Commandant's Shadow, The (2024)

[bunniefuu]

It feels strange being here with my father

in the Judean Desert,

which his own father crossed in 1917,

during the First World w*r,

when he was the youngest

non-commissioned officer

in the German army.

30 years later, when he was

nearing his death, he wrote,

"The life and death of the Jews

is truly a riddle

I have not been able to solve."

By then, he had k*lled more people

than any other man in all of history.

Okay.

I'm not a writer.

Writing has never been my strength.

I've recorded everything as I remember it.

My life has been colorful and varied.

My fate has led me through

all the highs and lows of life.

I have had two guiding stars

since I returned as a man

from the w*r I entered as a schoolboy,

my fatherland and my family.

I became the Commandant

of a new camp, Auschwitz.

I, myself, hadn't expected to be promoted

to Commandant so soon,

and it wasn't an easy task.

Out of nothing, and without any resources,

I was to build something enormous

as quickly as possible.

Russian prisoners of w*r

were meant to build the camp.

They arrived in a totally decrepit state.

We were constantly giving

them additional rations,

but without success.

They were dying like flies.

Cases of cannibalism were not uncommon.

Of more than 10,000

Russian prisoners of w*r

who were supposed to make up

the main workforce,

by the summer of 1942,

only a few hundred were still alive.

Himmler visited Auschwitz

and had a thorough look at everything.

We drove through the entire

Zone of Interest.

I was constantly drawing

his attention to the shortages.

He, too, saw them.

He shouted at me when

I could not stop talking about

the atrocious conditions.

"I don't want to hear anything

else about difficulties.

"For an SS leader,

there are no difficulties.

His task is to resolve them."

The enormity, I mean,

of what he do-- what he did,

what he conceived.

For years, planning,

making this concentration camp

the most efficient

extermination machine ever--

that ever existed, right?

I mean, that's his plan.

Auschwitz was his

kinda his brainchild.

Auschwitz became a Jew camp,

a gathering camp for Jews

to an extent not known before.

For the Jews of Auschwitz,

there was no more hope.

They knew that, without exception,

they were condemned to death.

Zyklon B was in constant use

for pest control in Auschwitz.

We decided to use this gas

for the mass extermination.

"I, myself, watched a k*lling,

protected by a gas mask."

"The door was closed,

"and the gas was poured

in through the openings.

"Some shouted, 'Gas,'

and a mighty yelling..."

...and pushing towards both doors ensued.

But they withstood the pressure.

They were only opened after a few hours

when the chamber was aired.

How long this k*lling took,

I'm not sure of,

but you could still hear a

humming noise for a long time.

That is when I saw gas corpses

for the first time in a heap.

I did not give any thought

to the k*lling itself.

It had been ordered,

and I had to execute it.

When I first read

my grandfather's memoirs,

what struck me was, he was

like a clinical observer,

just looking at himself,

looking at what he was doing.

It was a very clinical, like a scientist

that looks at a lifeless experiment,

and that had showed me some

kind of a coldness of his soul.

There wasn't much conversation

about Auschwitz in my family.

I think my dad was always

pretty quiet about it.

That's just silent generation, right?

They don't really talk

about stuff that much,

and he's not a big talker today either.

So, yeah, it's hard.

I mean, it freaks me a

little bit when you think about,

like, there's this, you know,

this joyful family life

going on with, you know, actually

quite beautiful presence and

joy, fun, having toys, and enjoying life.

And then, just a couple of hundred yards

behind the walls, you know,

and barbed wired walls,

there would be people being m*rder*d.

That is just mind-blowing

when you think about it.

For me, it's pretty difficult to kind of

imagine that they did not actually smell,

or hear, or see anything.

I think my dad probably, subconsciously,

suppresses some of

the experiences he's had.

Put it in some very deep layers

of his conscience

where he just really doesn't remember,

like protecting himself, his mind.

In Auschwitz, you were k*lled

in the most sophisticated manner.

People got gassed in a gas chamber.

The place is full of black smoke,

horrible smell.

Hell.

Hell on Earth is Auschwitz.

When I arrived in Auschwitz,

it transpired that there was a band there

that needed a cellist.

