What Our Fathers Did: A Nazi Legacy
- Description
- Reviews
- Citation
- Cataloging
- Transcript
A bracingly rigorous examination of inherited guilt and pain, WHAT OUR FATHERS DID explores the relationship between two men, each of whom are the children of very high-ranking Nazi officials but possess starkly contrasting attitudes toward their fathers.
The film was written and is hosted by eminent human rights lawyer Philippe Sands, who became fascinated by its central figures, Niklas Frank and Horst von Wachter, while researching the Nuremberg trials.
The film comes to a climax when they travel to Lviv in Ukraine, where it becomes clear that Frank and von Wachter's Nazi fathers were responsible for the annihilation of Sands' own Jewish grandfather's entire family. WHAT OUR FATHERS DID is a compelling examination of brutality, self-deception, guilt and the nature of justice.
'A remarkable and moving exploration of the problem of individual responsibility for state crimes...It is essential viewing for all those seeking to understand how mass killing could, and can still, take place.' Antony Polonsky, Emeritus Professor of Holocaust Studies, Brandeis University, Chief Historian, Museum of Polish Jews in Warsaw
'Highly Recommended...Here, in fine detail, is a riveting documentary that demonstrates why we should understand that the Holocaust could happen again-in fact, is happening around the world...Viewers can see for themselves there are more opinions about who perpetrated the Holocaust than one might think, and they ought not be ignored.' Sheila Intner, Educational Media Reviews Online
'An exceptional documentary about the long and painful shadow of the Nazi atrocities, this is highly recommended. Editor's Choice.' P. Hall, Video Librarian
'Right from the start, this involving documentary asks much of its audience and poses questions that are unnerving yet engrossing.' Ken Jaworowski, The New York Times
'Outstanding documentary...challenging...A chilling demonstration of how the poison of the past can live in the bloodstream of the present.' Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian
'Watching two men grappling with the culpability of their high-ranking Nazi fathers is a deeply stirring experience. It provokes immediate discussion about the conflict between justice and loving your parents, remembrance and shame. What does it take to heal historical trauma?' Dr. Bjorn Krondorfer, Director, Martin-Springer Institute: Global Engagement through Holocaust Awareness, Professor, Dept. of Comparative Study of Religions, Northern Arizona University
'A troubling study of denial, wartime responsibility and the challenge of dealing with a monster in the family...Absorbing.' Justin Chang, Variety
'This film is powerful testimony to how hard the truth about the Holocaust remains - despite the passage of time, which has produced prodigious historical scholarship but not always succeeded in penetrating the wall of denial erected by filial loyalty. Highly recommended for all teachers of the Holocaust who must navigate the disconnect between factual knowledge grasped by the mind and truth accepted in the heart.' Katharina von Kellenbach, Professor of Religious Studies, St. Mary's College of Maryland, Author, The Mark of Cain: Guilt and Denial in the Lives of Perpetrators of the Holocaust
'Riveting. This film is a withering cross-examination of conscience, recollection, and responsibility. Familial duty and the depths of denial are confronted powerfully in this penetrating psychological analysis of perpetrator and survivor. Highly recommended for those seeking to understand the generational legacy of the Holocaust and for those seeking to prevent genocide in the 21st Century.' Dr. Kevin Simpson, Chair and Professor of Psychology, John Brown University
'Chilling...gripping and compelling...Will put the viewer on edge...That's the price of war, whether on the winning or losing side.' Leba Hertz, SFGate
'Honest and penetrating...An important study in how one comes to terms with the past - or fails to do so - and how such a confrontation can empower one man to do good and another to exonerate evil. I would urge it to be screened widely. It will provoke deep and significant discussions among both students and adults. I was moved and angered; above all, overwhelmingly grateful for what I learned.' Dr. Michael Berenbaum, Director of the Sigi Ziering Institute, Professor of Jewish Studies, American Jewish University
'The film is keen and measured...Director David Evans asks how mass murder affects those who live through it. We all are living through it - all small actors shriveling up under our misdeeds. We all have fathers. We all ought to let this film unlock us, proof or no proof.' Diana Clarke, The Village Voice
'An excellent profile of two contrasting relationships to historical memory. A powerful and moving study on the how the children of perpetrators struggle with guilt, denial, shame, and their own complex relationships to their fathers' crimes and legacies. This movie would be extremely effective in the classroom, and would also be a very good candidate for community screenings at Jewish Community Centers or at universities, followed by roundtable discussions of panelists.' Dr. Jonathan Wiesen, Professor of History, Southern Illinois University
'What Our Fathers Did asks, how would you respond if you knew that your father was responsible for the murder of hundreds, or thousands, or millions?' Regina Weinreich, Huffington Post
'An excellent resource on the psychology of the perpetrator for not only the community but most of all for serious university students on the study of the Holocaust.' Dr. Miriam Klein Kassenoff, Director of Teacher Holocaust Institute, University of Miami , Co-author, Studying the Holocaust thru Film and Literature
'A gripping story. What Our Father's Did dramatically puts on display the self-serving nature of attributional styles and other critical-thinking biases like belief perseverance and the confirmation bias within the context of two elderly men reflecting on the actions of their fathers who held leadership roles in the Nazi party. It is a fascinating real-life psychological journey.' Dr. K. Paul Nesselroade Jr., Director and Professor, Psychology Program, Asbury University
'A useful film. It should be shown to the Holocaust class of students...Class should discuss feedbacks from the audience. Particularly necessary for those who have little previous knowledge of this tragedy.' Dr. Yury Polsky, Professor of Political Science, West Chester University
'Thought-provoking...Takes on the difficult feat of reexamining one of history's most atrocious events and exploring what is left of it...Poignant and profound.' Zack Sharf, Indiewire
'A remarkably intimate examination of familial loyalty, national guilt, and the human capacity for both evil and self-delusion.' Andrew Silow-Carroll, New Jersey Jewish News
'No more fascinating three subjects could be found for this story...Will leave the viewer haunted...A stinging reminder precisely why we must not forget.' Eric Althoff, The Washington Times
'This provocative documentary is a picture of the complexities that still dominate the psyche of those related to the Holocaust.' Regina Weinreich, Huffington Post
'Compelling...Can you ask someone to not love their father? What if your father was a Nazi?' David Costill, Cut Print Film
'A poignant, thought-provoking account of friendship and the toll of inherited guilt.' Jeremy Gerard, Deadline Hollywood
'A documentary with real intellectual heft...A fascinating and brutally honest, squirm inducing film.' Joe Bendel, The Epoche Times
'Prompts discussions on war crimes and personal responsibilities.' Candace Smith, Booklist
Citation
Main credits
Evans, David (film director)
Dwyer, Finola (film producer)
Posey, Amanda (film producer)
Sands, Philippe (screenwriter)
Sands, Philippe (on-screen participant)
Frank, Niklas (on-screen participant)
Wächter, Horst von (on-screen participant)
Other credits
Edited by David Charap; directors of photography, Sam Hardy, Philipp Blaubach, Matt Gray; music by Malcolm Lindsay.
Distributor subjects
Anthropology; European Studies; Family Studies; History; Holocaust Studies; Human Rights; Individual and Society; Jewish Studies; Law; Psychology; Religion; Social Psychology; Sociology; War and PeaceKeywords
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(PENSIVE MUSIC PLAYING)
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- Imagine what it must be like to grow
up as the child of a mass murderer.
00:01:33.504 --> 00:01:37.884
To live with such a parent is to
impose the most terrible of burdens.
00:01:44.710 --> 00:01:47.230
- My name is Niklas Frank.
00:01:47.230 --> 00:01:52.570
I am born the 9th of March in 1939.
00:01:52.570 --> 00:01:54.310
This is not special.
00:01:54.310 --> 00:02:02.730
Special is that I am by
chance the son of Hans Frank.
00:02:02.730 --> 00:02:08.300
He was politically responsible
for all the ghettos
00:02:08.300 --> 00:02:13.532
and for the concentration
camps on the soil of Poland.
00:02:17.590 --> 00:02:20.860
- I was researching a program on the
Nuremberg trial when I met Niklas Frank.
00:02:20.860 --> 00:02:23.415
And later he introduced
me to Horst von Wachter.
00:02:26.880 --> 00:02:33.410
- I was born in Vienna on 14th April, 1939.
00:02:33.410 --> 00:02:37.340
So I'm still a child of peace.
00:02:37.340 --> 00:02:39.820
It was before the war.
00:02:39.820 --> 00:02:46.460
As gratitude towards the Nazi Party,
my mother proposed the name of Horst
00:02:46.460 --> 00:02:52.090
after Horst Wessel, who was a prominent
figure from the first years of the Nazi
00:02:52.090 --> 00:02:53.425
Party.
00:02:53.425 --> 00:02:59.850
Right from the beginning, my
father, he was a complete Nazi.
00:02:59.850 --> 00:03:03.890
- The material is all the more relevant
to me because of my own family background.
00:03:03.890 --> 00:03:09.930
I'm Jewish, and my family was very directly
affected by the actions of these men.
00:03:09.930 --> 00:03:12.090
I'm curious about details and people.
00:03:12.090 --> 00:03:15.470
I want to know why things happened
and why people act as they do,
00:03:15.470 --> 00:03:20.345
how they can engage in mass killing and
then spend an evening with their families.
00:03:20.345 --> 00:03:24.700
Yet watching these images felt
dirty, as though I was complicit
00:03:24.700 --> 00:03:29.390
in a voyeuristic sort of way,
looking on the inside of horror.
00:03:42.130 --> 00:03:44.790
- Mr. President, members of the court.
00:03:44.790 --> 00:03:46.050
It's an honor.
00:03:46.050 --> 00:03:48.960
My day job is working as an
international lawyer on cases
00:03:48.960 --> 00:03:53.127
involving genocide and
crimes against humanity.
00:03:53.127 --> 00:03:55.960
But it was while working on my book
that I was commissioned to write
00:03:55.960 --> 00:03:58.180
an article about Horst von Wachter.
00:04:07.560 --> 00:04:12.220
I came with a tremendous anxiety because
I just didn't know what to expect --
00:04:12.220 --> 00:04:14.750
and because of this
connection with the past.
00:04:14.750 --> 00:04:16.715
Here was a man who might have met Hitler.
00:04:16.715 --> 00:04:21.990
I was meeting someone who was directly
connected not just with abstract history,
00:04:21.990 --> 00:04:26.234
but with a deep part of my family's life.
00:04:26.234 --> 00:04:27.230
- Put it right.
00:04:30.220 --> 00:04:31.720
- How did you find this house?
00:04:31.720 --> 00:04:36.000
- Here there was a colony of
artists in the '60s, you know?
00:04:36.000 --> 00:04:37.050
- Living in the schloss?
00:04:37.050 --> 00:04:37.870
- Ya, ya.
00:04:37.870 --> 00:04:40.720
It was a secret place, you
know, where they came and...
00:04:40.720 --> 00:04:41.330
- Yeah.
00:04:41.330 --> 00:04:43.554
- ...made their festivities.
00:04:43.554 --> 00:04:44.370
- Oh, I love this.
00:04:44.370 --> 00:04:45.120
Don't you?
00:04:45.120 --> 00:04:47.510
- Everything has a meaning, you know?
00:04:47.510 --> 00:04:49.350
Position of the doors.
00:04:49.350 --> 00:04:53.360
Four elements, four directions.
00:04:53.360 --> 00:05:02.620
This room is devoted to Trismegistus,
who's the god of wisdom, god of numbers.
00:05:02.620 --> 00:05:04.210
- 22 windows?
00:05:04.210 --> 00:05:04.865
- No, there...
00:05:04.865 --> 00:05:05.460
- No.
00:05:05.460 --> 00:05:06.163
16 windows.
00:05:06.163 --> 00:05:07.190
- Ya, 16.
00:05:07.190 --> 00:05:08.540
Then you have four doors.
00:05:08.540 --> 00:05:09.500
- Yeah.
00:05:09.500 --> 00:05:11.351
- And you have two chimneys, you know?
00:05:11.351 --> 00:05:11.850
- Yeah.
00:05:11.850 --> 00:05:19.560
- And 22 is the number of the
letters in the Hebrew alphabet.
00:05:19.560 --> 00:05:23.540
This is really very important.
00:05:23.540 --> 00:05:25.850
- The Hebrew thing keeps coming back.
00:05:25.850 --> 00:05:29.140
- Yes, this is Hebrew.
00:05:29.140 --> 00:05:32.170
Here you see here two lovers, you know.
00:05:32.170 --> 00:05:32.750
This is...
00:05:32.750 --> 00:05:34.440
- Now are they the same lovers,
or are they different lovers?
00:05:34.440 --> 00:05:35.481
- No, they are different.
00:05:35.481 --> 00:05:37.080
They're very different, you know?
00:05:37.080 --> 00:05:38.270
Because they are two...
00:05:38.270 --> 00:05:39.980
- I'd come to talk with him
about what his father got up to
00:05:39.980 --> 00:05:41.650
during the Second World War.
00:05:41.650 --> 00:05:45.410
He just wanted to talk about
stones and rocks and buildings --
00:05:45.410 --> 00:05:49.220
about history going back
millennia, not just 70 years.
00:05:49.220 --> 00:05:50.995
- You can see here, the two (INAUDIBLE).
00:05:50.995 --> 00:05:53.610
They're kissing each other, you know.
00:05:53.610 --> 00:05:57.570
- You told me that this building
was your father's gift to you.
00:05:57.570 --> 00:05:58.070
- Oh yes.
00:05:58.070 --> 00:05:59.200
- What did you mean by that?
00:05:59.200 --> 00:05:59.720
When you...
00:05:59.720 --> 00:06:00.380
- Ya.
00:06:00.380 --> 00:06:01.875
- ...you said that to me,
what did you mean by that?
00:06:02.374 --> 00:06:06.350
- This has to do with my
youth and how I dropped out
00:06:06.350 --> 00:06:10.270
of normality because of my father.
00:06:10.270 --> 00:06:14.140
Because my normality was...
00:06:14.140 --> 00:06:20.340
that was the normality until
1945 when I was six years.
00:06:20.340 --> 00:06:24.100
And that was practically
destroyed, you know?
00:06:24.100 --> 00:06:26.170
By this whole...
00:06:26.170 --> 00:06:27.980
by the war, more or less.
00:06:27.980 --> 00:06:30.670
But I see it now like this.
00:06:30.670 --> 00:06:32.790
Because everything was finished, you know?
00:06:32.790 --> 00:06:37.730
And I was raised like a young
Nazi boy and that everything
00:06:37.730 --> 00:06:39.620
was right and things like that.
