

into one platform. No

0:06

barriers, no hassle. Join

0:08

over 35,000 companies that

0:10

trust deal to hire,

0:13

pay, and support teams

0:15

worldwide. To learn more,

0:17

visit deal.com slash, andyT.

0:19

Deal. You are forever

0:21

people platform. When you

0:23

think of Europe. You probably think

0:26

of a museum you went to

0:28

on vacation or a beautiful bridge

0:30

that you crossed on the sand.

0:32

You probably don't think of it

0:34

as a place where you're stepping

0:37

over killing fields. And yet, that's

0:39

also what Europe is. It's a

0:41

vast cemetery. Think of all the wars

0:43

that have taken place, the last

0:45

two world wars being the most

0:48

devastating. Those wars left the bones

0:50

of millions of millions of

0:52

people scattered across the continent.

0:55

Today tens of thousands of bodies

0:57

are still being discovered in Europe

1:00

every year. They're being found

1:02

in people's backyards when they

1:04

plant a garden by excavators

1:06

digging out basements and

1:08

alongside freeways. It's the history

1:10

of war and fascism, two

1:12

ideas that have become very

1:14

relevant today. So what happens to

1:16

these bones when someone finds them?

1:19

What doesn't mean to go looking

1:21

for them? And what happens when

1:23

the bones... belong to Nazis. My

1:25

name is Nick Casey. I'm a staff

1:27

writer at the New York

1:29

Times magazine based in Madrid.

1:31

Sometime back I was reading headlines

1:34

in France and I came across

1:36

a story about a man named

1:38

Edmund Rave. At 98 years old,

1:40

he'd gone to his local

1:42

newspaper to make a confession.

1:44

At the end of World War II,

1:47

when he was a French-resistant

1:49

soldier, he said... His squad

1:51

captured a group of 47

1:53

German soldiers, but they never brought them

1:56

to a POW camp. They took

1:58

them instead to the woods. had

2:00

them dig their own graves, and

2:02

then executed them. At the end

2:04

of his life, Rave wanted to

2:06

set the record straight, and he

2:08

said he knew exactly where the

2:10

bones were. So who do you

2:13

go to after this kind of

2:15

revelation? I soon learned that there's

2:17

a private organization in Germany whose

2:19

mission is to go looking for

2:21

those bones. They're called the Volkswagen,

2:23

and for more than a century,

2:25

they've been trying to find the

2:27

bones of every German who died

2:29

during the world wars. even the

2:32

Nazis, so they can give them

2:34

a proper burial. When I first

2:36

heard about its mission, it raised

2:38

so many questions from me, like,

2:40

what does it mean to go

2:42

looking for the bones of war

2:44

criminals? What kind of controversy does

2:46

that cause? The Vokespoon is a

2:49

pretty low-profile group, but they found

2:51

new forms of support from people

2:53

on the German right. And once

2:55

I started talking to the group,

2:57

they started telling me about dig

2:59

sites that they were working on

3:01

in Lithuania in Poland. At this

3:03

point they told me they're digging

3:06

about 12,000 Germans out of the

3:08

ground every year. Decades ago was

3:10

more like 25,000. These numbers really

3:12

shocked me. And for this week's

3:14

Sunday read, I wanted to understand

3:16

what they mean right now. So

3:18

I followed the Volkswagen out to

3:20

one of their dig sites in

3:23

Hungary last year. We drove to

3:25

a town south of Budapest near

3:27

the border of Serbia. where this

3:29

mass grave was discovered containing close

3:31

to a thousand bodies of German

3:33

and Hungarian soldiers. We pulled up

3:35

to an empty lot on the

3:37

edge of the road and I

3:40

saw an excavator had dug up

3:42

a ramp about 10 feet deep

3:44

into this very sandy earth and

3:46

at the end of the ramp

3:48

you could see a wall of

3:50

human bones that went up so

3:52

high almost to the surface. In

3:54

front of me was a complete

3:56

jumble of bones, leg bones. arm

3:59

bones, multiple skulls with tree roots

4:01

coming out of them. There was

4:03

no way to even tell what

4:05

the individual skeletons were at that

4:07

point. I watched the Hungarian soldiers

4:09

who were assisting the Volkswagen as

4:11

they took out paintbrushes and worked

4:13

very slowly and methodically to brush

4:16

sand, dirt, and roots off of

4:18

the bones. They tried to arrange

4:20

the skeletons together in bags, one

4:22

skull, two femurs, one set of

4:24

hips. If the Volkswagen manages to

4:26

find dog tags or other items,

4:28

they use those to try to

4:30

identify the bodies and contact relatives.

4:33

Later, they rebarry the bones in

4:35

one of their cemeteries. I'd seen

4:37

a couple of mass graves like

4:39

this one before, from other genocides,

4:41

like in Guatemala. But I'd never

4:43

seen a mass grave on this

4:45

scale. When you look closely at

4:47

a site like this, you start

4:50

to see that it doesn't tell

4:52

just one story. I've

4:55

been reporting this article for more

4:57

than a year, and during that

4:59

time I've also been watching the

5:01

rise of populism that's been happening

5:03

in Germany and across Europe more

5:05

broadly. Germany's far-right party, alternative for

5:07

Germany, or AFD, just doubled its

5:09

seats in Parliament. And this is

5:11

a party where some of its

5:13

politicians have been found to have

5:15

neo-Nazi ties. The idea

5:18

of searching for the bones of

5:20

Nazis in forests around Germany is

5:22

terrifying to many people for what

5:24

it means today. A lot of

5:26

Europeans, especially the war's victims, don't

5:28

think this should be happening at

5:31

all. But the Volkswagen says it's

5:33

not here to commemorate or honor

5:35

any of the people who are

5:37

buried at their cemeteries. They're simply

5:39

here to remember the deadly toll

5:41

of war. The Volkswagen's work has

5:43

been controversial since the beginning. But

5:46

it's in crosshairs today that it

5:48

wouldn't have been in if we

5:50

were talking about it just a

5:52

few decades ago. And I wanted

5:54

to understand just how complicated it's

5:56

become. So here's my article read

5:58

by Malcolm Hillgartner. Our

6:00

audio producer today is Adrian Hurst.

6:03

The original music you'll hear was

6:05

written and performed by Aaron Esposito.