They didn't have a cellist.

So, my arrival seems to have been a,

you know, a great event.

So I became the only cellist

in the camp orchestra,

which was a very,

very lucky position to have.

Absolutely saved my life.

My mother survived

the m*rder of her parents,

witnessed the m*rder

of millions of others,

being starved,

every imaginable horror.

We had the job of playing marches

for the thousands of people

who were working in the factories

that surrounded Auschwitz.

Because the Germans like

everything nice and neat,

so we had to play marches

so that the working people could,

you know, walk out to the music.

But, this was also conceived as

a sort of entertainment for the guards.

Very boring places, you know, for us

all just to be guards in Auschwitz.

Those were times long before television

or any entertainment.

I found out after the w*r

that there were orchestras in every camp.

And the camp commander

of Birkenau where I was

suddenly is all,

"They all got music.

I want music as well."

We played. Hopefully,

next day, we are still alive.

That's how it was. Yeah.

I was just looking, Mom,

at your cello case.

It's such

- a monument, isn't it?

- Yeah.

A symbol to your life as a cellist.

I know.

The way in which my mother

found some kind of way

to be in the world after the Holocaust

was by not speaking.

She had settled into a kind of silence.

I only had one thought in mind

when I came here to catch up with lost--

my lost life, my lost youth.

When I arrived in England,

nobody asked any questions

about Auschwitz.

So, we decided,

"What's the point here?"

So, we didn't talk about it.

It took nearly-- I think it was 50 years,

and then my children said to me,

"Mom, you never actually

told us anything."

As a child, I was very aware

that there were no-go areas.

Anything German was bad.

So, you kind of settle into

a limbo of not knowing,

not knowing facts,

but a sense of knowing that

there is something really awful

in the hinterland.

I know now, as a psychotherapist,

that those born to Holocaust survivors,

as I am, can inherit a traumatization

that it sort of sits inside the psyche

and has no shape,

has no form, has no words

because words-- it hasn't

been given a context.

And I felt this from being a tiny child.

But nobody in those days

understood the impact of the Holocaust

on the second generation.

And this was my room.

It was the first room of my own,

but it wasn't a happy place.

When I look at the pictures of myself,

probably aged under 2,

I'm overwhelmed with sadness.

See, these are snaps

of a child in deep despair.

A child, which who is not sweetly plump,

but a misshapen child.

My struggle through life

is somehow symbolized

in these early pictures.

My mother wasn't there.

They are pictures of an inability

to take care of me

in the way that I needed.

And that, certainly for me,

was a consequence

of my mother's experiences

in the Holocaust.

I'm the wrong mother for my daughter.

I'm very basic.

Traumatized? Forget it. Get on with life.

If you have lived through

the unbelievable horror

that I've lived through,

it's quite difficult to actually

sympathize or empathize.

Do you know that

I'm somebody who needs nothing?

I could never understand

why you needed everything.

Completely anathema to me.

And it's still anathema to me.

What I needed just wasn't available.

I think what you needed

is to have your mother at home.

- Right.

- That's what I thought. But for me--

- Yeah.

- Your mother wasn't at home because we had

- to put bread on the table, you know?

- Yeah.

- But how can a child understand that?

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- Of course.

I think you think

that you and I are very different.

Do you think that there

are any similarities?

I would have to look a long way.

I would have to look a long way.

- Really?

- Yeah.

It's really interesting, isn't it?

That my whole life,

which chunks of it have been

about a feeling of not belonging,

in any sense, in British society or

just not belonging,

and everything always

being a huge struggle--

But, I was lucky because I had a very

fulfilled life in England, which...

which you didn't manage.

For you,

- this has been a place of refuge.

- Yeah.

Well, one must realize also, looking back,

what was the situation like in Germany.

A lot of unemployment,

and then this lovely Mr. Hitler appears.

Suddenly, we are somebody again.

So, yeah.

National Socialism became a big success.

I considered the National

Socialist worldview to be

the only appropriate one

for the German people.

Antisemitism is nothing new.

It has always existed all over the world.

It becomes more apparent

when the Jews push themselves forward

too much in their quest for power.

