Two or Three Things I Know About Him
TC Start Text
Barbel Ludin
10:00:09:13 It's my right to see my father the way I want to see him. Not the way I want to see him, the way I do see him. It's my right. You can't take that from me.
You have your own view and I'm sorry.
Barbel
10:00:26:21 So everyone is alone with his view.
Barbel
10:00:27:03 If you thought you can change anything with this film, then you are unfortunately mistaken.
Iva Švarcová
Zeigt
Malte Ludin
10:00:47:12 This is the story of my father, a war criminal. And of my mother, my siblings, nieces, and nephews. A typically German story.
Title
10:01:07:21 2 or 3 things I know about him
(Translates German writing on black screen) 2 oder 3 Dinge, die ich von ihm weiß
Kamera
Franz Lustig
Tonmontage
Matthias Lempert
Buch/Regie
Malte Ludin
Barbel
10:01:55:24 Erla was dressed in black. Tille was sitting in the sleigh, too. Erla had to go get something and she left us alone for a moment. It was at the beginning of that drive to the Schlösslehof. Tille told me, "Papa is dead." He wasn't supposed to tell me. But he just couldn't keep it to himself. We both started sobbing and crying and when Erla came probably all three of us.
Ellen
10:02:34:12 I think I heard in the schoolyard, from children, "They hanged your father!".
Andrea
10:02:43:04 Mother told me when I was small, at the end of 1947, I was three and a half, right? No, four and a half. She didn't want to tell me he had been executed. She told me he fell in battle. He would have preferred to die in the war. He wanted to go back to the war.
Ellen
10:03:11:14 That was the first time I ever saw her cry. She threw herself on the bed. It was horrible.
Malte
10:03:21:21 That your mother cried? You didn't know what to make of it? You didn't know why? Or did you know?
Ellen
Yes, I did, but...
Malte
10:03:47:18 Three of my five siblings are still alive. Ellen, the middle one, born in 1937 in Stuttgart. Barbel, born in Stuttgart in 1935, who at first didn't want to appear on camera. Andrea, the youngest, born in 1943 in Pressburg. Those were the days! When the whole family came together. Erika and Tilman were still alive. Erla, our mother, was the center. As long as she was alive, I wouldn't have dared to make this film. And she lived a long life.
Malte
10:04:39:11 Me, 1942 60 years later. I never knew my father. As a child I didn't even know what that is, a father.
Meine Schwester Ellen
10:04:54:13 As a child I often dreamed he would come back. 64 10:05:00:00 10:05:03:10 3:10 That it was all just a bad dream. That's how it was.
Malte
10:05:06:00 You?
Ellen
10:05:07:07 Yes, me. Yes, I just dreamt that I'd had a nightmare. Then I woke up to the sad reality: The bad dream was reality.
Meine Schwester Barbel
10:05:23:03 I dreamed it had all had just been a mistake. He wasn't dead at all and he was back again. It was a blissful feeling in my dream.
Eri's husband Heiner
10:05:35:18 With Eri, your sister and my wife, it was a huge burden on her. Whenever she spoke of her father, she broke out in tears. I thought it was understandable, it had only been eight years. But she never got over it in her whole life.
Reading out some of Ludin's last words (court transcript)
10:06:04:17 "The public prosecutor wants to let me die with dignity. And if necessary, I will. I ask the high court for milder punishment because I do not deserve to die - considering my six children and their good name and in the interest of the Slovakian people. I cannot plead guilty. I cannot plead guilty. I cannot plead guilty. I acted under the constraints of the situation, in the framework of the orders and directives I was given. I often faltered, I made errors and mistakes, but I committed no crimes. I entrust my fate into your hands. You will not break a heart
that beats so warm until..."
My father and me.
Trunk of Sorrows
(Translates German writing on black screen)
Barbel
10:07:19:17 The trunk was for featherbeds. When our mother died five years ago, we put everything she collected about our father into it.
