‘Masters of the Air’s Most Chilling Moment Brings Rosie Face-to-Face with the Horrors of the Holocaust

Masters of the Air is a drama full of harrowing moments, from the horrors of World War II aerial battles to the brutalization of prisoners of war. However, the moment in the Apple TV+ show that’s perhaps haunted me the most happens midway in the Masters of the Air series finale, “Part Nine.”

**Spoilers for Masters of the Air Episode 9 “Part Nine,” now streaming on Apple TV+**

The show’s most heroic character, Robert “Rosie” Rosenthal (Nate Mann) is shot down east of Berlin, where he witnesses a brief glimpse of the Ostfront’s terrors before discovering the full grotesque nightmare of the Holocaust. The Jewish major not only stumbles around a “liberated” concentration camp, one where no survivors were left to be saved, but learns first hand where the shellshocked Jewish survivors plan on going now that they’ve lost everything: Palestine.

Obviously Masters of the Air is based on true events and filming began literally three years ago in February 2021, so this moment just coincidentally has a more chilling weight in 2024. However, this sequence has stuck with me because while the rest of Masters of the Air feels like an open-and-shut war story, here we see how the long shadow of trauma has perpetuated more and more pain long after the Allies took Germany. Nate Mann’s performance, Tim Van Patten’s direction, and the chilling conversation Rosie has with that unnamed survivor created a perfect storm that’s lingered with me for months since I first finished watching Apple TV+’s Masters of the Air.

Masters of the Air opens with Robert “Rosie” Rosenthal leading a mission over Berlin. When his plane is repeatedly targeted by Nazi firepower, he’s forced to bail out — only after giving his surviving crew as much time as possible. Because he doesn’t want to wind up in Berlin, he attempts to fly east, into Soviet territory. He winds up injured and in Polish no-man’s-land in the middle of a tense skirmish. The Soviets have the upper hand over the Nazis and Rosie is able to convince them he is American and an ally.

When we next see Rosie, he’s patched up and riding with a Soviet General to an airport in Pozan. When a broken wagon pauses their progress, Rosie takes the opportunity to “stretch his legs.” While the Russians walk past the Zabikowo camp, Rosie walks in. A mix of anguish, rage, and horror flickers across his face as he surveys the scene. Dead Jewish prisoners have been left in piles or strung up where they were hung. He touches the walls of their pens, moved by the etchings of their faith.

Rosie then learns from his local translator that the Russians have found many of these camps, designed to kill mass groups of humans at the same time. He explains that they’ve yet to find any survivors and most of the victims are Jewish. Rosie seems gobsmacked by the sheer scale of the hideous operation. “There’s more of them?” Rosie asks his voice quivering. “Yes. Our comrades found even bigger camps than this.”

We then follow Rosie to the airport where he starts chatting with an elderly man via a young woman who knows both English and Yiddish. Rosie asks if the man is going home to see family. The elderly man, who honestly looks like an empty husk of a person, dazed and half dead, explains that the Germans killed his family and then forced him to dig the ditch they were buried in. Guilt is clearly eating away at him, but he says, “To live…one must make choices.”

Rosie asks where he will go now. The man stares ahead blankly, shrugs and says, “Palestine.”

Now Rosie is going to get to go home. He’s going to meet his beloved wife on the way to the Nuremburg trials, where they’ll both be prosecutors. He’s going to earn all sorts of honors and die an old man in 2007. Rosie’s had a rough time, but he’s going to be okay.

This nameless guy, who seems utterly destroyed by his experiences, headed to Palestine? I don’t think he’s going to be okay. He’s going to carry this unfathomable trauma with him to the nascent nation of Israel and pass it on. And the cycle of pain, violence, and atrocities will live on, even now, in events like the October 7 attack and the current ongoing war between Israel and Hamas. More children will be buried in their villages, more families will be torn apart, and more horror will be known.

And that’s what freaking got me. The understanding that even though the Allies technically won the war, evil will still persist. Antisemitism will continue to flourish in the most fetid corners of people’s hearts. Entire cities of human beings will be exterminated. We’ve not gotten any better as a people simply because one generation stood up and defeated the Nazis. We carry on and so do the shadows of hell beside us.