6:07

When Daniel and Victoria Van Bunnigan

6:10

first toured their future home, a

6:12

quiet villa in the Polish city

6:14

of Rotzwoff, it had been abandoned

6:16

for years, its windows sealed up

6:19

with bricks. But something about its

6:21

overgrown garden spoke to them. They

6:23

could imagine raising chickens there, planting

6:25

tomatoes and cucumbers. They could make

6:28

something beautiful out of it, they

6:30

thought. A place where their children

6:32

could run and play. They moved

6:34

in, knowing very little about what

6:37

happened at the villa before World

6:39

War II, when Vrotsov, formerly Breslau,

6:41

was still part of Germany, or

6:44

what occurred there during the war

6:46

when Soviet forces held the city

6:48

under a brutal siege, or even

6:50

what became of the house during

6:53

the war's aftermath, when hundreds of

6:55

thousands of local Germans were forcibly

6:57

resettled. from what was now Polish

6:59

territory. All their neighbors could tell

7:02

them was that the villa had

7:04

once housed a communist newspaper. Still,

7:06

the couple wanted to know more,

7:09

and their inquiries eventually led to

7:11

the Meinaka family in Heidelberg Germany,

7:13

elderly siblings who said they were

7:15

born in the home. Over a

7:18

long afternoon, they showed the couple

7:20

pictures of the place from happier

7:22

times before the war. But they

7:24

also offered the Venbinenigens a surprising

7:27

warning. The couple might find the

7:29

remains of some German soldiers buried

7:31

in the garden. Maybe a few,

7:33

maybe more, they couldn't be certain.

7:36

The Venbunigants didn't quite know what

7:38

to make of the claim, but

7:40

it suddenly sounded more plausible when

7:43

Daniel, digging a trench for a

7:45

water pipe in his backyard, unearthed

7:47

a Nazi-era helmet. It was around

7:49

that time that Victoria received an

7:52

unexpected knock on their door from,

7:54

of all people, an archaeologist. His

7:56

news unsettled the vent bunigans even

7:58

more. He had found documents that

8:01

described an entire war cemetery located

8:03

at their address, but someone returned

8:05

to investigate. It was perhaps a

8:07

coincidence of timing, but it was

8:10

clear to the Venbiningens that the

8:12

answer had to be yes. The

8:14

archaeologist, it turned out, was contracted

8:17

by a private organization in Germany,

8:19

run largely by former military officers

8:21

and little known to the public.

8:23

The folksbund, as the group was

8:26

called... had an unusual mission, to

8:28

find the graves of every German

8:30

who died in the country's many

8:32

wars, and then give each a

8:35

decent burial, a matter who they

8:37

were, or what they had done.

8:39

A team from the folks wound

8:41

descended on the Venbarian property with

8:44

an excavator on a cold March

8:46

day in 2023. Before along, the

8:48

workers hit a layer of churned

8:51

earth, a tell-tale sign that a

8:53

grave lay below. The archaeologists paused

8:55

to pull out trowels and paintbrushes

8:57

so as to not to damage

9:00

any bones. Victoria and her son

9:02

leaned in to look as the

9:04

diggers uncovered the remains of a

9:06

young woman with a much smaller

9:09

skull in her lap. A mother

9:11

and child, just like us, Victoria

9:13

thought. Her children, fascinated, asked if

9:15

they could stay home from school

9:18

the next day to watch. Their

9:20

parents agreed and all that week...

9:22

The Venbinnians looked on in astonishment

9:25

at what emerged from the earth

9:27

behind their home. There were old

9:29

rusted objects like keys and earrings,

9:31

a parsnay, a gold wedding ring,

9:34

a large chain, and on it

9:36

a medallion inscribed with the name

9:38

of Vilhem Korn. When someone lifted

9:40

the remains of a vermacht soldier,

9:43

a doll fell onto the ground,

9:45

perhaps belonging to the dead man's

9:47

daughter. The workers carefully accumulated bones,

9:50

accumulated bones, then sent them away

9:52

in label crates. Where the Van

9:54

Binnigens had pictured a garden, or

9:56

maybe a swimming pool, there was

9:59

now only a... series of mounds.

10:01

The final body count was

10:03

staggering, 128 people. Staggering, but

10:05

at least for the folks boot,

10:08

not exactly surprising, Europe

10:10

in some ways is a vast cemetery

10:13

littered with the remains of

10:15

two world wars that killed

10:18

by conservative estimates, some 56.5

10:20

million people. Many simply vanished

10:23

into the rubble, while others

10:25

were hastily buried in unmarked

10:27

and unmarked graves. As countries

10:29

rebuilt after the war, most

10:31

of these killing fields were

10:33

simply paved over, as Europeans

10:35

sought to turn a new page,

10:37

leaving the daunting task of finding

10:40

the dead for future generations.

10:42

Many countries around the world

10:44

have an organization like the folks

10:46

boond, but nowhere is this work

10:48

more fraught than in Germany, where

10:51

memory and forgetting are constantly bound

10:53

up in a struggle to confront

10:55

or avoid. a guilt that was so

10:58

vast that many references to

11:00

the country's nationalist past remain

11:02

taboo even today. Germany is a

11:04

place where the flag is rarely

11:06

waved outside soccer games, and giving

11:08

the Nazi salute can be punished

11:10

with a prison sentence. Germany's

11:12

response in the lead-up to

11:14

the Russia-Ukraine war was hampered

11:16

because it didn't want to

11:18

be seen as a military force. Yet

11:21

even as the country has sought

11:23

to avoid reminders of its history,

11:25

The remains of that past keep turning

11:27

up. The war graves of 8,000 to

11:29

12,000 Germans are uncovered each year.

11:31

Bones have been uncovered by

11:34

excavators digging parking garages in

11:36

German villages and by telephone

11:38

workers laying fiber optic cable

11:40

where battles took place in

11:42

the 1940s. At the start of

11:44

Russia's invasion of Ukraine in

11:46

2022, soldiers outside Kiev were

11:48

digging trenches when they came

11:51

across the skeleton of a man.

11:53

He was a German soldier who died during the

11:55

last war fought there the Nazi invasion

11:57

of the Soviet Union some 80

11:59

years before Complicating matters is the

12:02

rise of the far right in Europe and

12:04

around the world. For the first time

12:06

since World War II, extremist

12:08

parties have become a send-in

12:10

across the region, and in places

12:12

like Italy, Austria, Hungary, and

12:15

the Netherlands, these movements mirror,

12:17

and in some cases trace

12:19

their roots directly to, the fascist

12:21

groups that triggered the war. In

12:23

Germany, the charge is being led

12:25

by the Alternative for Germany Party,

12:27

or AFD. which in February snap

12:30

election became the second

12:32

largest party in parliament,

12:34

nearly doubling its seats there.

12:36

AFT has reshaped the German

12:38

discourse on issues like immigration

12:40

and climate change, but it is

12:43

the party's approach to the old

12:45

taboos of the war that have

12:47

collided most squarely with German norms.

12:49

AFT leaders now denigrate what they call

12:52

a cult of guilt around how the

12:54

Nazi past is taught in schools. and

12:56

they have reached out to figures of the

12:58

American right for help. Before the February

13:01

election, the tech billionaire Elon Musk

13:03

stumped for the AFD after giving

13:05

a Nazi style salute at President

13:08

Trump's inauguration. Children should not

13:10

be guilty of the sends of

13:12

their parents, let alone their great-grandparents.

