- opening title card: Monsters exist, but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are the common men. -- Primo Levi
- title card: During the Russian Campaign, from 1941 to 1943, Jewish civilians were systematically murdered with pistols and rifles.
- title card: This film is based on original quotations from the perpetrators.
- one of the perpetrators: At first the German machine gun was used, later the Russian machine gun. The German machine guns malfunctioned. Of course single shots were possible with the German machine gun, but they became so hot as they were fired off so often that even when set to "single shot" they fired repeatedly. That is why Russian machine guns were used.
- one of the perpetrators: Our battalion doctor had to explain to us precisely how to shoot a person so that they died at once.
- Narratress: The greatest individual mass execution takes place in Baba Yar near Kiev. 33,731 people are killed within 36 hours.
- Narratress: Most of the murders are committed in the summer because it is not possible to dig mass graves in frozen ground.
- [insert: The case of Kitty Genovese]
- Narratress: The Genovese Syndrome, aka. The Bystander Effect: In 1994, the 28-year-old Kitty Genovese is assaulted and raped in the courtyard of an apartment house. The perpetrator leaves the scene and returns 20 minutes later. He abuses his victim again and then kills her. There is proof that 38 residents of surrounding apartment houses witness the entire incident. Nobody calls the police, nobody helps. - The more bystanders are watching an incident, the less likely someone will intervene.
- Robert Jay Lifton: One could say, "I am unable to do this," with the implication that it was one's own shortcoming, and one might be quickly transferred because they didn't want you to interfere with the killing machinery. One could never say, "I'm against this. It's wrong." That would be a death knell.
- one of the perpetrators: Personally, I participated in about ten executions where I had to shoot men and women.
- one of the perpetrators: I couldn't shoot at people anymore. My commanding officer noticed, because I kept missing. That's why he replaced me.
- Narratress: During the mass executions in Eastern Europe about two million people are murdered, a third of all the Holocaust victims.
- one of the perpetrators: Digging the ditches takes up most of the time. Whereas the shooting goes quite fast. 100 men, 40 minutes.
- Benjamin Ferencz: When I got to Nuremberg as prosecutor, by chance were found the "Ereignismeldungen der Einsatzgruppen aus der UdSSR," the reports from the eastern front. Clearly a case of mass murder, unparalleled in human history. 3,000 men, the men you are talking about, went out and every day - every day! - they murdered large numbers of people including helpless innocent children.
- [first lines]
- one of the perpetrators: Actually we didn't even think about it at all.
- [last lines]
- Patrick Desbois: Perhaps one day you will be a policeman, or soldier, or scientist, or journalist in a place of killing. And this day you will have to do something. At least take a picture and sent to CNN. Don't wait for politicians to move, because politic machines are too slow. Until UNO, UNESCO, or NATO decide it's genocide, it's finished for the victims.
- Patrick Desbois: In a small village, of Belarus I think, the director gathered all the children and said, "Tomorrow there is no class, because we kill our enemies. You go to see, and you talk about it the day after in school." The next day the children gathered at the mass grave, all the school watched
- [the mass shooting]
- Patrick Desbois: , and the day after it was the course of the day.
- one of the perpetrators: We usually marched out as a platoon, combed the town by going from door to door, forcing people from their homes and pushing them to one spot in town. There, with the help of a local, we determined who was Jewish. Then locals who were not Jewish were sent back.
- one of the perpetrators: Men, women, children. All whacked. The Jews are being annihilated. Dear Heidi, don't worry about it. It has to be done.
- one of the perpetrators: I have to add that no one wanted to be called a coward.
- one of the perpetrators: I felt that I'd be able to cope with it, and that the Jews wouldn't have escaped fate if I hadn't taken part anyway.
- one of the perpetrators: No need to hush it up. The operations against the Jews were profitable.
- one of the perpetrators: We spent several days ironing money we had confiscated from the executed Jews. No idea what happened with the money. It was put in sacks and sent away.
- Narratress: The Ash Conformity Experiment, a variation. If only one other person answers correctly, the participant also insists on the correct evaluation.
- Narratress: Milgram Experiment, a variation. When the participants observe a staged procedure where the experiment is prematurely interrupted, the ratio of obedience sinks by 50%. When two of the experimenters are of different opinion, the ratio of obedience sinks to zero.