I'd like to stress that, personally,

I've never hated Jews,

but I considered them

the enemy of our people.

Once, two little children

were so absorbed into their game

that they absolutely did not

want to allow their mother

to pull them away from it.

Even the Jews of the Sonderkommando

did not want to take the children.

I will never forget

the mother's expression

in her eyes, begging for mercy,

as she surely knew what was happening.

Those in the gas chamber

were already getting restless.

I had to act.

Everyone was looking at me.

I gave the non-commissioned officer a nod,

and he took the children,

who were putting up

a fierce struggle in his arms,

and put them into the gas

chamber with the mother,

whose screams were heartbreaking.

I also saw a woman

who tried to push her children

out of the gas chamber

as the door was being closed.

Weeping, she cried out,

"At least let my precious children live."

Seeing women walk into

the gas chambers with children,

I often thought of my own family.

I come from a completely assimilated

German-Jewish family.

My father was a soldier

in the First World w*r

with the Iron Cross and all the--

Yeah, we were Germans.

And Jewish, but we did not

practice the Jewish faith.

My father, unfortunately,

was a complete optimist.

He said, "The Germans

can't be that stupid."

And then, he realized

the Germans are that stupid.

In the 1930s, all Jews in Germany

were stripped of their nationality.

My mother, and father, for that matter,

were never interested in

reclaiming German citizenship

although they would've been entitled to.

Germany was finished for me.

I don't belong there.

I couldn't wait to become

naturalized British.

Life without a passport

is very complicated.

But I decided that it was time

to get my citizenship.

When my German passport

was delivered to my house,

I remember just feeling

a huge sense of elation.

I felt triumphant.

Do you want this?

Will your home move

be within the next 28 days?

Yes.

Will your home move be

within the next 28 days?

Yes!

So now, I'm embarking on a new life.

I've decided to try and live in Germany,

a country that I've never lived in

and don't even speak the language.

But my bones belong there.

I should never have been born here.

I should have been born in Germany.

Hi, Mom.

It's gonna take me a bit of time to load.

Can you just move forward a bit?

No, stop!

Would you like these lights?

- Well, just bring it or whatever.

- Okay.

I'm doing my best, Mom.

Immigrating to Germany was met

with some incredulous responses

'cause, after all, this was the country

that my grandparents had been m*rder*d in,

as so many Jews were,

and it was the country

that my parents had fled from.

Indeed, my mother didn't

set foot back in Germany

for many, many years.

- Mom.

- Well, well, well.

So this is where you're living?

This is it.

Well, well, well. Oh, my goodness.

Oh, this looks beautiful.

Do you wanna sit down

- and have a cigarette?

- Yeah.

Oh, yes, a whole gallery there.

Yeah.

Very, very impressive.

Now, you gotta take

all these schnukies away,

so they can see the books.

Is it an exhibition place or a bookshelf?

No, I like my schnukies.

I guess, in some way,

making this home here

has something to do with an idea of trying

to reclaim stolen lives,

and also my unlived life.

Yeah. It also shows

what could have been

and was destroyed for no reason

other than stupidity.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah.

But, alas, the stupidity

seems to be perpetuating.

You know, obviously,

people need scapegoats,

and seeing the world is

in such a mess at the moment,

it is typical, it was the fault

of the Jews again.

I kept experiencing being here,

this terrible cultural dissonance,

and I was confronted with

unconscious antisemitism.

- You sure you don't imagine that?

- No, I don't imagine it.

And it's hard sometimes not just want

to turn round and run away.

- But where to?

- Exactly.

- That's the Jewish fate.

- That's the Jewish fate.

- You don't belong anywhere.

- Yeah.

And where you do, where you should belong,

you got the biggest problem.

The process of selection on the ramp

was full of incidents.

When families were ripped apart,

the men separated from

the women and children,

great agitation and turmoil

rippled through the transport.

And the separation of those fit

for work added to this

because the families wanted

to stay together by all means.

The Jews have a strongly

developed sense of family.

They cling to each other like limpets.

This gave every one commanded

to do this monstrous work

a lot to think about.

It left lasting impressions.

Most of those involved often came up to me

during my inspection round.

