Zeugin aus der Hölle

(Witness out of hell)

Director: Zika Mitrovic, b/w, 83 mn., 1965-67

Hoffmann, public prosecutor at the Central Office of the State Justice Administration for the Investigation of National Socialist Crimes in Ludwigsburg, Germany, travels to Belgrade to see the writer Bora Petrovic. Shortly after the end of the war, Petrovic wrote a book based on the testimonies of the survivor Lea Weiss about the crimes committed in the German extermination camps. Now Lea Weiss is supposed to be a witness against a former concentration camp doctor on trial in Germany, but she refuses and claims that her statements were made up. Hoffmann asks Petrovic to come with him to the Federal Republic to convince Lea Weiss to testify, but Petrovic's attempts are in vain. The shame of the victim — in contrast to the notorious good consciences of the perpetrators — is too large. In the concentration camp, Lea Weiss had been forced to sexually serve the camp commanders, and was then subsequently abused for medical experiments. Her solution to her desperate situation, 20 years after the war, is suicide. Numerous details used in the film are drawn from the Frankfurt Auschwitz trials of 1964-65.