My Nazi Legacy (PG.)
Directed by David Evans.
Featuring Philippe Sands, Niklas Frank and Horst von Wächter. 96 mins
“My father was a complete Nazi,” says Horst von Wächter. My Nazi Legacy is a film about two boys who were born in 1939. Niklas Frank and Horst von Wächter were both sons of prominent Nazi officers: Hans Frank was the governor General of Poland during the Second World War, while Baron Otto Gustav von Wächter served under Frank as the head of administration in occupied Poland. Part of their duties was implementing the Final Solution, in Krakow and Galicia. A similar start but their paths were very different. Frank was a miserable unhappy child who grew up despising his Nazi father. Von Wächter though had a blissfully happy childhood, at least up until 1945 when his father had to start spending the majority of his time off hiding in the woods, and still clings to the belief that deep down his father was good and didn't actually hold with the Nazi ideology.
In this compelling documentary, go on a road trip around the scenes of their fathers' crimes in Ukraine and Poland along with a third figure, top human rights lawyer Philippe Sands, who specialises in genocide and crimes against humanity, as well as sitting on the Court of Arbitration for Sport. His existence represents a slur on their fathers' efficiency. His grandfather was a Jew living in Lviv during the war and was the only one of a family of eighty to survive the Nazis' Grossaktion.
This is a film which is packed with remarkable, jaw dropping moments. We see them flicking through their childhood holiday snaps – skiing, hiking in the mountains, shopping in the Warsaw ghetto. In the first fifteen minutes Niklas Frank tells us that his mother was so desperate to avoid being divorced by Hans, she petitioned Hitler and the Fuhrer forbade it until after the war.
Niklas reviles his father but Horst still clings to the idea that his father was an honorable man who just got caught up in something that was out of his control. So the structure of the film is the strident, morally certain Frank trying to hector the bumbling, befuddled Von Wächter into accepting his father's guilt. He doesn't actually say his father was just obeying orders – his case is that his signature wasn't actually orders that sent millions of people to their death and that signifies that he didn't agree with the policy.
Directed by David Evans.
Featuring Philippe Sands, Niklas Frank and Horst von Wächter. 96 mins
“My father was a complete Nazi,” says Horst von Wächter. My Nazi Legacy is a film about two boys who were born in 1939. Niklas Frank and Horst von Wächter were both sons of prominent Nazi officers: Hans Frank was the governor General of Poland during the Second World War, while Baron Otto Gustav von Wächter served under Frank as the head of administration in occupied Poland. Part of their duties was implementing the Final Solution, in Krakow and Galicia. A similar start but their paths were very different. Frank was a miserable unhappy child who grew up despising his Nazi father. Von Wächter though had a blissfully happy childhood, at least up until 1945 when his father had to start spending the majority of his time off hiding in the woods, and still clings to the belief that deep down his father was good and didn't actually hold with the Nazi ideology.
In this compelling documentary, go on a road trip around the scenes of their fathers' crimes in Ukraine and Poland along with a third figure, top human rights lawyer Philippe Sands, who specialises in genocide and crimes against humanity, as well as sitting on the Court of Arbitration for Sport. His existence represents a slur on their fathers' efficiency. His grandfather was a Jew living in Lviv during the war and was the only one of a family of eighty to survive the Nazis' Grossaktion.
This is a film which is packed with remarkable, jaw dropping moments. We see them flicking through their childhood holiday snaps – skiing, hiking in the mountains, shopping in the Warsaw ghetto. In the first fifteen minutes Niklas Frank tells us that his mother was so desperate to avoid being divorced by Hans, she petitioned Hitler and the Fuhrer forbade it until after the war.
Niklas reviles his father but Horst still clings to the idea that his father was an honorable man who just got caught up in something that was out of his control. So the structure of the film is the strident, morally certain Frank trying to hector the bumbling, befuddled Von Wächter into accepting his father's guilt. He doesn't actually say his father was just obeying orders – his case is that his signature wasn't actually orders that sent millions of people to their death and that signifies that he didn't agree with the policy.