I heard the same question again and again.

Is it necessary that hundreds of thousands

of women and children

have to be exterminated?

And I would ask myself the same question

countless times deep inside,

had to have fob them off

with the Fuhrer Order,

console them with that.

I had to tell them that

the extermination of the Jews

was necessary to free Germany

and our descendants

of our adversaries once and for all.

My grandfather, obviously

he somehow swallowed,

you know, n*zi ideology,

I mean, socio-Darwinism in a sense,

he swallowed that hook, line, and sinker.

It made sense to him

at the time, the master race.

Auschwitz was given to him

and the way he was wired,

as a human being in his character,

was to do an excellent job.

Father, we just thank You

so much, Lord, for Your word.

Thank You for Your love for us, Lord.

Your patience with us, Lord.

You care for us like

we're Your children, God,

and just thank You

for blessing us this way.

I pray all this in Jesus' name. Amen.

Alright, tuck in, guys. Let's get it.

- I would say ladies' first.

- Dig in. Dig in.

I'm a pastor for

Bible Church for Stuttgart

and we serve an international community,

including personnel

from American military bases

and other expats.

We're our having monthly

men's prayer breakfast.

Just the men of the church

having a wholesome,

Godly good time together, that's all.

You guys, you have

enough space there, everybody?

On this study, I was just thinking about,

you know, men here today, men,

Christian men, any man.

Men in general in the,

in the 21st century, right?

What is our mission?

The Bible calls on us men to be leaders.

With leadership

comes great responsibility,

not just in what we teach at home,

but also how we act and walk with God

in each and every day, so...

When I became a Christian

and I read the Old Testament,

it's talking about

the sins of the fathers,

like how we revisit those, you know,

to the third or fourth generation,

and I thought, "Whoa."

My grandfather, he was a go-getter,

an ambitious man, a meticulous man,

but to the point where he, you know,

he turned into this monster,

this ruthless k*ller and, yeah,

he was not watchful.

And I don't think we can

become mass murderers,

but I think every human being, all of us,

have the propensity to go into a direction

that is totally wrong.

Thank you so much. So let's pray.

Thinking about it,

my grandfather's legacy,

there is blood on

the hands of the Hss family.

People are still suffering now.

I mean, even in my family,

you know, almost 80 years later.

Oh, and you have--

Oh, my God. Oh, my God.

Look at The Frog King.

Oh, God...

Oh, my God. Come on in.

I have to go on-- I'm a little

uneasy without the stick, you know?

Yeah.

Oh, boy.

Oh, my God.

I'm happy now you're here.

My family had a lovely time in Auschwitz.

My wife had her flower paradise.

The children could lead

a carefree and pleasant life.

In summer, they splashed

in the paddling pool in the garden

but their greatest joy was

when Daddy bathed with them.

It often happened at home that

my thoughts suddenly turned

to some of the extermination processes.

Often when I saw

our children happily playing,

my wife being overjoyed with

the youngest one, I thought,

"How much longer will our happiness last?"

We had a beautiful mother and father.

- Yeah.

- Beautiful.

Many people don't have that good

- of a life.

- Yeah.

When he talks in his book,

he was outside gas chambers

when women and children were herded in,

how does that feel

when you think about it?

I was very sad, and I have

nightmares sometimes

because he was the only one who said

what was done there.

He was a good person.

You mean he was honest

about his role in mass extermination?

Yes, but he got into it,

and he couldn't get out of it.

And, what about your mother Hedwig?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Don't want to talk about it anymore.

Do you find it, you know,

- do you find that--

- Depressing.

- It's depressing?

- Yes, yes.

Sometimes, I even thought,

"Why do I have to...

suffer, like, physically, so bad?"

And I even sort of said,

"Is this God will be angry with me

because my dad did things?"

But, I said, "I will never

be angry with my dad."

He must've been a very strong person

to live like this

and do what he had to do.

So...

What he had to do was to basically k*ll

more than a million people--

I don't think that way.

And look at all the people

that say they died in the camp,

but all the survivors,

why didn't they die?

They're still living,

and they get money now

from Germany or from the Jewish people.

