Wir waren keine Menschen mehr

Raffeiner vividly and concisely recounts his childhood and youth, as well as the dramatic experiences of war. He breaks with the myth of the clean Wehrmacht and names the German injustices. The war of annihilation on the Eastern Front made him both a victim and a perpetrator. His memories are the contribution of an ordinary man who represents the horrors of war and his struggle for decency. Luis Raffeiner grew up in the Schnalstal Valley in South Tyrol during the time of fascism. At the end of 1939, the then 22-year-old opted for Germany and was transferred to the Wehrmacht. As a tank mechanic in a assault gun division, he went to war against Russia in 1941. There, he experienced, as he puts it, "war in its brutal and cruel reality." He captured impressions of this with his camera, and decades later, he shared them with Luise Ruatti.