Malte
104 10:07:54:01 10:07:57:06 3:05 My father's childhood and youth were sheltered. His decisive experience was World War One. The hurrahs at the beginning, the misery at the end. My father's father was a romantic who taught school. Painter. United in their fear of the coming "modern times" my father shared with his father a penchant for mysticism and enthusiasm. A tendency to equate the ideal and reality. Lake Constance, a place for dreams, was his landscape.
Barbel
10:08:44:08 There is a report by...
- By whom?
10:08:46:18 A journalist who was sent to describe the house.
Malte
10:08:54:01 An atmosphere piece by a journalist. In the style of the period. "At the home of the Ambassador Mrs. Erla Ludin receives us. Light floods into the terrace and the hall. The room's harmony and brightness reflect the personality of the young woman standing before us, slender and tall, of blond beauty, with a clear gaze and calm cheerfulness.
Meine Mutter, 1995
Nordic! - Slender and tall and of blond beauty. With another kind of beauty, who knows...
Malte
10:09:29:08 A teacher of rhythmic gymnastics. Energetic and independent until my father took her for his bride. From then on, she was only the woman at his side. The wife of an SA leader. The spouse of the Ambassador. Our mother.
Barbel
I remember. I was sitting in the backseat of the car and I wanted to caress her. She sat in front and I always wanted to touch her, but I didn't dare.
Malte
10:10:05:00 There is an early interview with her in which she reveals a lot, but remains silent about even more.
Erla
10:10:10:16 I never liked coffee klatches or little visits with ladies only. I always felt men have to be there, too, or it's uninteresting. Though I never had much interesting to offer. It was more interesting with men.
Meine Mutter, 1978
10:10:33:02 Really? All your life?
- Yes. That's what I used to think. And
I still think that way today.
10:10:40:23 Pictures of a soldier's life. To my dear mother, Christmas 1926.
(Translates German writing on black screen)
Malte
10:10:44:22 To his parents' dismay, my father joined the Reichswehr, straight after high school.
"See, I've reached this point and always struggle to become a personality strong enough to take on the risk of life. Even at the risk of going under. Only then can one become a leader, only then can one achieve greatness and freedom in the soldier's profession."
Malte
10:11:54:10 Fantastic, here is a tailor's bill. "Your Honor Lieutenant Ludin, one short riding trousers, 90 marks 80 pfennigs, deposit 30 marks."
- Quite a pretty penny. Now comes the whole Reichswehr story. The Reichswehr trial...
Malte
10:12:13:23 One year in prison for professing himself a German, i.e., a National Socialist. The freshly commissioned lieutenant soon felt hemmed in by the barracks square. He and his friend Scheringer secretly sought contact to Hitler. That was a breach of their oaths as soldiers, preparation for high treason. The young lieutenants were brought to trial.
10:12:46:23 Adolf Hitler appeared as a witness. There was a lot of press and hubbub.
10:13:02:03 My mother secretly visited him in jail. She even stayed overnight.
10:13:20:08 "My dear Richard, after my release I immediately threw myself into the turmoil. I often speak at SA recruiting rallies, and I agitate against the system, not without success. Only now have I really committed myself to National Socialism. Two things really made the difference. First, the SA, which is an outstanding troop. Second, the personality of Hitler, whom I have now had the chance to get to know better during a longer stay in Munich. His goals are absolutely great and what he wants is pure."
Erla
10:13:56:15 If he had done it just to promote his career, he definitely would have discussed it with me. I wouldn't have approved of it. - He would have? - Yes. Something to promote his career... He certainly would have discussed it with me.
10:15:30:20 The joy of his life
(Translates German writing on black screen)
Hans Ludin
10:15:32:22 "The courage, tenacity, obedience, loyalty, and willingness to sacrifice
Originalton Hanns Ludin, 1933
of the SA Group Southwest should, now and henceforth, have only one great goal before its eyes: The liberation of the German nation. In hard work on ourselves, in constant struggle against everything un-German, this goal must be achieved. Let our honor be to serve this goal. When German farmers, workers, and soldiers stand as one man in the fight, then no power on earth can render our slavery eternal. To move forward on this path is the joy of my life."