And, you know...

So, just whatever you want

to believe, you do.

Do you think you're in the denial?

No. Why?

I mean, it was the way it was.

It was the Third Reich.

It's a long time ago.

All that's history, I think.

What can I do? What can I say?

Happy birthday to you

Happy birthday to you

Happy birthday dear, Mom

Happy birthday to you

Nothing wrong with

your breath or oxygen supply.

Well done.

I'm nearly 100 years old.

I don't know why

I should get so old, really.

There must be a reason somehow. I mean,

some of us, thank God,

who lived in those days are still alive.

But, when we've gone, finished.

Mom always says she hates birthdays,

she hates fuss, leave her alone,

so on and so forth.

But, today, she celebrated her--

she's celebrating her 98th birthday

and is surrounded by very dear people.

It's quite incredible, Anita,

to think that your parents

were such close friends

of my grandparents.

Yeah, we were tremendous friends.

My story's the typical Jewish story

because Judy's grandfather and my father,

we lived very happily in Germany.

And when the trouble started,

Judy's family had

the intelligence to leave.

And they encouraged my father

to leave as well.

My father went to Palestine,

and he came back and said,

"I don't want to live in the desert."

But Judy's family survived,

and my father did not.

And this is the place

where my family were from.

Now it's called Wroclaw, and it's Poland.

Although it's not Breslau anymore,

it will always be to me.

I want to, I have to, I must

connect the parts of our family history

into one narrative that lives on.

And so, I have to be here

because it's all part of one story.

The recollection of my youth

is a very happy one.

I had two sisters, Marianne and Renate.

My father was a lawyer,

and my mother was a very,

very accomplished violinist.

I mean, culture was written in

very big letters in our house.

We have a large collection

of Wroclaw photographs,

and the home that my mother lived in,

which was a residential,

beautiful outbound apartment house

with a wonderful terrace.

I knew that didn't stand anymore,

but I hadn't imagined what's in its place.

We were, yeah,

just a normal family really.

We became abnormal

with the advent of Hitler.

The front just closed, and

it was all too late for

a whole family to get away.

And then, the w*r broke out,

and then that was obviously

the end of everything.

And in 1942,

the deportation started.

And my parents were deported to the east.

My grandparents were given

24 hours' warning by the Gestapo

but they had to report the following day

to where the rounding up

of the Jews was happening.

So my mother spent that

last night packing, packing

and my grandmother

was in another room, crying.

And I know that my grandfather's hair

turned gray that night.

My mother wanted to go with her parents,

but my grandfather said,

"No. Where we're going,

you will get there soon enough."

My grandparents were deported

to a place called Izbica.

We need to leave something symbolic

to let you know that your

daughter, my mom's cello,

literally saved her life.

Miraculously,

my grandfather was able to smuggle out

two notes to my mother and her sister.

The last one being the psalm,

"I lift up mine eyes

from whence cometh my help.

A help coming from the Lord."

"Send food. Mutti can't write.

She isn't well."

Which I always understood

that she was dead already.

I've been driven by the need

to create some sort of

in perpetuity for my grandparents.

This happened, these people existed,

and these people happen

to be my grandparents,

and the millions of others

who have no graves.

I think I want to call my mom.

Hello, Mom.

Hi. Where are you?

Can you see?

Can you see?

What is it?

- Your parents.

- What?

Pictures of your parents

and the candles I've lit.

Yeah, I can't really

recognize it. Very nice.

But, I'd like to--

Oh, yeah, yeah. I can see now.

I was smoking in front

of my grandparents,

and I felt guilty.

So, where are you exactly now?

Standing in the middle of Izbica.

What village, is it?

No. I'm in like a big wood.

- What is that?

- Another memorial.

What does it say?

I can't read Hebrew or Polish,

but I did what I wanted to do.

- Good choice.

- Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

Ja.

Nein.

I have memories of my grandma, Hedwig.

She would sometimes visit

when we were small.

She was like the lady of the manor,

where my mom always felt, like,

intimidated by her.

She'd wear this white apron,

her hair in a bun.

And she was kind of rigid,

too, in her views.

Now, I never talked to her

about the Holocaust

as a child, you know?