00:06:39.620 --> 00:06:44.460
And it was just from one day to the
other, everything was gone, you know?
00:06:44.460 --> 00:06:44.960
That was...
00:06:44.960 --> 00:06:46.606
I was really shocked.
00:06:46.606 --> 00:06:48.820
I mean, I feel it today.
00:06:48.820 --> 00:06:53.560
So that's why I'm here, you know?
00:06:53.560 --> 00:06:54.755
More or less.
00:07:04.960 --> 00:07:09.780
I do remember moments in
summertime on the lake.
00:07:09.780 --> 00:07:19.350
I remember my sixth birthday,
which was on 14th of April, 1945.
00:07:19.350 --> 00:07:25.730
It's not only that the regime broke down,
but everything around us broke down.
00:07:25.730 --> 00:07:29.130
The normality broke down for us, for me.
00:07:29.130 --> 00:07:37.030
And I just remember when I was sitting
on this veranda overlooking the lake,
00:07:37.030 --> 00:07:41.370
and we had a small birthday party.
00:07:41.370 --> 00:07:45.840
And then I was alone and I
just thought that I should
00:07:45.840 --> 00:07:51.200
remember this moment for all my life.
00:07:51.200 --> 00:07:54.990
You had this feeling that
everything is finished.
00:07:54.990 --> 00:07:57.240
There is no future for you.
00:07:57.240 --> 00:08:02.524
And whatever you do, it
has no sense, you know?
00:08:02.524 --> 00:08:07.770
What I remember now is the
British and American warplanes.
00:08:10.410 --> 00:08:15.340
You saw these huge masses
of planes over you.
00:08:15.340 --> 00:08:19.670
And sometimes they... yes, I remember.
00:08:19.670 --> 00:08:23.494
Yes, (SNIFFLING) yes.
00:08:26.362 --> 00:08:29.650
Yeah, I remember that.
00:08:29.650 --> 00:08:31.420
They dropped...
00:08:31.420 --> 00:08:36.229
they dropped the bombs
in the lake, you know?
00:08:36.229 --> 00:08:42.690
When they had too much bombs, or they
just wanted to get rid of the bombs,
00:08:42.690 --> 00:08:44.150
they dropped it into the lake.
00:08:44.150 --> 00:08:51.915
And the whole house started
to shiver, you know?
00:09:00.660 --> 00:09:04.880
- Within an hour of sitting in his room,
he'd taken out the family albums and we
00:09:04.880 --> 00:09:09.400
were going through pages of summer holidays
and winter holidays interspersed with
00:09:09.400 --> 00:09:13.120
pictures of Dachau, images
of AH -- Adolf Hitler.
00:09:13.120 --> 00:09:15.810
And all that happened in the
first two hours that I met Horst.
00:09:22.891 --> 00:09:25.740
And here we have him on the water.
00:09:25.740 --> 00:09:28.300
Austrian rowing champion on the Danube.
00:09:28.300 --> 00:09:30.700
- Yes.
00:09:30.700 --> 00:09:32.140
Next album.
00:09:32.140 --> 00:09:34.190
- As the years move on.
00:09:34.190 --> 00:09:38.040
Otto von Wachter played a central role
in the murder of the Austrian Chancellor
00:09:38.040 --> 00:09:40.480
by the Nazis in 1934.
00:09:40.480 --> 00:09:43.960
As early as that, he was
a leading Austrian Nazi.
00:09:43.960 --> 00:09:46.310
And he's gone from being
a complete outsider...
00:09:46.310 --> 00:09:46.810
- Yeah.
00:09:46.810 --> 00:09:47.145
- Into...
00:09:47.145 --> 00:09:48.061
- Into the government.
00:09:48.061 --> 00:09:49.300
- Into the government.
00:09:49.300 --> 00:09:52.145
So he was named SS
Oberfuhrer on Kristallnacht.
00:09:54.781 --> 00:09:55.280
- Ya.
00:09:55.280 --> 00:09:56.040
When this...
00:09:56.040 --> 00:09:57.042
this was Kristallnacht?
00:09:57.042 --> 00:09:58.250
- That's Kristallnacht, yeah.
00:09:58.250 --> 00:09:58.750
- Yeah.
00:09:58.750 --> 00:10:01.830
I must check it, but when you say it.
00:10:01.830 --> 00:10:05.374
- A year later, he's now been
upgraded and he's a Brigadefuhrer.
00:10:05.374 --> 00:10:06.040
- Brigadefuhrer.
00:10:06.040 --> 00:10:08.800
That's already in Krakow, ya.
00:10:08.800 --> 00:10:09.730
- I recognize that.
00:10:09.730 --> 00:10:10.229
That's...
00:10:10.229 --> 00:10:11.345
- Yeah, that's my mother.
00:10:11.345 --> 00:10:13.840
- That's your mother
sitting with Niklas' mother.
00:10:13.840 --> 00:10:14.570
- Yeah.
00:10:14.570 --> 00:10:17.050
- So this must be in the Wawel.
00:10:17.050 --> 00:10:18.080
- Yes.
00:10:18.080 --> 00:10:19.220
- In the Wawel Castle.
00:10:19.220 --> 00:10:22.530
- And you see, she was quite
good friend to Brigitte Frank.
00:10:25.150 --> 00:10:29.460
- I was transported back 70 years
to the heart of an appalling regime.
00:10:29.460 --> 00:10:33.890
But Horst was looking at these images
with a different eye from mine.
00:10:33.890 --> 00:10:37.640
I see a man who's probably been responsible
for the killing of tens of thousands
00:10:37.640 --> 00:10:39.630
of Jews and Poles.
00:10:39.630 --> 00:10:42.130
Horst looks at the same
photographs and he sees
00:10:42.130 --> 00:10:44.830
a beloved father playing with the children.
00:10:44.830 --> 00:10:51.360
And he's thinking, "That was family life."
00:10:51.360 --> 00:10:53.117
- More skiing photos.
00:10:53.117 --> 00:10:54.400
- Yes.
00:10:54.400 --> 00:10:56.530
- And this... and now we're in Lemberg.
00:10:56.530 --> 00:10:57.860
- Now we're in Lemberg.
00:10:57.860 --> 00:10:59.030
- What is he now?
00:10:59.030 --> 00:11:00.560
The governor of Galicia?
00:11:00.560 --> 00:11:01.410
- Yes.
00:11:01.410 --> 00:11:02.691
- So they've just occupied it.
00:11:02.691 --> 00:11:03.190
- Yes.
00:11:03.190 --> 00:11:03.731
- Here he is.
00:11:03.731 --> 00:11:04.810
They've just occupied it.
00:11:04.810 --> 00:11:05.309
- Yes.
00:11:05.309 --> 00:11:06.280
- They're moving east.
00:11:06.280 --> 00:11:08.060
This is Soviet propaganda.
00:11:08.060 --> 00:11:08.640
- Ya.
00:11:08.640 --> 00:11:10.480
- And is that your father?
00:11:10.480 --> 00:11:11.924
- Yes.
00:11:11.924 --> 00:11:13.340
- There was a little photograph...
00:11:13.340 --> 00:11:14.480
- Ya, ya.
00:11:14.480 --> 00:11:15.460
With the Jews?
00:11:15.460 --> 00:11:17.180
- Yeah.
00:11:17.180 --> 00:11:18.750
- That was a visit to Warsaw.
00:11:18.750 --> 00:11:20.620
- The visit to Warsaw.
00:11:20.620 --> 00:11:25.620
The eye's attention is caught by
the little girl who's in the middle.
00:11:25.620 --> 00:11:26.350
And it...
00:11:26.350 --> 00:11:26.850
- Wait.
00:11:26.850 --> 00:11:28.680
I'll get lamp.
00:11:28.680 --> 00:11:30.250
Light is not so good here.
00:11:37.580 --> 00:11:38.950
- So your father?
00:11:38.950 --> 00:11:39.590
- Ya.
00:11:39.590 --> 00:11:40.730
- And this is Himmler.
00:11:40.730 --> 00:11:41.240
- Ya.
00:11:41.240 --> 00:11:41.790
- This is...
00:11:41.790 --> 00:11:44.410
- It is in '43, must be.
00:11:44.410 --> 00:11:46.820
- His Galician SS division.
00:11:46.820 --> 00:11:47.420
- Ya.
00:11:47.420 --> 00:11:50.730
That was his biggest effort there.
00:11:50.730 --> 00:11:57.890
Because it was at this division where
they had war with the Ukrainians.
00:11:57.890 --> 00:12:00.300
- And that's not you?
00:12:00.300 --> 00:12:00.842
- That is me.
00:12:00.842 --> 00:12:02.091
Yes, that's me with my friend.
00:12:02.091 --> 00:12:04.326
- You went to stay in
the Frank's summer house?
00:12:04.326 --> 00:12:05.700
- I must be sitting behind there.
00:12:05.700 --> 00:12:06.658
- You're sitting there.
00:12:06.658 --> 00:12:08.086
That's you over there.
00:12:08.086 --> 00:12:08.586
- Ya.
00:12:08.586 --> 00:12:09.086
Must be.
00:12:09.086 --> 00:12:10.895
- I think that's Niklas.
00:12:10.895 --> 00:12:11.820
- Yes, it could be.
00:12:11.820 --> 00:12:12.653
- In the Schoberhof.
00:12:20.380 --> 00:12:24.810
- The very first picture I have in
mind I was being washed by my nurse.
00:12:24.810 --> 00:12:26.350
It was my first memory.
00:12:26.350 --> 00:12:27.840
It was here in Schoberhof.
00:12:27.840 --> 00:12:30.040
Our rooms were on the back side.
00:12:30.040 --> 00:12:33.275
It's now torn down.
00:12:33.275 --> 00:12:34.570
It's a building...
00:12:34.570 --> 00:12:37.160
it became more and more a ruin.
00:12:37.160 --> 00:12:41.280
But now it really tore
myself apart when I saw
00:12:41.280 --> 00:12:44.920
that they're rebuilding it in a new way.
00:12:44.920 --> 00:12:46.250
That really hurts.
00:12:46.250 --> 00:12:47.570
- Because...?
00:12:47.570 --> 00:12:49.250
- Because it's my home.
00:12:49.250 --> 00:12:50.990
We always were on holidays here.
00:12:50.990 --> 00:12:53.320
We loved the mountains around here, skiing.
00:12:56.744 --> 00:12:58.226
(MUSIC - "O TANNENBAUM")
00:12:58.226 --> 00:13:05.142
(VOCAL GROUP SINGING IN GERMAN)
00:13:28.360 --> 00:13:30.830
My beloved nurse, Hilda.
00:13:30.830 --> 00:13:33.860
She was always with us.
00:13:33.860 --> 00:13:41.200
Everything what is human with me
came from Hilda, not from my mother.
00:13:41.200 --> 00:13:46.300
And when my mother came back for
instance and said, "Oh Hilda, go away.
00:13:46.300 --> 00:13:50.260
Now I am with my children,
you have a free day off."
00:13:50.260 --> 00:13:52.970
And after 20 minutes, she said, "No, no.
00:13:52.970 --> 00:13:54.380
Hilda, you have to stay here.
00:13:54.380 --> 00:13:55.850
I can't do it with the children.
00:13:55.850 --> 00:13:57.050
I am too nervous.
00:13:57.050 --> 00:13:58.910
Please keep the children with you."
00:13:58.910 --> 00:14:03.640
And she was away with her old Mercedes.
00:14:03.640 --> 00:14:09.010
Because I had some memories also of
Poland and she filled in what was left.
00:14:09.010 --> 00:14:14.920
For instance my visit in the Krakow
ghetto, I only had some (INAUDIBLE).
00:14:14.920 --> 00:14:19.210
And she said where it was,
when it was, and what happened.
00:14:19.210 --> 00:14:20.800
- Did she accompany you?
00:14:20.800 --> 00:14:21.870
- Yes, she was with me.
00:14:21.870 --> 00:14:25.060
I was never alone as a little
child in the Krakow ghetto.
00:14:25.060 --> 00:14:25.560
- She was...
00:14:25.560 --> 00:14:26.643
- Together with my mother.
00:14:26.643 --> 00:14:27.710
- What did you see?
00:14:27.710 --> 00:14:29.650
I mean, what did you see
in the Krakow ghetto?
00:14:52.330 --> 00:14:57.360
- The only thing I remember was that
I was standing inside my Mercedes car
00:14:57.360 --> 00:15:03.900
on the back side, and there were a
lot of sad people around me outside.
00:15:03.900 --> 00:15:10.340
And there were some young
people of my age -- children.
00:15:10.340 --> 00:15:15.090
And to one of them I took out my tongue.
00:15:15.090 --> 00:15:18.810
And he went away very sadly looking.
00:15:18.810 --> 00:15:22.840
And so I was the winner,
and I was laughing aloud.
00:15:22.840 --> 00:15:27.805
But Hilda took me back and was silent
beside me, showing me that was not correct.
00:15:46.900 --> 00:15:49.250
- Your mother accompanied you on that trip.
00:15:49.250 --> 00:15:54.024
- Yes, but she was outside of
the car, shopping in the ghetto.
00:15:54.024 --> 00:15:55.690
- What shopping was there in the ghetto?
00:15:55.690 --> 00:15:56.790
I mean, the imagination...
00:15:56.790 --> 00:15:57.330
- Furs.
00:15:57.330 --> 00:15:58.070
Furs.
00:15:58.070 --> 00:16:00.060
She was always looking for furs.
00:16:00.060 --> 00:16:03.870
- When you say shopping, you
mean shopping or stealing?
00:16:03.870 --> 00:16:06.630
- She sets the prices, I would say.
00:16:06.630 --> 00:16:09.160
And then everybody who was
selling to her would say, "Oh,
00:16:09.160 --> 00:16:11.270
that's the wife of the Governor-General.
00:16:11.270 --> 00:16:12.560
So I'm lucky.
00:16:12.560 --> 00:16:13.800
I will survive."
00:16:13.800 --> 00:16:14.300
- Yeah.
00:16:14.300 --> 00:16:16.216
And did your father
accompany you on those...?
00:16:16.216 --> 00:16:17.077
- No.
00:16:17.077 --> 00:16:18.360
Never.
00:16:18.360 --> 00:16:21.480
They hated each other.
00:16:21.480 --> 00:16:25.280
The marriage was gone and then
my father wanted the divorce.
00:16:25.280 --> 00:16:28.690
My mother fought all her way up to Hitler.
00:16:28.690 --> 00:16:33.450
And Hitler forbade my father
the divorce till after the war.
