PRODUCTION COMPANY INTERNATIONAL SALES CANADIAN PUBLICITY TLNT Productions Inc. AQUTE MEDIA INC. GAT PR [email protected] Berry Meyerowitz / 416.508.8603 Ingrid Hamilton / 416.731.3034 [email protected] [email protected] Jeff Sackman / 416.903.2555 [email protected]

SCREENING SCHEDULE

Sunday April 29, 2018 Time: 5:45 pm Location: TIFF Bell Lightbox 2

Monday April 30, 2018 Time: 3:45 pm Location: TIFF Bell Lightbox 1

Friday May 4, 2018 Time: 9:00 pm Location: Scotiabank Theatre 13

LOGLINE Seventy years after WWII, the ‘Accountant of Auschwitz’ goes on trial as an accessory to the murder of 300,000 people.

SYNOPSIS Oskar Gröning, known as the "Accountant of Auschwitz," was charged with the murder of 300,000 Jews. When he took the stand in 2015, at the age of 94, his trial made headlines worldwide. The debate around his prosecution is at the centre of this historic yet contemporary look at justice. As survivors travel to Germany to testify, the heinous acts of the Holocaust remain vivid and traumatic. For some, there is no grey area: Gröning was witness and therefore complicit, regardless of his duty to follow orders. Others look at a frail man in the last years of his life and see no reason to pursue charges. Bringing war criminals to justice, with no statute of limitations, asks fundamental moral questions with few simple answers. From Nuremberg to the new alt-right, The Accountant of Auschwitz constructs a stark reminder that those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.

- Hot Docs

CREW

Matthew Shoychet – Director Ricki Gurwitz – Producer

Matthew Shoychet is a Toronto-based filmmaker. He has Ricki Gurwitz is a former producer at CTV News worked in the narrative and documentary world of short Channel. She started her career in New York, where she films for many years. He is a graduate of York was a producer at WABC News Talk Radio. She moved University's Film Production BFA, as well as Sheridan back to Toronto in 2009 where she took over the College's post-graduate in Advanced Television and production of the The Bill Carroll Show and The Jerry Film. In 2013, he worked with acclaimed Canadian Agar Show on Newstalk 1010. In 2011, Ricki made the director Bruce McDonald on the video instalments for the switch to television, joining CTV News Channel as a musical concert Tumbling Into Light, by The Flying segment and associate producer, working with reporters Bulgars. Shorts directed by Matthew include, Red Ether, in the field to package news stories, and in the (2011), Faker Chaser, (2012), Patrick: Evil Awakens, newsroom to cover the headlines of the day. In 2015 (2014) and Anne Frank: 70 Years Later, (2015). His Ricki left CTV to produce The Accountant of Auschwitz, newest project, The Accountant of Auschwitz, is his her first feature documentary. feature film debut.

Ric Esther Bienstock is an Emmy Award-winning filmmaker best known for her groundbreaking investigative documentaries. Her films, including Tales From the Organ Trade, Sex Slaves, Ebola: Inside an Outbreak (aka Plague Ric Esther Bienstock – Producer Fighters), Boxing: In and Out of the Ring, Penn & Teller’s Magic and Mystery Tour and Ms. Conceptions, have screened at over 80 international festivals and aired in over 60 countries.

In 2015, she was awarded the Gordon Sinclair Award for Broadcast Journalism from the Canadian Academy of Cinema and Television for her body of work. Bienstock was also honoured at the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival with the Birks Diamond Tribute to the Year’s Women in Film as one of Canada’s leading women filmmakers.

Her work has garnered dozens of prestigious awards, including an Emmy Award for Outstanding Investigative Journalism, 2 Edward R. Murrow Awards, a Dupont-Columbia Award for Excellence in Broadcast Journalism, a British Broadcast Award, a Distinguished Achievement award from the IDA in Los Angeles, a Norman Bethune Award, 4 Canadian Screen Awards, 2 Donald Brittain Awards for Best Documentary, 2 Geminis, a Genie, a Royal Television Society Award and 2 Amnesty International Awards among many others.

