What Our Fathers Did: A Nazi Legacy Page #3

And when my mother came back

for instance and said,

Oh, Hilda, go away,

now I am with my children.

You have a free day off.

And after 20 minutes she said,

"No, no, Hilda, you have to stay.

"I can't do it with the children,

I am too nervous.

"Please keep the children with you. "

And she was away with her old Mercedes.

Because I have some memories also of Poland

and she filled in what was left.

For instance, by visiting the Krakow ghetto.

I only had some, few...

And she said

where it was, when it was and what happened.

Did she accompany you?

- Yes, she was with me.

I was never alone as a little child

In the Krakow ghetto.

Together with my mother.

What did you. I mean,

what did you've seen in the Krakow ghetto?

The only thing I remember was

that I was standing inside my Mercedes car,

on the back side

and there were a lot of sad people

around me outside.

And there were some young people of my age,

children.

And to one of them I took out my tongue,

and he went away very sadly looking,

and so I was the winner

and I was laughing aloud.

But Hilda took me back

and was silent besides me,

showing me that was not correct.

Your mother accompanied you on that trip?

Yes, but she was outside of the car

shopping in the ghetto.

What shopping was there in the ghetto?

I mean the imagination...

Furs, furs.

She was always looking for furs.

When you say shopping,

you meaning shopping or stealing?

She's said "surprises" I would say

and everybody who was

selling to her would say,

"Oh, that's the wife of the Governor-General.

I'm lucky I will survive. "

Yeah, and did your father

accompany you on those?

No, never.

They hated each other.

The marriage was gone

and my father wanted a divorce,

my mother fought all the way up to Hitler

and Hitler forbade my father the divorce

'til after the war.

She... She actually contacted Hitler?

Yes, by letter.

She didn't come personally to him

but she wrote a letter, a letter including

a picture of her and the five children.

And the consequence of that was

that Hitler did what? Hitler instructed...

He forbade. Hitler forbade

Frank the divorce 'til after the war.

And why did your father just not ignore that?

He loved Hitler more than his family.

(HANS SPEAKING GERMAN)

My father,

he wrote a letter and wrote, uh,

I am seeing mountains of corpses,

"lam going into the dark

please don't accompany me,

give me the divorce.

He's using the final solution

to persuade Brigitte to give him a divorce

and she says no.

By the way, if she would have said yes,

we would still keep the show of...

Niklas and Horst,

two men We come to know

whose fathers were very senior

in the Nazi hierarchy.

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