The “Final Account: Third Reich Testimonies” collection is an invaluable historical resource. It was created by the British documentary filmmaker Luke Holland between 2008 and 2017 and consists of 295 filmed interviews.

The collection, also known from the documentary film Final Account, consists of life story interviews with elderly men and women born between 1905 and 1934, most of whom came from Germany and Austria. The questions Holland asks relate to their memories of and participation in National Socialism, the Holocaust, and World War II.

The collection includes accounts by former members of the SS and Wehrmacht, secretaries and other employees in National Socialist and military organizations, alongside farm workers and homemakers. The interviews allow unique insight into recollections of everyday life in Nazi Germany, and post-war reflections on responsibility, complicity, and guilt.

These interviews have been made available for the first time in Germany thanks to cooperation between the Freie Universität’s University Library and University College London, the Wiener Holocaust Library, Institut national de l’audiovisuel, Pears Foundation, and Luke Holland’s ZEF Productions.

“Having access to the interviews conducted by Luke Holland for the first time in Germany will allow scholars to engage with sources that have received little attention in research until now. The interviews will offer researchers insight into the memories of members of mainstream Nazi society who shored up the regime, their everyday lives under National Socialism, and their approaches to subjects such as their own participation, responsibility, and guilt,” says Verena Nägel from the Digital Interview Collections at Freie Universität Berlin’s University Library.