The Twilight Zone (1959) s03e09 Episode Script

You're traveling through another dimension- a dimension not only of sight and sound, but of mind, a journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination.
Your next stop, the twilight zone.
Yes, sir.
I've just arrived in town.
Do you have accommodations here? I can give you a lovely front room overlooking the square.
Would you care to see it? I am sure it will be satisfactory.
Yes? Anything wrong? No, sir.
Mr.
Schmidt? That's what i've written.
Of course, sir.
Of course, what? I i just meant, sir i just wondered it's just that what? You just wondered what? It's just that you remind me of someone.
Oh? During the war.
Go on.
There were there were s.
s.
Stationed here.
They used to come to the inn very often.
I spent the war years on the russian front- the panzer division.
Of course.
Was it a prison or something you had here? Something of the sort, sir.
Was it a prison? A camp, sir.
How's that? A camp, mr.
Schmidt.
A concentration camp.
A concentration camp.
Really? Now, that's odd.
For the life of me, i can't seem to recall the name of this town.
Sir? The name of this town! What is the name of this town? Dachau, sir.
Dachau.
Of course, dachau.
The camp, it's that group of buildings up on the hill, isn't it? It is, indeed.
But most of us would like it burned to the ground.
Mr.
Schmidt, recently arrived in a small bavarian village which lies eight miles northwest of munich- a picturesque, delightful little spot one time known for its scenery, but more recently related to other events having to do with some of the less positive pursuits of man: Human slaughter, torture, misery and anguish.
Mr.
Schmidt, as we will soon perceive, has a vested interest in the ruins of a concentration camp, for once, some 17 years ago, his name was gunther lutze.
He held the rank of a captain in the ss.
He was a black-uniformed, strutting animal whose function in life was to give pain, and like his colleagues of the time he shared the one affliction most common amongst that breed known as nazis: He walked the earth without a heart.
And now former s.
s.
Captain lutze will revisit his old haunts, satisfied perhaps that all that is awaiting him in the ruins on the hill is an element of nostalgia.
What he does not know, of course, is that a place like dachau cannot exist only in bavaria.
By its nature, by its very nature, it must be one of the populated areas of the twilight zone.
All right, pigs, up! Time to greet the morning.
On your feet, filth! We have a nice day ahead of us.
It's snowing.
Temperature's are slightly below zero.
You will all assemble in the square.
And dress.
We'll do some exercises.
I and you! Detention yes, i remember you.
We had some good times in this building.
Such good times.
You'd like water, number Is that what you'd like? You'd like water? But why should you care? It's only been five days since you've been fed.
Five little days! Good afternoon, captain, and welcome back.
We've been waiting.
That's right, captain.
We've been waiting for a long time.
You're you're becker alfred becker.
I remember you.
And well you should.
How well you should, captain lutze.
You don't look so bad, becker.
No, as a matter of fact, you look quite well.
You don't seem to have changed at all.
That's it you haven't changed.
Why, it's been it's been It's been 17 years, captain, since you and i last saw each other.
Really? You're the caretaker around here? In a manner of speaking.
It's odd how paths cross, and we meet again under somewhat happier circumstances.
What was that? It sounded like the wind, captain? Wind? Perhaps.
Perhaps it was the wind, eh? Of course.
Of course it was the wind.
It was not the wind.
It was it was what, captain? Stop calling me captain! I'm not a soldier anymore.
You never were a soldier.
The uniform you wore cannot be stripped off.
It was part of you, part of your flesh, part of your body.
It was a piece of your mind.
A tattoo, captain.
A skull and crossbones burned into your soul.
I was a soldier, becker.
No, captain, you were a sadist.
You were a monster who derived pleasure from giving pain.
Listen to me, becker.
There's no more war.
That's all in the past.
There are no more camps.
It's ridiculous.
It's utterly ridiculous to dwell on these things.
You did as you thought best, and i i functioned as i was told.
What is this noise? Strange that it should disturb you so it never used to, captain.
When your victims screamed you weren't so sensitive.
But now, they are not screaming.
No, they are reacting.
They just heard you offer the apology for all the monsters of our times.
"We did as we were told.
" "We functioned as ordered.
" "We merely carried out directives from our superiors.
" Familiar, is it, captain? It was the nazi theme music at nuremberg, the new lyrics to thegotterdammerung, the plaintive litany of the master race as it lay dying.
"We did not do, others did.
" Or "someone else did it.
"We never even knew that it was being done.
" Or "we did it, but others told us to.
" Captain lutze ten million human beings were tortured to death in camps like this.
Men, women, children, infants, tired old men- you burned them in furnaces.
You shoveled them into the earth.
You tore up their bodies in rage, and now you come back to your scenes of horror and you wonder that the misery that you planted has lived after you? There's no point in talking about this any longer.
I must leave you now, becker.
I told you i had to leave, becker! Why did you come back, captain lutze? You changed your name.
You were quite safe down there in south america.
What could possibly have brought you back here? One misses the fatherland, becker.
One grows nostalgic for the good old days.
I had thought i had hoped that with the passage of time sanity would have returned, people would be willing to forget the little mistakes of the past.
Little mistakes? Little mis? You ask too much, captain lutze far too much.