CHARACTERS AND INTERVIEW SUBJECTS

SURVIVORS

BILL GLIED Holocaust Survivor & Co-Plaintiff

“He was a cog in the wheel, and the wheel couldn’t have worked without that cog in it.” In April 1944, Bill was deported, along with his entire family, from his hometown of Subotica, Yugoslavia to Auschwitz. His mother and younger sister were killed immediately and his father died just days before the camp was liberated. Bill immigrated to Canada on a ship of orphaned children in 1947. He was 17 years old. Bill dedicated his life to Holocaust education. He went back to Auschwitz many times, speaking to youth about the lessons of the Holocaust in the hope that a crime of this magnitude would never be forgotten or repeated. In 2015, Bill travelled back to Germany to testify at the trial of the former “Accountant of Auschwitz”, Oskar Gröning.

HEDY BOHM Holocaust Survivor & Co-Plaintiff

“Being a witness at the trial was like putting a bouquet on a non-existent grave of my parents.” At the age of 16, Hedy Bohm and her family were packed into a cattle car and sent to the Auschwitz death camp in occupied Poland. Hedy was the only one who survived. After the war, she moved to Canada to start a new life. In 2015, she went to Germany to testify at Oskar Gröning's trial. She hoped a guilty verdict would set a precedent and deter others from committing war crimes in the future.

MAX EISEN Holocaust Survivor & Co-Plaintiff

“I can’t forgive and I can’t forget. If we don’t learn from the past we repeat the same mistakes again.” In the spring of 1944, Max Eisen was deported from Czechoslovakia to Auschwitz, where his whole family was killed. After the war, he moved to Toronto, where he has been a Holocaust educator for nearly two decades. Max testified at Oskar Gröning’s trial and was shocked by the former accountant’s testimony and admissions of guilt.

EVA KOR Holocaust Survivor & Co-Plaintiff

"I know many people will criticize me, but so be it. It was two human beings reaching out." Originally from Romania, Eva and her twin sister, Miriam, were subjected to human experimentation under the infamous Dr. at Auschwitz. Her parents and two older sisters were killed at the camp. Kor immigrated to the US after the war. In 1995, she founded the CANDLES Holocaust Museum and Education Center to educate the public about eugenics, the Holocaust, and the power of forgiveness. She received international attention when she publicly forgave Oskar Gröning and embraced him in the courtroom.

EXPERTS

BENJAMIN FERENCZ Chief Prosecutor at the Einsatgruppen Trial at Nuremberg

“We’ll pursue them wherever they are as long as necessary, and have them explain their actions.” After fighting under General Patton in the US army in World War II, Benjamin Ferencz became the Chief Prosecutor for the Nuremburg Einsatzgruppen Case, which the Associated Press called "the biggest murder trial in history." Twenty-two defendants were charged with murdering over a million people. He was only twenty-seven years old. It was his first case. All of the defendants were convicted and thirteen were sentenced to death. The verdict was hailed as a great success for the prosecution. Ferencz's primary objective was to establish a new precedent that would protect humanity under the law, encouraging a more humane and secure world in the future. Now 98 years old, Ferencz continues to actively advocate for these values.

THOMAS WALTHER Lawyer to the Co-Plaintiffs, Oskar Gröning Trial

“Gröning is very old, but no one was too old to be killed at Auschwitz.” A former German judge, Thomas Walther came out of retirement to prosecute former SS guards. His persistence has resulted in the indictment of more than 12 remaining Nazi guards, 10 of whom were deemed unfit for trial, and one of whom recently died. He tracked down Hedy Bohm, Bill Glied, and Max Eisen, and convinced them to testify against the former ‘Accountant of Auschwitz’, Oskar Gröning.

ELI ROSENBAUM Former Director, DOJ Office of Special Investigations

“Imagine a population in which a significant percentage of the fathers, brothers, and sons took part in these crimes. It was very difficult for the German public to accept the idea of large scale prosecutions after the war.” Eli Rosenbaum is the longest-serving investigator and prosecutor of Nazi criminals, having worked on these cases at the U.S. Department of Justice for over thirty years. From 1994 to 2010, Rosenbaum served as the Director of the Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations (OSI), which was created to investigate and prosecute WWII-era Nazi criminals.

