Inheritance (2006)

Inheritance (2006)

Inheritance is another documentary that was recommended by my sister-in-law, and it features one the women interviewed in Hitler's Children: Monika Hertzwig.

Helen Jonas (née Sternlicht,
now Jonas-Rosenzweig).

Monika is the daughter of Amon Goeth, former commandant of the Plaszow concentration camp.  She was raised by her mother, Ruth, who was Goeth's mistress, to believe that her father simply ran a work camp.  As she got older and learned more, and saw her father portrayed in Schindler's List, she struggled to come to grips with the reality of her family history.

She got in touch with Helen Jonas, one of her father's Jewish maids at his Plaszow villa when he ran the camp, after seeing her interviewed on TV.

Helen agreed to return to Poland for the first time since emigrating to the United States to revisit Plaszow and meet with Monika.  Helen's life is still haunted by what she witnessed and experienced.  Her parents, her boyfriend, and many friends died (her boyfriend shot by Goeth within earshot), and she discusses how her husband of 20 years, a fellow survivor, had committed suicide, unable to live with survivor's guilt any longer.

Monika is very distraught when she meets Helen, and Helen tries to console Monika to a certain extent, but she is suffering greatly with her own memories.  Helen's daughter observes, "I think my mom was sympathetic to Monika, but she needed to limit it for her own preservation."  Monika seems to need some sort of forgiveness or validation from Helen, but Helen needs to grieve for what she went through.

Monika Hertzwig.

Monika grapples with guilt, with the fear that she is like her father, with the ambivalent feelings she has about her parents, and the struggle to come to terms with what her father did, so that she can have, as she says, “A life where I am able to live with the truth.”  Her mother, who was devoted Goeth's memory, eventually committed suicide, and Monika viewed video footage of her father being executed, which must have been disturbing for her (I've read that new evidence leads historians now to believe that the footage of the hanging (very disturbing, it is shown in the documentary) is actually of Dr. Ludwig Fischer, and not Goeth: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2296911/Amon-Goeth-Did-executed-Nazi-murderer-Schindlers-List-escape-justice.html).

Still, it is Helen who experienced the camp and all its horrors; in particular, the brutality of Amon Goeth.  Helen (with her daughter Vivan along for support) meets Monika at the camp, and they speak very emotionally:

Monika: Am I better than my father?  She [Ruth] told me “You are like him, and you will die like him.”  And so I was looking in my life and maybe I am really like him.  But I am not Amon.
Helen: You have a choice.
Monika: Yes, I know.
Helen: And those people here died because of one man, Amon Goeth, in a cruel way.  We just can’t be silent.  We just can’t push things away.  They’re there.  And you see they disturb our lives...we are traumatized people.  And that’s why I made this trip to find that little piece here.
Monika: I know.  Do you know what people tell me in Germany?  I went to school to speak to some children.  “Oh, God, you’re a strong person.”  I’m not a strong person.
Helen: You will become.
Monika: When the children are gone, and the teachers are gone, I break down.
Helen: You break down, you have a right to break down.  It’s good.  But you have a mission.  Look at those monuments.  What do they mean?  There are bodies here, innocent bodies.  Good people.  I don’t think God wants it.
Monika: I know that, and suffer, you know?  When I see Vivian, I feel like Amon…I’m Amon.  And she will look at me and say, “Oh, Goeth.  That God-damning daughter.”  And if she would be his daughter,  I would think the same, you know?
Helen: But my daughter doesn’t feel that way.

At times, Monika does display a bit of a lack of empathy that does ring of her father, which I hate to say.  Her insistence on bringing the attention back to her own sense of suffering rather than focusing outwardly on the pain of those around her irked me.  I wanted her to shift her focus to not only Helen's pain, but to the devastation of the loss of those lying under the ground around her as Helen tries to describe to her their horrible fate.  Also, her hostility towards other children of Nazis felt excessive.  Monika says, "If those children of perpetrators suffer, let them suffer.  I hated all the other children of perpetrators, you know?  The daughter of Hermann Goering was living near our house.  When I saw that girl, I didn’t like that girl.  I thought about her father.  She was the daughter of Herman Goering.  The children are innocent but I still see their fathers and I can’t help myself.  But I never would have any pity with children of perpetrators.  Never."  Still, she is making the effort to reach out, and her sense of guilt feels very real. 

The villa.

Amon Goeth on the balcony of the villa.