Why not ask for the earth to stop revolving in its axis? Don't ask the impossible, captain lutze.
Do not ask forgiveness from those whom you have destroyed to a point past forgiveness.
But time is short, captain.
We have something to accomplish here today.
Accomplish? What? Your trial.
It is time for your trial, captain.
The court is convening in compound six.
The court? What is this nonsense? Is this a joke? No no joke, captain.
Your trial.
You will be tried for crimes against humanity.
By whom? Who will try me? You're insane, becker.
You were insane when i used to string you up and when you used to string me up, captain? Suspended over a hot pipe? Feed me salt water until my tongue swelled? Burned me with cigarette butts all over and laughed when i screamed to please put an end to it, to please have mercy and kill me? Your memory's quite good, captain.
Quite good, indeed.
Come.
Shall we go? The court is waiting.
No! Shall we proceed, captain lutze? Please.
Please let me out of here.
This this is this is inhuman! I must get out of here.
I must get out of here! We inmates of compound six, dachau concentration camp versus gunther lutze, captain, s.
s.
That he condemned to death without a trial Indictment two: That he did maim and torture without provocation thousands and thousands of human beings.
No no that he did deliberately condone the use of criminal medical experiments on women and children.
No! No! No! That he did personally murder at least oh oh, no! No! No! No! No! That he did sign and put into effect specific orders calling for the gassing and cremating of one million human beings.
I i fell asleep.
No, you were unconscious for awhile.
I had such a dream.
You had no dream, captain.
Of course i had a dream.
I dreamt there were people in this room.
There was a trial.
Ghostly figures.
They are still here.
They have never left.
They walk the buildings in the square outside.
You didn't bury them deep enough, captain.
You didn't cover them up with enough earth, or perhaps the bullets were too small a caliber, or the flames not sufficiently hot, or perhaps there wasn't enough gas.
Becker becker, who are you? Did you forget? The caretaker.
This this trial the trial is over, captain lutze.
You have been found guilty.
It's time to pronounce sentence.
You are going to pronounce sentence? Is that what you have in mind now? You will pronounce sentence, and then you shall execute that sentence? Is that correct? Pigs! Filth! You will all assemble in the square! You will pass sentence on captain lutze! You will crawl out of your graves to see that justice is done! Where are they? Where's the judge? Where's the jury? Where's the executioner? Shall i tell you where they are? In your mind.
You've hatched them out of your hatred.
You've planned your vengeance out of the crazy quilt of your imagination sewed together with thin little threads of wishful thinking.
Why didn't i kill you when i had a chance? Why didn't i? Becker? Becker, i did kill you.
I killed you the night you killed me the night the americans came close to the camp.
You tried to burn it down, remember? You tried to kill everyone who was left.
In my case, you succeeded.
So i think it would be a waste of time, captain, wouldn't it- a waste of your precious time- of that little time you have left to murder me again? Captain lutze.
Captain lutze, you have been tried and found guilty of crimes against humanity.
It is the unanimous judgment of this court that from this day on, you shall be rendered insane.
What is this nonsense? What is this gibberish? What is this madness?! At this gate, you shot down hundreds of people with machine guns.
Do you feel it now, captain? Do you feel the bullets smashing into your body? Do you feel the agony of tortured lead? On these posts, by the anguished hour you hung up human beings to die a slow death.
Do you feel their torture now? In this room, captain, the things you did to human beings are unmentionable.
How does their torment feel? Captain lutze, if you can still reason, if there's still any portion of your mind that can still function, take this thought with you.
This is not hatred, this is retribution.
This is not revenge, this is justice.
But this is only the beginning, captain.
Only the beginning.
Your final judgment will come from god.
Well, he's so full of sedatives now he doesn't even know he's on the earth, but i want him in the hospital, and i want him strapped to the bed.
Doctor? What happened to him? I drove him up here myself not two hours ago.
He was all right then.
I have no idea.
I only know that he is screaming through pain.
No, it's more than pain, it's agony.
And there isn't a mark on him.
He's insane, a raving maniac.
But what could happen in two hours to turn a man into a raving maniac? That, somebody will have to tell me that.
Dachau.
Why does it still stand? Why do we keep it standing? There is an answer to the doctor's question.
All the dachaus must remain standing- the dachaus, the belsens, the buchenwalds, the auschwitzes, all of them.
They must remain standing because they are a monument to a moment in time when some men decided to turn the earth into a graveyard.
Into it, they shoveled all of their reason, their logic, their knowledge, but worst of all, their conscience.
And the moment we forget this- the moment we cease to be haunted by its remembrance- then we become the gravediggers.
Something to dwell on and to remember, not only in the twilight zone, but wherever men walk god's earth.
Rod serling, creator of the twilight zone, will tell you about next week's story after this message.
And now, mr.
Serling.
Next week, we see what will happen to a world that, with each passing hour, draws closer and closer to the sun.
This is a nightmare in depth, in which we watch two doomed women spend their last hours struggling for survival against a fiery orb that moves over the top of a hot, still, deserted city.
We call it "the midnight sun," and we also recommend it most highly.
This is james arness.
You know, it's only a short hop fromthe twilight zone to dodge city andgunsmoke, saturday nights, over most of these stations.