At the heart of a masterful cover-up fabricated by the film's trio of government operatives lies an explicit ideological theme that expounds upon the complexities found along the fine line drawn between good and evil. During Act II of the film, the dialogue carried out by the mission team explicated a sociological basis for justifying "bringing [a war criminal] to justice," by which they labeled their enemy "an animal," "monster," and "not a human being" according to his heinous crimes committed in the name of Jewish extinction. Was the nature of their mission justified by their intent to seek justice for those lost at the hand of the man posing as Dr. Bernhardt, or was it nothing more than a self-righteous attempt at revenge on behalf of a victimized culture? The Debt brings forth a valid discussion of how human perceptions of good and evil can be misshaped at the point of execution, as the "heroes" of the story ultimately reduce their good intentions to public pacification in defense of their failed mission. For succumbing to the pressures of their ambitions, and thus rubbing shoulders with evil, they endure the absences of love and happiness in their lives until their debt to good is paid... paid with the blood of their former prisoner and some wounds of their own.
From a more abstract perspective, the first scene in which Rachel's daughter dedicates her book to her mother's "heroism" in vanquishing a public enemy explicates their society's validation of the mission to bring the doctor to trial, and under questionable morale, celebrates his "death" in cold blood as a victory for the families of Holocaust victims. I argue that among those survivors whose opinions lie in favor of the trio's means of justice, the line between good and evil has undeniably been crossed: apparently, Rachel is a hero because she shot an unarmed man in the back in an attempt to rescue the nobility (for her fallen mother) of her mission, and a worse crime would have been to allow this older man to survive another day in the disguise as both gynecologist and husband , away from his former access to tools of torture. For Stefan, Rachel, and David, the truth would have upset an already delicate public psyche regarding the search for resolution for Holocaust survivor families. The line of moral judgment they'd crossed, then, was to secure the "good" of a people that they'd deemed worthy of their activism, but also exposed them as the selfish beings through which the likes of Dr. Bernhardt had justified their extermination. Wow. There we have it. They were no better than the criminal they'd hunted.
