“Oh, come on! Grow up.” Werner Bergen looked at his friend with contempt. “This will be over soon. History will forget about it. We will be nothing, even to ourselves. The next generation behind us will forget the war even happened, and if they remember, they won’t care because it doesn’t affect them. Don’t you see the thrill of this? We are given permission to kill! The world turns on its head. We get to sin without repercussion!”
Two German teenage boys, inseparable best friends, enthusiastic members of the Hitler Youth, epitomize the ideals of the Third Reich as starry-eyed, would-be warriors willing to sacrifice all. The year is 1943 and they are about to enter brutal combat. Their heroism is rewarded, but they receive severe wounds and are ordered to recuperate and serve out the remainder of the war in Auschwitz, arguably the most inhumane of all the concentration camps. The horrors that await them will affect each of them permanently but quite differently. They survived the tolls of war, but would be succumb to the worst hell––man’s inhumanity to man?
