Hitler's Children

This film is fascinating, profound and moving. It raises important moral issues and shakes many conventional beliefs.

How should we view crimes committed by our parents and ancestors? At what point do our ancestors' acts forfeit our natural (and culturally-encouraged) love for them? Should we even face the facts of their choices and lives? The documentary addresses these issues in the starkest case: by speaking with the relatives of men who committed the worst of crimes. These children and grandchildren bear the family-name of their infamous ancestors while not accepting and, in some cases sharply repudiating, the legacies of those ancestors.

Modern society washes away what happened last week, let alone by the last generation. So the current inclination is to simply forget about the past. Yet when the past was atrocious, forgetting it is wrong. At the least, we owe victims of atrocities remembrance of their history and their suffering.

This movie should be seen by more people. To understand our present, we need to grapple with our past, including the ugly parts.

Do the following names have a familiar sounding ring to them? Heinrich Himmler? Herman Goring? Rudolf Hoess? Hans Frank? Amon Goeth?

Well, if you are at all up on your WW2 history, and, especially, if you're hip to who's who in the notorious Nazi camp, then these particular names should, of course, ring a very clear bell that comes straight from a Gestapo, concentration camp from hell.

Anyways - For anyone who might be a little vague about these 5 names and the significance that they had in the scheme of things during WW2, then here's a brief run-down of their general relevance.

Heinrich Himmler was second in command of the Nazi Party. His position was directly under Adolf Hitler.

Rudolf Hoess was the creator and commander of the infamous Auschwitz concentration camp.

Hans Frank was the Polish Governor-General who, during WW2, was directly responsible for all of the ghettos and concentration camps that existed in Poland.

Hermann Goring was a high-ranking Nazi official responsible for countless WW2 atrocities.

This well-produced, 60-minute documentary consists of interviews with 5 descendants of these once powerful figures who had reigned supreme in the Nazi regime. These interviewees are people who had inherited a legacy that had permanently associated them with one of the greatest crimes in all of history.

And their names are as follows - Bettina Goring, great-niece of Herman Goring; Rainer Hoess, grandson of Rudolf Hoess; Katrin Himmler, great-niece of Heinrich Himmler; Niklas Frank, son of Hans Frank; and Monika Goeth, daughter of Amon Goeth.

For more than 60 years these people have, in a sense, lived in the shadows, trying to rebuild their lives without being constantly reminded of what their fathers or fore-fathers once did.

In Hitler's Children each of these people discusses the delicate balance that they reached between the natural admiration that a child has for his father or relative and the innate revulsion that they clearly hold towards the crimes which their ancestors committed.

The viewer is told of the challenges that these people had to face in protecting their families as they passed down their family name to future generations.

All-in-all - Hitler's Children was an interesting documentary that provided the viewer with even more insight into the devastating effects of a worldwide event, like WW2, which, even today, still continues to have an impact on us.

Chanoch Ze'evi Has accomplished the near impossible: he has gathered the descendants of Hitler's regime. Placed them in front of his camera, let them talk, provided subtitles, and let the rest of the film work it's own insidious way into the psyches f all who watch it. Perhaps for the first time we are seeing a full picture of what life in and around Adolf Hitler was like as he terrified the universe with his megalomaniac plan for purification of the Aryan race – a plan that resulted in the deaths and tortures and cremations of millions of Jews, gypsies, criminals, homosexuals, and those who tried in vain to stop the atrocities.

The cast then are the descendants of Hitler's murderous group – now adults, forever tainted by the sins of their forbears, who explaining to us in penetrating eye contacts what it was like to be around the monster's court. Bettina Goering, Katrin Himmler, Eldad Beck, Rainer Hoess, Niklas Frank, and Monika Goeth are the cast members in this unforgettable film.

These six ordinary appearing people were not associated with Nazi leanings and they talk individually about what it is like to carry a name associated with the Nazi Party, being a blood relative to someone associated with hate and murder, being German at a time when that in and of itself was seen as being associated with Nazism, dealing with their family regardless of their allegiance to the Nazi Party, and if they feel any guilt associated with the actions of their infamous ancestor. Bettina Goering is the great-niece of Nazi official Hermann Göring shares her voluntary sterilization she underwent to put an end to her bloodline of horror (she now lives simply in New Mexico). Katrin Himmler is the great-niece of Heinrich Himmler, second in command of the Nazi Party under Adolf Hitler and has written copiously about the evils of the Nazi regime. Rainer Hoess is the grandson of Rudolf Hoess, creator and commandant of the Auschwitz Concentration Camp. Niklas Frank is the son of Hans Frank, Polish Governor- General during WWII, he who was responsible for the ghettos and concentration camps in Nazi occupied Poland. Monika Goeth is the daughter of Amon Goeth, commandant of the Plaszów Concentration Camp. In addition to these musings, Hoess and journalist Eldad Beck - a third generation Holocaust survivor - travel back to Auschwitz to revisit their shared ancestral past. And Frank tells in his writings and in public speaking engagements, most to school aged children, of his past of being the direct beneficiary to many of the Nazi Party's favors which in turn is partly the reason he denounces his parents.

Many viewers will find hearing these tales (basically related in German) unsettling and that is the film's purpose. Never ever forget that period in history and yet realize the agony of the descendants of those beasts that hopefully will never be duplicated.

Grady Harp

What I most appreciated about this film is that you do not have to be of German or Jewish ancestry to understand what is being discussed, you only need to be human. Personally, I am of neither ancestry but I was moved to tears as these candid and innocent descendants of those who both inflicted and suffered through one of the worst tragedies in history. As for the German descendants, they are very much trying to keep the sins of their ancestor from defining them while admitting that they were personally affected by their atrocious actions.

Some of their resemblances to their forefathers are uncanny to the point that some can easily be recognized as being the offspring of those who commanded the Third Reich, something that can be shameful or even dangerous.

Hitler's Children (2011) is a documentary directed by Chanoch Zeevi. The movie features in-depth interviews with the children or grandchildren of notorious Nazis. Obviously, there are millions of people in Germany--and elsewhere--whose parents or grandparents were members of the Nazi party. However, the people in the film are descended from the most notorious, vicious members of Hitler's inner circle: Goering, Hess, Himmler.

All of the descendants of these Nazis appear to be gentle, humane people. The movie outlines the manner in which they have dealt with their unsolvable dilemma-- how can you love or respect a parent or grandparent who committed such monstrous acts?

It's interesting that none of the people in the film made any attempt to excuse or explain the behavior of their relatives. This attitude has severed some family ties. Their parents or siblings sometimes cling to the "it's all lies" excuse. The people in the movie meet concentration camp survivors or the children of survivors. How can they cope?

The Holocaust will remain a scar on human history as long as human history exists. Its psychological effects will always be with us, although perhaps they will diminish with time. For the people in the movie, the effects of the Holocaust are with them forever. It's an impossible situation. They have to deal with it in the best way they can.

This film was shown at Rochester's Dryden Theatre as part of the wonderful Rochester Jewish Film Festival. It's definitely worth finding and seeing, and it will work well on DVD. It makes a good companion film to another JFF movie, "The Flat." In "The Flat," a daughter of a high-ranking Nazi maintains the fiction that her father was "just a journalist." He wasn't.