He comes to understand that the only thing that can ease the horror is not justice, but attention to the lives and stories of those who suffered. His idealism has suffered from hard encounters with the real world at every turn, the "system" wants compliance, but he wants justice. When he finds this means working with a colleague who had defended a former Nazi he was investigating, Radmann walks out. There he is again confronted with the dilemma: do what is right or do what the system requires you to do? He resigns his official post and goes to work for an industrialist. By the end of the film, however, there is a chance she will have him back. When he tells Marlene that her father too was in the party, she ends their relationship. Radmann reaches a crisis when he discovers his own father was in the Nazi party. Meanwhile, Radmann allows himself to be seduced by Marlene, a seamstress who, benefiting from Radmann's connections, starts a business as a dress designer. Having pulled off this coup, Israel declines to pursue Mengele. As a result, Adolf Eichmann is kidnapped and spirited away to Israel where he is tried, convicted and executed for his crimes. The department invites Mossad agents to visit, and shares its information with them. After the authorities block Radmann's attempt to issue an arrest warrant, his boss warns him off and orders him to concentrate on lower-profile suspects. He goes after Josef Mengele, who lives in Argentina, but flies back to West Germany to visit his family.
occupation forces give him access to their files, and he discovers there were 8,000 workers. Radmann's boss, the prosecutor-general Fritz Bauer, puts him in charge of investigating former workers at the Auschwitz camp. Radmann is determined to bring Schulz to justice, but finds his efforts frustrated because of the many former Nazis who are serving in government and looking out for one another. In 1958, Johann Radmann is a young and idealistic public prosecutor who takes an interest in the case of Charles Schulz, a former Auschwitz extermination camp commander who is now teaching at a school in Frankfurt am Main.