00:16:33.450 --> 00:16:37.300
- She actually contacted Hitler?
00:16:37.300 --> 00:16:38.130
- Yes.
00:16:38.130 --> 00:16:38.790
By letter.
00:16:38.790 --> 00:16:44.380
She didn't come personal to him,
but she wrote a letter including
00:16:44.380 --> 00:16:47.850
a picture of her and the five children.
00:16:47.850 --> 00:16:50.147
- And the consequence of that
was that Hitler did what?
00:16:50.147 --> 00:16:50.980
Hitler instructed...
00:16:50.980 --> 00:16:51.980
- He forbade it.
00:16:51.980 --> 00:16:57.240
Hitler forbade Frank the
divorce till after the war.
00:16:57.240 --> 00:17:00.960
- And why did your father
just not ignore that?
00:17:00.960 --> 00:17:05.294
- He loved Hitler more than his family.
00:17:05.294 --> 00:17:08.520
(HANS FRANK SPEAKING GERMAN)
00:17:23.212 --> 00:17:24.508
(APPLAUSE)
00:17:25.810 --> 00:17:33.710
My father, he wrote a letter and wrote,
"I am seeing mountains of corpses.
00:17:33.710 --> 00:17:36.140
I'm going into the dark.
00:17:36.140 --> 00:17:38.420
Please don't accompany me.
00:17:38.420 --> 00:17:40.680
Give me the divorce."
00:17:40.680 --> 00:17:44.990
- He's using the Final Solution to
persuade Brigitte to give him a divorce,
00:17:44.990 --> 00:17:45.660
and she says no.
00:17:48.730 --> 00:17:54.785
- By the way, if she would have said
yes, we would still keep the Schoberhof.
00:17:54.785 --> 00:17:57.755
(LAUGHING)
00:18:19.540 --> 00:18:22.370
- Niklas and Horst, two
men I've come to know,
00:18:22.370 --> 00:18:26.390
whose fathers were very
senior in the Nazi hierarchy.
00:18:26.390 --> 00:18:29.010
Hans Frank started as
Hitler's personal lawyer,
00:18:29.010 --> 00:18:34.005
and then rose to be
Governor-General of occupied Poland.
00:18:34.005 --> 00:18:37.000
Otto von Wachter was
only a notch or two down.
00:18:37.000 --> 00:18:40.670
He was one of Hans Frank's deputies
-- first the governor of Krakow,
00:18:40.670 --> 00:18:42.975
then the governor of District Galicia.
00:18:53.520 --> 00:18:55.940
- What a beautiful castle.
00:18:55.940 --> 00:18:58.079
Full of criminals at this time.
00:19:35.070 --> 00:19:38.080
Everybody of those servants,
of those German staff
00:19:38.080 --> 00:19:42.380
of the government who worked
also here, they knew exactly
00:19:42.380 --> 00:19:49.320
that no day passes by when we've not
committed the most horrible crimes.
00:19:58.680 --> 00:20:03.210
My father always wanted to please Hitler.
00:20:03.210 --> 00:20:07.385
So he gave a shit really
about the fate of the Jews
00:20:07.385 --> 00:20:09.910
or about the fate of the Polish people.
00:20:16.551 --> 00:20:17.050
Ya.
00:20:17.050 --> 00:20:18.350
Here it is.
00:20:18.350 --> 00:20:23.690
For me, it was the most
special room in whole Wawel
00:20:23.690 --> 00:20:29.440
because it was a bath I've
never seen before or afterwards.
00:20:29.440 --> 00:20:38.160
Always it was one of my dreams to have
a bath like this, going down two steps.
00:20:38.160 --> 00:20:43.125
But this was the only gentle
experience I had with my father.
00:20:43.125 --> 00:20:50.720
I came in through this door, very small,
and my father was standing here shaving.
00:20:50.720 --> 00:20:58.130
And he saw me and gave a little bit
of his shaving foam onto my nose.
00:20:58.130 --> 00:21:04.731
And that was the only gentle moment
between him and me which I remember.
00:21:04.731 --> 00:21:05.230
- And...
00:21:05.230 --> 00:21:12.422
- And you can see that I remember how much
I was longing for the love of my father.
00:21:12.422 --> 00:21:15.150
Otherwise it's quite a normal procedure.
00:21:15.150 --> 00:21:18.130
But it burned into my soul.
00:21:18.130 --> 00:21:20.890
That was the only gentle moment.
00:21:20.890 --> 00:21:23.390
Wonderful bathroom.
00:21:23.390 --> 00:21:28.330
- Why do you think your father
had so little affection for you?
00:21:28.330 --> 00:21:37.340
- Because he didn't think that I am his son,
but the son of his best friend Karl Losch.
00:21:37.340 --> 00:21:39.650
- Who was your mother's lover.
00:21:39.650 --> 00:21:44.240
- At the time, she could have conceived.
00:21:44.240 --> 00:21:50.175
But later, I think, he believed
my mother that I am his son.
00:21:54.930 --> 00:22:02.930
He was five to ten times better
educated, for instance, than me.
00:22:02.930 --> 00:22:07.430
He knew Goethe's "Faust" by heart, and
also most of the plays of Shakespeare.
00:22:13.160 --> 00:22:18.360
As if it was Hans Frank's
own possession, huh?
00:22:18.360 --> 00:22:19.640
Unbelievable.
00:22:19.640 --> 00:22:27.670
I'm really happy that this painting has
survived and is back where it belongs to.
00:22:27.670 --> 00:22:30.620
- Leonardo da Vinci's
portrait of Cecilia Gallerani
00:22:30.620 --> 00:22:33.190
was one of the most famous
paintings in the world.
00:22:33.190 --> 00:22:37.260
Hans Frank took it from a Polish museum
created by the Czartoryski family,
00:22:37.260 --> 00:22:39.175
and kept it with him throughout the war.
00:22:39.175 --> 00:22:40.470
- Do you remember that?
00:22:40.470 --> 00:22:40.970
- Yes.
00:22:40.970 --> 00:22:43.940
That I remember, because
I thought this is a rat.
00:22:43.940 --> 00:22:45.151
- Ermine.
00:22:45.151 --> 00:22:45.650
- Ermine.
00:22:45.650 --> 00:22:47.960
- It's "The Lady with Ermine."
00:22:47.960 --> 00:22:54.310
And the painter Leonardo da Vinci described
it as the painting that should instill,
00:22:54.310 --> 00:22:59.454
in any person who looked
at it, feelings of love.
00:22:59.454 --> 00:23:02.448
- Not to my father.
00:23:02.448 --> 00:23:06.124
In a stolen castle in a stolen country.
00:23:06.124 --> 00:23:10.000
Makes me really angry.
00:23:10.000 --> 00:23:18.400
- And there's no sense of pride
on your part that, in some way,
00:23:18.400 --> 00:23:24.010
it could be said that your father's
actions did protect this work?
00:23:24.010 --> 00:23:24.992
- No.
00:23:24.992 --> 00:23:27.940
No.
00:23:27.940 --> 00:23:28.960
I could not forgive him.
00:23:28.960 --> 00:23:35.680
He was brought up as a Catholic and he
studied law in the Weimar democracy.
00:23:35.680 --> 00:23:40.260
So he knew by heart what
is right, what is wrong.
00:23:40.260 --> 00:23:44.520
And he went on and on till to the gallows.
00:23:44.520 --> 00:23:49.160
Because I think he was too much of a coward.
00:23:49.160 --> 00:23:54.170
He knew that he is committing crimes.
00:23:54.170 --> 00:24:01.700
And he never (CLEARS THROAT) had
the bravery to say, "OK Mr. Hitler.
00:24:01.700 --> 00:24:03.781
That's it."
00:24:09.630 --> 00:24:14.740
As the family of one of the
defendants, we have got the chance
00:24:14.740 --> 00:24:18.940
to visit our father in Nuremberg.
00:24:18.940 --> 00:24:24.550
First thing, what I saw was Mr.
Hermann Goering on the opposite side.
00:24:24.550 --> 00:24:29.000
So I was sitting looking at
my father behind the window.
00:24:29.000 --> 00:24:30.450
"Hi Nicky.
00:24:30.450 --> 00:24:32.470
It's a pleasure to see you.
00:24:32.470 --> 00:24:39.120
Soon we will celebrate a really great
Christmas together at Schoberhof."
00:24:39.120 --> 00:24:44.070
And I was thinking, why is he lying?
00:24:44.070 --> 00:24:46.170
Why is he lying?
00:24:46.170 --> 00:24:51.300
He knows that he will be hanged.
00:24:51.300 --> 00:24:54.040
And I was unbelievably disappointed.
00:25:01.460 --> 00:25:05.310
- My father, he was staying
four years in the mountains.
00:25:05.310 --> 00:25:06.650
Always hidden.
00:25:06.650 --> 00:25:12.940
My mother brought him food and equipment
for the winter, for the summer, and so on.
00:25:12.940 --> 00:25:17.710
My mother was of course, still a Nazi lady.
00:25:17.710 --> 00:25:18.590
No?
00:25:18.590 --> 00:25:24.190
So when the American soldiers moved
in to our house, they asked my mother,
00:25:24.190 --> 00:25:26.200
"Are you a Nazi?"
00:25:26.200 --> 00:25:30.120
And my mother said, "Yes, I am Nazi."
00:25:30.120 --> 00:25:36.683
And then they said, "Oh, you are the first
person we met who said she's a Nazi."
00:25:36.683 --> 00:25:38.850
(LAUGHING) So...
00:25:38.850 --> 00:25:41.080
- And she was proud?
00:25:41.080 --> 00:25:44.370
- Yes, of course she was proud.
00:25:44.370 --> 00:25:48.570
She was convinced that my father
was right and did the right things.
00:25:48.570 --> 00:25:54.090
And never one word that
she spoke bad about him.
00:25:54.090 --> 00:25:56.040
Then he came to live with us.
00:25:56.040 --> 00:25:59.340
I think it was two weeks or so.
00:25:59.340 --> 00:26:06.690
And she said to us smaller children, "That's
an uncle from South America," or whatever.
00:26:06.690 --> 00:26:09.870
He had a little mustache.
00:26:09.870 --> 00:26:18.960
And he came up to see us when we were
sleeping in our beds, I remember.
00:26:18.960 --> 00:26:24.645
And that is the only contact
with my father I remember.
00:26:24.645 --> 00:26:26.850
He had good connections to the Vatican.
00:26:26.850 --> 00:26:32.390
He found refuge in some
religious institution there.
00:26:32.390 --> 00:26:35.600
And he died very quick there.
00:26:42.490 --> 00:26:43.675
- Oh my god.
00:26:43.675 --> 00:26:44.910
- Here she is.
00:26:44.910 --> 00:26:49.225
The Queen of Poland, my mother.
00:26:49.225 --> 00:26:52.110
It was painted in 1935.
00:26:52.110 --> 00:26:54.330
- Did they still love each other then?
00:26:54.330 --> 00:26:55.650
- Yes.
00:26:55.650 --> 00:27:02.130
Well, some adultery, but not
so heavy ones than later.
00:27:02.130 --> 00:27:06.420
And when it was over with the
big glory of the Frank family,
00:27:06.420 --> 00:27:09.060
she said, "OK, now it's over.
00:27:09.060 --> 00:27:13.650
Now I have to work my ass off
to nourish these children."
00:27:13.650 --> 00:27:18.400
And she died in the age of
63, completely worn out.
00:27:21.085 --> 00:27:25.840
A very clear picture about the
Frank family and what they have done
00:27:25.840 --> 00:27:30.260
and what they have connected to
when I saw the first pictures,
00:27:30.260 --> 00:27:32.615
photographs in the newspapers.
00:27:32.615 --> 00:27:39.910
There I saw mountains of corpses
and also children of my age, then.
00:27:39.910 --> 00:27:46.380
And it was always written,
underlined, "Poland."
00:27:46.380 --> 00:27:52.040
And what happened to me
that I really got a shock,
00:27:52.040 --> 00:27:54.860
because I always thought Poland is ours.
00:28:15.150 --> 00:28:18.410
- 'Course I felt guilty
because of my father somehow.
00:28:18.410 --> 00:28:27.420
Of course, because you knew that more or
less it started all these horrible things.
00:28:27.420 --> 00:28:29.646
Came into public what happened then.
00:28:29.646 --> 00:28:30.850
It was not...
00:28:33.410 --> 00:28:41.320
immediately after the war there was nobody
talked about this, talking about it.
00:28:41.320 --> 00:28:45.530
The difficulties started later.
00:28:45.530 --> 00:28:51.620
My mother wanted me to become a
lawyer of course, like my father.
00:28:51.620 --> 00:28:55.470
She was very disappointed
when I said "No, finished.
00:28:55.470 --> 00:28:56.800
I don't study anymore.
00:28:56.800 --> 00:28:58.540
I go into the woods.
00:28:58.540 --> 00:29:00.430
Bye bye, Mother."
00:29:00.430 --> 00:29:03.330
And of course, she was very shocked.
00:29:03.330 --> 00:29:08.090
Then she got this professor friend,
and this friend said to me, "Oh Horst,
00:29:08.090 --> 00:29:09.810
you don't have to do anything.
00:29:09.810 --> 00:29:11.780
You will be professor doctor.
00:29:11.780 --> 00:29:16.030
You just have to inscribe in
Salzburg at the University."
00:29:16.030 --> 00:29:19.540
And there you had all these
friends of my father's.
00:29:19.540 --> 00:29:23.200
And well of course, I refused this thing.
00:29:23.200 --> 00:29:28.470
And I said, "I must find my own way."
00:29:28.470 --> 00:29:32.540
I was closing up, and I was very insecure.
00:29:32.540 --> 00:29:37.915
At a certain moment, I said to my
friend, "I want to serve somebody.
00:29:37.915 --> 00:29:39.010
I want to...
00:29:39.010 --> 00:29:40.770
like a servant.
00:29:40.770 --> 00:29:41.880
I really...
00:29:41.880 --> 00:29:46.040
I have to be of any use to somebody."
00:29:46.040 --> 00:29:49.440
And then he said, "Oh,
I know a crazy painter.
00:29:49.440 --> 00:29:55.590
He needs somebody."
00:29:55.590 --> 00:30:00.250
When I saw Hundertwasser the first
time, I knew that he would need me
00:30:00.250 --> 00:30:02.940
and I would go along with him quite well.
00:30:02.940 --> 00:30:07.880
Because he was also a shy person like
me, and found out that he was Jewish.
00:30:07.880 --> 00:30:13.480
That was of course very
good for my feelings, too.
