To this day we as humans still need to be reminded a few things so that we do our best to grow and evolve so that history does not repeat itself. We seem to still be failing at this, but hopefully, get a little better each time.
This story, written by Rod Serling and directed by Don Medford, is about a former SS officer revisiting the Dachau concentration camp a decade and a half after the end of World War 2. It first aired on November 10th, 1961, as the 9th episode of the 3rd season. It was the 74th episode overall.
Opening Narration: “Mr. Schmidt, recently arrived in a small Bavarian village which lies eight miles northwest of Munich… a picturesque, delightful little spot one-time known for its scenery, but more recently related to other events having to do with some of the less positive pursuits of man: human slaughter, torture, misery, and anguish. Mr. Schmidt, as we will soon perceive, has a vested interest in the ruins of a concentration camp—for once, some seventeen years ago, his name was Gunther Lutze. He held the rank of a captain in the SS. He was a black-uniformed strutting animal whose function in life was to give pain, and like his colleagues of the time, he shared the one affliction most common amongst that breed known as Nazis… he walked the Earth without a heart. And now former SS Captain Lutze will revisit his old haunts, satisfied perhaps that all that is awaiting him in the ruins on the hill is an element of nostalgia. What he does not know, of course, is that a place like Dachau cannot exist only in Bavaria. By its nature, by its very nature, it must be one of the populated areas… of the Twilight Zone.”
In this story, former SS Captain Gunther Lutze, played by Oscar Beregi Jr., returns to Dachau, Bavaria, under the name of Mr. Schmidt. The townspeople seem to recognize him but clearly are still terrified of him, even after many years away. He takes a taxi to the now-abandoned Dachau concentration camp and strolls around reliving his ‘fond’ memories while he was a guard there during the war.
Lutze is surprised to see Alfred Becker, one of the camp’s former inmates and a particular victim of Lutze’s cruelty. He assumes Becker is now the caretaker of the camp, which Becker confirms “in a manner of speaking”. As they talk, Becker relentlessly dogs Lutze about the past and how he treated the prisoners of the camp. Lutze arrogantly states he was just following his orders, which of course is a lie, as he took great pleasure in all that he did. When Lutze tries to leave, he realizes he is trapped with the front gate locked. In one of the camp buildings, Becker and several ghostly inmates place the former SS guard on trial for crimes against humanity and find him guilty.
Before he can be sentenced Lutze then realizes that he had killed Becker 17 years earlier the night the American troops were closing in on Dachau. As for his punishment, Gunther Lutze is made to undergo the same horrors he had inflicted on his victims in the form of tactile illusions. He screams in agony and collapses. Before departing, Becker’s ghost informs him, “This is not hatred. This is retribution. This is not revenge. This is justice. But this is only the beginning, Captain. Only the beginning. Your final judgment will come from God.”
Lutze is found hours later and taken to a mental institution since he continues to experience and react to his illusionary sufferings. His finders wonder how a man, who was perfectly calm two hours before, could have gone insane. The doctor looks around and asks, “Dachau. Why does it still stand? Why do we keep it standing?”
Closing Narration: “There is an answer to the doctor’s question. All the Dachau’s must remain standing. The Dachau’s, the Belsen’s, the Buchenwald’s, the Auschwitze’s – all of them. They must remain standing because they are a monument to a moment in time when some men decided to turn the Earth into a graveyard. Into it, they shoveled all of their reason, their logic, their knowledge, but worst of all, their conscience. And the moment we forget this, the moment we cease to be haunted by its remembrance, then we become the gravediggers. Something to dwell on and to remember, not only in the Twilight Zone but wherever men walk God’s Earth.”
It is 2019, it has been 74 years since the end of World War 2 and the fall of Nazi Germany. Though tens of millions lost their lives at the hands of the Nazi’s, we keep certain things around to remind us not to allow it to happen again, even though so much pain is still felt three-quarters of a century later. The camps still stand all across Europe, as they will continue to do so until time slowly erodes them away but we must never forget, and continue to pass this dark time in history onto future generations as a reminder.
The message is clear, evil cannot run forever, in the end, the past will catch up with it and in one form or another justice will be served, whether on Earth or beyond.
