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Is there anything left to say about the depraved lunatics that were the Nazis? Seems so. Timothy Ryback, who heads the Institute for Historical Justice in the Netherlands, focuses on a brave prosecutor, Josef Hartinger, and even braver doctor (Flamm) who investigated the first killings at Dachau concentration camp in 1933. Seventeen investigations in, Himmler was alerted and the investigations closed down. Strangely, Ryback devotes only a paragraph to Hartinger’s subsequent career – he remained a prosecutor, though in a different district, and survived. Hardly a problem-free CV for an anti-Nazi “hero”? Fascinating to remember that Hitler’s first victims were communists and trade unionists – the vigorous, often Jewish-led left that had to be demolished to pave the way for the Führer’s Third Reich.
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