00:30:13.480 --> 00:30:16.900
Then I went sailing the boat to New Zealand.
00:30:16.900 --> 00:30:18.215
That was his new paradise.
00:30:24.690 --> 00:30:32.130
Perhaps also with you, because you
are Jewish, somehow this being Jewish
00:30:32.130 --> 00:30:35.700
is something very attractive for me.
00:30:35.700 --> 00:30:40.400
And in the beginning
when I met Hundertwasser,
00:30:40.400 --> 00:30:48.560
his mother was afraid of me of course,
because she knew who my father was.
00:30:48.560 --> 00:30:51.455
And she was...
00:30:54.260 --> 00:30:57.200
with all her experiences
in the war when they
00:30:57.200 --> 00:31:02.300
had to run around with the Star of David.
00:31:02.300 --> 00:31:06.890
The question of the historical
responsibility of my father
00:31:06.890 --> 00:31:08.780
is a very complex one.
00:31:08.780 --> 00:31:14.050
But the racial theory of
Germans being Supermen
00:31:14.050 --> 00:31:17.330
and the others being
Untermenschen, my father
00:31:17.330 --> 00:31:21.080
was against this right from the beginning.
00:31:21.080 --> 00:31:26.630
He was absolutely somebody who
wanted to do something good,
00:31:26.630 --> 00:31:33.820
and he wanted to get something moving and
find some solution about all these problems
00:31:33.820 --> 00:31:38.650
who arose after the first war and tried...
00:31:38.650 --> 00:31:40.310
he was a complete optimist.
00:31:42.920 --> 00:31:49.150
- My father really had
deserved to die at the gallows.
00:31:49.150 --> 00:31:53.120
What he has done, he deserved it.
00:31:53.120 --> 00:32:03.260
Besides photos of my beloved family,
I always wear with me the last picture
00:32:03.260 --> 00:32:07.176
of my father when he
was... after he was hanged.
00:32:07.176 --> 00:32:12.425
He has a swollen eye, so maybe
he crashed against the trapdoor.
00:32:15.781 --> 00:32:19.610
On the one hand...
00:32:19.610 --> 00:32:20.150
ya.
00:32:20.150 --> 00:32:23.925
To be sure that he's really dead.
00:32:23.925 --> 00:32:29.620
But on the other hand -- and this
is what haunts me all of my life --
00:32:29.620 --> 00:32:39.260
the Germans know exactly what can
happen if you are losing civil courage,
00:32:39.260 --> 00:32:42.020
if you are losing democracy.
00:32:42.020 --> 00:32:45.060
It leads to...
00:32:45.060 --> 00:32:49.030
can lead to extermination camps.
00:32:49.030 --> 00:32:55.130
So we know this by heart because
we have done it, the Germans.
00:32:55.130 --> 00:33:05.620
And people of his merciless kind of living
and killing are still alive in Germany.
00:33:09.970 --> 00:33:13.320
- The article I'd written for The Financial
Times attracted a lot of interest.
00:33:13.320 --> 00:33:17.390
The newspaper offered to stage a public
event at which Horst and Niklas could
00:33:17.390 --> 00:33:22.603
present their views side by side, and
I was surprised when they both agreed.
00:33:22.603 --> 00:33:23.585
(SPEAKING GERMAN)
00:33:23.585 --> 00:33:24.567
- Ya.
00:33:24.567 --> 00:33:25.549
(LAUGHING)
00:33:25.549 --> 00:33:26.531
(SPEAKING GERMAN)
00:33:26.531 --> 00:33:27.513
(SPEAKING GERMAN)
00:33:27.513 --> 00:33:28.500
(SPEAKING GERMAN)
00:33:28.500 --> 00:33:31.220
- The two men had much in
common, with similar backgrounds.
00:33:31.220 --> 00:33:34.380
Yet seeing each on his own,
I had become acutely aware
00:33:34.380 --> 00:33:37.037
that they had very different
attitudes to their fathers.
00:33:37.037 --> 00:33:38.438
(SPEAKING GERMAN)
00:33:41.707 --> 00:33:42.650
(APPLAUSE)
00:33:42.650 --> 00:33:45.980
Niklas is a more polished
and prepared individual.
00:33:45.980 --> 00:33:47.990
Horst has just opened himself up.
00:33:47.990 --> 00:33:49.910
He's never been through anything like this.
00:33:49.910 --> 00:33:52.750
He's never had this kind of scrutiny.
00:33:52.750 --> 00:33:55.240
Horst, let's turn to you.
00:33:55.240 --> 00:33:58.680
- May I first introduce... have some words?
00:33:58.680 --> 00:33:59.330
- Absolutely.
00:33:59.330 --> 00:33:59.900
Please do.
00:33:59.900 --> 00:34:03.500
- Yes, I'm very grateful that I can be here.
00:34:03.500 --> 00:34:09.580
That kind of listening and hearing
would be impossible in Austria.
00:34:09.580 --> 00:34:13.060
There would be, "Well, we don't
know anything about Nazis,
00:34:13.060 --> 00:34:15.729
and we don't want to know anything."
00:34:15.729 --> 00:34:16.670
And so...
00:34:16.670 --> 00:34:20.789
- I'd come to learn that Niklas didn't
like to miss any opportunity to attack
00:34:20.789 --> 00:34:23.229
his father, and to do so publicly.
00:34:23.229 --> 00:34:25.830
But Horst on the other hand,
it was less clear to me
00:34:25.830 --> 00:34:28.045
why he would want to
expose himself publicly.
00:34:30.689 --> 00:34:35.280
- Both of our fathers were heavily involved.
00:34:35.280 --> 00:34:37.350
Heavily.
00:34:37.350 --> 00:34:41.370
You told me once I should
make peace with my father.
00:34:41.370 --> 00:34:43.700
I have peace with my father.
00:34:43.700 --> 00:34:49.990
Because I acknowledged his crimes, and
so I could lead a really good life.
00:34:49.990 --> 00:34:53.039
And you, you're struggling for what?
00:34:53.039 --> 00:34:56.580
The files are also against your father.
00:34:56.580 --> 00:35:00.290
Sorry, dear friend.
00:35:00.290 --> 00:35:02.980
- Well, I think I see it different.
00:35:02.980 --> 00:35:06.910
I see the structure of the
whole annihilation of Jews
00:35:06.910 --> 00:35:10.620
and what happened quite different.
00:35:10.620 --> 00:35:12.240
I didn't look for peace.
00:35:12.240 --> 00:35:19.390
It's just I felt it's my duty as a son
to put things straight with my father.
00:35:19.390 --> 00:35:22.410
And I see who was really responsible.
00:35:22.410 --> 00:35:26.670
- But it doesn't make your father
innocent if he's not quite responsible.
00:35:26.670 --> 00:35:28.360
They worked together.
00:35:28.360 --> 00:35:32.750
All those parts of the German
people were working together
00:35:32.750 --> 00:35:37.650
in the annihilation of
the Jews, for instance.
00:35:37.650 --> 00:35:41.680
- Well, I think I don't agree with you.
00:35:41.680 --> 00:35:46.930
Because I have this where they protested
and my father protested, even to Hitler,
00:35:46.930 --> 00:35:52.890
that this is impossible how to
treat the people there and how to...
00:35:52.890 --> 00:36:00.380
and his fault was that he believed
that Hitler would change his politics.
00:36:00.380 --> 00:36:05.740
- In our conversations, we've touched on
what you've uncovered about your father.
00:36:05.740 --> 00:36:09.820
He ran, for example, the transportation
system that shifted people
00:36:09.820 --> 00:36:13.100
to concentration camps and to their death.
00:36:13.100 --> 00:36:17.410
And yet you've resisted,
in our conversations,
00:36:17.410 --> 00:36:23.640
ever acknowledging that he himself
is somehow guilty for what happened.
00:36:23.640 --> 00:36:26.100
- Because...
00:36:26.100 --> 00:36:27.490
it's his character.
00:36:27.490 --> 00:36:30.970
I mean, I don't know about transportation.
00:36:30.970 --> 00:36:37.550
But when the Jewish ghetto
in Lemberg was established,
00:36:37.550 --> 00:36:43.940
it's written down below his name,
"(INAUDIBLE) Governor Wachter" --
00:36:43.940 --> 00:36:50.720
but it's only signed by an SS Fuhrer,
so my father refused to sign this.
00:36:50.720 --> 00:36:52.290
- That's ridiculous, Horst.
00:36:52.290 --> 00:36:53.430
- No, I mean...
00:36:53.430 --> 00:36:55.760
- But if he has not signed some document.
00:36:55.760 --> 00:36:57.392
But it happened.
00:36:57.392 --> 00:36:58.370
It happened.
00:36:58.370 --> 00:37:03.180
- Do you remember I showed you a letter
that was sent by Heinrich Himmler?
00:37:03.180 --> 00:37:07.910
And in the letter, Himmler writes that he
asked your father whether your father would
00:37:07.910 --> 00:37:10.510
like to return to Vienna.
00:37:10.510 --> 00:37:12.770
They weren't sure whether
your father was fully
00:37:12.770 --> 00:37:15.120
committed to what was about to happen.
00:37:15.120 --> 00:37:20.270
And Himmler wrote, "Wachter does
not wish to return to Vienna."
00:37:20.270 --> 00:37:26.480
In other words, he would stay and see
through what he knew was being done.
00:37:26.480 --> 00:37:27.931
Can you explain what...
00:37:27.931 --> 00:37:28.430
- Yes.
00:37:28.430 --> 00:37:30.080
He had no choice.
00:37:30.080 --> 00:37:39.850
He couldn't react like he himself
felt. And he was just making...
00:37:39.850 --> 00:37:42.780
he was just employee of his father, you see.
00:37:42.780 --> 00:37:44.030
- But he chose to stay.
00:37:44.030 --> 00:37:44.910
He could have gone.
00:37:44.910 --> 00:37:45.410
- Yes.
00:37:45.410 --> 00:37:48.720
But he felt responsible for the people.
00:37:48.720 --> 00:37:50.230
- Well, for some of the people.
00:37:50.230 --> 00:37:51.750
- Yes, for some.
00:37:51.750 --> 00:37:53.670
For some he could do.
00:37:53.670 --> 00:38:00.320
From the first moment he was very close with
the Ukrainians, with his Galician division.
00:38:00.320 --> 00:38:07.910
And he actually tried to
do something positive.
00:38:07.910 --> 00:38:11.308
- Why Niklas, did you introduce me to Horst?
00:38:11.308 --> 00:38:12.772
(LAUGHING)
00:38:12.772 --> 00:38:13.748
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
00:38:13.748 --> 00:38:15.212
(LAUGHING)
00:38:15.212 --> 00:38:16.490
- Is this a trick?
00:38:16.490 --> 00:38:21.330
- Well, when we had our first
conversation at this beautiful hotel --
00:38:21.330 --> 00:38:25.432
and the lawyer for sure was always
in the best hotel available.
00:38:25.432 --> 00:38:26.910
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
00:38:26.910 --> 00:38:31.130
And I told him... we
came across Otto Wachter.
00:38:31.130 --> 00:38:34.920
And I told him, "I am a friend
of Horst Wachter, his son.
00:38:34.920 --> 00:38:36.590
He's a very nice person."
00:38:36.590 --> 00:38:38.570
And you said, "What?
00:38:38.570 --> 00:38:42.910
You are a friend of this family
and of this Horst Wachter?"
00:38:42.910 --> 00:38:44.560
I was like, "You will like him.
00:38:44.560 --> 00:38:45.600
You will like him."
00:38:45.600 --> 00:38:47.320
- I had nothing to hide.
00:38:47.320 --> 00:38:47.820
- That's...
00:38:47.820 --> 00:38:53.210
- Or I did nothing that you
shouldn't know about my father.
00:38:53.210 --> 00:38:58.490
And my dear family was very angry.
00:38:58.490 --> 00:38:59.300
- And still angry.
00:38:59.300 --> 00:39:00.155
- And still angry.
00:39:00.155 --> 00:39:03.150
- Do you regret that we're
sitting here in an audience today?
00:39:03.150 --> 00:39:04.086
- Yes, of course.
00:39:04.086 --> 00:39:05.958
(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)
00:39:06.900 --> 00:39:10.780
- What do you want this audience to
take away from this conversation?
00:39:10.780 --> 00:39:14.480
What's the message that
you want to leave them?
00:39:14.480 --> 00:39:20.936
- (SIGHS) Well, I think there are many
victims of the Holocaust sitting here.
00:39:20.936 --> 00:39:28.150
And I want them to have more concern...
00:39:28.150 --> 00:39:33.760
more survey about how things
were and that there were
00:39:33.760 --> 00:39:39.780
many different sides about the whole thing.
00:39:39.780 --> 00:39:44.760
And it was not just like a
bloc like he wants it to be.
00:39:44.760 --> 00:39:49.990
There had been many people
who were against this.
00:39:49.990 --> 00:39:54.370
But that's what I want you to acknowledge.
00:39:54.370 --> 00:39:57.260
And that's why I'm thankful I can say this.
00:39:57.260 --> 00:40:03.380
And I think it's my duty, but it's
also my right and it should be said.
00:40:03.380 --> 00:40:08.050
I mean, and then I'm very happy.
00:40:08.050 --> 00:40:10.300
- Lady over there.
00:40:10.300 --> 00:40:13.450
- I love my father, and I honor my father.
00:40:13.450 --> 00:40:17.812
But as far as I'm aware, my father
has done nothing to be ashamed of.
00:40:17.812 --> 00:40:21.230
And I don't know what it must be like
growing up with a heritage like both of you
00:40:21.230 --> 00:40:22.310
have.
00:40:22.310 --> 00:40:28.315
I must however say, Horst, that I think
a lot of your arguments are so extraneous
00:40:28.315 --> 00:40:33.552
to the main facts of the issue --
that to be actually so self-deceiving,
00:40:33.552 --> 00:40:34.760
I find it rather frightening.
00:40:34.760 --> 00:40:39.790
All this rubbish about Ukrainians,
that's extraneous to the issue.
00:40:39.790 --> 00:40:40.928
- OK, so...
00:40:40.928 --> 00:40:42.824
(APPLAUSE)
00:40:42.824 --> 00:40:45.086
So that's a clear view that's been put.
00:40:45.086 --> 00:40:45.585
- Yes.
00:40:45.585 --> 00:40:46.084
I accept.
00:40:46.084 --> 00:40:50.200
I accept the view, and I
think I can understand it.
00:40:50.200 --> 00:40:55.690
The only thing which I... it's only
related between the relations between me
00:40:55.690 --> 00:41:00.730
and my father, and what I
turned out to be with my father.