Barbel
10:16:30:20 Maybe... it was probably because I preferred to flee into Erla's arms than into his. Because he was too...
10:16:52:05 That my father joined the SA, I could grasp. He had burned his bridges back to the military. To escape the army of the jobless he chose the brownshirts. Greeting him was salvation, the Führer, the comrades. That he remained in the SA, even after 1934, when the Führer killed his comrades, I never understood.
Erla
10:17:25:14 It didn't get under my skin, some of his best friends were among them.
Meine Mutter, 1978
At any rate, one of them, I know, was one of his best friends. Who died. I was terribly indignant and disappointed.
Was he, too?
- He, too, of course. But I didn't tell him to drop the whole thing. There was never really any question of that. Did he have a tendency to drop everything? Maybe he would have liked to, because he was full of despair and rage. In my case... I would have tried to tell him that you can't make an omelet without breaking eggs that there are always difficulties, and that he should just persevere.
10:18:47:17 Belated memory
Malte
10:18:56:12 One year before she died, my mother told me something else. In March 1933, in a little town in Swabia, my father covered for an SA thug.
Erla
10:19:10:05 Except for Klein, they were all very just. Except for Fritz Klein, Hanns must have seen to that himself. He didn't want anything...
Malte
10:19:25:13 ... to happen to Klein, and nothing did happen to him, because my father had covered up the killing of Hermann Stern in Creglingen.
Malte
10:19:33:01 ... that he didn't exert pressure. But with Klein, pressure was exerted.
Erla
10:19:38:08 Yes, for people, he...
-Yeah, but I mean...
Erla
10:19:42:06 That's something entirely different. You just can't compare them.
- What had Klein actually done?
10:19:52:14 Apparently he... killed at least one Jew. In '38 on the 9th of November 1938, and several days later he came, he came and said: "You gotta help me. A coupla Jews died." Now I don't even remember the town. I've told you that often before, I don't even know what town it was. It turned out that he... and Hanns even told me this, I think, of course he was annoyed. He resented Klein for it. He had chased an older or a Jewish man out of bed, who ran out into the street in his pajamas and these guys chased him down. Who else was with them, no idea. I just don't know. Anyway, it was something that otherwise would have been severely punished.
10:21:04:11 Our children's happiness
(Translates German writing on black screen)
Fabian, Malte's nephew:
10:21:08:03 This is a dedication: "For the 30th birthday of our Group Leader, the staff of the SA Group Southwest has..." OK.
Meine Neffe Fabian
Malte
10:21:15:21 Read what it says. "It is of no consequence who one day falls as the culmination of our struggle. Crucial is that we live bravely."
Hanns Ludin
10:21:29:04 "The night, SA comrades, lies behind us. Ahead of us lies a new day.
Originalton Hanns Ludin, 1933
What this day will bring us is still uncertain. Courageously, let us carry our banner, courageously and tenaciously endure until the day when Germany is free, our honor restored, and the happiness of our children and wives secured for decades."
Ellen
10:22:05:01 I don't have a lot... I have astonishingly few memories of him. Just happy ones, being in the bathtub together, and it was simply wonderful. He was so much fun.
Barbel
10:22:21:13 Despite all the discipline that he acquired in the course of his development, of growing up, somehow he was also a bit of a bon vivant. He loved good food and good wine and he laughed a lot. He always played his jokes on us. I remember what he looked like. Children always think their parents are beautiful, up to a certain age, but I was always amazed at his huge paws. He had especially large hands and sometimes he would grasp us by the head and we fit into the crook of his arm, and he would lift us up. It was a test of courage.
