"If the German people listen, it's going to be a very important lesson," Holocaust survivor Renée Firestone told a packed press conference when asked what it meant to her to be in Germany with James Moll's The Last Days. The film's purpose, she said, was to "teach humanity something." Firestone is one of the five Hungarians whose story is told in Moll's documentary about the final days of Hitler's genocidal war against the Jews.

During yesterday's screening, there was a collective groan when the audience heard an Auschwitz doctor claim that six months was the normal life expectancy for an inmate. Hearing that made the entire film seem worthwhile: "If we want to explore the work of the devil in its fullest… we focus on this period," Lipper said of the filmmakers' decision to concentrate on the plight of the Hungarian Jews in late 1944.