00:41:00.730 --> 00:41:02.980
And that's what I am saying.
00:41:02.980 --> 00:41:06.780
- Nik's father sounds to me
like the most horrible father,
00:41:06.780 --> 00:41:11.580
and you don't come from a happily
married family or anything like that.
00:41:11.580 --> 00:41:13.310
You had a happier childhood.
00:41:13.310 --> 00:41:14.607
Is that not...?
00:41:14.607 --> 00:41:15.106
- Yes.
00:41:15.106 --> 00:41:15.605
I...
00:41:15.605 --> 00:41:17.320
- Is it too simple?
00:41:17.320 --> 00:41:20.330
- Yes that must have been
something very important,
00:41:20.330 --> 00:41:27.100
because I was very embedded in the family.
00:41:27.100 --> 00:41:30.910
And I'm very proud that
I had this childhood.
00:41:30.910 --> 00:41:31.900
- Niklas?
00:41:31.900 --> 00:41:35.510
- I won't say that I had
an unhappy childhood.
00:41:35.510 --> 00:41:43.500
As a prince of Poland I was really very well
off, with the best toys you can imagine.
00:41:43.500 --> 00:41:44.000
- Hi.
00:41:44.000 --> 00:41:46.130
I've got a question for Horst.
00:41:46.130 --> 00:41:50.330
You say that your father didn't sign the
paper and that's why you won't condemn him.
00:41:50.330 --> 00:41:53.240
If his signature was on
it, would you condemn him?
00:41:53.240 --> 00:41:54.280
What would it take?
00:41:54.280 --> 00:41:58.250
What proof would it take
for you to condemn your dad?
00:41:58.250 --> 00:42:01.280
- Yes, I would have
condemned him, of course.
00:42:01.280 --> 00:42:01.780
I mean...
00:42:01.780 --> 00:42:03.365
- Yeah, but if he had signed.
00:42:03.365 --> 00:42:06.880
- I think the question is going,
you're taking refuge in the fact
00:42:06.880 --> 00:42:11.820
that there are not in existence
pieces of paper which say
00:42:11.820 --> 00:42:14.260
"And today, I will kill 15,000 Jews."
00:42:14.260 --> 00:42:16.810
If you were presented with
such a piece of paper,
00:42:16.810 --> 00:42:20.970
would your position be any different
in terms of saying as a son,
00:42:20.970 --> 00:42:23.770
you have a duty to defend your father?
00:42:23.770 --> 00:42:25.540
- Of course it would be different.
00:42:25.540 --> 00:42:28.640
But it would be different.
00:42:28.640 --> 00:42:32.400
But I cannot imagine that one paper exists.
00:42:32.400 --> 00:42:36.470
My father did everything what he
could do to save the population.
00:42:36.470 --> 00:42:42.600
And my father is now, in these days with
the difficulties between Ukrainians,
00:42:42.600 --> 00:42:45.387
is really venerated there.
00:42:45.387 --> 00:42:46.818
(SPEAKING IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
00:42:46.818 --> 00:42:48.726
(GUNFIRE)
00:42:53.510 --> 00:42:57.070
- As we met in the (INAUDIBLE) room, the
Ukraine was engaged in its own struggle
00:42:57.070 --> 00:43:01.940
as to whether it would look east towards
Russia or west towards the European Union.
00:43:01.940 --> 00:43:05.390
Some of the protesters voiced
an age old hatred of Russia.
00:43:05.390 --> 00:43:09.330
And for that, they and the group as a
whole -- which included writers, students,
00:43:09.330 --> 00:43:13.650
and human rights activists -- were
accused of being fascists and neo-Nazis.
00:43:13.650 --> 00:43:16.940
It was as if the past had
returned to haunt the present,
00:43:16.940 --> 00:43:20.220
because there is a link between
contemporary events in the Ukraine
00:43:20.220 --> 00:43:25.804
and the period when Horst's father
was in charge of District Galicia.
00:43:25.804 --> 00:43:27.150
(BAND PLAYING)
00:43:27.150 --> 00:43:28.420
(SPEAKING GERMAN)
00:43:57.410 --> 00:44:01.000
This is where Horst's father was
based, in what's now called Lviv.
00:44:01.000 --> 00:44:02.610
The Germans call it Lemberg.
00:44:02.610 --> 00:44:04.520
The Poles know it as Lwow.
00:44:04.520 --> 00:44:09.380
The city's name reflects the changes
in the region, and the tensions.
00:44:09.380 --> 00:44:13.430
The city is at the heart of this story
because the killings that link the three
00:44:13.430 --> 00:44:18.980
of us -- me, Niklas, and Horst -- are the
events of August 1942, "The Grossacktion"
00:44:18.980 --> 00:44:22.405
as it's called, when the Jewish population
was almost entirely exterminated.
00:44:27.590 --> 00:44:30.250
Before 1942 this city
was an important center
00:44:30.250 --> 00:44:34.700
of Jewish life, a life
that's now totally vanished.
00:44:34.700 --> 00:44:37.970
This was my grandfather's hometown.
00:44:37.970 --> 00:44:42.820
What I hadn't appreciated was how large
a family my grandfather had left behind.
00:44:42.820 --> 00:44:47.130
In fact, there was a vast family
-- more than 80 individuals.
00:44:47.130 --> 00:44:52.810
And I didn't know that of those 80 who
were alive in 1939, he was the only one
00:44:52.810 --> 00:44:54.345
still alive in 1945.
00:45:12.574 --> 00:45:15.950
The building that we're
in was the Parliament
00:45:15.950 --> 00:45:19.980
of Galicia in the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
00:45:19.980 --> 00:45:27.070
And then in 1919 when the Poles took over,
it then became the Jan Kazimierz University
00:45:27.070 --> 00:45:31.110
until September '39 --
then the Soviets came.
00:45:31.110 --> 00:45:36.493
Then on July 1941, the Germans came.
00:45:36.493 --> 00:45:44.540
And into this room came your
father, Nik, as Governor-General,
00:45:44.540 --> 00:45:47.810
and your father as Governor of Galicia.
00:45:47.810 --> 00:45:52.000
And they stood on the platform,
they stood on the stage.
00:45:52.000 --> 00:45:57.225
And your father made a speech in
which he announced, essentially,
00:45:57.225 --> 00:46:01.250
the implementation of the
Final Solution in Galicia.
00:46:01.250 --> 00:46:05.570
And within a month, 75,000
people, at least, had died.
00:46:05.570 --> 00:46:10.890
- I would like to have this
place which my father had had.
00:46:10.890 --> 00:46:15.260
And now Horst to have to
hear what he was saying.
00:46:21.120 --> 00:46:29.520
And he addressed your father at
first, saying, "Party Comrade Wachter,
00:46:29.520 --> 00:46:33.740
I have to say you did well.
00:46:33.740 --> 00:46:38.520
Lemberg is once again a
true and proud German city.
00:46:38.520 --> 00:46:42.640
I do not speak about the Jews
that we still have here."
00:46:42.640 --> 00:46:49.630
And then here it says, "We
will deal with them, of course.
00:46:49.630 --> 00:46:51.040
By the way..."
00:46:51.040 --> 00:46:58.226
And now it's my well-educated, funny
father -- and he's doing a joke.
00:46:58.226 --> 00:47:02.940
"By the way, I hardly saw any of them today.
00:47:02.940 --> 00:47:05.320
What has happened?
00:47:05.320 --> 00:47:09.650
I was told that this city
used to swarm with thousands
00:47:09.650 --> 00:47:15.670
and thousands of these flat-footed
Indians, but I could see none.
00:47:15.670 --> 00:47:20.600
You have not done anything
nasty to them, have you?"
00:47:20.600 --> 00:47:25.520
And the protocol brought great hilarity.
00:47:25.520 --> 00:47:31.470
And you are still pretending you
didn't find anything which would accuse
00:47:31.470 --> 00:47:34.380
your father of being involved in this.
00:47:34.380 --> 00:47:35.780
This I won't understand.
00:47:35.780 --> 00:47:38.400
As you know, I like you personally.
00:47:38.400 --> 00:47:43.390
But I don't like your brains and
your thoughts you have in your brain.
00:47:43.390 --> 00:47:48.930
- Horst, what would you need to see to come
to a different perspective of your father?
00:47:48.930 --> 00:47:50.010
- I don't think...
00:47:50.010 --> 00:47:53.780
I think all the guilty
ones have been judged.
00:47:53.780 --> 00:47:57.430
And I know that his father was some...
00:47:57.430 --> 00:47:58.820
he was a theater man.
00:47:58.820 --> 00:48:00.590
He liked to make himself...
00:48:04.748 --> 00:48:06.620
all these remarks he made.
00:48:06.620 --> 00:48:08.630
My father did never...
00:48:08.630 --> 00:48:12.270
avoided the personal
contact with his father.
00:48:12.270 --> 00:48:13.730
That was the reason before.
00:48:13.730 --> 00:48:19.420
And I don't know of any
anti-Semitic speech my father did.
00:48:19.420 --> 00:48:20.280
I don't know about.
00:48:20.280 --> 00:48:23.040
- Maybe he was just more careful.
00:48:23.040 --> 00:48:24.930
- Well, he was...
00:48:24.930 --> 00:48:27.230
that was not his style.
00:48:27.230 --> 00:48:31.165
He was a completely other
style of man like his father.
00:48:31.165 --> 00:48:34.130
- But the result was the same.
00:48:34.130 --> 00:48:36.491
- He sat there in this room.
00:48:36.491 --> 00:48:36.990
- Yes.
00:48:36.990 --> 00:48:38.830
I'm very sorry about this, but...
00:48:38.830 --> 00:48:39.330
- Why?
00:48:39.330 --> 00:48:39.970
Why...
00:48:39.970 --> 00:48:43.660
if he didn't do anything,
why are you sorry about it?
00:48:43.660 --> 00:48:44.596
- (SIGHS)
00:48:45.570 --> 00:48:47.710
I mean, what should he have done?
00:48:47.710 --> 00:48:51.310
He should have jumped up
as you said, and said, "No!
00:48:51.310 --> 00:48:53.800
I'm against this!" and...
00:48:53.800 --> 00:48:57.690
- Horst, no one was
responsible for what happened?
00:48:57.690 --> 00:48:58.190
- Yes!
00:48:58.190 --> 00:49:00.600
You have all the names who were responsible.
00:49:00.600 --> 00:49:02.870
You have all the names, all the details.
00:49:02.870 --> 00:49:04.830
They are all documented.
00:49:04.830 --> 00:49:06.700
- But the lists include your father.
00:49:06.700 --> 00:49:09.780
- No, they don't include my father.
00:49:09.780 --> 00:49:13.240
They don't include my father.
00:49:13.240 --> 00:49:14.960
You cannot say this.
00:49:14.960 --> 00:49:17.120
That's all imagination for me.
00:49:17.120 --> 00:49:20.670
- Do you want me to show you a
document that lists your father?
00:49:20.670 --> 00:49:21.170
- Yes.
00:49:21.170 --> 00:49:21.410
- OK.
00:49:21.410 --> 00:49:22.214
- If there's a...
00:49:22.214 --> 00:49:23.420
- Stay there.
00:49:23.420 --> 00:49:24.030
- Yes.
00:49:24.030 --> 00:49:26.000
If you show it to me.
00:49:26.000 --> 00:49:27.670
But not speeches.
00:49:27.670 --> 00:49:28.720
- Nope.
00:49:28.720 --> 00:49:29.890
Document.
00:49:29.890 --> 00:49:31.050
I found it last week.
00:49:33.864 --> 00:49:35.740
- OK.
00:49:35.740 --> 00:49:38.140
This is a Polish document?
00:49:38.140 --> 00:49:40.750
- I just found it on Friday.
00:49:40.750 --> 00:49:41.485
- '46.
00:49:41.485 --> 00:49:43.670
- 28th of September, 1946.
00:49:43.670 --> 00:49:44.230
- Uh huh.
00:49:44.230 --> 00:49:47.170
- "To the military governor,
United States zone."
00:49:47.170 --> 00:49:47.680
- OK.
00:49:47.680 --> 00:49:48.390
- OK?
00:49:48.390 --> 00:49:53.670
"I, being the authorized representative
of the government of Poland,
00:49:53.670 --> 00:49:59.611
request on behalf of my government that
Wachter be delivered to Poland for trial."
00:49:59.611 --> 00:50:00.110
- Yes.
00:50:00.110 --> 00:50:02.990
- "For the hereinafter described offenses.
00:50:02.990 --> 00:50:03.670
One..."
00:50:03.670 --> 00:50:04.440
- "Subject."
00:50:04.440 --> 00:50:09.320
- "Subject is responsible for mass
murder -- shooting and executions.
00:50:09.320 --> 00:50:12.230
Under his command as
Governor of District Galicia,
00:50:12.230 --> 00:50:21.900
more than 100,000 Polish
citizens lost their lives."
00:50:21.900 --> 00:50:22.470
- Yes.
00:50:22.470 --> 00:50:25.220
Of course.
00:50:25.220 --> 00:50:28.230
That is made in September '46.
00:50:28.230 --> 00:50:31.300
I didn't know about this.
00:50:31.300 --> 00:50:35.300
(SIGHS) But still this is
a very general supposition
00:50:35.300 --> 00:50:40.370
of being mass murders under
his command as Governor.
00:50:40.370 --> 00:50:41.960
Under his command.
00:50:41.960 --> 00:50:46.000
That's all generalizations for me.
00:50:46.000 --> 00:50:47.690
- Horst, it's like my father.
00:50:47.690 --> 00:50:53.500
He was a representative of
Hitler as the Governor-General.
00:50:53.500 --> 00:51:02.630
So he was, politically speaking, responsible
for every dead Jew or every Polish.
00:51:02.630 --> 00:51:04.700
It's the same with you.
00:51:04.700 --> 00:51:05.710
With your father.
00:51:05.710 --> 00:51:11.120
He was the governor of Galicia, and
therefore, he was politically responsible
00:51:11.120 --> 00:51:14.050
for all the mass murders.
00:51:14.050 --> 00:51:16.870
The mass murders were (SPEAKING GERMAN).
00:51:16.870 --> 00:51:17.370
(SCOFFS)
00:51:17.370 --> 00:51:20.410
They were special things
and they had no influence.
00:51:20.410 --> 00:51:23.964
I see this is a Soviet...
00:51:23.964 --> 00:51:24.755
this is a Soviet...
00:51:24.755 --> 00:51:26.910
It's Polish and American.
