As the last movie made by British documentary filmmaker Luke Holland before his passing in 2020, Final Account is a disturbing, sobering affair. The focus is Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, but instead of concentration camps survivors, his subjects are former civilians of the Third Reich. Not just ex-SS and ex-Hitler Youth, but “ordinary” folk who worked the remedial jobs that allowed the Nazis to commit genocide on such a widespread, bureaucratic scale. It’s hardly a flashy film, but the ways in which it lays out these interviewees’ statements force them to confront the most lingering of questions: How could you help allow the Holocaust happen?

Holland, who started the interviews in 2008, documents the now elderly survivors’ statements through a semi-chronological description of the Nazis’ rise to power. As they recall, Hitler’s indoctrination process was taught as far back as childhood, offering German youth a sense of freedom that their more conservative family households often refuted. Songs with anti-Semitic lyrics were taught innocuously, teachers reiterated loyalty to the Reich over one’s parents, and recreational activities performed in Hitler Youth uniforms established national camaraderie. Some of those profiled still can’t help but look back on these memories nostalgically.

Holland’s questions of accountability cast a shadow over every conversation because of the thorough indoctrination, especially in the various attempts to rationalize past actions. One former Dachau guard claims that he only knew Jewish arrivals as political prisoners, even as another admits that everyone who worked there knew why people were being brought to the camp. Former workers who kept concentration camps well-oiled from the outside (a wages clerk, a man who did paperwork for the railyards) understood what cause they were serving, but struggled to resist. In an extensive sequence, one former Wehrmacht soldier named Heinrich Schulze even points out for the camera a barn where some Jews once hid before revealing that he alerted their whereabouts to the SS, never quite indicating whether that decision warranted remorse.

Those who were formally SS and Wehrmacht members, by comparison, are made to reconcile with a different dichotomy: pride. To have served at the time was a badge of honor, but given how SS military endeavors consisted of burning villagers alive and murdering innocents, it meant at one point they openly embraced the Reich’s core genocidal philosophy. Some true believers even still exist, such as Herman Knoth, who proudly promotes his collection of medals and refuses to label the Nazis a criminal organization. But for the most part, these men exhibit a mix of shame and/or guilt, if not always a willingness to face judgement, that seep into their confessions. One even regrets his actions so much that he actively reprimands a group of far-right German millennials for embracing the same toxic socio-political talking points that once turned him into a monster.

Nearly all of the film is from the Germans’ perspectives, with Holland giving occasional input off-screen. He doesn’t so much judge as he coerces, trying to get an honest response on why they would willfully partake in the most inhumane crime of the 20th century. “Everyone knew, but no one said anything,” one woman exclaims despite her colleagues’ attempt to muddy things, a distillation of the film’s thesis if there ever was one. It’s difficult to look at this sea of old people and believe them capable of such cruelty, yet that revelation is ultimately what continues to perplexed historians and citizens alike more than 75 years after the Holocaust became public knowledge.

On its own, Final Account is important, but what Holland could never have foreseen is our post-Charlottesville, post-January 6 Capitol Riot cultural environment. With the United States and Western nations experiencing a drastic spike in xenophobic hate crimes and groups who openly bare and modify Nazi iconography and propaganda, the message he desired to convey now feels more relevant than ever. “Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it” is a common phrase affiliated with the Holocaust. The trick is realizing how often violent history relies on a wide swath of the population embracing violence and scapegoating if it makes them feel like a part of something greater.