What my mom told me that there was,

you know, a sort of reluctance

to actually own up,

to call it for what it was,

you know, a mass m*rder.

Holocaust. Shoah. Millions of people

k*lled by, you know, by her husband.

My grandmother, Hedwig Hss,

she got a one-way ticket

to visit Aunt Pppi,

but the rumor has it that

she took this cyanide pill

that she had actually showed

to members of the family

years earlier, that she still

was in possession of this,

you know, suicide device

from the Second World w*r

that they were all handed

or all issued to commit suicide

if they were captured

by the enemy or something.

What do you think of the rumors

that she committed suicide

- by biting into a cyanide pill?

- Who?

- Your mother.

- No way!

No way.

Who said that?

It's not true.

I just would love to die the way she died,

just go to sleep and wake--

not wake up.

She had these ideas that

it just all went wrong,

that it could've been so good,

you know, if given the chance.

As she said, "We rose with that star,

and we fell with that star."

The Fuhrer was dead.

My wife and I had the same

thought at the same time.

Now, we, too, must go.

Our world had gone down with the Fuhrer.

Did it make any sense

for us to go on living?

We would be hunted.

They would search for us everywhere.

We wanted to take poison.

We did not do it

for the sake of our children.

Later on, I regretted it again and again.

We were bound and chained to that world.

We should have gone down with it.

I knew that the English Field

Security Police were looking for me,

and also that my family

was strictly monitored,

and that there were constant

searches of their quarters.

On the 11th of March, I was arrested.

My poison ampule had

broken two days before.

I was treated very badly

by the field security police.

I was paraded around

like a particularly interesting animal.

The interrogations were not very pleasant.

I cannot resent the interrogators.

They were all Jews.

I'm gonna see Mom now,

and I'm gonna show her

some absolutely remarkable papers

that I just received 48 hours ago,

and I think she'll be

kind of pretty stunned by.

"I, Rudolf Franz Ferdinand Hss,

"alias Franz Lang,

having been duly warned,

hereby declare that the

following statements are true."

They are, apparently,

the first interrogation documents

when Rudolf Hss was arrested

when he was found on the run.

God. Who sent that to you?

Somebody who wrote to me saying,

"My uncle, who died recently,

they were found in his attic,

"and I don't know what to do with them.

Can I send them to you?"

What a find. What a find.

He says here,

"I was ordered to report to Berlin

"in June 1941 to Himmler,

"where he told me

approximately the following.

"He wanted me to produce,

within four weeks,

"construction plans in accordance

with these directions.

"He added that the task was so difficult

that he could only trust me with it.

"Prisoners had to be gassed,

then the doors were...

"screwed tight, and two

canisters of Cyclone B

"were thrown in through small holes.

"People would die within three

and ten minutes.

"After half an hour, the doors were opened

and the bodies extracted

"by a special squad of prisoners

who were permanently

employed for this job."

What a find.

Now, you go and deny that.

On the 25th of May,

our wedding anniversary of all days,

I was driven to the airport

and handed over to Polish officers there.

An American plane took us to Warsaw.

You darling little fellow,

may you keep your affectionate nature.

Life, my dear boy, will wrench you

too soon from the world of childhood.

Now, you poor boy only have

your dear good mommy left.

You know, throughout my years of ministry,

I've spoken to a number of people.

People whose lives were marred

by trials and tribulations,

hardship,

calamity.

And some of them were wondering

whether their plight,

their suffering, was due

to a generational curse,

brought upon them by an ancestor.

This hits particularly

close to home in my own life.

I mean, being the grandson,

right, of Rudolf Hss.

The infamous, ruthless SS Commandant

of the Auschwitz concentration camp.

Just imagine having

such a person as your grandfather.

I mean, you hear people say,

"Like father, like son."

And so, when I considered

my own ways, and I thought,

you know, "Am I like my grandfather?

Am I like him to some extent?"

When I first read

Exodus chapter 20, verse 5,

I was horrified by the thought

at having been born

into the second generation

after Rudolf Hss,

that God's wrath was upon me.

Because of the wicked, cold-blooded evil

that my grandfather

had inflicted upon the Jews.