00:51:26.910 --> 00:51:29.365
Yes, but that was...
00:51:29.365 --> 00:51:32.940
Poland was under Soviet
rule at that time already.
00:51:32.940 --> 00:51:36.509
It's a request to the Americans to
assist and the Americans assisted.
00:51:36.509 --> 00:51:38.550
The Americans were not
friendly with the Soviets.
00:51:38.550 --> 00:51:40.323
Don't hide into the little corners.
00:51:40.323 --> 00:51:40.823
No.
00:51:40.823 --> 00:51:41.480
But this is all general...
00:51:41.480 --> 00:51:42.510
I'm asking you...
00:51:42.510 --> 00:51:43.950
Horst, we'll come back to this.
00:51:43.950 --> 00:51:47.110
I'm asking you what is
really motivating you?
00:51:47.110 --> 00:51:51.390
Why are you resisting, with
every fiber in your body,
00:51:51.390 --> 00:51:55.720
the terrible evidence with
which you are confronted?
00:51:55.720 --> 00:52:02.860
Because I have so many documents from people
who knew him personally and who said he was
00:52:02.860 --> 00:52:05.370
a decent... he had a decent character.
00:52:05.370 --> 00:52:11.220
And he tried everything what he could
do to prevent the things that happened.
00:52:11.220 --> 00:52:14.410
I want to know what really was going on.
00:52:14.410 --> 00:52:15.640
What was really going on...
00:52:15.640 --> 00:52:16.223
The details...
00:52:16.223 --> 00:52:17.770
Was your father was sitting there.
00:52:17.770 --> 00:52:18.270
Yes.
00:52:18.270 --> 00:52:19.800
In front of his father.
00:52:19.800 --> 00:52:23.960
His father was announcing that
100,000 Jews are going to be murdered.
00:52:23.960 --> 00:52:24.460
Yes.
00:52:24.460 --> 00:52:28.710
And your father sat there,
no expression on his face.
00:52:28.710 --> 00:52:32.430
(CLAPPING) Clapping in this room.
00:52:32.430 --> 00:52:33.980
Going off and doing his work.
00:52:33.980 --> 00:52:35.560
That's what your father did.
00:52:35.560 --> 00:52:37.308
That's what he did.
00:52:37.308 --> 00:52:38.670
Yes.
00:52:38.670 --> 00:52:40.600
I presume he did like this.
00:52:40.600 --> 00:52:43.270
So that is terrible evidence.
00:52:43.270 --> 00:52:44.740
But this is a speech.
00:52:44.740 --> 00:52:49.130
This is a rhetorical speech,
a highly rhetorical speech.
00:52:49.130 --> 00:52:53.290
This was a political session
here from somebody who...
00:52:53.290 --> 00:52:59.450
Horst, what happened two weeks
later on the 17th of August?
00:52:59.450 --> 00:53:00.310
You've shown...
00:53:00.310 --> 00:53:04.390
you've shown me the letter your
father wrote to your mother.
00:53:04.390 --> 00:53:06.675
"I'm coming back to Lemberg.
00:53:06.675 --> 00:53:09.450
Die Grossacktion is beginning."
00:53:09.450 --> 00:53:11.110
He knew all about it.
00:53:11.110 --> 00:53:13.310
And it happened.
00:53:13.310 --> 00:53:16.160
75,000 people were killed.
00:53:16.160 --> 00:53:19.820
So that's a father to love?
00:53:19.820 --> 00:53:21.470
That's a man one can love?
00:53:21.470 --> 00:53:22.620
An honorable man?
00:53:22.620 --> 00:53:23.880
A decent man?
00:53:23.880 --> 00:53:27.570
"I'm going back to help kill 75,000 people?"
00:53:27.570 --> 00:53:29.285
That's an honorable thing to do?
00:53:29.285 --> 00:53:33.520
Of course it's not an honorable thing.
00:53:33.520 --> 00:53:37.090
(SIGHS) But it was as...
00:53:37.090 --> 00:53:42.200
the system was something for us
today which you can't imagine.
00:53:46.580 --> 00:53:49.580
Death was so near to everybody.
00:53:49.580 --> 00:53:51.310
And it was nothing.
00:53:51.310 --> 00:53:52.930
Life of men was just nothing.
00:53:59.790 --> 00:54:02.980
Horst fills me with despair.
00:54:02.980 --> 00:54:06.970
I cannot accept that approach.
00:54:06.970 --> 00:54:13.410
It's not just the lawyer in me
concerned with how one treats evidence.
00:54:13.410 --> 00:54:15.810
It's much more personal than that.
00:54:15.810 --> 00:54:18.730
When I hear him speak of his
father's good character and actions,
00:54:18.730 --> 00:54:22.255
I hear him to be justifying the killing
of my grandfather's entire family.
00:54:34.400 --> 00:54:38.780
This is where my grandfather's
family came from.
00:54:38.780 --> 00:54:40.966
And it's where most of that family perished.
00:55:14.140 --> 00:55:17.130
Do you ask yourself why
we came here together?
00:55:20.891 --> 00:55:21.390
No.
00:55:21.390 --> 00:55:24.740
I had no problems to understand.
00:55:24.740 --> 00:55:37.066
We commemorate what happened and
we are confronted what happened.
00:55:37.066 --> 00:55:43.500
And we feel sad and ashamed maybe.
00:55:43.500 --> 00:55:46.620
And we ask ourselves questions.
00:55:46.620 --> 00:55:51.800
How it could be that such things happened
in the past and continue to happen today?
00:55:51.800 --> 00:55:53.840
It's the point.
00:55:53.840 --> 00:55:57.365
Because they continue everywhere.
00:55:57.365 --> 00:56:02.460
And we have no means to stop them.
00:56:02.460 --> 00:56:04.195
We have to accept them.
00:56:04.195 --> 00:56:05.070
We cannot have our...
00:56:05.070 --> 00:56:06.778
Well no, that's where you and I disagree.
00:56:06.778 --> 00:56:08.940
That's where you and I disagree.
00:56:08.940 --> 00:56:15.530
I think that there are things that can
be done to stop things from happening.
00:56:15.530 --> 00:56:18.042
And it's about, in part,
individual responsibility.
00:56:18.042 --> 00:56:19.000
It's where you and I...
00:56:19.000 --> 00:56:19.170
Ya.
00:56:19.170 --> 00:56:19.929
We have a small...
00:56:19.929 --> 00:56:20.720
You and I disagree.
00:56:20.720 --> 00:56:21.895
We have a small...
00:56:25.350 --> 00:56:28.750
just like points in the whole history.
00:56:28.750 --> 00:56:30.890
It's like the soldiers who fought here.
00:56:30.890 --> 00:56:37.260
They can't stand up and say,
"Oh, I don't want to fight."
00:56:37.260 --> 00:56:39.420
They would be executed immediately.
00:56:39.420 --> 00:56:43.942
So there's no option but to
kill and to carry on killing?
00:56:43.942 --> 00:56:45.880
(SIGHS) There is option.
00:56:45.880 --> 00:56:52.480
I mean, there is other ways which
are in your power to do something.
00:56:52.480 --> 00:56:53.547
But this was inevitable?
00:56:53.547 --> 00:56:54.630
Your father had no option.
00:56:54.630 --> 00:56:58.700
This, for him, he had no
option to change this thing.
00:56:58.700 --> 00:57:01.261
And because it was inevitable,
he had no responsibility?
00:57:04.420 --> 00:57:07.511
Well, there's a difficult question.
00:57:07.511 --> 00:57:08.010
One?
00:57:08.010 --> 00:57:08.885
About responsibility.
00:57:12.570 --> 00:57:19.020
Well, I don't think that he
ordered to burn down this room.
00:57:19.020 --> 00:57:24.939
I mean, I refuse to say that he
gave orders to burn down here.
00:57:24.939 --> 00:57:29.760
And I don't see my father in here.
00:57:29.760 --> 00:57:38.790
I mean, I can't see walking my
father around here with his uniform
00:57:38.790 --> 00:57:42.260
and saying "Well done,"
and things like that.
00:57:42.260 --> 00:57:46.108
I can't see him like this.
00:57:46.108 --> 00:57:47.056
He's dead.
00:57:50.848 --> 00:57:53.600
But you...
00:57:53.600 --> 00:57:58.860
I mean, in this room, you have
to have ideas, great ideas.
00:57:58.860 --> 00:58:00.640
And not pessimistic.
00:58:00.640 --> 00:58:06.900
And you have to see what was
really going on building this up.
00:58:06.900 --> 00:58:11.720
And because for me, this
is built for eternity.
00:58:11.720 --> 00:58:17.360
You can see the enormous vaults
there, the column thickness.
00:58:17.360 --> 00:58:22.720
And for me, this idea is much
stronger than destroyed surfaces.
00:58:22.720 --> 00:58:26.340
300 years filled with people and singing.
00:58:26.340 --> 00:58:26.840
Yes.
00:58:26.840 --> 00:58:28.270
And prayer and life.
00:58:28.270 --> 00:58:28.770
Yes.
00:58:28.770 --> 00:58:28.930
And color.
00:58:28.930 --> 00:58:29.390
Yes.
00:58:29.390 --> 00:58:29.960
And hair and jewelry.
00:58:29.960 --> 00:58:30.460
Yes.
00:58:30.460 --> 00:58:31.390
And that is my...
00:58:31.390 --> 00:58:32.140
And it's all gone.
00:58:32.140 --> 00:58:33.306
It all went in a single day.
00:58:33.306 --> 00:58:34.155
No, it's not gone!
00:58:34.155 --> 00:58:35.760
It's still there.
00:58:35.760 --> 00:58:37.870
It isn't gone.
00:58:37.870 --> 00:58:42.120
Because that is my main interest,
why I agreed to come here.
00:58:42.120 --> 00:58:45.580
To go back to 300 years ago.
00:58:45.580 --> 00:58:49.610
Not be stuck in what happened 70 years ago.
00:58:49.610 --> 00:58:50.610
It'll never be filled...
00:58:50.610 --> 00:58:51.360
And that's why.
00:58:51.360 --> 00:58:53.520
It'll never be filled again, this place.
00:58:53.520 --> 00:58:55.600
You don't know.
00:58:55.600 --> 00:58:56.800
Maybe it will.
00:58:56.800 --> 00:58:58.780
I am not so pessimistic than you.
00:59:02.000 --> 00:59:02.500
I...
00:59:05.070 --> 00:59:07.360
this will be filled up.
00:59:07.360 --> 00:59:09.100
I can tell you.
00:59:09.100 --> 00:59:13.970
Because it's so great that
this period will be gone.
00:59:13.970 --> 00:59:25.490
And there will be a new period
coming up which can see it again.
00:59:25.490 --> 00:59:30.966
Now it's only a few people who can see this.
00:59:30.966 --> 00:59:34.570
But I can see it.
00:59:34.570 --> 00:59:35.590
See?
00:59:35.590 --> 00:59:37.280
I don't want to get stuck somewhere.
00:59:40.040 --> 00:59:46.500
Full of shame and full
of, (SIGHS) full of...
00:59:54.170 --> 00:59:56.510
I'm proud to be here.
01:00:02.880 --> 01:00:11.200
I always imagined when was the last Shabbat
celebration before they all were killed?
01:00:11.200 --> 01:00:14.370
What have they talked to each other?
01:00:14.370 --> 01:00:16.075
How can we hide?
01:00:16.075 --> 01:00:17.720
Or can we go into the woods?
01:00:17.720 --> 01:00:23.110
Or do we have any relatives who can
hide us somewhere in the countryside?
01:00:23.110 --> 01:00:26.054
And all this kind of stuff, it's
always running through my brain.
01:00:26.054 --> 01:00:28.775
That's the only thing.
01:00:28.775 --> 01:00:31.186
And this makes me furious.
01:00:31.186 --> 01:00:32.716
And I will never forgive this.
01:00:35.980 --> 01:00:37.570
So it was the synagogue of my family.
01:00:37.570 --> 01:00:38.400
Ach, ya?
01:00:38.400 --> 01:00:38.950
Yeah.
01:00:38.950 --> 01:00:39.824
This was their place.
01:00:39.824 --> 01:00:40.886
Your family, it was?
01:00:40.886 --> 01:00:43.180
Yeah.
01:00:43.180 --> 01:00:44.970
You didn't know that?
01:00:44.970 --> 01:00:46.210
No.
01:00:46.210 --> 01:00:48.990
You always ask me what about my feeling.
01:00:48.990 --> 01:00:53.430
No, what's your feeling standing
here in this synagogue where
01:00:53.430 --> 01:00:56.310
your family used to be?
01:00:56.310 --> 01:00:58.690
It's a very heavy feeling.
01:00:58.690 --> 01:01:00.380
It's a very, very heavy feeling.
01:01:00.380 --> 01:01:02.180
What means heavy?
01:01:02.180 --> 01:01:07.930
It means that my imagination
is running very strongly.
01:01:07.930 --> 01:01:14.080
I imagine the moment in July 1941
that the Germans came into the town.
01:01:14.080 --> 01:01:20.310
And like you, I imagine the fear,
the mayhem, and the certainty
01:01:20.310 --> 01:01:21.610
that they knew what was coming.
01:01:21.610 --> 01:01:24.400
Because they had contacts with
Vienna and with Germany and they
01:01:24.400 --> 01:01:25.975
knew what was on its way.
01:01:25.975 --> 01:01:29.840
And so for me, it boils down to a
number of individuals that I never met.
01:01:29.840 --> 01:01:31.861
I don't even have
photographs of these people.
01:01:31.861 --> 01:01:32.360
Nothing.
01:01:32.360 --> 01:01:33.970
Nothing remains.
01:01:33.970 --> 01:01:34.750
Nothing.
01:01:34.750 --> 01:01:36.320
But this would've been the place.
01:01:36.320 --> 01:01:40.430
Where have they been, the last
time you have heard about this?
01:01:40.430 --> 01:01:44.110
About those family?
01:01:44.110 --> 01:01:46.510
My grandfather never talked to me about it.
01:01:46.510 --> 01:01:47.960
He refused to talk to me about it.
01:01:47.960 --> 01:01:49.293
And you also didn't dare to ask.
01:01:49.293 --> 01:01:50.350
I didn't dare to ask.
01:01:50.350 --> 01:01:56.180
So and when they perished, they were still
living around here, using this synagogue.
01:01:56.180 --> 01:01:56.680
Yes.
01:01:56.680 --> 01:02:00.230
Well, the synagogue was
burned down in July '41.
01:02:00.230 --> 01:02:06.620
The ghetto was created in the autumn.