13:14

He told a crowd of AFD supporters at

13:16

a rally. Weeks later at a security

13:18

conference in Munich, Vice President

13:21

Jady Vance, through his support

13:23

to authoritarian movements across Europe.

13:25

telling German leaders that there

13:27

is no room for firewalls

13:30

between extremist parties and the

13:32

seats of power. The comment drew gasps

13:34

in the room, and a rebuke

13:37

from Chancellor Olaf Shultz, who later

13:39

said, a commitment to never again,

13:41

is not reconcilable with

13:43

support for the AFD. The

13:46

commitment to never again, raises hard

13:48

questions for the folks

13:50

boond, which confronts the

13:52

idea of guilt individual

13:55

or collective. with every

13:57

disinterment sometimes we have

13:59

truly evil perpetrators, says

14:01

Turkbakin, who heads the organization. In

14:03

some cases we know the biographies, and

14:06

we know that probably if they

14:08

had survived the war they would have

14:10

been put on trial and executed. But

14:12

sometimes the organization will instead

14:14

find itself seeking a grave

14:16

for the disinterred bodies of

14:18

German mothers and their children, who

14:20

were cut down by Soviet artillery fire

14:23

or in a grayer zone, the corpse

14:25

of a conscripted teenage soldier who was

14:27

forced at gunpoint to murder Jews.

14:30

These cases can reflect the

14:32

complexity of history, but

14:34

as I found after many months of

14:36

reporting on the folks wound, and

14:38

its own sometimes in battled history,

14:41

they can also obscure it. Support

14:54

for this podcast comes from

14:56

Northwestern Medicine. I got a phone call

14:58

from Dr. Brought and he said, listen, we have

15:00

a situation. That's Dr. Satish

15:02

Nadeig, Chief of Transplant Surgery

15:05

at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago.

15:07

There's a physician in California

15:09

who is dying. He has lung cancer. It's

15:11

affected his liver as well. Dr. On Kit

15:13

Brought, chief of thoracic surgery, proposed

15:15

a double lung and liver transplant,

15:18

something that had never been done

15:20

before on a cancer patient. Dr.

15:22

Nadig's answer? I don't see why

15:24

not. The surgery required an extraordinary

15:27

level of collaboration. Here's Dr. Barat.

15:29

So we have to take world

15:31

the lungs out very meticulously without

15:33

spilling even a single cancer cell.

15:35

After transplanting a new liver

15:38

their efforts proved successful. We

15:40

want to help patients deal with

15:42

not just a simple problem, but

15:44

we want to deal with problems

15:46

that potentially don't have solutions.

15:49

Visit nm.org/breakthroughs for more.

15:51

That's nm.org/breakthroughs. Hey finance folks,

15:53

you're under a lot of pressure to

15:55

save money, but the best finance leaders

15:57

focus on more than that. Brex knows...

15:59

We want to drive growth,

16:02

change the game, and

16:04

win. So that's exactly

16:06

what Brex will help

16:08

you do. Brex offers

16:10

the world's smartest corporate

16:12

card, banking, expense management,

16:14

and travel, all on

16:16

one AI-powered platform. See

16:18

why 30,000 companies across

16:20

every stage of growth

16:22

use brex.com/Grow. Germany's

16:25

search for its fallen soldiers begins

16:27

in a lonely office park, a

16:29

two-hour train ride from Frankfurt. On

16:31

a fall day, I met Arnashrader,

16:34

a retired army reserve major who

16:36

heads the exhumations department at the

16:38

folks' headquarters near Castle, an industrial

16:40

city in central Germany. Castle was

16:43

once filled with medieval buildings, but

16:45

after it became a wartime manufacturing

16:47

hub of the Nazis, allied bombers

16:50

flattened it into rubble. That changing

16:52

landscape after the war presented one

16:54

of the biggest challenges to finding

16:56

the dead. Shrader told me. An

16:59

archival map might show the exact

17:01

place where a group of soldiers

17:03

were buried, based on the location

17:05

of a local church or an

17:08

old street plan. But what if

17:10

that church is gone? The streets

17:12

remapped. Now it's only just a

17:14

field, Shrader said. Where do you

17:17

even begin? The

17:19

Folksbund Deutche Criggs Graber-Fersogger, the organization's

17:21

full name translates roughly to the

17:24

People's League for the Care of

17:26

German War Graves, was founded in

17:28

2019 as a private group to

17:31

search for those lost in World

17:33

War I. Members went door to

17:35

door collecting change from war widows

17:37

and their children, who hoped that

17:40

the next time they heard from

17:42

the Folksbund, it would be with

17:44

news about the fates of their

17:47

loved ones. The Folksbunds mandate is

17:49

not just to find the bodies.

17:51

but also to decide where to

17:53

put them. Creating a kind of

17:56

vertically integrated operation that first exumes

17:58

the dead, then rebarries them, often

18:00

in cemeteries it has established on

18:03

the outskirts of towns, which the

18:05

Foxbund cares for in perpetuity. Today

18:07

it manages some 830 war cemeteries

18:10

around the world, where 2.8 million

18:12

Germans are buried. The Foxbund's budget

18:14

comes mainly from its members, many

18:16

of them relatives of the dead.

18:19

It leads tours of grave sites

18:21

as points of departure to reflect

18:23

on what participants would have done

18:26

had they been in the shoes

18:28

of the war's victims. goes an

18:30

old saying of the folks' wound.

18:32

The dead obliged the living. The

18:35

sheer amount of remains, unearthed, numbering

18:37

in the millions of bones, makes

18:39

DNA testing too costly, so researchers

18:42

use other objects found with the

18:44

skeletons as clues, like dog tags

18:46

or letters from loved ones. As

18:48

Shrader and I walked through the

18:51

hall, we passed a collection of

18:53

objects that survived the years alongside

18:55

the bones of the dead. A

18:58

rusted cross. a glass eye with

19:00

a blue iris, a pocket watch

19:02

with arms frozen at five minutes

19:05

to eleven. Schrader produced a bottle

19:07

that once held wine. It now

19:09

contained a typewritten message with the

19:11

name Franz Tauver. He was born

19:14

on July 16th 1918 and was

19:16

a milkman before joining the war.

19:18

Schrader asked a colleague to log

19:21

into a database, but the results

19:23

said the folksbound had not yet

19:25

found any descendants of Tauver. At

19:27

the other end of the table

19:30

sat hundreds of dog tags that

19:32

were collected from exhumation sites, organized

19:34

into piles of around a dozen.

19:37

Three hundred lives, sitting on a

19:39

table, he said. Five hundred children

19:41

left behind, maybe. Three hundred wives.

19:43

Six hundred parents. Shrada paused for

19:46

a moment, as his colleagues continued

19:48

typing. The question is, why do

19:50

we do we do this? He

19:53

had not always been so philosophical,

19:55

but when Trado was a young

19:58

lieutenant, he visited a folks vote.