God's people.

The people of Israel.

And, of course, many others.

Let me just read it again

what God says here in verse 5.

"I will visit the iniquity

the sins of the fathers

"upon the children

and the children's children,

to the third and fourth generation."

But God says that any generational curse

and the guilt and suffering

and the pain that comes with it

can be canceled by earnest repentance.

In other words,

what breaks the curse of sin

is the blood of God's spotless lamb,

and he is Jesus Christ.

Believe and you shall be saved.

When I am in awesome wonder

Consider all the worlds

Thy hands have made

I see the stars

I hear the rolling thunder

Thy power throughout

The universe displayed

Then sings my soul

My savior God, to thee

How great Thou art

How great Thou art

Then sings my soul

My savior God to Thee

The Holocaust throws a long shadow.

The trauma is not only

on the survivor side.

How many German families are traumatized,

who know or don't know

what their grandfathers have done?

With a very small "a,"

I think of myself as an activist.

And one of the key parts is to work with

and understand the experience

of the children of perpetrators.

This trip to London is very much

about seeing my mother,

and I come this time

with a very big request

which provokes some anxiety for me.

Hi, Mom!

I'm here.

I made it.

Good. Had a good trip?

Yeah, not too bad

compared to some times.

How are you?

- I'm okay.

- What's news?

News is that I can no longer drive,

and I feel a bit like a trapped animal,

but I'll get used to it.

Anyway, that's how it is. Can't be helped.

So, Mom.

I'm going to be meeting

the son of the Commandant

and grandson of

the Commandant in Auschwitz.

Yes?

Partly motivated--

Well, I actually would say

largely motivated by

what I've learned from you

and the things that you've said.

And what do you think about that?

Well, I think it's fantastic.

Since the hatred goes on

and antisemitism

is absolutely flourishing,

it's very important

to talk about these things.

I wanted to ask you whether

you would consider

coming to Auschwitz with me.

Not really, no. You know,

my Auschwitz is very

different from your Auschwitz.

You haven't actually been in it,

I mean, that's what I mean.

You haven't actually been

in this situation

where you didn't know whether

you're going to live another hour or not.

You don't know what my Auschwitz is.

And I want it left alone.

I want it left alone.

I have nothing against meeting

the son of Hss,

but I'm not going to Auschwitz.

He should come to my house.

You know, I'm pretty disabled.

If anybody wants anything,

has to come here.

- That's quite a thought.

- What?

Kaffee und kuchen in your house.

Yes, why not? If he brings the kuchen.

So this is Oswiecim,

infamously known

and will always be remembered

as "Auschwitz."

It's a very strange thing

that there is a town

so close to the actual concentration camp.

When this possibility came up

that I could accompany

the son of the Commandant of Auschwitz,

who had never been to the camp...

and his son, my contemporary,

that I could witness them witnessing

what they had never seen before

was somehow, in some perverse way, a gift.

The Hsses and I met for

the first time in the cafe

of the last remaining

synagogue of Oswiecim,

which used to have

a thriving Jewish community.

It was as if time stood still.

I felt we were all breathless.

- Ja.

- Hello.

It's difficult to find words.

- Yeah. I know.

- Yeah.

It's been a heavy on-- in my heart,

- you know, just--

- Yes.

Yeah. I understand that.

By the will of the

Reichsfuhrer-SS Himmler,

Auschwitz became the greatest

human extermination facility

of all time.

When he personally gave me

the order to prepare a place

for mass extermination in Auschwitz

and to personally carry out

this extermination,

I did not have the slightest idea

of the scale and consequences.

This order was unusual.

Indeed, monstrous.

But the justification made the process

of extermination seem right to me.

So, this is the crematoria.

- The gas chamber.

- Right.

Which,

believe it or not, was maybe

100 steps from where my mother

and the women's orchestra played.

Transport after transport

would walk this way

and hear music, and people

who were coming to their deaths,

would come to this building,

be asked to undress,

thinking that they were

going to have a shower,

and told to put their shoes

and their clothes neatly,

so that they could find them again easily.

And within the next 30 minutes,

they were gassed.

