The Seventh Cross (1944)

Ray Collins: Wallau

Quotes 

• Wallau : George Heisler. Before I die, I must tell you this. I tell you there is in man an instinct for good which cannot be destroyed. It isn't dead. Even in this nation of beasts, it still must live somewhere. If in this Germany, among the cruellest people on Earth, you find one man with a spark of good still in him, then there is hope for the human race. Listen to me, George Heisler. There is good in men, deep within their hearts. Unless you believe that, there is no faith to cling to anywhere on Earth. Dear God, let him find it. Guide him. Lead him to the few good men who still remain in Germany. Let him die if he must, but with his faith alive.

• [first lines] 

  Wallau : [narrating]  When all the stories have been told - the great stories and the little ones, the tragedies and the melodramas - when all the stories of what happened in Europe have been told, as of course they never can be, the seventh cross will be remembered as the story of a beautiful people who proved there is something in the human soul which sets men above the animals, and beyond them. It happened in Germany in the fall of the year 1936. 1936 - the wars and the aggressions had not yet begun, but the concentration camps were full. The Germans were still purging their nation of rebels, purging their country of the last traces of human decency. One morning, just before dawn, some prisoners escaped from the concentration camp at Westhofen. I was among them; my name is Ernest Wallau.