Barbel
10:23:52:14 Once, he caught Eri and me quarrelling. Up in our room. He summoned us to him probably I was already crying. Anyway, we had to write one hundred times, each of us, "I should not quarrel on Sunday." And that was kind of a joke again. Because you shouldn't quarrel weekdays, either. We had to write that and I probably reached about thirty, crying my eyes out. I could still hardly write. Eri was better, she was two years older.
10:24:45:24 My big sister
(Translates German writing on black screen)
Malte
10:24:50:24 She was the closest to her father. She was his first-born. And the loss hit her hardest.
Alexandra, Malte's niece
10:25:01:11 I could tell she was raging inside. She had something in her that I experienced as a black hole, as an internal raging that she had to get rid of. This darkness. From the very beginning I felt that her drinking was a creeping suicide.
10:25:36:23 I suspect that my mother had no chance to mourn this loss of her father,
Meine Nichte Alexandra
to work through it and understand what had really happened. Instead, she just carried on with everyday life. This ambivalence was always in the air, on the one hand an incredible anger at him that he had left her in the lurch, that he was just gone and couldn't take care of her. Anger because she actually knew that he had been a criminal, that he had supported the Nazi regime. And on the other hand an infinite sadness and incredible grief that this father she loved was no longer there, not as a father and not as a guiding figure in her life.
Heiner
10:26:31:20 And in the end it broke her and our relationship as well, which at some point
Mein Schwager Heiner
was so affected by her self-destruction that all I could do was pull the emergency brake.
10:26:49:14 His Führer
(Translates German writing on black screen)
Fabian
10:26:53:20 "Certificate of the Awarding of the Blood Order of the NSDAP. At my suggestion, the Führer has granted Party Member Hanns Ludin the Blood Order of the NSDAP. Munich, January 30, 1939."
Barbel
10:27:30:13 There is a photo where he's bending over to us. Our father stands to one side and Eri presents him flowers, and I'm wringing my hands beside her. I was supposed to say "Welcome to Stuttgart" or something, and I had forgotten it. But I think I was just three, three at the most. I still have this memory of messing up. But it wasn't anything terrible, nobody was upset at me, except maybe me with myself.
Ellen
10:28:08:07 I also see him with his medals decorating the Christmas tree, but he never did that. It's just this association that for me he always looked so magnificent.
10:28:28:23 In times of dire need God sends us the saviour, our Führer, our glorious SA!
10:28:49:12 My big brother
(Translates German writing on black screen)
Malte
10:29:00:23 Tille was three years older than me. When I was thirteen, he went far away and made his life there.
Johannesburg-City, 2002
When I asked him about it, he said: ‘If it must be, then it's better you make the film than someone we don't know. But don't drag my children into it.'
Astrid, Malte's niece
My father had a photograph of his father on his study desk and I knew who it was. And...I asked him who it was,
Meine Nichte Astrid
and he said an uncle that I didn't know. I must have been somewhere between ten and twelve at that stage so... it made it very clear to me that my father didn't want to discuss his father with me. Through my teens, I tried to engage him in various times and my father was always... He read a lot. He read a lot about the Second World War, he tried to see movies about the Second World War. It was definitely very much part of... I always had the feeling he was searching for something. I think my father... for him, it was very painful and I respected that. For me, my South African history was very painful in dealing with that.
Malte
For a long time I put off confronting my father's past. I contented myself with hearsay. There was little of that, but in postwar Germany it tended to be approving. When I was a boy, my father seemed like a hero, a martyr. Then, in the late 60s, he was just another Nazi for me, like other Germans who belonged to the German past.
10:31:19:10 In 1989, when the Iron Curtain fell, I met my later wife. I told her whose father's son I was. Her view of Nazi history was that of the victims. She asked me unpleasant questions.
Bratislava/Pressburg/Pozsony
(German writing on black screen - no translation required)
10:32:09:21 The scene of my father's crimes, where I was born. They used to speak three languages here: Slovakian, Hungarian, and German. The fourth language, says the poet, was silence.
