Hitler's Children | |
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Directed by | Chanoch Zeevi |
Written by | Chanoch Zeevi |
Produced by | Chanoch Zeevi |
Cinematography | Yoram Millo |
Edited by | Arik Leibovitz |
Music by | Ophir Leibovitch |
Production companies | Maya Productions Saxonia Entertainment |
Distributed by | Film Movement (US) |
Release dates |
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Running time | 83 minutes |
Countries | Israel Germany |
Language | English |
Hitler's Children is an Israeli-German 2011 documentary film directed by Chanoch Zeevi that portrays how relatives of Adolf Hitler's inner circle deal with the burden of that relationship and the identification of their surnames with the Holocaust. They describe the conflicted feelings of guilt and responsibility they carry with them in their daily lives and the disparate reactions of their siblings and other family members. [1]
The film features Katrin Himmler, [1] Rainer Höss , and Niklas Frank. [1]
The film consists primarily of interviews with the descendants of several of the most powerful figures in the Nazi regime, including Heinrich Himmler, Hans Frank, Hermann Göring, Amon Göth and Rudolf Höss, whose ties of kinship associate them with notorious criminals. Amongst them are Bettina Goering, [1] Katrin Himmler, Monika Hertwig , Rainer Höss, Eldad Beck and Niklas Frank.
They discuss the delicate balance they have managed to achieve in negotiating between the natural bonds between children and parents and earlier generations on the one hand and their innate revulsion at their crimes. It also includes documentary footage of one's visit to Auschwitz, others speaking with relatives, or visiting schools to talk about their personal and family histories. Their personalities and personal histories are varied and have produced a range of solutions as some have decided to discuss their situation in public–several have authored books–or decided whether or not to keep the family name, to have children, to live in Germany, or celebrate their German heritage. The film also explores one's relationship to the victims of the Holocaust. [2]
Hitler's Children was completed in 2011 and was produced by Zeevi's company Maya Production, in co-production with the German company Saxonia Entertainment. The film was first broadcast on Israeli Channel 2 on 1 May 2011, [3] the eve of the Israeli Holocaust Memorial Day, and was first shown internationally in November 2011 at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam. [4] The documentary has been shown at several documentary film festivals and has been presented by a number of TV broadcasters, including BBC2, [5] ORF and the Swedish network Kunskapskanalen. [6]
The film reached the finals in the category of Best TV Programmes Broadcast in Europe in the Prix Europa 2012 competition.[ citation needed ]
The documentary received critical acclaim in several UK newspapers after being broadcast on BBC2 on 23 May 2012. [1] [7]
The film won the 2012 Boston Jewish Film Festival Audience Award for Best Documentary film.
According to Zeevi, a personal meeting with Hitler's former secretary, Traudl Junge, in 1999, triggered the film. He said: "When I sat in front of her I suddenly understood that the need to try and understand the evil that led to the horrors of the Holocaust was an integral part of the narrative. I understood that the dialogue with the 'other side' can teach us many new things on the fertile ground on which the hatred grew and in parallel convey a message of hope for the future". He said he hoped to provoke discussion of the Holocaust "in an intelligent manner and from a new point of view" and to "provide an indisputable answer to Holocaust deniers". [8]
Ernst Kaltenbrunner was a high-ranking Austrian SS official during the Nazi era and a major perpetrator of the Holocaust. After the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich in 1942, and a brief period under Heinrich Himmler, Kaltenbrunner was the third Chief of the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA), which included the offices of Gestapo, Kripo and SD, from January 1943 until the end of World War II in Europe.
The Final Solution or the Final Solution to the Jewish Question was a Nazi plan for the genocide of individuals they defined as Jews during World War II. The "Final Solution to the Jewish question" was the official code name for the murder of all Jews within reach, which was not restricted to the European continent. This policy of deliberate and systematic genocide starting across German-occupied Europe was formulated in procedural and geopolitical terms by Nazi leadership in January 1942 at the Wannsee Conference held near Berlin, and culminated in the Holocaust, which saw the murder of 90% of Polish Jews, and two-thirds of the Jewish population of Europe. The Final Solution did not, however, include the hundreds of thousands of Jews killed by Romanian forces. By far the greatest extermination of Jews by non-German forces, this genocide was "operationally separate from the Nazi Final Solution".
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Heinrich Luitpold Himmler was the Reichsführer of the Schutzstaffel, a leading member of the Nazi Party of Germany, and one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany, primarily known for being a main architect of the Holocaust.
Reinhard Tristan Eugen Heydrich was a high-ranking German SS and police official during the Nazi era and a principal architect of the Holocaust.
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Claude Lanzmann was a French filmmaker known for the Holocaust documentary film Shoah (1985).
Rudolf Franz Ferdinand Höss was a German SS officer during the Nazi era who, after the defeat of Nazi Germany, was convicted for war crimes for his role in the Holocaust. Höss was the longest-serving commandant of Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp. He tested and implemented means to accelerate Hitler's order to systematically exterminate the Jewish population of Nazi-occupied Europe, known as the Final Solution. On the initiative of one of his subordinates, Karl Fritzsch, Höss introduced the pesticide Zyklon B to be used in gas chambers, where more than a million people were killed.
The Holocaust—the murder of about six million Jews by Nazi Germany from 1941 to 1945—is the best-documented genocide in history. Although there is no single document which lists all Jewish victims of Nazi persecution, there is conclusive evidence that about six million were murdered. There is also conclusive evidence that Jews were gassed at Auschwitz-Birkenau, the Operation Reinhard extermination camps, and in gas vans, and that there was a systematic plan by the Nazi leadership to murder them.
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Hitler: A Film from Germany, called Our Hitler in the US, is a 1977 film written, directed and narrated by Hans-Jürgen Syberberg, and produced by Bernd Eichinger. An co-production by West Germany, France and the United Kingdom, the film stars Heinz Schubert in a dual role, as Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler. Along with Syberberg's characteristic and unusual motifs and style, it is notable for its 442-minute running time.
Katrin Himmler is a German author. She is the granddaughter of Ernst Himmler (1905–1945), who was the younger brother of Heinrich Himmler, one of the leading figures of Nazi Germany. Therefore, she is the great-niece of Heinrich Himmler. She is the author of Die Brüder Himmler: Eine deutsche Familiengeschichte, published in English as The Himmler Brothers: A German Family History.
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Niklas Frank is a German author and journalist best known for an intimate and strongly accusatory book about his father, Hans Frank, the lawyer who became Governor-General of the General Government in German occupied Poland during World War II.
The Decent One is a 2014 German-Austrian-Israeli documentary directed by Vanessa Lapa about Heinrich Himmler. The film was based on a cache of letters and diary entries that were purchased by Lapa's parents and published in the German newspaper Die Welt. It premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival and received mixed reviews.