FeistyUpper If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

Moustroll Good movie but grossly overrated

KnotStronger This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

Logan By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

info-33216 Saw this film last night on UK TV. I can add little to the reviews already given but would like to comment on Michael Wehle sour remarks.Yes, not everything is explored, such a Fascism in the Ukraine. Can it be in the time given? Personally I had not problem with the one son seeing his father as a loving man etc. What else would a very young child think? The issue is the refusal to admit that his father was personally responsible for the crimes and, I think, that is what Sands is trying to do, namely to get him to concede when faced with the facts.The documentary also indirectly alludes to the problems in many German families when the younger generation found out about the crimes of their parents.

Steve B The film description tells you more than I can. However, I watched this not so much with interest for the 2 men, but for the story of their fathers and the occurrences they showed and the whole family perspective. The visits to the ghettos by the men as children said a lot to me. I mean, their fathers, dealers of death, took their kids to work. Incredible. They point out in the film the contradiction between these father's work and their ability to go home to their families to lead normal lives. It is inconceivable. All of the Nazis truly convinced themselves that their victims were not human. They had to have to look at everyone, their children victims and then go home to their own children. I cannot really grasp this which is why I watch films like this. I have never really come to an understanding of this and I probably never will.I did not expect the men to accuse their fathers or to convict them in front of the audience. I am not sure one should expect that. Both men acknowledge to different degrees what their fathers did. Are their fathers actions their actions? Should we expect them to vilify their fathers? I guess acknowledging who and what their fathers were and did is something I expect. Should they be blamed in a sense for their fathers actions if they do or do not blame or accuse their fathers? I think to a certain degree, people want to blame the children for their fathers crimes against humanity. By asking these men to vilify their fathers, they then would disown the crimes of their fathers....well this is the expectation of the filmmakers. I am not sure it is what should be expected. Their fathers were evil men who performed horrible evils, we all know that. Now if the children believed those actions were justified or if they believed their fathers were good men for those actions, then you could throw them in with their fathers actions. One man disowns his father and hates him as a father, for the father he was, as much as his Nazi actions in my opinion. He hated his mother too. That is some burden to carry. I think he carries it as a burden, truly.One man believes his father was a good man stuck in a bad circumstance. I don't believe that, I don't think anyone believes that. Should he vilify his father? He could say his father was kind to him but he knew his father did so much evil....but that didn't come out in the film to me.Watch this for the story of how human beings can lead 2 lives. Watch it to understand the horrors of the Nazis. Watch it to remember and ensure we don't see the rise of this again. We are seeing the rise....everywhere in the world. Watch this film to see where you stand, to judge your own beliefs. This film forces Introspect in my opinion.It is not about me, but it forces me to look at these people and my beliefs. I have strong Polish heritage so maybe that pushed my interest in this film too.

l_rawjalaurence MY NAZI LEGACY (using the UK television release title) is a straightforward documentary in which human rights lawyer Philippe Sands confronts two elderly Germans (Niklas Frank and Horst von Wachter) with evidence of their fathers' involvement in the "Final Solution" during the Second World War. Together they travel to the city of Lviv, now in Poland, where thousands of Jews were sent to their deaths, and Sands interviews the two men as to what their feelings are about their fathers' behavior.Frank is, to coin a phrase, brutally frank, about his father, a high-ranking officer in the Nazi hierarchy who willfully believed in the justice of the "Final Solution." One sequence taking place in an historic city building, which once served as the Nazi meeting- place, is especially gruesome, as Sands reads out the transcript of a speech given by Frank's father where he made a macabre joke about the number of people being sent to their deaths.Von Wachter's reaction to his father's role in the war is a lot more complex. While acknowledging the Nazi Party's cruelty (which encourages him during his life to collaborate in any way he can with Jewish people), he does not believe for one moment that his father was culpable; rather he was a fundamentally good man forced to carry out his duties within a sadistic organization on pain of death. Despite all the evidence presented in front of him, Von Wachter remains resolute - so much so that the long-standing friendship between himself and Frank is put in grave danger.Our reaction to this documentary is a complex one: while we understand and empathize with Sands's determination to make Von Wachter acknowledge his father's complicity (most of Sands's family had been wiped out as a result of the killings), we do get the feeling that he is putting undue pressure on an elderly man without acknowledging the complexity of Von Wachter's feelings. Having spent seven decades harboring a particular image of his father, it is obviously difficult for him to change it.In the end we wonder what the purpose of the documentary actually is: were the filmmakers hoping for a Hollywood-style happy ending in which Von Wachter would break down and undergo a change of heart, thereby proving the justness of Sands's cause? Or did they deliberately manipulate the emotions of an old man so as to emphasize the fact that there were still neo-Nazis around, seven decades after the Second World War had ended? I am not condoning Von Wachter's responses in any way; but I do believe that the more pressure Sands put on him to change them, the less he was willing to do so.MY NAZI LEGACY is a harrowing piece, but perhaps a little manipulative in its structure.

Tom Dooley Philippe Sands lost nearly all of his ancestors in Ukraine at the hands of Nazi's and their sympathisers. He became a barrister and specialises in human rights violation cases and war crimes. He met with two men who both owned up to being the sons of prominent Nazi's during WW II and he set out to make a film about them now and what the sins of the fathers mean to them.This film was made for the BBC Timewatch programme and has all the hallmarks of a high quality production. What makes this so watchable is the fact that the two men are at either end of the spectrum when it comes to blame. One hating his father for his crimes and the other claiming his papa did nothing wrong despite the evidence. He is not even using the 'he just followed orders' excuse as his father was the one issuing those self same orders.I found this to be a difficult watch in places even with the desensitising nature of modern TV it is still hard to contemplate the mass murder that Hitler and his acolytes carried out. Things here are generally balanced though and to say it was engrossing is an understatement – I would go for a rental if you can as you may not gain more on subsequent viewings.