You can see the strain that talking with Monika has on Helen, and she says goodbye abruptly, later recalling, "I had a difficult time meeting with Monika, because I felt bad for her.  At the same time I kept seeing him.  Remembering all the horrors that I experienced being in the villa."

But she then seems to change her mind and invites Monika to accompany her on a visit to the villa where she once lived with Amon Goeth.  It is at the villa that Helen really breaks down as she remembers the terror she felt in that house, and the abuse she suffered at Goeth's hands.  Everything seems to come rushing back to her, and she vividly recalls the details of her life at the villa, down to where every piece of furniture had been.

Through tears she recalls: "I used to stand here and look out.  This was the window, I used to envy people.  They walked to work, and I was all alone.  They were marching to work.  The camp was over there.  Now I can understand...This was my room, and I heard his footsteps.  I shivered when I heard his footsteps...You see those steps, Monika?  I never went one step at a time.  I always run like this to be fast.  As fast as I can climb them.  And he pushed me down those steps."  Later, she elaborates: "I fear those steps.  I heard those steps upstairs.  He wouldn’t sleep.  He would walk around first thing in the morning.  He would walk out of the villa, 6 o’clock, and I would hear shooting.  He had the urge to kill, like animal."

She grows very angry (understandably) hearing Monika repeat the excuses her mother and others had given her for the murders, and when Monika implies that her mother may not have known the extent of what was going on:

Monika: Not –not seeing.
Helen: Don’t say that.  She saw us downstairs.  She –she heard the shots.
Monika: She heard?
Helen: I mean, it was very obvious.  You could hear, I mean, they were –they were shooting like no tomorrow.  You know how many thousands of people died?
Monika: Now, when you talk, when you tell me.  But what I heard, when I was a child –he only killed some Jews because of –
Helen: Because they were Jews.
Monika: No, because of sanitary problems.  Because they-
Helen: Because they were just Jews.  Monika, they were just Jews.
Monika: They wouldn’t go to a bathroom.  They wouldn’t use a bathroom.
Helen: Really?
Monika: And therefore, there was disease, and then when he saw some men–
Helen: Monika, please, I have to stop you right now.
Monika: That was my history.
Helen: Yeah, but from now on you can see that it’s the ignorance.  It was just simply we were  tortured and killed because we were Jews.  That’s it.  Nothing else.

Both women recall Oskar Schindler, who saved 1,200 plus Jews by employing them at his factory.

Oskar Schindler.

Helen says that while he was friends with Goeth and the other Nazis, "there was something different about him."  She tells how he reassured her that she would be okay:  "He pointed with a finger, he said, “You see those people working there?  Remember the story of Egypt?  There were slaves,” he says.  “They were freed, right?  Remember they were freed?  You will be freed, too.""  And remembers what happened when Goeth was arrested, and she was left at the villa, not knowing what to do: "And all of a sudden, somebody rings them bell.  And who is there but Oskar Schindler.  Standing on the step.  And he said, “You’re coming with me.”  And everything he told came back to me.  “You will be safe.  You will be all right.  You’re coming with me to my factory.”  He kept his promise."

Monika met Schindler after the war, and his words, as he called her by her father's nickname, made a powerful impression her: "I met him in Frankfurt with my mother.  And he looked at me.  He clapped on my shoulder and said, “Hi, Mony.  You can’t deny your father!  You’re looking quite the same.”"  Indeed, you can see some similarities -she certainly inherited his height.

A photo of Monika next to a photo of her father, Amon Goeth.

After the documentary was released, Helen was interviewed by Voices on Antisemitism (http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/focus/antisemitism/voices/transcript/?content=20090226), and reflected on meeting Monika:

"Monika, she accepted the fact that her father was a killer, but she still wanted to defend him.  She said to me that, "They all were doing it."  I said, "But he was the one that gave all the orders."  So, it's just like she still protected…"They all were doing it."  It just, like, annoyed me, you know?  It's hard for me to be with her because she reminds me a lot of, you know…she's tall, she has certain features.  And I hated him so.  But she is a victim.  And I think it's important because she is willing to tell the story in Germany.  She told me people don't want to know, they want to go on with their lives.  And I think it's very important because there's a lot of children of perpetrators, and I think she's a brave person to go on talking about it, because it's difficult.  And I feel for Monika.  I am a mother, I have children.  And she is affected by the fact that her father was a perpetrator.  But my children are also affected by it.  And that's why we both came here.  The world has to know, to prevent something like to happen again."