20:00

war cemetery in Belgium, the final

20:02

destination of nearly 40,000 German soldiers,

20:04

many of them the same age

20:06

as Schrader and the rest of

20:08

his paratrooper platoon. The stark reality

20:11

of all those graves raised many

20:13

questions for him about military violence

20:15

and the moral culpability of those

20:17

who fought. What allows men to

20:19

kill each other? he asked himself.

20:21

What war can turn a nice,

20:24

caring family father in 1938 father

20:26

in 1938? into a fighting machine

20:28

in 1942 in Russia. Still, the

20:30

living judged the dead. There a

20:32

few families are interested in accepting

20:34

the bones of Nazi ancestors when

20:37

the folks wound calls with the

20:39

news of their discovery. Other groups

20:41

have attacked the folks' boons' work

20:43

outright. In 2020, anti-fascist leaders began

20:45

protesting when it became public that

20:47

German officials had been attending ceremonies

20:50

at a folks-boons graveyard in the

20:52

Netherlands. that held the remains of

20:54

prominent Nazis, including Julius Detman, the

20:56

SS officer who had Anne Frank,

20:58

arrested. They were joined by Jewish

21:00

leaders who signed a petition calling

21:03

the cemetery the most racist and

21:05

anti-Semitic place in the Netherlands. The

21:07

folks bunt brushes off such criticism.

21:09

If Europe is to confront the

21:11

damage done by its history of

21:13

war, the group believes, then it

21:16

must have places to remember the

21:18

dead. including figures like Deppmann. Some

21:20

time after I returned from Germany,

21:22

I looked up Artur Graf, the

21:24

man who organized the petition against

21:26

the cemetery. Dead people need to

21:29

be buried, he said when I

21:31

called him in the Netherlands. You

21:33

can't just leave them lying there.

21:35

But the man who ultimately sent

21:37

Anne Frank to her death? By

21:40

offering him a tomb like anyone

21:42

else, he said. The folks bunt

21:44

had gone too far in its

21:46

mission. It made Nazi dead look

21:48

like the war's victims, not its

21:50

criminals. A goal that Graft told

21:53

me he suspected... was behind the

21:55

Fokswoon's desire to care for the

21:57

graves. I asked Graf what he

21:59

would do with the site if

22:01

he were in charge. I'd put

22:03

an earthen wall around it, he

22:06

told me. Let the brambles grow.

22:08

That's it. The Fokswoont gets its

22:10

leads from a variety of sources,

22:12

and sometimes the source is the

22:14

person who buried the bodies. In

22:16

May 2023... A 98-year-old named Edmund

22:19

Raveja told his local newspaper that

22:21

he had something to confess. At

22:23

19, he had been part of

22:25

the Mackeys, a guerrilla group that

22:27

fought the Nazi occupiers in France.

22:29

In the last days of the

22:32

war, his squad captured a group

22:34

of 47 German soldiers. Instead of

22:36

taking them to a POW camp,

22:38

Raveja said, his squad took the

22:40

prisoners to the outskirts of a

22:42

village called maimak, told them to

22:45

dig their own graves, and shot

22:47

them all dead. along with a

22:49

French woman believed to be a

22:51

collaborator. Rivea said the members of

22:53

the squad all swore that day

22:55

never to speak about what they

22:58

did. Now they were all dead,

23:00

but him. He wanted people to

23:02

know what happened, and, perhaps most

23:04

important for the folks, Bunt. He

23:06

said he still knew exactly where

23:08

the bodies were buried. When I

23:11

arrived that summer, the old man

23:13

had already led the Germans to

23:15

a site about a 15-minute drive

23:17

from the center of Maymack. But

23:19

the passage of time... had transformed

23:21

the putative killing field. The once

23:24

baron hills were now covered by

23:26

a towering forest of Douglas Furs

23:28

planted after the war. Still the

23:30

folkspoon felt good about the site.

23:32

Its ground radar system, though unable

23:34

to detect bones, had sighted what

23:37

looked like bullet casings and the

23:39

evidence of disturbed earth. As the

23:41

Germans went about their work, I

23:43

went looking for a theyya. His

23:45

confession was a big new story

23:47

in Europe. At least one reporter

23:50

had staked out his home. But

23:52

by the time I arrived in

23:54

Maymack, the frenzy had calmed, and

23:56

Ravea agreed to me— me for

23:58

lunch at the home of his

24:01

friend, the village dentist." He walked

24:03

in wearing a checkered newsboy hat

24:05

and brushed off all attempts to

24:07

help him to the table. Aside

24:09

from a slight stoop, he caught

24:11

a dashing figure for a man

24:14

nearing his 100th birthday. "'So you

24:16

want to hear the whole story?'

24:18

he asked, after finding his seat.

24:20

His resistance squad, he said, was

24:22

commanded by a former French reservist

24:24

whose Nondoger was Hannibal." On June

24:27

7th, 1944, the squad attacked the

24:29

city Tula, and the next day

24:31

it took 55 prisoners. The squad

24:33

gave the soldiers the chance to

24:35

join the resistance, but only a

24:37

few among them did, mainly checks

24:40

and poles, who had been conscripted

24:42

by the Nazis. But the matter

24:44

of the 47 Germans remained. There

24:46

was no one to turn them

24:48

over to, and the squad was

24:50

too small to keep them. When

24:53

an order was received, he said,

24:55

you just had to execute. Vivier

24:57

said he ran into Hannibal crying

24:59

after he received the order from

25:02

one of his superiors. The commander,

25:04

the only fighter among the French

25:06

who spoke German, had gotten to

25:08

know their captives, some of whom

25:10

grew up along the same border

25:12

as he had. No one wanted

25:14

to kill the Frenchwoman. A collaborator,

25:16

they were told from the village

25:18

called Saint-partou. They drew lots, and

25:20

the task fell to a man

25:22

whose last name Revalia remembered as

25:24

Tessier, the brother of a local

25:26

carpenter. After the trench was dug,

25:28

Hannibal ordered the Germans who had

25:30

pictures of their families to have

25:32

one final look at them. The

25:34

men they were about to kill

25:36

were fathers to some and sons

25:38

to others, Rivaya told me. The

25:41

prisoners were shot once, and then

25:43

a second time to ensure they

25:45

were dead, the kudugras, in Rivaya's

25:47

words. My life is novel, Rivaya

25:49

told me finally. I don't wish

25:51

you to go through what I

25:53

went through. He finished his

25:55

dessert and then his son drove

25:57

him home. As the days passed...