10:32:36:16 The Slovakian state was the result of Hitler's extortion and of the destruction of Czechoslovakia. Sovereign on paper, in reality it was a vassal of the Greater German Reich. Its government eagerly passed laws fully the equal of Germany's race laws. But their implementation in Slovakia went too slowly for the Germans in Berlin. Jozef Tiso, a Catholic priest, was the President. His power base was the clergy and the landowners. In his anti-Czech zeal, he'd have made a pact with Lucifer.
10:33:27:09 When, at the end of 1940, my father was appointed Ambassador to Slovakia, the aim was to tighten the reins on the vassals between the Danube and the Carpathians. My father had no inkling of diplomacy. Receiving orders carrying them out, giving them - that's what my father was used to. But he used his power sparingly and showed understanding for Slovakia's own interests.
10:34:04:02 Among his duties was to strengthen the German minority. They were to know that the German Reich would not abandon them. For one thing,
it needed the men for the war.
10:34:38:10 Three Slovakian gentlemen, historians by profession, were eager to talk with me.
first historian
10:34:44:08 It wasn't as dangerous for Dr. Jozef Tiso as for Wisliceny... Ludin showed greatness in not letting himself be broken completely. Although Wisliceny testified against him...
Second historian
Why we talk positively about Ludin? That's simply because we know the situation, we know the circumstances in which he worked. We know the reports, which he sent to Berlin. The relations were smooth, friendly, and really on a high level of civilized behavior.
Malte
10:35:40:17 The house was very modern for its time. It belonged to Steiner, the beer king of Slovakia. They confiscated it. I was born in an Aryanized villa.
Mrs Dr. Valentova, former neighbour
10:35:49:21 The whole house was for the Ludin family. This room to the left was a beautiful dining room. In the middle were a reception hall, a salon, and furnished like that. Over there on the left was your father's work room.
10:36:06:08 10:36:08:20 2:12 Ah, yes. Down here.
- Yes, down here.
Frϋhere Nachbarin, Frau Dr. Valentová
10:36:09:02 There was a broad stairway and that was the playroom, because the children had bedrooms up above. But over there were just toys; there was a little boudoir for your mother there was the master bedroom, and over there was another little children's room.
Barbel
10:36:30:05 It was just a little house. Another storey was added. And Marika, one of the maids, was cleaning a stairway, and she had on a beautiful Slovakian folk costume. I can still remember it.
Prof. Dr. Juraj Stern
10:36:55:10 The house that belonged to my parents was near the Embassy
Prof. Dr. Juraj Štern
and the house where your father lived. My father's experiences in this time were not nice at all. And on top of it: this neighborhood, which made it even more rigorous for us. More problems, because Jews were forbidden to move about freely. And the embassy was under guard, so the other measures,
Ehemalige Gesandtschaft, Pressburg
I mean security measures, affected my parents indirectly, as well. On a certain date, the Jews had to leave Pressburg, the city had to be "judenfrei", free of Jews. And of course these were the first places to be cleansed. So our whole family had to leave the city and move eastward. We experienced part of the war in Eastern Slovakia.
Barbel
10:38:09:22 Down below were the salons, and then came the first upper storey. Is this interesting? Here is the parents' bedroom, with a dressing room and their bath, and then there was Hanns' work room and Erla's little salon, and next to them was our children's play room and then the next door, there was our children's dining room. A stairway went up from there, and there were our bedrooms.
Prof. Dr. Stern
10:38:42:18 I was housed in a stall with cows and horses. And I slept, I don't know
how you say it in German: where the cows have their feed. The trough. And there I was covered with hay, and you have to imagine, a 3- or 4-year-old child, what kind of an experience that is. When I came out, I began to stutter. Until my 18th birthday I stuttered badly. At school I had to write my answers on the blackboard. I only got rid of it with hard work and the help of speech therapists.
