Verdict on Auschwitz: The Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial 1963-1965 (1993)

VERDICT ON AUSCHWITZ: THE FRANKFURT AUSCHWITZ TRIAL 1963-1965

Original title:
STRAFSACHE 4 Ks 2/63 - AUSCHWITZ VOR DEM FRANKFURTER SCHWURGERICHT

A film by Rolf Bickel and Dietrich Wagner

1993, 180 minutes, color & b/w, German with optional English subtitles
DVDRip, XviD/AVI, AC-3, 3x 698MB

Part 1: The Investigation
Part 2: The Trial
Part 3: The Verdict

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1034084/

Description
One of the most important trials of the 20th century began in 1963, when 360 witnesses from 19 countries, including 211 Auschwitz survivors, confronted former members of Hitler’s SS - many of whom had made comfortable lives for themselves in postwar West Germany - and accused them of taking part in the mass murder of millions. Using excerpts from the trial, the filmmakers bring to life the investigation, the courtroom drama and the verdict in this historic trial involving perpetrators of the “Final Solution.”

http://firstrunfeatures.com

Review
by Ed Gonzalez, November 28, 2006

Verdict on Auschwitz isn't a film so much as it is a discovery. From 1963 to 1965, the first Auschwitz trial played out inside a Frankfurt courtroom, where a tribunal of judges heard from over 300 witnesses, including more than 200 Auschwitz survivors, who testified against 22 men put on trial for the mass extermination of Europe's Jewry.

In 1993, directors Rolf Bickel and Dietrich Wagner pondered the significance of the trial — the investigation leading to the arrest of the accused ghouls (all of whom learned that saying and admitting to nothing was in their selfish interest), the toll the 20 months of proceedings would have on everyone from witnesses to the public, and the serving of the verdict and its outcome —through a mix of archival footage, photographs, interviews with people present at the trial, and excerpts from 430 hours of audiotapes.

The film doubles not only as an autopsy of a trial but an examination of how the mass slaughter that took place at Auschwitz-Birkenau could not have been possible without the meticulous paperwork the Germans kept—records that would prove to be their undoing in courts of law from Nuremburg to Frankfurt. The documentary's aesthetic isn't groundbreaking, but when set atop the image of the empty Frankfurt courtroom as it appeared to the filmmakers in the early '90s, the voices of the trial's witnesses resonate like wails from a haunted house. In the documentary's third part, it is revealed that the horrific would become routine to the public as the trial dragged on, and though there are enough Holocaust documentaries to match the number of days it took for the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial to come to its conclusion, the voices Bickel and Wagner allow us to overhear never cease to shock and awe.

http://www.slantmagazine.com/film/review/verdict-on-auschwitz/2595

MediaInfo
General
Complete name: Verdict.1993.Part1.avi
Format: AVI
Format/Info: Audio Video Interleave
File size: 698 MiB
Duration: 58mn 54s
Overall bit rate: 1 658 Kbps

Video
ID: 0
Format: MPEG-4 Visual
Format profile: Advanced Simple@L5
Format settings, BVOP: 2
Format settings, QPel: No
Format settings, GMC: No warppoints
Format settings, Matrix: Default (H.263)
Codec ID: XVID
Codec ID/Hint: XviD
Duration: 58mn 54s
Bit rate: 1 457 Kbps
Width: 640 pixels
Height: 480 pixels
Display aspect ratio: 4:3
Frame rate: 29.970 fps
Color space: YUV
Chroma subsampling: 4:2:0
Bit depth: 8 bits
Scan type: Progressive
Compression mode: Lossy
Bits/(Pixel*Frame): 0.158
Stream size: 614 MiB (88%)
Writing library: XviD 1.2.1 (UTC 2008-12-04)

Audio
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Format: AC-3
Format/Info: Audio Coding 3
Mode extension: CM (complete main)
Codec ID: 2000
Duration: 58mn 54s
Bit rate mode: Constant
Bit rate: 192 Kbps
Channel(s): 2 channels
Channel positions: Front: L R
Sampling rate: 48.0 KHz
Bit depth: 16 bits
Compression mode: Lossy
Stream size: 80.9 MiB (12%)
Alignment: Aligned on interleaves
Interleave, duration: 64 ms (1.92 video frames)
Interleave, preload duration: 192 ms
Title: German

Text
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Duration: 58mn 54s
Bit rate: 167 bps
Stream size: 72.0 KiB (0%)
Title: English

Technical note
The English subtitles are muxed into the AVI container. If they don't show up in your media player, try the external subtitle files in the "Subtitles" folder instead.
I tested the files on 3 different media players on Windows 7 Ultimate: VLC media player 2.0.1, Media Player Classic - Home Cinema 1.6.1 and SMPlayer 0.8.0.
VLC and MPC worked fine for me, SMPlayer did not. Therefore I decided to put the subtitles in a separate folder, in case someone else is having trouble with muxed-in subtitles.