26:00

with little progress in the search,

26:02

the folksbound workers grew tense. Right-wing

26:04

collectors were fueling an online market

26:06

for our Nazi-era paraphernalia, and the

26:08

workers feared that looters might sneak

26:11

into the site at night looking

26:13

for trophies. At the same time,

26:15

the village was growing weary of

26:17

the international spotlight. Mamak's role in

26:19

resisting the Nazis seemed clearly heroic

26:22

until Revaya's revelation. Now some online

26:24

commentators were saying that he had

26:26

perpetrated a massacre. One day, while

26:28

I was on my phone in

26:30

Maymack, I came across a pamphlet

26:33

on the internet that wanted to

26:35

set the record straight. Resistance fighters

26:37

are the opposite of war criminals,

26:39

it said, criticizing the journalists who

26:41

wrote about the killings for sensationalizing

26:44

them. Over coffee, Celine Kompa, the

26:46

local reporter who published the first

26:48

article about Revaya. told me about

26:50

how the town reacted to the

26:52

news. A lot of people would

26:55

have preferred him to be quiet,

26:57

not to say anything, she said,

26:59

and I thought it was extremely

27:01

courageous of him to speak up.

27:03

France, it seemed, had its own

27:06

taboo when it came to speaking

27:08

about what its fighters did during

27:10

the war. All sides had something

27:12

to be guilty of, she said,

27:14

and war brought out the worst

27:17

in everyone. This is like pulling

27:19

a ghost out of a closet.

27:22

By late August, a rumor began

27:24

to spread around the village that

27:26

the search was not going well.

27:28

Few people thought Ravea could have

27:30

concocted such a dramatic story from

27:32

scratch, and in fact some elements

27:35

had been corroborated. More likely it

27:37

seemed the remains were in another

27:39

spot nearby. Ravea Secret had been

27:41

buried so long that it might

27:43

be impossible to ever on earth.

27:45

Ten days after the digging began...

27:48

The folks won't issue a statement

27:50

saying it had found old coins

27:52

and bullet cases from the war,

27:54

but there were no skeletons at

27:56

the site. Unfortunately, such setbacks are

27:58

part of our work, the statement

28:01

said. They are not giving up

28:03

and are looking for more information.

28:05

Some of the folks' wounds to

28:07

discoveries come together far more quickly.

28:09

Last April I got a call

28:11

asking if I could fly to

28:14

Budapest. The group had unearthed what

28:16

it believed was a mass grave

28:18

of around 1,000 remains along a

28:20

highway near Hungary's border with Serbia

28:22

and Croatia. The ground there was

28:24

sandy, which meant the excavation was

28:27

moving more swiftly than usual. and

28:29

I would need to get there

28:31

soon if I wanted to arrive

28:33

before they finished. The history of

28:35

this particular mass grave began with

28:37

the 50-day siege of Budapest by

28:40

Soviet and Romanian forces at the

28:42

end of the war. My then

28:44

Hungary was ruled by its own

28:46

fascist regime, the Arrow Cross Party,

28:48

which killed thousands of civilians as

28:50

it fought alongside its Nazi allies

28:53

during just five months in power.

28:55

By the time the Soviets finally

28:57

took the city, the fighting was

28:59

not just on the streets, on

29:01

the streets, but had descended into

29:03

the sewers, and more than 150,000

29:06

people would die. On a sunny

29:08

day last spring, I pulled up

29:10

to a lot near an abandoned

29:12

barracks from Hungary's communist years. The

29:14

bones of hundreds of men, both

29:16

Germans and Hungarians, lay in an

29:19

open pit. I stepped out of

29:21

the car to the sounds of

29:23

birds singing, mixed with the clink

29:25

of shovels digging into sand. The

29:27

pit dropped ten feet down. and

29:29

a Hungarian soldier who was working

29:32

with the folks-boned, gestured for me

29:34

to join him at the bottom.

29:36

Behind the soldier, sticking out from

29:38

a wall, an army of bones

29:40

had risen. Where once there were

29:42

men, now there were ribs, fragments

29:45

of sternum, pieces of vertebrae, and

29:47

teeth, everything sticking out from the

29:49

earth. On the ground, other soldiers

29:51

sat with paintbrushes, dusting off the

29:53

bones and placing them into groups.

29:55

FEMA with femur with femur. hip

29:58

with hip. A collection of skulls

30:00

covered a table, tree roots springing

30:02

from where there once were. eyes.

30:04

The soldiers whose bones we were

30:06

looking at, there mocked soldiers and

30:08

Hungarians who fought with them, had

30:11

survived the Soviet invasion and been

30:13

sent as prisoners of war to

30:15

a camp in a town called

30:17

Baya. But after they arrived there,

30:19

a sickness, most likely typhus, began

30:21

to spread among them. They had

30:24

lived through a world war. The

30:26

oldest among them had probably survived

30:28

too, only to die at a

30:30

camp mostly in their bedclothes. The

30:32

sun broke through the clouds, and

30:34

the Hungarian soldier and I simultaneously

30:37

spotted something twinkling in the sand.

30:39

It was a dog tag. A

30:41

crowd of Hungarians and Germans quickly

30:43

crowded around to examine it. Part

30:45

of the birth date on the

30:47

tag, July 29, was clear, but

30:50

the year was rusted beyond legibility.

30:52

The name was Peter Vidag. His

30:54

last name meant flower in Hungarian,

30:56

a soldier told me. Propane

31:33

is the energy for everyone. Learn

31:36

more at propane.com. Brought to you

31:38

by the Capital One Saver card.

31:40

With Saver, you earn unlimited 3%

31:42

cash back on dining, entertainment, and

31:44

at grocery stores. That's unlimited cash

31:46

back on ordering takeout from home

31:48

or unlimited cash back on tickets

31:50

to concerts and games. So grab

31:52

a bite, grab a seat, and

31:55

earn unlimited 3% cash back with

31:57

the Saver card. Capital One. What's

31:59

in your wallet. Terms apply. See

32:01

Capital one.com for details. The

32:28

presence of the cemetery on Hungarian

32:30

soil seems to have been accepted

32:33

by the locals, but elsewhere the

32:35

folkspont's grave sites have stirred up

32:37

controversy. As I started to look

32:39

into other cemeteries the folkspont managed,

32:41

I came across many disputes over

32:44

the graveyards, some going back decades,

32:46

and similar to the one involving

32:48

the tomb of Anne Frank's Tourmentor

32:50

in the Netherlands. In one case,

32:53

the residence of Costromano, Italy had

32:55

discovered that Christian Vert, an SS

32:57

officer known as Christian the Cruel

32:59

for having pioneered Hitler's gassing and

33:02

lethal injection programs, was buried at

33:04

a local folksbund cemetery along with

33:06

two other top Nazi officials. The

33:08

townspeople demanded that the remains be

33:11

removed, but the folksbund said it

33:13

couldn't disinter them because they were

33:15

buried in a mass grave. Only

33:17

after four years of protests by

33:20

the residents... and a refusal by

33:22

officials to bury more remains there,

33:24

were the names of the men

33:26

removed from the Book of Honor

33:29

at the Cemetery's Visitor Center in

33:31

1992. In 2002, Israel's official Holocaust

33:33

memorial, Yad Vashem, objected before a

33:35

folkspoon ceremony in Israel that honored

33:38

Germans killed during army service, including

33:40

SS officers. The event had to

33:42

be postponed. The following year the

33:44

Folksbund proposed building a memorial for

33:47

Germans near a cemetery in the

33:49

Russian enclave Kaliningrad for victims of

33:51

SS medical experiments. At one point

33:53

the bones of 4,000 300 German

33:56

soldiers spent years sitting in a

33:58

check factory that produced toilet bowls

34:00

after a dispute with authorities who

34:02

initially demanded that the Germans pay

34:05

millions of dollars to bury them.

