Those Germans Kept Good Records

Yesterday, the New York Times reported that an Italian on the fast track to sainthood may in fact be no saint at all. Instead of being the hero who was allegedly Italy’s Schindler, this would be saint may have sent much of his area’s Jewish population to their death at Auschwitz. It appears now that records thought destroyed have surfaced that point to his willing cooperation in identifying and targeting Jews for death. (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/20/arts/an-italian-saint-in-the-making-or-a-collaborator-with-nazis.html?smid=fb-share)
Yes, those Germans kept good records - having perhaps no sense that things might turn against them and certainly no shame in recording the horrors of their policies.
As a child, I heard firsthand (practically at my grandmother’s knee or perhaps even literarily so though I don’t recall exactly) how German records exposed a shameful family secret. It seems the mother of two boys who had served in the resistance went, after the war, to collect payment due her for one son’s death at the hands of the Gestapo. Careful German records revealed they had released her son to his brother.
Capturing that moment when the mother discovers the awful truth proves tough indeed.