Inheritance
Closed CaptioningJames Moll
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Plot Summary
INHERITANCE is the story of Monika Hertwig, a soft-spoken woman struggling with a profound legacy left by a father she never really knew. Monika's father was Amon Goeth. Often described as a "monster," and "inhuman," Goeth was a prominent Nazi leader and commandant of the Plaszow concentration camp. He murdered thousands of Jews and other prisoners during the war. When Schindler's List opened in 1993, Monika found Ralph Fiennes' chilling portrayal of her father so disturbing that she left the theater more than once. The fact that this man was her father is something that Monika still cannot reconcile. Feeling an aching need to come to terms with this legacy of hatred, Monika reaches out to Helen Jonas, who lived enslaved under Goeth's roof serving as both his maid and prey for nearly two years. In INHERITANCE, sixty years after Amon Goeth's execution, Monika and Helen meet for the first time at what was once Goeth's luxurious villa overlooking the concentration camp. It's a brutally honest, gut-wrenching, and emotional journey that brings both closure and new questions.
Customer Reviews
Powerful
This documentary is one of the most powerful movies I have every seen. It is tragic and horrifying and cuts to the core emotions of a daughter struggling to come to grips with who her father actually was. This movie is not just for the people interested in WWII. This is a serious story that needs to be told. For eveyone to see the emotions of the actual people involved is crutial for the changing of the future. Personally, I will urge you not to have plans of a short period of time after watching this. This will require quiet time afterward.
Warning: There is one semi-graphic scene.
And the truth will set you free
Children of war criminals bear a special cross. It weighs like iron, blinds them like denial. It was never fitted for their hands, but its nails stretch them far and wide, and bind their feet like concrete. There they are crucified in a vacuum, voiceless, deaf, and blind before unforgiving eyes. If one unholy daughter could meet a victim of her father's -- even one; just one -- a word could cross the void, a ray of light piercing the darkness, ricocheting from myth to myth. There is no glory in that truth, but freedom at last to cry and to know why. And for the victim, triumph. "She is not he; he is gone at last. I survived." For the dead there can be no peace. Gradually their voices fade into the din of distant history. They too are gone; their bones are thorns, scars forever aching in the earth.
Peace be to the living. You are not he. You survived.
Shooshie, 2010
Sentenced to Everlasting Shame
This film left me In tears for Amon's daughter. She did nothing wrong yet her existence is overshadowed by her father's infamous legacy, her days, hours and minutes dominated by guilt that isn't hers to bear. I feel so much empathy for this poor woman, I was so moved by her pain that I could almost, just almost understand why Magda Goebbels killed her six children before committing suicide along with her husband. There was and still is no help offered to the children of the perpetrators or the children of the July 20th plotters. The latter were treated like scum prior to the end of the war and the ensuing years while the former were forever tainted by the sins of their fathers. Another supremely sad case is that of Rudolf Hess' son who would never again be held by the father who adored him. Hess sat out the war, yet he served a full life sentence while men like Speer who actually used forced laborers for his armaments plants served only 20. Lastly I felt very little sympathy for Amon Goeth's former enslaved housekeeper. Why agree to meet with Amon's daughter only to treat her with disdain, contempt and barely contained hatred. May you find peace Monica.
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