Some three-quarters of a century on, the Nazis’ grim legacy continues to cast its shadow over the families of their victims – and also over the descendants of the perpetrators themselves, as this powerful documentary (showing at 9pm on Friday 20th September) attests.
Haunted by the concept of ‘the sins of the fathers’, and struggling to come to terms with the accompanying guilt, shame, pain and regret, individuals whose family members were supporters, officers and the elite of the Nazi regime strive to distance themselves from their crimes and ideology.
This need for reconciliation and healing is vividly evoked by the example of The Austrian Encounter. Brought together in honest dialogue, descendants of Nazi perpetrators and Holocaust victims bravely face the past together in an attempt to exorcise these ghosts.
