Three men meet each other. Two childhood friends: Niklas Frank and Horst von Wächter, both of them born right before the outbreak of World War II and both of them sons to high-ranking Nazis who “governed” what is now Poland and the Ukraine. Hans Frank was convicted and executed in Nürnberg while Otto Wächter was protected by the Vatican and went into hiding without ever being brought to justice. Niklas Frank squared off against his father in numerous books, while Horst von Wächter sees his own father as someone who had moral integrity and who did his best to oppose the system in the limited way that he could.

The third man is Philippe Sands, born in 1960, whose family was almost completely wiped out in Frank and Wächter’s sphere of control. The playwright and lawyer travels with the sons to the places where their fathers ruled and confronts them both with his family’s burned synagogue, the memorial of the mass shootings, and the modern Ukrainian independence movement that was in awe of the Wehrmacht and the SS.

The film resembles a cross-examination that doesn’t deal with historical crimes but rather with the question of how one can reconcile the image of a father who you want to love with an officer who is responsible for thousands of deaths and what happens when one’s own convictions are challenged. The camera remains close to Horst’s face as he is repeatedly confronted with his father’s guilt and always manages to find an excuse for him. In these times when historical facts are twisted into “fake news”, it is illuminating to be made aware of the personal repression of the post-war generation.

Christian Klose

Translation: Elinor Lewy