What Our Fathers Did: A Nazi Legacy Page #5

was the Parliament of Galicia,

in the Austro-Hungarian empire,

and then in 1919 when the Poles took over

it then became the, hmm,

Jan Kazimierz University

until September '39, then the Soviets came.

Then on July 1941

the Germans came and in to this room came

your father, Nik, as Governor-General

and your father as Governor of Galicia

and they stood on the platform,

they stood on the stage

and your father made a speech

in which he announced, essentially,

the implementation of the final solution

in Galicia and within a month

75,000 people at least had died.

I would like to have this place

which my father had had

and now, Horst, you have to hear

what he was saying.

And he addressed your father

at first saying,

"Party comrade Wchter,

I have to say, you did well.

"Lemberg is once again

a true and proud German city.

"I do not speak about the Jews

that we still have here. "

And then hear out this.

"We will deal with them of course.

"By the way-f'

Now it's my well-educated funny father,

and he's doing a joke.

"By the way, I hardly saw any of them today.

"What has happened?

"I was told that this city used to swarm with

"thousands and thousands of these

flat-footed Indians

"but I could see none.

"You have not done anything nasty to them,

have you?"

And the protocol wrote great hilarity.

And you are still pretending you didn't find

anything which would accuse

your father of being involved in this.

This I won't understand. As you know,

I like you personally,

but I don't like your brains and your thoughts

you have in your brain.

Horst, what would you need to see

to come to a different perspective

of your father?

I don't think... I think all the guilty ones

have been judged.

And I know that his father was some...

Some... He was a theatre man.

He liked to make himself, hmm...

All these remarks he made

and my father did never

avoided the personal contact with his father.

That was the reason before

and I don't know of any anti-Semitic...

Anti-Semitic speech my father did,

I don't know about.

Maybe he was just more careful?

Well, he was, he... He would...

That was not his style.

He was a completely other style of man,

like his father.

The result was the same.

He sat... He sat there in this room.

Yes, I'm very sorry about this, but, hmm...

Why? Why, if nothing... If he didn't do

anything why are you sorry about it?

mean...

What should he have done? He should have

jumped up, as you said and said, "No.

"Hmm, I'm against it and... "

Horst.

- No one was responsible for what happened.

- Yes.

You have all the names

of who are responsible.

You have all the names, all the details,

they are all documented.

But the lists include your father.

No, they don't include my father.

They don't include my father.

You cannot say this,

that's all imagination for me.

Do you... Do you want me

to show you a document

- that lists your father?

- Yes.

OK, stay there.

- OK.

If you... If you show it to me,

but not speeches.

No, document.

I found it last week.

OK.

This is a Polish document.

I just found it on Friday.

- Forty-six.

- "28th of September, 1946."

- Uh-huh.

- "To the military governor,

"United States zone," OK?

"I, being the authorized representative

of the Government of Poland,

"request on behalf of my government

"that Wchter be delivered to Poland for trial

"for the here and after described offences.

"One, subject is responsible for mass murder,

"shooting and executions, under his

command as Governor of district Galicia,

"more than 100,000 Polish citizens

lost their lives. "

- Now...

- Yes. Of course.

That is made in September '46,

I didn't know about this.

But still these are very general, hmm,

superstition of being mass murders, hmm,

under his command as Governor.

Under his command...

That's... That's all generalizations for me.

Horst, like my father,

he was a representative of Hitler

and as a Governor-General,

so he was politically speaking,

responsible for every dead Jew

or every Polish.

It's the same with you, with your father.

He was a Governor of Galicia

and therefore he was

politically responsible

for all the mass murders.

That mass murders were...

They were special things

and he had no influence.

I saw... I see this is Soviet. This is a Soviet...

It's Polish and American.

Yes, but the...

That was... Poland was under Soviet rule

at that time already.

it's a request to the Americans

to assist, and the Americans assisted.

The Americans were not friendly

with the Soviets.

Don't hide into the little comers.

- No, but this is a general...

- I'm asking you...

Horst, we'll come back to this.

I'm asking you what is really motivating you?

Why are you resisting

with every fiber in your body,

the terrible evidence

with which you are confronted?

Because I have so many documents,

hmm, from people who knew him personally

and who said he was a decent...

He had a decent character.

And he tried everything what he could do,

to prevent the things that would happen.

I want to know what really was going on...

What was really going on was that

your father was sitting there

in front of his father.

His father was announcing that 100,000 Jews

are going to be murdered and your father

sat there, no expression on his face.

Clapping in this room,

going off and doing his work.

That's what your father did,

that's what he did.

Yes. I presume he did like that.

So that is terrible evidence.

But this is a speech.

This is a rhetorical speech.

A highly rhetorical speech.

Hmm, and this was a political session here,

hmm, from somebody.

Horst, what happened two weeks later?

On the 17th of August?

You've shown... You've shown me the letter

your father wrote to your mother.

"I'm coming back to Lemberg.

"The Grossaktion is beginning?

He knew all about it, and it happened.

75,000 people were killed,

so that's a father to love?

That's a man one can love?

An honorable man? A decent man?

I'm going back to help kill 75,000 people,

that's an honorable thing to do?

Of course it's not an honorable thing'

But it was, hmm... The system was something

for us today which you can't imagine.

Hmm...

The deaths were so near to everybody

that it was nothing to.

Life of man was just nothing.

Horst fills me with despair.

I cannot accept that approach.

It's not just the lawyer in me concerned

with how one treats evidence,

it's much more personal than that.

When I hear him speak of his father's

good character and actions,

I near him to be justifying the killing

of my grandfather's entire family.

This is where my grandfathers family

came from

and this is where most of that family perished.

Do you ask yourself

why we came here together?

Hmm... No, I had no problems to understand.

We com... Commemorate what happened and

we, uh, confronted what happened

and we feel sad and ashamed maybe.

And we ask ourselves questions.

How it could be

that such things happened in the past

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