Two German men confront the sins of their fathers in this exceptional documentary.
One thing that most sane people do if the subject comes up in serious conversation is distance themselves from the Nazis. That’s the default position. Nazis equals wrong. My Nazi Legacy studies a fascinating exception to this rule and in doing so explores the limits of rational debate, the binds of family loyalty and the network of subjective interpretations that create an individual’s viewpoint.
Horst von Wächter and Niklas Frank are the sons of dead, high-ranking Nazi officials whose signatures are present on paperwork sentencing Jewish prisoners to death. Horst [son of Otto] has made a game out of finding logical loopholes that enable him to sympathise with and so excuse his father’s deeds. Niklas Frank [son of Hanz] renounces his father at all opportunities (“My father deserved to die”). Human rights lawyer, Philippe Sands, who lost relatives in the Holocaust, narrates the documentary while questioning the two men as he escorts them on a tour around increasingly significant historical sites.
Sands is an intellectually adroit compere, Frank provides reassuring moral ubiquity, but it is stubborn, controversial, infuriating von Wächter who gives the film its bite. This old man in a baseball cap repeatedly explains that his father was a good man in a bad situation. It would be easier to dismiss his denial if it was terse, but he is always measured and articulate. Were the subject different, it would be tempting to applaud his analytical ingenuity and the dogged nature of his defence.
Choosing not to is an ideological position that makes von Wächter a source of despair. Otto evaded condemnation at Nuremberg but, as Sands points out, based on the evidence the law would have seen him hanged. Although it can feel like one, this documentary isn’t a trial. Under democracy, there is clearly no subject that creates a consensus. My Nazi Legacy is a confrontational and engrossing testimony to the matter of opinion.
Published 18 Nov 2015
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