01:02:06.620 --> 01:02:11.460
And they lived in the ghetto in '42.
01:02:11.460 --> 01:02:16.060
And they were then rounded
up, taken to a wood
01:02:16.060 --> 01:02:22.940
where there were sand pits that were used
to repair the road from Zolkiew to Lemberg.
01:02:22.940 --> 01:02:26.860
And they put a plank at
the end of the sand pit.
01:02:26.860 --> 01:02:34.230
And each of the three and a half thousand
walked along the plank, they were shot,
01:02:34.230 --> 01:02:35.962
and they fell in.
01:02:35.962 --> 01:02:37.540
But the story doesn't end there.
01:02:37.540 --> 01:02:40.230
It's a kilometer from
where we're standing now.
01:02:40.230 --> 01:02:42.160
They're still there.
01:02:42.160 --> 01:02:43.353
Nothing's changed.
01:02:43.353 --> 01:02:47.893
All the bodies are in the spot
that we are going to right now.
01:03:07.120 --> 01:03:09.092
(BREATHING DEEPLY)
01:03:22.403 --> 01:03:24.277
This our fathers did.
01:03:35.708 --> 01:03:36.702
(SIGHS)
01:04:04.070 --> 01:04:06.530
So everyone remains here.
01:04:06.530 --> 01:04:07.730
Nothing's been moved.
01:04:13.490 --> 01:04:15.155
Horst, you've seen the date over here.
01:04:15.155 --> 01:04:15.655
Ya.
01:04:15.655 --> 01:04:17.902
The 25th of March, 1943.
01:04:17.902 --> 01:04:19.110
Ya.
01:04:19.110 --> 01:04:26.550
So I'm afraid there is no escaping that
this action took place on the territory
01:04:26.550 --> 01:04:28.258
and with the support of your father.
01:04:31.440 --> 01:04:37.512
And it contains three and a half
thousand people, including my family.
01:04:44.456 --> 01:04:45.448
(CAMERA SHUTTER)
01:04:55.880 --> 01:05:00.510
Horst, please accept it.
01:05:00.510 --> 01:05:02.900
Recognize it.
01:05:02.900 --> 01:05:07.140
It's also the responsibility of
my father in first (INAUDIBLE).
01:05:07.140 --> 01:05:13.180
But your father was as well
involved in this horrible crime.
01:05:13.180 --> 01:05:14.610
Here in this place.
01:05:20.910 --> 01:05:22.360
Please.
01:05:22.360 --> 01:05:25.130
He was involved in the system, I know.
01:05:25.130 --> 01:05:27.715
This is why we're here.
01:05:27.715 --> 01:05:28.590
The system is very...
01:05:28.590 --> 01:05:29.940
And I never...
01:05:29.940 --> 01:05:31.140
Very abstract.
01:05:31.140 --> 01:05:31.740
This is a...
01:05:31.740 --> 01:05:32.360
I never...
01:05:32.360 --> 01:05:36.704
Place of a mass killing that our
father has been responsible for.
01:05:50.840 --> 01:05:56.800
I want to have the exact date and who
was responsible, who was present here,
01:05:56.800 --> 01:06:01.870
and the name of the police
officers and (INAUDIBLE).
01:06:01.870 --> 01:06:04.020
Why you always want to flee?
01:06:04.020 --> 01:06:06.130
I'm not flee.
01:06:06.130 --> 01:06:09.500
I want to see the reality.
01:06:09.500 --> 01:06:10.368
(SIGHS)
01:06:12.540 --> 01:06:15.090
And we are standing in midst of a death.
01:06:15.090 --> 01:06:18.000
That is all death around us.
01:06:18.000 --> 01:06:22.220
There must be tens of thousands
of Austrians lying around here.
01:06:22.220 --> 01:06:22.720
But Horst...
01:06:22.720 --> 01:06:23.510
And in the middle of...
01:06:23.510 --> 01:06:24.343
We're not talking...
01:06:24.343 --> 01:06:27.430
we're talking about these three
and a half thousand people.
01:06:27.430 --> 01:06:28.790
We're talking about these...
01:06:28.790 --> 01:06:29.290
Yes.
01:06:29.290 --> 01:06:31.420
But I see all of them around here.
01:06:31.420 --> 01:06:32.390
It's not only those.
01:06:32.390 --> 01:06:33.790
Well, I'm talking about these.
01:06:33.790 --> 01:06:39.030
I'm asking you to focus on these
people who, on the 25th of March, 1943,
01:06:39.030 --> 01:06:44.046
walked from the place where we
have just been to this place.
01:06:44.046 --> 01:06:45.020
Well...
01:06:45.020 --> 01:06:50.350
With the support of the auxiliary
police under your father's authority,
01:06:50.350 --> 01:06:52.380
they were made to walk
to the end of the plank.
01:06:52.380 --> 01:06:56.190
Each person got a single bullet to
the head, and they are in there now.
01:06:56.190 --> 01:07:01.400
There's simply no escaping
the issue of responsibility.
01:07:01.400 --> 01:07:03.070
Not your responsibility.
01:07:03.070 --> 01:07:04.510
Never your responsibility.
01:07:04.510 --> 01:07:06.850
The responsibility of Otto von Wachter.
01:07:06.850 --> 01:07:08.670
There is no escaping.
01:07:08.670 --> 01:07:10.160
You simply cannot run away from it.
01:07:10.160 --> 01:07:13.550
You are confronted here with the reality.
01:07:13.550 --> 01:07:20.180
But then I want the exact following
of the orders from the smallest
01:07:20.180 --> 01:07:24.366
soldiers up to the civil government.
01:07:24.366 --> 01:07:27.380
Do you know who paid the
salary of the auxiliary police?
01:07:32.180 --> 01:07:32.780
Your father.
01:07:35.420 --> 01:07:36.960
That was paid by your father.
01:07:36.960 --> 01:07:38.210
He signed off on it.
01:07:38.210 --> 01:07:39.751
That's called command responsibility.
01:07:43.230 --> 01:07:45.580
Doesn't matter who did the
individual act of killing.
01:07:45.580 --> 01:07:47.580
Doesn't matter who put
the individual bullet in.
01:07:47.580 --> 01:07:48.445
Doesn't matter.
01:07:48.445 --> 01:07:49.486
All of that's complete...
01:07:49.486 --> 01:07:52.919
It matters for me.
01:07:52.919 --> 01:07:55.210
Yeah, but as a matter
of moral responsibility
01:07:55.210 --> 01:07:59.520
and as a matter of legal
responsibility, it's totally irrelevant.
01:07:59.520 --> 01:08:01.040
Totally irrelevant.
01:08:01.040 --> 01:08:02.500
He signed off on everything.
01:08:05.790 --> 01:08:13.424
(SIGHS) Well, he wouldn't have signed
the march coming here with these people.
01:08:13.424 --> 01:08:14.900
I don't think.
01:08:34.088 --> 01:08:38.060
(SIGHS) I see this as
a battlefield, you see.
01:08:38.060 --> 01:08:45.220
Because at the beginning of the First
War in 1914, there were these big battles
01:08:45.220 --> 01:08:47.550
and the soil was full of blood.
01:08:56.514 --> 01:08:59.400
And there have been so
many killings going on.
01:09:37.515 --> 01:09:42.334
(SINGING IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
01:09:46.555 --> 01:09:51.290
The annual commemoration of Otto von
Wachter's Waffen-SS Galicia Division,
01:09:51.290 --> 01:09:55.340
created by him in 1943,
includes a ceremony to rebury
01:09:55.340 --> 01:09:58.940
newly discovered remains of
German and Ukrainian soldiers who
01:09:58.940 --> 01:10:02.500
fell in the fields near this chapel.
01:10:02.500 --> 01:10:07.500
(SINGING IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
01:10:26.000 --> 01:10:27.355
(SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
01:10:27.355 --> 01:10:28.730
(CROWD SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
01:10:28.730 --> 01:10:30.115
(APPLAUSE)
01:10:32.485 --> 01:10:33.870
(SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
01:10:34.705 --> 01:10:37.060
(INAUDIBLE).
01:10:37.060 --> 01:10:38.620
(SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
01:10:39.380 --> 01:10:41.830
So it's a kind of Sons of Ukraine of nation.
01:10:41.830 --> 01:10:45.710
So am I right in thinking the
historical role of the division
01:10:45.710 --> 01:10:48.610
remains important today in modern Ukraine?
01:10:48.610 --> 01:10:50.140
(SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
01:10:54.186 --> 01:10:54.810
So there was...
01:10:54.810 --> 01:10:57.090
(SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
01:11:02.710 --> 01:11:08.220
We hear Putin say that Ukraine
is full of fascists and Nazis.
01:11:08.220 --> 01:11:11.500
(SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
01:11:18.004 --> 01:11:19.420
Why are you wearing this swastika?
01:11:19.420 --> 01:11:21.770
(SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
01:11:21.770 --> 01:11:22.410
Symbol.
01:11:22.410 --> 01:11:23.010
(INAUDIBLE).
01:11:23.010 --> 01:11:25.230
(SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
01:11:26.105 --> 01:11:28.610
The symbol has a different meaning.
01:11:28.610 --> 01:11:31.430
The people have used it in a different way.
01:11:31.430 --> 01:11:33.320
(SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
01:11:34.250 --> 01:11:36.190
The symbols are not carrying...
01:11:36.190 --> 01:11:38.940
in themselves are not negative.
01:11:38.940 --> 01:11:40.630
But people who use them.
01:11:40.630 --> 01:11:43.550
(SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
01:11:45.720 --> 01:11:48.812
This helmet, I was in Kiev when (INAUDIBLE).
01:11:48.812 --> 01:11:51.040
And it was from sniper.
01:11:51.040 --> 01:11:51.920
Rifle?
01:11:51.920 --> 01:11:52.460
A rifle.
01:11:52.460 --> 01:11:52.880
Now?
01:11:52.880 --> 01:11:53.250
Now.
01:11:53.250 --> 01:11:54.120
Yes, he used this.
01:11:54.120 --> 01:11:55.080
What does this mean?
01:11:55.080 --> 01:11:55.930
(INTERPOSING VOICES)
01:11:55.930 --> 01:11:57.280
(SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
01:11:57.280 --> 01:12:00.292
The 19th of February.
01:12:00.292 --> 01:12:01.768
19th of February.
01:12:01.768 --> 01:12:02.620
Yes. (INAUDIBLE).
01:12:02.620 --> 01:12:03.720
You don't feel...
01:12:03.720 --> 01:12:09.670
if you have this helmet, you don't feel like
a German soldier and a member of the SS?
01:12:09.670 --> 01:12:13.676
You don't feel ashamed, knowing exactly
what happened under this swastika?
01:12:13.676 --> 01:12:14.800
(SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
01:12:14.800 --> 01:12:17.560
(SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
01:12:19.000 --> 01:12:20.896
What they were doing...
01:12:20.896 --> 01:12:22.372
(SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
01:12:23.356 --> 01:12:29.260
(SINGING IN FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
01:12:48.000 --> 01:12:51.930
Did he ever see Otto von Wachter speak?
01:12:51.930 --> 01:12:53.075
(SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
01:12:53.075 --> 01:12:53.645
(SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
01:12:53.645 --> 01:12:54.500
Yes, sure.
01:12:54.500 --> 01:12:55.625
(SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
01:12:58.460 --> 01:13:02.142
If he was to meet the son of Wachter,
what would he say to the son of Wachter?
01:13:02.142 --> 01:13:03.740
(SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
01:13:06.636 --> 01:13:08.810
(SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
01:13:09.310 --> 01:13:10.495
A sin, a sin.
01:13:10.495 --> 01:13:12.710
(SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
01:13:19.910 --> 01:13:21.860
So can I present him to the son of...
01:13:21.860 --> 01:13:23.570
(SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
01:13:26.335 --> 01:13:27.460
(SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
01:13:27.460 --> 01:13:28.410
Horst von Wachter.
01:13:28.410 --> 01:13:29.820
Horst.
01:13:29.820 --> 01:13:34.140
Well, I must say this day
was the best day for me.
01:13:34.140 --> 01:13:41.115
Because so many people wanted to shake my
hand because of my father, and saying he
01:13:41.115 --> 01:13:42.370
was a decent man.
01:13:42.370 --> 01:13:47.090
And that's all what I want, nothing else.
01:13:47.090 --> 01:13:52.550
(SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
Horst von Wachter.
01:13:52.550 --> 01:13:55.410
How you would like to introduce
yourself beyond your name?
01:13:55.410 --> 01:13:56.695
Sin.
01:13:56.695 --> 01:13:57.950
Sin of governor.
01:13:57.950 --> 01:13:59.350
Sin Otto von Wachter.
01:13:59.350 --> 01:14:00.475
(SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
01:14:01.740 --> 01:14:04.222
My name is (INAUDIBLE).
01:14:04.222 --> 01:14:05.086
(INAUDIBLE).
01:14:05.086 --> 01:14:06.820
No, no.
01:14:06.820 --> 01:14:11.620
For sure he is an apologist
for the actions of his father.
01:14:11.620 --> 01:14:17.850
What still have in mind,
maybe also in his heart,
01:14:17.850 --> 01:14:24.250
is a picture of a wonderful man who
tried the best for the Ukrainians.
01:14:24.250 --> 01:14:26.570
And it's just a lie.
01:14:26.570 --> 01:14:27.850
(SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
01:14:27.850 --> 01:14:29.170
I am.
01:14:29.170 --> 01:14:38.080
He is not accepting that his
father was involved in mass murder.
01:14:38.080 --> 01:14:40.710
He should know better.
01:14:40.710 --> 01:14:42.980
I really despise him like my father.
01:14:46.570 --> 01:14:51.730
In my opinion, Horst will
become a neo-Nazi in the end.
01:14:51.730 --> 01:14:54.100
That is serious?
01:14:54.100 --> 01:14:57.590
Not so serious because
he is an old man like me,
01:14:57.590 --> 01:15:04.510
so he can't do only some damage
around with his friends or so.
01:15:04.510 --> 01:15:05.610
But not in the...
01:15:05.610 --> 01:15:07.160
really not in the public.
01:15:07.160 --> 01:15:14.470
But I don't know exactly if they started out
in Austria to invite him for public events,
01:15:14.470 --> 01:15:20.620
delivering a speech, showing the pictures,
this the Austrians really would like.
01:15:20.620 --> 01:15:25.490
How far does Horst have
to go for you to say,
01:15:25.490 --> 01:15:30.240
I can no longer have a
relationship with this man?