34:07

When I spoke about the controversies

34:09

with David Livingston, a historian at

34:11

California Lutheran University who has researched

34:14

the work of the folksbound. He

34:16

said that the group's history may

34:18

have something to do with how

34:20

it behaves today. In West Germany,

34:23

where the folksbound was based, The

34:25

task of purging former Nazis from

34:27

their old positions stalled as the

34:29

Cold War fight with the Soviets

34:32

became Europe's main concern. That allowed

34:34

many former Nazis to find work

34:36

at Foxbund, searching for their dead

34:38

compatriots. Those men died long ago,

34:41

Livingston said, and the folksbund was

34:43

different today. But the organizational culture

34:45

is such that it's been set

34:47

by the people who were the

34:50

founders in the 1950s and 1960s.

34:52

specifically military veterans of the Third

34:54

Reich, he told me. Livingston told

34:56

me about a personal tie to

34:59

the search for the graves. In

35:01

the early 2000s he learned that

35:03

his maternal grandfather was buried at

35:05

the Folksbun Cemetery in Costomano. According

35:08

to a family legend, the grandfather,

35:10

a sergeant, was killed in a

35:12

mutiny by his own men when

35:14

he wouldn't abandon the Nazi cause,

35:16

even after it was clear that

35:19

the Germans had lost the war.

35:21

Livingston told me that he explained

35:23

the situation to the Folkswoon while

35:25

researching a book about him and

35:28

asked if it could give him

35:30

all the documentation it had about

35:32

how his grandfather's body was found

35:34

so that he might corroborate the

35:37

story. All of a sudden they

35:39

started to get very evasive with

35:41

me, he said. Long story short,

35:43

they didn't respond. Folkswoon told me

35:46

that the exchange had been extremely

35:48

polite, but that their files are

35:50

internal working documents. that the folksbone

35:52

cannot pass on. Livingston said there

35:55

were limits to the folksbones portrayal

35:57

of the soldiers. as casualties of

35:59

the Nazi regime. The narrative that

36:01

they promote from my research is

36:04

what I would call a grand

36:06

equivalency, that everybody was a victim.

36:08

But you can't put a Jewish

36:10

victim that was torn from their

36:13

home, and a German citizen who

36:15

was subjected to bombing by the

36:17

allies, in the same category, he

36:19

said. I think right now it's

36:22

really important to call this stuff

36:24

out, because we're sliding toward this

36:26

illiberal, if not authoritarian populist view

36:28

of the world. One

36:32

summer afternoon on a long car

36:34

ride to Vienna with Dirk Rites,

36:37

the managing director of the Fokspoon's

36:39

office in Dresden, I asked him

36:41

what the rising tide of populism

36:44

meant for his work. He took

36:46

a second to answer. There was

36:48

a debate over how the Fokspund

36:51

should manage the interest of Germany's

36:53

far-right party, AFD, which had contacted

36:56

Fokspund about hosting joint events. Rites

36:58

believed that as a nonpartisan organization...

37:00

the folks should try to engage

37:03

with all the political parties in

37:05

Germany. But sometimes things didn't go

37:07

as planned, he said. Not long

37:10

before, he and a colleague had

37:12

been invited by an AFT supporter

37:14

to make a presentation at an

37:17

upcoming gathering. When they arrived, they

37:19

found themselves in the middle of

37:21

a battle reenactment, like the ones

37:24

done for the American Civil War.

37:26

But this battle seemed to be

37:28

from World War II, and some

37:31

of the participants were wearing SS

37:33

uniforms. The uniforms crossed the line

37:35

for rights. He said he left

37:38

the event immediately. Still, I asked

37:40

him if he had ever confronted

37:42

the FT supporter about the uniforms.

37:45

We still have to have that

37:47

conversation, he told me. Rites kept

37:49

driving through the flat landscape toward

37:52

Vienna. Around sunset, the phone rang

37:54

and Rites answered it, exchanging a

37:56

few words with the caller before

37:59

he hung up. I asked him

38:01

who it was. The man I

38:03

told you about, he said. I

38:06

told him not wasn't a good

38:08

time to talk. Even if the

38:10

folkspun is cautious in its dealings

38:13

with AFD members, Germany's far-right party

38:15

is vocal about its support for

38:17

the group and its mission. On

38:20

the AFD website, a petition by

38:22

its leader, at least vital, lists

38:25

funding the group as one of

38:27

its legislative priorities, along with establishing

38:29

a national day for unborn life

38:32

and a plan to block Gazan

38:34

refugees from entering Germany. Jan Philip

38:36

Tutson, an AFD State Parliament member

38:39

in Germany's Northeastern Mecklenburg Warpormen, told

38:41

me that he is both a

38:43

folksborn donor and that he likes

38:46

to lay wreaths at its ceremonies

38:48

from the AFD. The folksborn does

38:50

have supporters across the political spectrum.

38:53

Several folksbound officials I talked to

38:55

said their biggest political patrons belong

38:57

to the Christian Democratic Union, Germany's

39:00

center right party. One Green Party

39:02

member I contacted told me she

39:04

supported the group because it promoted

39:07

peace and was opposed to far-right

39:09

extremism. Still, the possibility that far-right

39:11

extremists could co-opt the Volkswagen is

39:14

a concern for some, including its

39:16

former leadership. I fear this organization

39:18

is at huge risk of being

39:21

instrumentalized. Marcus Meckle, the folks' president

39:23

until 2016, told me when I

39:25

met him in Berlin. Meccel, a

39:28

former Protestant pastor, grew up in

39:30

East Germany, where the communist regime

39:32

refused to build World War II

39:35

memorials because they were seen as

39:37

inherently pro-Nazi. An approach Meccel said

39:39

he didn't agree with because it

39:42

sidestepped the hard questions of history.

39:44

When he came to lead the

39:46

folksboned in 2013, however, he said

39:49

he was startled by the group's

39:51

emphasis on commemoration. There was this

39:53

attitude there of... Our poor boys,

39:56

look at what happened to them

39:58

in the battlefield," he said. For

40:01

an organization so can of the

40:03

past, the folksbund had seemed to

40:05

sideline the mantra of never again.