KIRSTEN GOETZE German Prosecutor

“The main defense almost every perpetrator said after the war is “I never killed someone with my own hands. They were killed by a machine.” Kirsten Goetze is a German prosecutor who worked at the Central Office for the Investigation of National Socialist Crimes in Ludwigsburg for five years. While there, she completed the investigations and recommended prosecution of cases against (Sobibor), Samuel K. (Blezec), Aleksej N. (Treblinka II), Johann Breyer (Auschwitz), among others.

LAWRENCE DOUGLAS Professor of Law – Amherst College

“If we really want to get our mind around acts of mass atrocity and genocide, we have to understand these perpetrators in the way the Gröning case understands them: mainly as cogs in a machine of death.” Lawrence Douglas is the author of the book The Right Wrong Man: John Demjanjuk and the Last Great Nazi War Crimes Trial. His research has been primarily devoted to exploring the possibilities and limitations of war crimes trials as tools for responding to mass atrocities.

EFRAIM ZUROFF Chief Nazi Hunter at the Center

“The German judiciary after the war was full of ex-Nazis. And the whole atmosphere in Germany was not one of, “let’s get all these guys”, but was one of, “let’s try and do something to get over it and get on with life.” is the chief Nazi hunter at the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Jerusalem, and has devoted his life to tracking down former Nazis who never faced justice for their crimes. He believes Gröning must be found guilty to send a message to future generations. He also recognizes that the Gröning trial was unlike any other, saying "It's the first in recent history in which a defendant has talked publicly about the horrors of Auschwitz, and that's something you almost never see."

ALAN DERSHOWITZ Professor of Law, Emeritus – Harvard University

“If we can send a powerful message that there is no statute of limitations on genocide, these trials could have an impact on preventing individuals from risking prosecution, even at the end of their lives.” Alan Dershowitz is an American lawyer, jurist, author, and leading defender of civil liberties. He maintains that after the Second World War, the German system deliberately decided not to prosecute war criminals. He believes Oskar Gröning is “probably paying for the sins of many of his colleagues who got away with mass murder” but feels he too should be punished for his role at Auschwitz.

PETER SINGER Professor of Bioethics – Princeton University

“If you punish a man of 93, for something that he did when he was 23, are you still punishing the person who did the crime?” Peter Singer is a world-renowned moral philosopher, specializing in applied ethics. He believes Gröning was unfairly prosecuted as the man that he is now is entirely different than the person who joined the SS more than 70 years ago.

REBECCA WITTMANN Professor of History – University of Toronto

“There were over 6,500 guards at Auschwitz, and it tells you something about the West German criminal record that only 49 of them ever stood trial in West Germany.” Rebecca Wittmann is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Toronto. Her research focuses on the Holocaust and postwar Germany, trials of Nazi perpetrators and terrorists, and German legal history. While she supports this latest chapter of Nazi trials, she is critical of Germany for having waited so long, and for having missed their chance to prosecute the majority of those who were responsible.

CREDITS

DIRECTOR Matthew Shoychet

PRODUCERS Ricki Gurwitz, Ric Esther Bienstock

EDITOR Ted Husband

COMPOSER Ken Myhr

EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS Randi Kirshernbaum, Berry Meyerowitz, Jeff Sackman, Jordan Nahmias

CO-EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS Trevor Birney, Brendan Byrne, Corey Russell

KEY INTERVIEWS

SURVIVORS Bill Glied, Hedy Bohm, Max Eisen, Eva Kor

EXPERTS Benjamin Ferencz, Thomas Walther, Eli Rosenbaum, Kirsten Goetze, Lawrence Douglas, Efraim Zuroff, Alan Dershowitz, Peter Singer, Rebecca Wittmann

BROADCASTERS

FUNDING PARTNERS

PRODUCTION COMPANY: INTERNATIONAL SALES: CANADIAN PUBLICITY: TLNT Productions Inc. AQUTE MEDIA INC. GAT PR [email protected] Berry Meyerowitz / 416.508.8603 Ingrid Hamilton / 416.731.3034 [email protected] [email protected] Jeff Sackman / 416.903.2555 [email protected]