01:15:30.240 --> 01:15:32.170
I think it's nothing left.
01:15:32.170 --> 01:15:34.350
Just my decision.
01:15:34.350 --> 01:15:43.250
And I'll give him a last email to say
that's not, for me, not endurable anymore.
01:15:43.250 --> 01:15:47.340
Do you think Horst is a Nazi?
01:15:47.340 --> 01:15:49.140
Yes.
01:15:49.140 --> 01:15:53.150
Now I would admit he is really a Nazi.
01:15:53.150 --> 01:15:57.810
Well, I think that Nik is a egoist maniac.
01:15:57.810 --> 01:16:01.450
He's just focused on his father, you know?
01:16:01.450 --> 01:16:07.550
And he makes his father most
criminal being on earth and so on.
01:16:07.550 --> 01:16:10.680
But it's because it's his father.
01:16:10.680 --> 01:16:12.850
It's only because it's his father.
01:16:12.850 --> 01:16:16.020
Otherwise, he wouldn't do this, you know?
01:16:16.020 --> 01:16:21.146
For me, his life is practicality
annihilated by his father.
01:16:28.376 --> 01:16:36.750
When my father fled, 1945, he went with
his last members of his government --
01:16:36.750 --> 01:16:43.710
his adjutant and his secretary
and the cook -- to this house.
01:16:43.710 --> 01:16:46.020
There he was arrested.
01:16:46.020 --> 01:16:52.760
The last room on the right hand
side was his so-called (INAUDIBLE),
01:16:52.760 --> 01:16:55.550
his religious room or something like this.
01:16:55.550 --> 01:17:01.980
And there he had hanged all the paintings
-- this Leonardo da Vinci, two Rembrants,
01:17:01.980 --> 01:17:02.850
one Raphael.
01:17:02.850 --> 01:17:06.020
These are the most famous four.
01:17:06.020 --> 01:17:06.870
I've found it...
01:17:06.870 --> 01:17:09.920
all my life, I've found
very crazy that my father
01:17:09.920 --> 01:17:16.270
was sitting in this small house in the end
waiting to be arrested from the Americans.
01:17:16.270 --> 01:17:21.320
And there were American
soldiers who, some days before,
01:17:21.320 --> 01:17:26.520
has liberated a camp of the
Dachau concentration camp outside,
01:17:26.520 --> 01:17:28.660
have seen all the corpses.
01:17:28.660 --> 01:17:36.105
And say, I have heard that the Butcher
of Poland -- which was his nickname --
01:17:36.105 --> 01:17:37.450
is here lies.
01:17:37.450 --> 01:17:38.780
The Butcher?
01:17:38.780 --> 01:17:42.160
The Butcher of Poland is arriving.
01:17:42.160 --> 01:17:45.640
And they have beaten him up heavily.
01:17:45.640 --> 01:17:50.642
So he tried twice to commit
suicide, but he didn't succeed.
01:17:50.642 --> 01:17:54.955
He was brought to a
hospital and then prison.
01:17:54.955 --> 01:17:57.400
And then it was over.
01:17:57.400 --> 01:18:05.520
He wrote in a letter to us whenever we came,
we should go over to this little chapel
01:18:05.520 --> 01:18:06.700
to pray for him.
01:18:09.740 --> 01:18:10.680
I never did it.
01:18:13.460 --> 01:18:17.126
Does it ever make you want to cry though,
when you come back to a place like this?
01:18:17.126 --> 01:18:17.978
No.
01:18:17.978 --> 01:18:19.260
Never.
01:18:19.260 --> 01:18:20.940
You've never cried about him?
01:18:20.940 --> 01:18:22.390
No.
01:18:22.390 --> 01:18:26.040
Does that not seem... does
that not seem strange?
01:18:26.040 --> 01:18:27.290
He was your father.
01:18:27.290 --> 01:18:28.980
He wasn't my father.
01:18:28.980 --> 01:18:31.290
He was your father.
01:18:31.290 --> 01:18:32.480
Biologically.
01:18:32.480 --> 01:18:33.432
But not...
01:18:36.306 --> 01:18:36.806
(SIGHS).
01:18:45.990 --> 01:18:50.420
(INAUDIBLE) in a real trial
like it was in Nuremberg,
01:18:50.420 --> 01:18:54.050
I don't think that my father
would have been condemned.
01:18:54.050 --> 01:18:56.460
(INAUDIBLE).
01:18:56.460 --> 01:19:05.150
I don't think so, because who
would have spoken up against him?
01:19:05.150 --> 01:19:11.520
Maybe it would only be Jews
because of the Holocaust.
01:19:11.520 --> 01:19:19.150
But the SS took all things which
concerning Jews on their side.
01:19:19.150 --> 01:19:22.470
Horst's father, Otto von Wachter,
was indicted for mass murder,
01:19:22.470 --> 01:19:26.000
but died in 1949 under the
protection of the Vatican.
01:19:26.000 --> 01:19:29.250
He was never tried, and that
allows Horst to take refuge
01:19:29.250 --> 01:19:32.323
in his own long view of history.
01:19:32.323 --> 01:19:37.040
This is my grandfather,
Josef von Wachter, general
01:19:37.040 --> 01:19:41.530
of the imperial army in the First War.
01:19:41.530 --> 01:19:45.700
Two times he prevented
the Russian army to break
01:19:45.700 --> 01:19:51.350
through the Austrian lines in Galicia,
where we have been, around Zolkiew.
01:19:51.350 --> 01:19:58.310
My father expressly wrote that he wants
to continue what my grandfather did there.
01:19:58.310 --> 01:20:06.530
And at the moment he knew that he was going
to Galicia, my father chose his coat of arm
01:20:06.530 --> 01:20:08.460
as a crusade order.
01:20:08.460 --> 01:20:13.145
So his fighting crusade mentality
is somewhere in the family.
01:20:17.040 --> 01:20:22.235
The man who built this castle was a
crusader connected with the Templars.
01:20:25.000 --> 01:20:30.595
And the ground plan corresponds
to the temple in Jerusalem.
01:20:30.595 --> 01:20:35.230
I feel like a descendant of Aaron.
01:20:35.230 --> 01:20:38.040
I read the definition of a Jew.
01:20:38.040 --> 01:20:41.945
A Jew is somebody who makes
service in the temple.
01:20:44.570 --> 01:20:47.820
And then I said, I will be a real Jew here.
01:20:56.690 --> 01:21:00.436
There's an image from the Krakow
footage that I can't get out of my mind.
01:21:22.390 --> 01:21:23.610
You see a little girl.
01:21:23.610 --> 01:21:25.210
She's wearing a beautiful red dress.
01:21:25.210 --> 01:21:27.890
And I look at that girl and
I think of my own children.
01:21:27.890 --> 01:21:28.980
I think of my own family.
01:21:28.980 --> 01:21:30.906
I think of my grandfather's family.
01:21:30.906 --> 01:21:34.970
And I imagine if he'd been in that
ghetto, he wouldn't have left.
01:21:34.970 --> 01:21:36.962
And I wouldn't be here today.
01:21:42.940 --> 01:21:47.015
We're all prone to feelings of group
loyalty, a sort of tribal instinct
01:21:47.015 --> 01:21:48.930
that lumps people together.
01:21:48.930 --> 01:21:53.250
We tend to see people as victim
or perpetrator, as us or them.
01:21:57.390 --> 01:21:59.040
I understand that tribal instinct.
01:21:59.040 --> 01:22:02.850
And indeed, I feel it myself when
I see that girl in the red dress.
01:22:05.730 --> 01:22:10.100
But as a lawyer, I've learned to
mistrust being swayed by such feelings,
01:22:10.100 --> 01:22:14.810
to try to avoid a tribal instinct when it
comes to dealing with issues of justice.
01:22:14.810 --> 01:22:16.670
That's one of the reasons we have courts.
01:22:19.320 --> 01:22:24.750
That four great nations, flushed
with victory and stung with injury,
01:22:24.750 --> 01:22:29.670
stay the hand of vengeance and
voluntarily submit their captive enemies
01:22:29.670 --> 01:22:33.620
to the judgment of the law is one
of the most significant tributes
01:22:33.620 --> 01:22:36.896
that power has ever paid to reason.
01:22:36.896 --> 01:22:41.378
(SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
01:22:47.852 --> 01:22:49.844
(INTERPOSING VOICES)
01:22:49.844 --> 01:22:53.520
(SPEAKING FOREIGN LANGUAGE)
01:23:04.050 --> 01:23:09.852
But it is also true that Frank was
a willing and knowing participant
01:23:09.852 --> 01:23:14.502
in the use of terrorism in
Poland, which led to the death
01:23:14.502 --> 01:23:19.370
by starvation of over a million
Poles and a program involving
01:23:19.370 --> 01:23:25.360
the murder of at least three million Jews.
01:23:25.360 --> 01:23:28.820
Frank didn't kill anybody personally,
yet the Nuremberg judgment
01:23:28.820 --> 01:23:33.870
was unequivocal in finding him guilty of
the murder of four million individuals.
01:23:33.870 --> 01:23:37.070
It's called command responsibility.
01:23:37.070 --> 01:23:39.190
I don't think that Horst is a Nazi.
01:23:39.190 --> 01:23:44.340
But he's completely wrong about his
father, who was a senior Nazi leader.
01:23:44.340 --> 01:23:47.880
And if he'd been apprehended
and tried, he would certainly
01:23:47.880 --> 01:23:50.860
have suffered the same fate as Hans Frank.
01:23:50.860 --> 01:23:54.340
Otto von Wachter's name is
on the order authorizing
01:23:54.340 --> 01:23:56.930
the construction of the Krakow ghetto.
01:23:56.930 --> 01:23:58.100
Game over.
01:23:58.100 --> 01:24:03.550
Intention, having a decent character, as
Horst puts it, are totally irrelevant.
01:24:03.550 --> 01:24:07.480
Nuremberg was the first time
the political leaders of a state
01:24:07.480 --> 01:24:10.790
were hauled up in front of an
international court of law.
01:24:10.790 --> 01:24:12.910
Churchill wanted them
to be lined up and shot,
01:24:12.910 --> 01:24:17.130
but President Roosevelt preferred
that a court should dispense justice.
01:24:17.130 --> 01:24:19.330
And justice is what Hans Frank got.
01:24:47.680 --> 01:24:54.630
Well, it's the only room in the world
where I'm a little bit nearer to my father.
01:24:54.630 --> 01:25:08.310
Sitting here and thinking of being
him, for about a year to be in here.
01:25:08.310 --> 01:25:16.670
Coming from a big castle, driving a
big Mercedes, having a lot of uniforms.
01:25:16.670 --> 01:25:23.415
And suddenly you're sitting here
with an open toilet, a small table,
01:25:23.415 --> 01:25:25.900
with a small bed.
01:25:25.900 --> 01:25:26.585
Nothing else.
01:25:31.200 --> 01:25:37.105
There is, right now in
me, a little kind of pity.
01:25:37.105 --> 01:25:40.650
Here he sits.
01:25:40.650 --> 01:25:43.260
Maybe it's the same place to us.
01:25:43.260 --> 01:25:47.220
So it's a momentary feeling of pity.
01:25:47.220 --> 01:25:53.410
Is it amplified today, the
anniversary of his execution?
01:25:53.410 --> 01:25:54.000
No.
01:25:54.000 --> 01:25:57.136
It's not special day of the 16th.
01:25:57.136 --> 01:26:01.825
Around this time, he was already dead.
01:26:01.825 --> 01:26:03.060
(INAUDIBLE).
01:26:03.060 --> 01:26:08.020
Shortly after one o'clock in
the morning, they got him.
01:26:08.020 --> 01:26:17.450
And the funny thing about when the
court took my father to the gallows,
01:26:17.450 --> 01:26:25.990
when they opened the door, my
father was kneeling like this.
01:26:25.990 --> 01:26:32.160
And he said to the priest,
"Father, when I was a boy,
01:26:32.160 --> 01:26:38.480
my mother used to give me the cross every
morning when I was leaving for school.
01:26:38.480 --> 01:26:43.280
Please do this also now."
01:26:43.280 --> 01:26:47.350
And I think this Catholic priest
was very, very much enjoyed.
01:26:47.350 --> 01:26:48.460
And he did it.
01:26:48.460 --> 01:26:50.940
And behind, you have all these people.
01:26:50.940 --> 01:26:52.870
And he was kneeling here.
01:26:52.870 --> 01:26:57.350
And I used to say that's
a ham actor's exercise.
01:27:07.970 --> 01:27:15.370
Jesus Christ personally has
shown himself to my father.
01:27:15.370 --> 01:27:24.300
And so maybe, maybe it wasn't a
ham actor's decision to do this.
01:27:24.300 --> 01:27:29.890
Maybe it's really in those moments very
near to the gallows, very near to the death.
01:27:29.890 --> 01:27:32.920
I'm now about 30 years older than him.
01:27:32.920 --> 01:27:34.165
So he was very young.
01:27:34.165 --> 01:27:35.840
He was 46 years.
01:27:35.840 --> 01:27:41.930
And you know you will not
survive the 16th of October.
01:27:41.930 --> 01:27:48.340
And maybe it was really an honest...
01:27:48.340 --> 01:27:51.610
the only and last honest thing he did.
01:27:51.610 --> 01:27:57.180
He wanted to go back to being
an innocent child again.
01:27:57.180 --> 01:28:04.670
What he was when his mother makes
this sign of God on his brain.
01:28:04.670 --> 01:28:11.250
The first time I think about it, I
think he wanted to be a little boy again
01:28:11.250 --> 01:28:14.021
and haven't done nothing
of all those crimes.
01:28:53.360 --> 01:28:54.610
What a last stand.
01:29:06.584 --> 01:29:08.033
Eh?
01:29:08.033 --> 01:29:10.060
It's a happy room for me.
01:29:10.060 --> 01:29:11.796
And for the world, I would say.
01:29:20.007 --> 01:29:24.675
And then he's sitting here doing this
and that with his dark spectacles.
01:29:28.560 --> 01:29:35.066
Maybe he was thinking, why I didn't stop it?
01:29:35.066 --> 01:29:35.566
Why?
01:29:49.537 --> 01:29:50.037
Ya.
01:30:02.512 --> 01:30:07.502
(MUSIC PLAYING)
01:32:02.272 --> 01:32:06.017
(BUZZING)
Distributor: Bullfrog Films
Length: 92 minutes
Date: 2016
Genre: Expository
Language: Not available / English subtitles
Grade: 10 - 12, College, Adults
Color/BW:
Closed Captioning: Available
Interactive Transcript: Available
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