What Our Fathers Did: A Nazi Legacy

Saw this film last night on UK TV. I can add little to the reviews already given but would like to comment on Michael Wehle sour remarks.

Yes, not everything is explored, such a Fascism in the Ukraine. Can it be in the time given? Personally I had not problem with the one son seeing his father as a loving man etc. What else would a very young child think? The issue is the refusal to admit that his father was personally responsible for the crimes and, I think, that is what Sands is trying to do, namely to get him to concede when faced with the facts.

The documentary also indirectly alludes to the problems in many German families when the younger generation found out about the crimes of their parents.

This documentary follows two different men who were sons of prominent figures during WW2. The person who does the interviews had several relatives who died in the war. This leads to an obvious bias on the part of the interviewer, but nonetheless it manages to reveal a sense of complication - both mental and emotional - created by such extreme events of the past. If your mind and heart are open, you will get much more out of this documentary.

Some people say this has a political message / bias to it. But to me, the fact that real people were asked to encounter questions the enormity of which the world has never seen, and hopefully will never see again, negates any sense of intentionality of a "take away" message. In the end, it's left up to the viewer to decide - and that may be the most difficult part, realizing that a "decision" in terms of right and wrong are not always as clear as they seem. Not when it's personal. Not when it's your own father who was involved in such atrocities as this.

MY NAZI LEGACY (using the UK television release title) is a straightforward documentary in which human rights lawyer Philippe Sands confronts two elderly Germans (Niklas Frank and Horst von Wachter) with evidence of their fathers' involvement in the "Final Solution" during the Second World War. Together they travel to the city of Lviv, now in Poland, where thousands of Jews were sent to their deaths, and Sands interviews the two men as to what their feelings are about their fathers' behavior.

Frank is, to coin a phrase, brutally frank, about his father, a high-ranking officer in the Nazi hierarchy who willfully believed in the justice of the "Final Solution." One sequence taking place in an historic city building, which once served as the Nazi meeting- place, is especially gruesome, as Sands reads out the transcript of a speech given by Frank's father where he made a macabre joke about the number of people being sent to their deaths.

Von Wachter's reaction to his father's role in the war is a lot more complex. While acknowledging the Nazi Party's cruelty (which encourages him during his life to collaborate in any way he can with Jewish people), he does not believe for one moment that his father was culpable; rather he was a fundamentally good man forced to carry out his duties within a sadistic organization on pain of death. Despite all the evidence presented in front of him, Von Wachter remains resolute - so much so that the long-standing friendship between himself and Frank is put in grave danger.

Our reaction to this documentary is a complex one: while we understand and empathize with Sands's determination to make Von Wachter acknowledge his father's complicity (most of Sands's family had been wiped out as a result of the killings), we do get the feeling that he is putting undue pressure on an elderly man without acknowledging the complexity of Von Wachter's feelings. Having spent seven decades harboring a particular image of his father, it is obviously difficult for him to change it.

In the end we wonder what the purpose of the documentary actually is: were the filmmakers hoping for a Hollywood-style happy ending in which Von Wachter would break down and undergo a change of heart, thereby proving the justness of Sands's cause? Or did they deliberately manipulate the emotions of an old man so as to emphasize the fact that there were still neo-Nazis around, seven decades after the Second World War had ended? I am not condoning Von Wachter's responses in any way; but I do believe that the more pressure Sands put on him to change them, the less he was willing to do so.

MY NAZI LEGACY is a harrowing piece, but perhaps a little manipulative in its structure.

Sands seems hell-bent on destroying Horst. Sands obviously is on a mission to bring the guy down. I find it very ironic that Sands uses bullying tactics that the Nazi's used to push Horst into saying things or admitting things that he simply doesn't believe! Nik Frank is almost pathetic as Sand's lacky running around denouncing his father at every opportunity. There were many people involved in the running of the system then and I sympathize with Horst when he is trying to say that things were more complex than we can understand being removed by so many years. Everything is rarely as black and white as some people would like to believe. I was left with a very unsettling feeling after it was over. I don't like all the assumptions that are made and I especially don't like that Nik Frank says the day of his father's execution is a happy day for him. Regardless of what his father was accused of I find that very disturbing. Having said all that the film still gives insight into a very important period of history and some unique perspectives that are important to understanding the time period.

Good documentaries about the Holocaust, such as the harrowing Night and Fog, are impossible to forget. In a less visceral way, but still memorable, What Our Fathers Did: A Nazi Legacy explores in an interview style two sons of high-ranking Nazi officers. The low-key three-hander, moderated by Jewish lawyer Phillipe Sands, exemplifies the difference between acceptance of the horror and denial, both still active points of view.

Horst von Wachter believes his father was blameless because he was following orders with no alternative but death for anyone who disobeyed. Yet, he signed orders to build Dachau, the notorious death camp. On the other hand, Nicklas Frank completely accepts his father's responsibility and shoulders the shame courageously and with an equanimity that contrasts with Horst's defiance.

Because Niklas's father was convicted at Nuremburg of murder and hanged for "command responsibility" and Horst's escaped, it's probably why Niklas thinks Horst is a Nazi, and why Horst calls Niklas an "egoist maniac." The filmmaker is on Nicklas's side.

Director David Evans smoothly intercuts old footage, much about family outings, whose joy contrasts starkly with the murder going on in the background. His emphasis on the humanity of his interviewer and the contrast between the two subjects is unwavering. Yet the filmmaker's opinion, evidenced in the closing voice-over, is apparent, some might say to the detriment of the doc's objectivity.

As for me, I don't know how a decent human being could hide sympathy for the victims and survivors of the world's most heinous crime. Although What Our Fathers Did presents the two enduring attitudes toward Nazis and their shame, the outcome is as it will always be--outrage and a lingering sadness for the entire human race.