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Reviews
My Nazi Legacy (2015)
uncomfortable but important
I don't think I have to recount the events of what's going on - a human rights lawyer with personal investment in having the sons of former Nazis admit their father's guilt - is interviewing two elderly Germans who recount their personal and their fathers' history with Nazism and the relationships they had with their respective fathers.
Niklas is of course a former journalist and has been outspoken about his hatred towards his father and his role within the Nazi machinery since the '60s. It is revealed (and everyone who's familiar with his work, knows this already) that he comes from a more or less loveless home. His parents hated each other, his mother didn't know what to do with the kids, and his father was even less affectionate.
His father was tried and hanged in Nuremberg.
Add to that Niklas' own political leanings and long journalistic history and you can see how he has found refuge in absolute condemnation of his father.
Horst is the more interesting subject. He hasn't made a career out of speaking out against his family's personal history. So, he's unfamiliar with constantly being asked questions about this issue and probably hasn't looked at the issue from different people's perspective. He does seem to understand the gravity of the atrocities that happened and doesn't shy away from conemning what happened. But he doesn't admit to the role his father, a prominant Nazi in his own right, even if not as high-ranking as Niklas' father, had in the grand scheme of things.
His personal history however is much different from Niklas'. He loved his family, by all accounts his father was a good father, his parent were devoted to each other. Horst's father did not stand trial and died in exile in the Vatican/Rome.
Given his personal memories of his father and the lack of public condemnation for the man (as he did escape justice), for the last 70 years, he has painted a picture of his father in his head that resemebles maybe the Speer myth of the "Good Nazi", that only wanted the best for the people he was "responsible" for and got caught up in a political avalanche that he didn't actually identify with.
All of this is of course nonsense. Both Niklas and Philippe know this. And while it is extremely uncomfortable to see them imploring Horst to acknowledge his father's guilt by presenting them with horrific evidence, taking him to the Ukraine and just hammering into him what an idiot he's being for not understaning the gravity of the personal guilt his father was carrying, I do think it's important that they aren't really giving up.
There has repeatedly been the debate about whether or not really old Nazis should still be held accountable for their actions.. be tried and sent to prison. The answer is a resounding YES! And we can't shy away from having the public ackqnowledge this guilt either. Even the guilt of dead people.
In this day and age, when far-right populism is on the rise everyhwere, it's more important than ever to understand that this isn't ever going to go away. The stench of what the Nazis did is going to cling to their names for all eternity. No happy family photographs are going to change what he did.
Hannah Arendt wrote about the banality of evil. Niklas Frank has been writing about the cowardice of evil. And Horst von Wächter should become the face of the undeniablity of evil.