In the course of his legal work surrounding The Nuremberg Trials, renowned human rights barrister Philippe Sands came into contact with two elderly men, both the sons of high-ranking Nazis: Niklas Frank and Horst von Wächter, the sons of Hans Frank and Otto Wächter, respectively the Nazi governor of occupied Poland and Nazi governor of Galicia in Ukraine. In this documentary, he travels with the two men to Ukraine, where it becomes clear their fathers were responsible for the annihilation of the entire family of Sands’s own Jewish grandfather. One man protests his father’s fundamental decency despite evidence that he was responsible for slaughter on an industrial scale. The other despises his father so much that he carries a picture of him, hung at Nuremberg, in his wallet, ‘to be sure he is really dead, and to never forget what happened in Germany’. But the conflict is not only about the past: in Ukraine, a group of Nazi-nostalgist paramilitaries hail Horst von Wächter as the son of a hero. Wächter is clearly pretty pleased. It is a chilling demonstration that the past is not yet dead and that Wächter Jr is still in denial – something that Sands is not ready to accept. An intelligent exploration of three men wrestling with conflicting versions of the truth.
AUDIO: English
SUBTITLE: Romanian
awards and festivals
2015 - Tribeca Film Festival, SUA
2015 - Hamburg Film Festival, Germania
2015 - Jerusalem Film Festival, Israel, Best Feature
2015 - Stockholm Film Festival, Suedia
2015 - International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, Olanda