Filbert's Contributions

The mind of a perpetrator is a subject that has fascinated historians, resulting in the study to try and understand these killers. While books on top Nazis such as Himmler and Heydrich are more prevalent when trying to explain the mind behind the Holocaust, Alex Kay 's book, The Making of an SS Killer: The Life of Colonel Alfred Filbert, 1905-1990, looks to shed light on the mindset and conduct behind a mid/ lower level perpetrator. Basing the primary research of his book on archival records, Filbert 's trial reports, witness testimony, Kay exposes Filbert as a materialist killer, "a man who only had his own advancement in mind" (122). On trial for his crimes, Filbert tried to cast himself as the victim, but Kay 's research presents the Filbert actions were all done in order to gain him notoriety, admiration, and aid in his career advancement. By presenting both Filberts own victimized reasoning and the data that present Filberts as a careerist, Kays methods, grant the reader a broader …show more content…
He practically took on a role playing himself, believing that the film was going to be about him. Maybe here, the biggest ego stroke of all the Kay points to was once again something Filbert exaggerated in his mind. The crew gave filbert the feeling of importance, but by this time Filbert only felt the need to glorify himself and felt no guilt for any of his actions. As his interpreter Ursula Langmann recalls, when they went out to dinner at a Jew owned restaurant. while Filbert knew that those who opened it and those dining around him were Jewish Langmann recalls that "this did not bother filbert, in the slightest: 'No qualms, not the least sense of guilt... In his eyes, it had nothing whatsoever to do with him or his past" (113). Filbert had cast himself so far from the reality which he contributed to that he felt no connection to the Jewish lives he had done harm