Hitler's Children

Cognitive dissonance
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...

What If Your Family Legacy Was Evil Personified? A Powerful, Yet Effectively Understated, Documentary Explores The Answer
Is it possible to escape the onus of evil? The crimes of the Third Reich are indelibly printed on our mass consciousness even as we've struggled to put them into perspective. I've seen a lot of films that deal with the aftermath of World War II and the shame it brought on the nation of Germany. Those who survived, those who sacrificed, those who suffered, and those who were merciless--there are a lot of stories to tell when considering genocide and torture on a global scale. But there is one group of survivors that I've never considered before and this is the angle taken in the strong, but understated, new documentary "Hitler's Children." What if someone in your immediate family played a significant and horrifying role in what happened? What if your family legacy was evil personified? It's a chilling notion and the participants interviewed for this presentation all cope in varying ways.

The filmmakers have assembled a handful of Germans with very recognizable and notorious...

MUST SEE documentary: "where to draw the line to love those parents?"
I am a big fan of Film Movement's library of foreign and indie movies, and in fact am a subscriber to their DVD-of-the-month club. However, this is one of those releases that fell outside that DVD-of-the-month subscription, so I am just now catching up on it.

"Hilter's Children" (2011 German-Israeli co-production) brings the amazing story of several of the survivor's of Hitler's closest officers and confidants (Hitler obviously has no offspring himself). Just in the first 15-20 min. alone, we got to know Bettine Goering (Herman Goering was her great-uncle), Katrin Himmler (Heinrich Himmler was her great-uncle), Rainer Hoess (Rudolph Hoess, who ran the Auschwitz concentration camp, was his grandfather), and Monica Goeth (Amon Goeth, who ran the Plaszow concentration camp, was her father). Later on we get to know some others too. I was floored by all this. These are REAL people. The beauty of the movie is that the director asks a question (off-camera) and then lets the...

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