40:08

Michael decided he would undertake a

40:10

reform project to the folksbund. After

40:12

having a look at the materials

40:15

being distributed by the group, he

40:17

found most of them to be

40:19

inappropriate. For example, commemoration books for

40:22

dead Wehrmacht soldiers that told about

40:24

their lives, but left out any

40:26

information on the crimes German soldiers

40:29

committed, for Christmas cards sent to

40:31

families who had donated that told...

40:33

sad stories from the Western Front.

40:36

The Flyers, the Volkswagen, distributed at

40:38

its cemeteries, focused mainly on the

40:40

architecture. But there was nothing about

40:43

the war, nothing about why the

40:45

soldiers were even there, he said.

40:47

Mekel ordered the publications to cease

40:50

until they could be rewritten. Mekel

40:52

also told me that the Volkswagen

40:54

staff, almost exclusively focused on identifying

40:57

the graves of German soldiers, and

40:59

ignored civilian remains. Before long, the

41:01

new president was looking into the

41:04

folks' bones finances. One concern was

41:06

that with each year, there were

41:08

fewer war widows still alive to

41:11

make contributions, and the organization's income

41:13

was declining. But equally troubling, Mackel

41:15

said, was that some of the

41:18

remaining donors had very questionable backgrounds.

41:20

In one case, Mackel found that

41:22

a large contributor was actually an

41:25

organization that he suspected was founded

41:27

by SS veterans. The group now

41:29

sent money through a charitable foundation

41:32

to obscure the funding's Nazi ties,

41:34

Meckle told me. The question is,

41:37

who is sponsoring this, he said.

41:39

When I approached the folks wound

41:41

about the matter, it identified the

41:44

group as the mutual aid organization

41:46

former Vofen-SS, a group that was

41:48

known by its German initials, H-I-I-A-G.

41:51

and was eventually dissolved after numerous

41:53

controversies. The folks won't confirm that

41:55

HIG's assets had been transferred to

41:58

a foundation it worked with afterward.

42:00

But the folksbund said, though Voffin

42:02

SS Group saw itself as an

42:05

aid organization, and for this reason

42:07

was free to donate. His frustration

42:09

mounting, Meckel sought to set the

42:12

record straight with a mission statement,

42:14

a move that he hoped would

42:16

be a first step to build

42:19

momentum for bigger proposals. It turned

42:21

out it would be Meckel's last

42:23

crusade at the folksbund. His proposal

42:26

sought to clarify the group's stance

42:28

on World War II, calling it

42:30

a... racist war of extermination. A

42:33

standard description approved years before by

42:35

the German Parliament, that placed the

42:37

blame for the conflict squarely on

42:40

Germany. But many in the folks

42:42

won't rank and file balked. A

42:44

group of reservists led the charge

42:47

against Mecca, with one former general

42:49

writing an article that called his

42:51

proposal downright nonsense, and dismissed the

42:54

idea that the war was an

42:56

extermination campaign as a historical theory

42:58

that requires factual proof. Sometime in

43:01

2016, Meckel determined that his opponents

43:03

had the votes to remove him

43:05

and resigned. In his statement, the

43:08

folks said Meckel had fallen out

43:10

with the organization because he had

43:13

ignored decision-making processes within the association

43:15

and did not involve the committees

43:17

in his decisions, instead acting autonomously.

43:20

This caused resentment within the association.

43:22

After Meckel went public about the

43:24

resistance against his reforms, The Folksbund

43:27

eventually approved war of extermination language

43:29

similar to what Mackel was pushing

43:31

for, though only after he was

43:34

gone. Mackel told me he was

43:36

shocked that it even had to

43:38

be debated so many years after

43:41

the war. But he was also

43:43

skeptical that the wording made a

43:45

difference in the end. They might

43:48

have approved their mission statement, but

43:50

they didn't change their behavior, he

43:52

told me. How do we mourn

43:55

and remember these soldiers, without honoring

43:57

them? The

44:02

bones exhumed from the Venbeningen's garden

44:04

in Vrotswoff were set to be

44:06

reburied on a rainy September day

44:08

at a folks-won cemetery on the

44:11

outskirts of the city. To the

44:13

128 bodies the folksbound had added

44:15

an additional 178 remains, mainly Nazi

44:17

soldiers it found at other sites

44:19

around the city. A total of

44:22

306 people would be interred that

44:24

day, I was told, in a

44:26

military-style ceremony that would include a

44:28

trumpeter and a chaplain. The

44:31

Fauksbund had also searched for relatives

44:33

to attend, but found only one

44:35

who was alive. Still, that did

44:38

not stop a crowd from coming

44:40

to the services that afternoon. As

44:42

I arrived, dozens of Germans filed

44:44

out of rented buses, Fauksbund ranked

44:47

and filed who traveled more than

44:49

three hours from towns in the

44:51

conservative states, Saxony, and Thyrinja. One

44:53

group had brought a wreath with

44:55

the logo of a group called

44:58

Lansmanshaft Schlichien, to Poland. The group,

45:00

I learned afterward, was a so-called

45:02

German homeland association that represented descendants

45:04

of those expelled from that part

45:07

of Poland after the Nazi regime's

45:09

fall. In recent years, its youth

45:11

wing was expelled for having ties

45:13

to a neo-Nazi political party. Below

45:16

us in the pits set the

45:18

remains to be buried. Each set

45:20

of bones had been fitted into

45:22

a tiny black coffin about two

45:25

feet long, which in turn had

45:27

been arranged in neat rows on

45:29

the ground. each with a sprig

45:31

of fur on top. They were

45:33

divided between two massive pits, one

45:36

for soldiers and the other for

45:38

civilians, roughly half in each group.

