What Our Fathers Did: A Nazi Legacy Page #4

all those parts of the German people

were working together

in the annihilation of the Jews for instance.

Well, I think, I don't... I don't agree with you

because I have to swear they protested

and my father protested

even to Hitler that is impossible

how to treat the people there

and how to and he...

His fault was that he believed

that Hitler would change his politics.

In our conversations we've touched on

what you've uncovered about your father,

he ran for example the transportation system

that shifted people to concentration camps

and to their death.

And yet you've resisted in our conversations

ever acknowledging that he himself

is somehow guilty for what happened.

Because it's his character.

I mean, I don't know about transportation

but when the Jewish ghetto

in Lemberg was established

ifs written down below his name,

General-Governor Wchter,

but it's only signed by SS fuehrer...

So my father refused to sign this.

That's ridiculous Horst.

If he has not signed some document

but it happened, it happened.

Do you remember, I showed you a letter

that was sent by Heinrich Himmler

and in the letter Himmler writes

that he asked your father

whether your father would like

to return to Vienna.

They weren't sure whether your father was

fully committed to what was about to happen

and Himmler wrote,

"Victor does not wish to return to Vienna,"

in other words,

he would stay and see through

what he knew was being done.

Can you explain what...

Yes, he had no choice.

He couldn't react like he himself felt

and he was just, hmm,

making, hmm...

He was just employee of his father,

you see, but...

But he chose to stay, he could have gone.

Yes, but he felt responsible for the people.

Well for some of the people.

Yes, for some... For some he could do.

From the first moment he was very close

with the Ukrainians,

with the Galician division

and he actually tried to

do something positive.

Why, Niklas, did you introduce me to Horst?

- it was a trick.

- No, when we had our first conversation,

in this beautiful hotel,

as a lawyer for sure he was always

in the best hotel available.

(AUDIENCE LAUGHING)

And, hmm, I told him

we came across Otto Wchter,

and I told him I am a friend of Horst Wchter,

his son is a very nice person.

And you said, "What? You are a friend

of this family and of Horst Wchter?"

I think you will like him, you will like him.

I had nothing to hide

or I did nothing that

you shouldn't know about my father.

And my, yeah, family was very angry.

And still angry.

- And still angry, OK.

Do you regret that we're sitting here

- in an audience today?

- Yes, of course.

What do you want this audience to take away

from this conversation?

What's the message

that you want to leave them?

Well, I think there are many victims

of the holocaust in sitting here

and I want them to have a more concern,

more survey about how things were

and they were,

that there were many different, hmm,

sides about the whole thing

and, hmm, it was not just like a block

like he wants it to be.

There had been many people

who were against this

but that's what I want you to acknowledge

and that's why I'm thankful I can say this

and I think its not...

It's my duty but it's also my right

and it should be said, I mean,

and then that I'm very happy.

Lady over there.

I love my father,

um, and I honor my father

but as far as I'm aware my father has

done nothing to be ashamed of.

Um, and I don't know what it must be like

growing up with a heritage

like both of you have.

I must however say, Horst,

that I think a lot of your arguments

are so extraneous

to the main facts of the issue

to be actually so self-deceiving,

I find it rather frightening.

All this rubbish about Ukrainians,

that's extraneous to the issue.

OK, so...

So that's a clear view that's been put.

Yes, I accept. I accept the view

and I think I can understand it.

The only thing which l...

It's only related between the relations

between me and my father

and what I turned out to be with my father

and that's what I say.

Nik's father sounds to me like

the most horrible father

and you don't come from

a happily married family or anything like that.

You had a happier childhood, is that not,

is it too simple?

Yes, it must have been

something very important

because, hmm,

I was much embedded in the family

and I'm very proud that I had this childhood.

Niklas?

I won't say that I had an unhappy childhood.

As a Prince of Poland

I was really very well off,

the best toys you can imagine.

Hi,

I've got a question for Horst.

You say that your father didn't sign the paper

and that's why you won't condemn him,

if his signature was on it,

would you condemn him?

What would it take? What proof would it take

for you to condemn your dad?

Yes, I would have condemned him, of course.

Yeah, but if he had signed?

I think the question is going

you're taking refuge in the fact

that there are not in existence

pieces of paper which say,

"And today I will kill 15,000 Jews"?

If you were presented

with such a piece of paper,

would your position be any different

in terms of saying

as a son you have a duty

to defend your father?

Of course it would be different but it...

It would be different

but I cannot imagine that one paper exists.

My father did everything

what he could do to save the population

and my father is now... In his days

there were difficulties between Ukrainians

is really venerated there.

As we met in the Purcell Room

Ukraine was engaged in its own struggle

as to whether it would look east

towards Russia

or west towards the European Union.

Some of the protesters

voiced an age old hatred of Russia

and for that, they and the group as a whole,

which included writers, students and human-rights activists

were accused of being fascists and nee-Nazis.

R was as if the past had returned

to haunt the present

because there's a link between

contemporary events in the Ukraine

and the period when Hurst's father

was in charge of district Galicia.

(BAND PLAYING)

(MAN SPEAKING GERMAN)

This is where Horst's father

was based in what's now called Lviv,

the Germans call it Lemberg,

the Poles know it as Lww.

The city's name reflects the changes

in the region and the tensions.

The city is at the heart of this story

because the killings that link

the three of us, me, Niklas and Horst

are the events of August 1942'

the Grossaktion, as it's called

when the Jewish population

was almost entirely exterminated.

Before 1942 this city was an important

center of Jewish life,

a life that's now totally vanished.

This was my grandfathers hometown.

What I hadn't appreciated was how large

a family my grandfather had left behind,

in fact there was a vast family'

more than 80 individuals

and I didn't know that of those 80

who were alive in 1939

he was the only one still alive in 1945.

The building that we're in

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