It's just shocking how there

was this evil deception

that was kept up

for these people to believe

that there was something.

There was a silver lining,

some offer them safety, perhaps.

Even having, when you said sh--

you know, having to fold their clothes,

that they were gonna have a shower,

and perhaps to keep

people from panicking

because if all these thousands

of people had panicked...

Yeah.

...it would've been very difficult

to contain that.

I think this is so terrible.

Schrecklich, as they say in German.

It's a horror.

And then the realization hits home,

who did this?

And it is actually no other

than my grandfather.

Yeah.

I had to witness death itself

through the spyhole of the gas chamber.

I had to witness all the processes.

I had to watch, day and night,

the dragging and

the burning of the bodies.

The removal of the teeth.

The cutting off of the hair.

All this ghastliness, for hours on end.

I had to do all this

because I had to show everyone

that I was willing to be

present everywhere myself

as I had to demand

of those I was commanding.

The smell of the burning was

carried many kilometers away

and led to the whole population

talking of the burning of the Jews.

I think there is no one else that did

what he did on such a scale.

It is a fact, an undeniable fact,

that my grandfather is really the...

the greatest mass m*rder*r

in human history.

May the public continue seeing in me

the bloodthirsty beast,

the savage sadist,

the m*rder*r of millions

because the mass of people cannot imagine

the Commandant of Auschwitz

to be anything other.

They would never understand

that he had a heart, too.

Rudolf Hss.

I think he was kinda polishing

his image a little bit.

He had come to the end of the line.

Death was inevitable.

This is the last statement

Rudolf Hss, my grandfather,

made before his execution.

"My conscience compels me to

make the following declaration.

"In the solitude of my prison cell,

I have come to the bitter recognition

that I have sinned gravely

against humanity."

As Commandant of Auschwitz,

I carried out part of the cruel plans

of the Third Reich

for human extermination.

In so doing,

I inflicted grievous damage onto humans

and humanity.

I'm to pay with my life

for what I'm responsible for.

May the Lord God forgive me

one day for what I have done.

Do you think we could see

something like the Holocaust

- happening again?

- It could happen again,

something like the Holocaust

could happen again.

I mean, look at the world now.

It looks different. Yes, it can happen

again because I think

we humans behave atrociously badly.

- Guten tag.

- Come in.

Oops.

Wunderbar. Fantastisch.

Ja.

Ja.

- Ja.

- Ja.

So do you hate your grandfather now?

What is your feeling?

I would hate him, yes. I could say that.

- I hate him, yeah.

- What about you?

- Ja.

- Ja.

Very peculiar situations that we

should be sitting here together

and talking about

these terrible days, yes?

And there are you,

who knew nothing about it

because there was a fence

between the horror

and a normal life, yes.

To somebody like your father, I suppose,

these Jews seemed like vermin,

- not people. Vermin.

- Yeah, yeah.

You need the Jews

to have something to let

your own shortcomings out on, you know?

- Yeah.

- The Jews are original.

They're just people. And it's time

to stop that stupid hatred of Jews.

The Jews are God's chosen people.

Only what for are we chosen?

You know the famous prayer of the Jews...

"Why don't You choose

somebody else for a change

as the chosen people?"

You know, what have we done?

What have we done?

I mean, today, a boy wears

a koppel on the head

is not out of danger.

So, we haven't really made

so much progress yet,

so we have still got lots to do.

We have a responsibility,

the second generation,

to continue to communicate

and speak about humanity

and the absence of...

And make sure it's not forgotten, move on.

You can't forgive what-- what's happened,

but the important thing is that

we talk to each other

and understand each other.

This is going to the next stage,

not what we've done,

but what are we doing now.

That is important.

Yeah, it certainly was a unique moment,

of the son of the Commandant of Auschwitz

walking into my house,

sitting down in a chair opposite me,

and we're having a cup of coffee together.

I mean, in a way, that was beautiful.

My grandfather, Rudolf Hss,

was instrumental in the annihilation

of two-thirds of Europe's Jews.

Thirty years after he had

crossed the Judean Desert

during the First World w*r,

a Jewish state was proclaimed here

in the hope that it would

protect future generations.