What Our Fathers Did: A Nazi Legacy Review
By David Kempler
My Daddy Didn't Do That
Just when you thought that everything that could be said about the Holocaust had already been captured on film, along comes a new view of it. The documentary "What Our Fathers Did: A Nazi Legacy" premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival earlier this year. It's directed by David Evans, written by the film's on-camera narrator Phillipe Sands, and introduces us to the sons of two high-ranking Nazi officials.
Horst von Wächter and Niklas Frank are the two sons and their views of their fathers could not possibly be more different. They are both in their sixties, but Frank views his father as a monster. Wächter views his father lovingly, recalling their tender moments together.
We watch in appreciation of Frank's honest handling of the legacy of his father, but Wächter is the fascinating character. Watching him contort himself into a position where he refuses to accept the realities of his father is frustrating but oddly admirable, no matter how much we disagree with him. We don't quite like him, but we feel more exasperation than anger towards him.
The most interesting aspect of the documentary is watching Sands trying to push Wächter into a corner of remorse for his father's deeds. Sands has another motive. His ancestors were murdered by the Nazis. A couple of times, Sands comes close, but Wächter is no pushover. His defiance of the truth is powerful.
The relationship between Wächter and Frank is also one of the driving forces. Sometimes it seems that despite their differences, their shared history may yield a lasting friendship, but Frank often gets disgusted with his associate, so how their relationship will progress or regress is up in the air. One gets the feeling that Sands doesn't quite get what he set out for at the outset, but what he does get is a unique look inside the psyche of a man possibly destined to live in denial forever.