45:40

I asked if I could meet

45:42

the relative the researchers had located,

45:45

and was soon introduced to Ermgarde

45:47

Aust, whose grandfather, Gustav Hiller, was

45:49

killed during the war's last year

45:51

at 61. Aust told me she

45:54

was a folksbound member herself. She

45:56

had first seen them as a

45:58

child in Bavaria. collected donations in

46:00

tin cans. When it called her,

46:03

she thought it was after another

46:05

contribution. Instead, it said it had

46:07

found her grandfather's remains behind the

46:09

villa. I started crying, she told

46:12

me. I got emotional. Oost showed

46:14

me a sepia portrait of Hiller,

46:16

who looked out with sunken eyes,

46:18

a middle-aged man who had already

46:20

lived through one world war. Hiller

46:23

didn't fight for the Nazis, Oost

46:25

said. but the regime trusted him

46:27

with leading food distribution as Breslau

46:29

fought on. Finally, in April 1945,

46:32

Hiller was killed in an air

46:34

raid. Oust's husband, Gotti, began to

46:36

show more pictures, but at one

46:38

point his wife asked him to

46:41

stop. Gotti closed the photo album

46:43

and looked up from it with

46:45

a polite smile. It seemed we

46:47

had reached something the couple didn't

46:50

want to be seen. I asked

46:52

Oust. What was in the last

46:54

photos?" She wouldn't say. Someone rang

46:56

a bell signaling the beginning of

46:58

the ceremony. A sprinkle of rain

47:01

began to fall, and various officials

47:03

took to the lectern, speaking about

47:05

the war in Poland and the

47:07

need for Germans to acknowledge their

47:10

responsibility for their crimes. They spoke

47:12

about Germany's campaigns of extermination against

47:14

minorities. In the crowd of Germans,

47:16

I was one of few foreigners

47:19

there that day. No Polish representatives

47:21

spoke at the ceremony taking place

47:23

in their country, even though some

47:25

were invited. And it was perhaps

47:28

because of this environment that a

47:30

new theme emerged. Not guilt, but

47:32

grief. Many said that despite the

47:34

devastation that was inflicted by Germany,

47:36

their families had been victims too,

47:39

and wanted closure of their own

47:41

from the war. One spoke of

47:43

a relative who died on Christmas

47:45

Day in 1941. The military deacon

47:48

told the story of his grandmother,

47:50

who did not know whether to

47:52

declare her husband dead after he

47:54

was taken as a prisoner of

47:57

war into Russia. When we remember

47:59

the dead in front of God,

48:01

we don't think about a mass

48:03

of people. We think about single

48:06

people, a name, a home, a

48:08

family," he said. God of peace,

48:10

we ask you for the people

48:12

we have buried here today. We

48:14

only know a few by name,

48:17

but we trust for you they

48:19

are not a number, but your

48:21

children. There was a moment of

48:23

silence as the trumpeter played. Later

48:26

men with shovels came. and buried

48:28

the 306 bodies for the second

48:30

time. The following month I sat

48:32

down with Bacon, a former Brigadier

48:35

General who now serves as the

48:37

Fokespoon's chief executive. There was something

48:39

strange about the funeral to me,

48:41

not just to see the ceremony

48:44

done with military honors, but to

48:46

see Germans grieving as much for

48:48

themselves as for their victims. I

48:50

knew this was the natural response

48:52

when people bury their dead. At

48:55

the same time... It all seemed

48:57

to break with some unspoken prohibition

48:59

about how to remember these particular

49:01

combatants. Certainly there was an acknowledgement

49:04

at the funeral of the National

49:06

Guilt Germany still faced. But when

49:08

it came to the responsibility of

49:10

the family members who chose their

49:13

path during the Nazi years, those

49:15

single people in the words of

49:17

the chaplain, never again was replaced

49:19

by recollections like those Aust had

49:22

for her grandfather. about their positive

49:24

individual qualities instead of their monstrous

49:26

collective crime. Maybe it is harder

49:28

for families to carry stories of

49:30

guilt than for nations." I asked

49:33

Bacon what other taboos might be

49:35

changing in his country. Its distrust

49:37

of the military was one, he

49:39

said. When I was a young

49:42

soldier walking down the streets of

49:44

Hamburg, someone might spin on you,

49:46

right at the bottom of your

49:48

feet when he crossed your path.

49:51

He said, Now things were changing.

49:53

Russia's invasion of Ukraine was showing

49:55

that German attitudes about pacifism needed

49:57

to be reconsidered. It will not

50:00

protect you from someone who intends

50:02

to do you harm," he said.

50:04

None of this was to excuse

50:06

Germany's past war crimes, he said.

50:08

The Nazi regime destroyed its own

50:11

country, along with much of Europe.

50:13

Among the dead that the folkspoon

50:15

exhumed were not just drivers and

50:17

cooks, but also true mass murderers.

50:20

Still, the question of guilt was

50:22

a complicated one. Marken said many

50:24

of those who were buried were

50:26

only 19 when they died when

50:29

they died when they died when

50:31

they died. Now, with the wisdom

50:33

of hindsight, people say, they should

50:35

have done this and they should

50:38

have done that. I often ask

50:40

myself, what would I have done

50:42

if I was in that position?

50:44

He told me a story about

50:46

his grandfather, who fought with the

50:49

Wehrmacht only to be sent to

50:51

a prisoner camp after Hitler's defeat,

50:53

where he faced abuse at Soviet

50:55

hands before returning home. As a

50:58

young boy in post-war Germany, Bachen

51:00

said he once came across his

51:02

grandfather and great uncle. both former

51:04

soldiers, in the garden drinking coffee.

51:07

The two men were in tears.

51:09

You don't understand as a boy,

51:11

but later as you grow older

51:13

and mature, you start to understand

51:16

why they were crying, he said.

51:18

But my children? There are no

51:20

experiences like this anymore. I remembered

51:22

an email exchange I had with

51:25

Sersh Klassfeld, an 89-year-old former Nazi

51:27

hunter living in France. who joined

51:29

the protest over the graveyard of

51:31

Anne Frank's persecutor in the Netherlands.

51:33

Klarsfeld's family experience in the war

51:36

was far different from Bakins. His

51:38

father was murdered in Auschwitz. And

51:40

he now seemed frustrated that the

51:42

graves issue was still up for

51:45

debate so many years later. To

51:47

him the matter had been simple.

51:49

We protested because it was known

51:51

that the German graves in that

51:54

cemetery in a country occupied by

51:56

the German army during the war

51:58

were mostly SS graves. he wrote

52:00

to me. Muckin did not see

52:03

the matter of the graves as

52:05

so black and white. Why? How

52:07

do we judge someone today, whom

52:09

we probably can assume has done

52:11

wrong in his life, and has

52:14

committed a crime? He was never

52:16

given a trial. He never had

52:18

the chance to defend himself, because

52:20

he died, Bucken said. For Bucken,

52:23

there seemed to be more room

52:25

to discuss, more room for nuance

52:27

and subtlety, when it came to

52:29

the remains, and to whom they

52:32

belonged. I'm someone who has really

52:34

no desire to see them as

52:36

heroes. Backen said of the Nazi

52:38

bones the folks bunt exhumed, but

52:41

imagine them, even those who are

52:43

perpetrators. Imagine them in your mind,

52:45

as maybe an eight-year-old boy standing

52:47

in front of a Christmas tree,

52:49

with shiny eyes, and... There was

52:52

a pause. Was he born as

52:54

a monster? A perpetrator? No. He

52:56

was made into that by someone.

53:10

Brought to you by the Capital

53:12

One Saver card. With Saver, you

53:14

earn unlimited 3% cash back on

53:16

dining, entertainment, and at grocery stores.

53:18

That's unlimited cash back on ordering

53:20

takeout from home or unlimited cash

53:22

back on tickets to concerts and

53:24

games. So grab a bite, grab

53:26

a seat, and earn unlimited 3%

53:28

cash back with the Saver card.

53:30

Capital One. What's in your wallet?

53:32

Terms apply. See Capital one.com for

53:35

details.