Barbel
10:39:26:11 We sang a lot and we played theater, we played circus in the garden, always under Eri's instruction.
Ellen
10:39:38:21 We were happy, we had a great time as children. You didn't experience it anymore, but Tilman and me in our little play car.
Prof. Dr. Stern
10:39:49:17 Eating, sleeping, drinking, and what a person does. And the whole day by myself, just the few minutes when this farmer came to tell me, "You should keep quiet and not scream, not cry." Just imagine the pressure: I didn't cry, I didn't scream.
10:40:18:05 Paper trails
(Translates German writing on black screen)
602 10:40:22:21 10:40:24:01 1:05 Here rests my father's past as Hitler's Ambassador, neatly documented. When I was looking through the files, I quietly hoped to find something to exonerate him. That at some point he dissented, refused, or obstructed.
Barbel
10:41:12:10 Hanns was not only responsible for that, he had other tasks, he also had to pass on the tasks the Foreign Office assigned him
Meine Schwester Barbel
to the Slovakian government.
Elmar, Barbel's husband
10:41:25:13 Well, from the documents, as far as I've seen them, I don't see any proof that he started anything
Mein Schwager Elmar, Barbels Mann
on his own initiative. Aside from that, I can't determine what or whether your father knew or could have known or should have suspected what actually happened to the deported Jews. These documents, as far as I have seen, don't reveal anything about that.
Malte
10:42:25:19 ‘Arrested so far: 18,937. "Special treatment":2,257. Transferred to German camps: Jews 8,975, others 530."
Barbel
10:42:53:23 Maybe from 1941 onwards you could criticize him for not informing himself... adequately... but he couldn't have. Because who could have told him what happened to these people?
10:43:29:10 Tuvia Rübner, poet
(Translates German writing on black screen)
Malte
10:43:33:23 In 1941, my father had just taken office. This man's parents sent him away, to Palestine and succor. He never saw his parents again.
Malte
10:43:56:10 I was reticent to tell him whose son I am.
Malte
10:43:58:18 No, no... He was sent here. It was an order from Hitler. He was a soldier, and was sent here and he held his office until April 1945.
Tuvia Ruebner
10:44:14:14 Then he is actually the one to whom my parents and my whole family fell victim. Life brings different experiences.
Malte
656 10:44:30:19 Well, he did not have... direct executive responsibility
657 10:44:34:05 10:44:37:02 2:22 658 10:44:37:10 10:44:39:01 1:16 for the deportations. That was Wisliceny, there were departments in the embassies, in Hungary, in Romania.
Tuvia
10:44:47:18 Yes, I know that. I know who that is. Wisliceny. Ludin, I haven't heard this name. What I remember is my father, who was a very... a person who didn't show his feelings. He stood there, off to the side, and said goodbye to me. My mother and sister both cried, and Mother said, If you don't want to go, you can stay here. And actually I wanted to stay, but I was already on the train, and I didn't know what no one knew back then, what would come. My father may have known and hidden it.
Malte
10:45:38:00 Did your contact immediately break off completely or was it still there?
Tuvia
10:45:42:07 No, it was still there. The kibbutz allowed us once every two months, supposedly there wasn't enough money, to write Red Cross letters. I still have two or three Red Cross letters. Where you're allowed to write 24 words. They were censored and there was space for an answer on the back. It went through the Red Cross. And then I received the last one through an acquaintance, an official in the Bratislava office of Palestine: Parents resettled, new residence Lodz, and the rest was censored.
That was the last sign.
That was the last. I still have that letter, too.
Tuvia
10:46:37:05 "My Little Sister
In the air,
she flows no more,
in the air,
she closes like a fist,
in the air,
she crumbles to dust,
in the air,
blind as fire,
in the air,
sweet - not from blossoming,
in the air,
thin as a whimper,
in the air,
she opens wide a thousand eyes
and every eye a darkness,
in the air,
she lingers between lip and lip,
my little sister lives the eternity of the last moment."
