What Our Fathers Did: A Nazi Legacy Page #7

bullet in, doesn't matter.

Well, it matters for me.

Yeah, but as a matter of moral responsibility

and as a matter of legal responsibility

it's totally irrelevant. Totally irrelevant.

He signed off on everything.

Well, he wouldn't have

signed much coming here.

These people I think...

I see this as a battlefield, you see,

because at the beginning

of the first war in 1914

there were these big battles

and the soil was full of blood.

There have been so many killings going on.

The annual commemoration of

Otto von Wchter's Waffen SS Galicia division

created by him in 1943 includes a ceremony

to rebury newly discovered remains

of German and Ukrainian soldiers

who fell in the fields near this chapel.

(SPEAKING UKRAINIAN)

(SPEAKING UKRAINIAN)

So am I right in thinking the historical role

of the division

remains important today in modern Ukraine?

(SPEAKING UKRAINIAN)

We hear Putin say that Ukraine

is full of the fascists and Nazis.

(SPEAKING UKRAINIAN)

Why are you wearing this swastika?

(SPEAKING UKRAINIAN)

- Now?

- Now, yes, he used this.

19th of February.

19th of February.

Yes.

You don't feel if you have... Wear this helmet,

you don't feel like a German soldier

in the memory of the SS?

You don't feel ashamed knowing exactly

what happened under the swastika?

(SPEAKING UKRAINIAN)

Did he ever see

Otto von Wchter speak?

(SPEAKING UKRAINIAN)

If he was to meet the son of Wchter,

what would he say to the son of Wchter?

(WOMAN TRANSLATING IN UKRAINIAN)

So can I present him to the son of...

Horst von Wchter.

Well I must say this day

was the best day for me

because so many people wanted to

shake my hands

because of my father

and saying he was a decent man

and that's all what I want, nothing else.

(WOMAN SPEAKING UKRAINIAN)

How you would like to introduce yourself

beyond your name?

My name is...

For sure he is an apologist

for the actions of his father.

What still have in mind,

maybe also in his heart

is a picture of a wonderful man

who tried the best for the Ukrainians

and it's just a lie.

He is not accepting that his father

was involved in mass murder.

He should know better.

I really despise him like my lather.

In my opinion Horst will become

a new Nazi in the end.

That is serious.

Not so serious

because he's an old man like me,

so he can't do

only some damage around with his friends

and so...

But not in the... Really not in the public,

but I don't know exactly if they started

also in Austria to invite him

for public events, delivering a speech,

showing the pictures,

this, the Austrians really would like.

How far does Horst have to go

for you to say I can no longer

have a relationship with this man?

I think ifs nothing left,

just my decision and I give him last

email to say that's not...

For me not endurable any more.

Do you... Do you think Horst is a Nazi?

Yes.

Now I would admit he is really a Nazi.

Well, I think that Nik,

hmm, is an egotistic maniac,

he's just focused on his father, you know,

and he makes his father most criminal being

on Earth and so on.

But it's because it's his father,

it's only because it's his father

otherwise he wouldn't do this, you know.

For me, his life is practically

annihilated b y his father.

When my father fled in 1945,

he went with the last members

of his government,

his adjutant and his secretary and the cook

to this house.

There he was arrested,

the last room on the right-hand side

was his so called...

(SPEAKING GERMAN)

his religious room or something like this

and there he had hanged all the paintings,

this Leonardo Da Vinci, two Rembrandts,

one Raphael, they are the most famous four.

I found it all my life, I found it very crazy

that my father was sitting in this small house

in the end waiting

to be arrested from the Americans

and there were

American soldiers who some days before

had liberated camp of the...

Dachau concentration camp outside,

have seen all the corpses

and say I have heard

that the Butcher of Poland

which was his nickname all his life.

The butcher?

The Butcher of Poland,

hmm, was arriving

and so I've beaten him up heavily

so he tried twice to commit suicide,

but he didn't succeed.

He was brought to a hospital

and then prison and then it was over.

He wrote in a letter,

hmm, to us whenever we came we should

go over to this little chapel to pray for him.

I never did it.

Does it ever make you

want to cry though

when you come back to a place like this?

No, never.

- You've never cried about him?

- No.

Does that not seem... Does that not seem

strange, he was your father?

He wasn't my father.

He was your father.

Biologically, but not...

So in the real trial like it was in Nuremberg,

hmm, I don't think that my father

would have been condemned...

I don't think so because, hmm,

who would have speak...

Spoken up against him?

Hmm, maybe it would only be, hmm, Jews,

because of the holocaust,

but the SS took all things

which concerning Jews on their side.

Horst's father Otto von Wchter

was indicted for mass murder

but died in 1949 under the protection

of the Vatican.

He was never tried and that allows Horst

to take refuge in his own long view of history.

This is my grandfather,

Joseph von Wchter,

General of the, hmm,

Imperial Army in the first war.

Two times he prevented the Russian Army

to break through the Austrian lines in Galicia

where we've been around Kiev.

My father expressly wrote that

he wants to continue

what my grandfather did there

and he chose at the moment he...

He knew that he was going to Galicia,

my father chose his coat of arm as a

crusade order so this fighting crusade

mentality is somewhere in the family.

The man who built this castle

was a crusader connected with the Templars.

And the ground plan corresponds

to the temple in Jerusalem.

(CHUCKLES) I feel like a descendant of Aaron.

I read the definition of a Jew,

a Jew is somebody

who makes service in the temple.

And then I said I would be a real Jew here.

There's an image from Krakow

ghetto footage that I can't get out of my mind.

You see a time girl,

she's wearing a beautiful red dress

and I look at that girl

and I think of my own children.

I think of my own family,

I think of my grandfather's family

and I imagine if he had been in that ghetto

he wouldn't have left

and I wouldn't be here today.

We're all prone to feelings of group loyalty,

a sort of tribal instinct

that lumps people together.

We tend to see people as victim

or perpetrator. as us or them,.

I understand that tribal instinct

and indeed I feel it myself

when I see that girl in the red dress.

But as a lawyer I've learnt to mistrust

being swayed by such feelings,

to try to avoid a tribal instinct when it comes

to dealing with issues of justice.

That's one of the reasons we have courts.

those four great nations,

flushed with victory and stung with injury

stay the hand of vengeance

and voluntarily submit their captive enemies

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