From acclaimed British filmmaker Daniela Völker comes a powerful and deeply moving documentary following Hans Jürgen Höss, the 87-year-old son of Rudolf Höss, the Commandant of Auschwitz, as he confronts his father’s horrific legacy for the first time.
While Hans Jürgen Höss spent a seemingly happy childhood in the family villa adjacent to the Auschwitz camp, Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, a Jewish prisoner who later became a world-renowned cellist, was fighting for survival inside the camp. Eight decades later, the film captures an extraordinary and historic encounter as the two meet face to face in the intimate setting of Anita’s London living room — the first such private meeting between the descendant of a major Nazi perpetrator and a Holocaust survivor.
Together with their children, Kai Höss and Maya Lasker-Wallfisch, the protagonists explore the vastly different legacies of memory, guilt, survival, and responsibility passed down through generations.
The film also features rare excerpts from Rudolf Höss’s long-forgotten autobiography, written shortly before his execution, providing chilling first-person testimony by the perpetrator himself and serving as a powerful response to Holocaust denial and historical amnesia.
