When the film-maker Daniela Völker met Hans Jürgen Höss, the 90-year-old son of Rudolf Höss, the commandant of Auschwitz, she had understood that he did not recall witnessing any of the horrors, despite spending almost four years of his early childhood living in the villa adjacent to the camp. “At first, he really didn’t. I had a German cameraman who said I was wasting my time and money and to leave.
” But undeterred, Völker hung around for a few days and on the last day of filming gave Hans Jürgen his father’s confessional autobiography, which he had never read. “I’d selected parts for him to read. And you could see the change in his face as he started reading.
” Extracts from Höss’s book, , written while he was awaiting trial in a Polish prison, form the structure of Völker’s raw and compelling documentary , in which two families explore the transgenerational trauma of the Holocaust on their lives from their two different perspectives. Völker, 52, began developing the film in 2020, at the beginning of the first lockdown. She had initially been contacted, via a friend, by psychotherapist Maya Lasker-Wallfisch, who had written a book about her experiences as the daughter of Holocaust survivor Anita Lasker-Wallfisch.
“I began researching and very early on, I came across the Höss autobiography, which really surprised me,” explains Völker, speaking in London over Zoom. “I couldn’t believe that no one had made a documentary about it.�.