Barbel
10:47:30:13 This is the point we always come to.
Meine Schwester Barbel
The only way he could be counted among the Nazi criminals or Nazi murderers is if he had known that... I assume he didn't know, and there is also... I've read it in Dönhoff's book, she also says we knew the Jews were sent to labor camps, but no one could have known they were being killed.
Elmar
10:48:03:09 Back then they talked about labor camps,
Elmar, Barbels Mann
about forced resettlement, about deportation, about sending them off to the East, all of them terrible expressions, and a terrible fate as well. But that this terrible fate was even worse and finally presented itself as organized killing, not presented itself but actually happened was difficult to grasp. Although many people involved as functionaries could know it and actually did know it.
Heiner
10:48:57:16 When you take this position, with this background in the Foreign Office
Heiner, Eris Ex-Mann
and are confronted with all these things, how can you not know what Final Solution means and what happens when you initial an order to transport the Slovakian Jews away. You only ask where and why, what did these people do, aside from being Jews?
Erla
10:49:57:23 The wife of the Swiss Ambassador, once when I ran into her on the street, she told me she had taken in a Jewish child to protect it from Auschwitz. And I asked, what's Auschwitz, and she said, "You know perfectly well." But I had no idea. She said, "You're just pretending." I said: "No,
Meine Mutter, 1978
please tell me what that is." Then she said, "It's a place where the Jews are gassed." And I didn't really understand what she meant by "gassed", but then she said: "Killed." And I said, defiantly, "We should have locked them all up, those who live abroad damage us so terribly with propaganda." Then I went home and there was a man from Berlin sitting there with my husband, it must have been shortly before dinner, I indignantly told them what I had heard. It's really very stupid that I have no idea who he was: someone with a function in Berlin. He said, "Auschwitz is a munitions factory, the Jews work there for our armaments." My husband and I believed him. That was that.
Ellen
10:51:27:10Yes, well, even if... He wasn't standing somewhere with a pistol,
Meine Schwester Ellen
he didn't have a key to the gas chamber. In that case... You could say those are the worst, the ones who organize it from their desks, but I'm sorry...
Andrea
808 10:51:51:24 Somebody who wrote to our mother in 1945! These are important things.
Meine Schwester Andrea
According to everything I know, he wasn't someone who wanted to save his own skin at any price and glorify himself for posterity. He wrote the children can be proud of their father. That's not what someone writes who knows Jews are being killed, who knowingly sends people to their deaths, it just can't be, not even the worst criminal can be that schizophrenic. There's something wrong... So I just can't believe it.
Ellen
10:52:38:22 He tried, in a very mild way, he didn't work against it, If I knew why... Maybe... he believed in it. He must have, otherwise he wouldn't have done it.
Malte (reads)
10:53:18:07 "I myself, in personal talks with the most influential Slovakian personalities, have again and again pointed out the political necessity for a total solution. I did not have a diplomatic assignment."
Barbel
10:53:37:00 Then he must have been the biggest liar, and that is impossible, precisely that was an old German virtue, one that has also vanished meanwhile.
Meine Schwester Barbel
One strove to be honest. So lies, even harmless fibbing you disdained and didn't do and that's how we were raised. I don't remember any particular pedagogical measures, but it simply was that way.
Malte
10:54:49:13 "Re.: Slovakian bishops' pastoral letter against state anti-Jewish measures. Prime Minister Dr. Tuka informed me that, through his assistant secretary Dr. Koso, he summoned a bishop to discuss this pastoral letter. The bishop in question declared that the Slovakian bishops had received the following report on a German atrocity against Jews. In the Ukraine, masses of Jews were shot down, and not just men, but also women and children. They had to dig their own graves before their execution."
Andrea
10:55:36:06 The matter is so complex and difficult, even the documents exist only as dispatches to the Foreign Office, where he answered. They don't tell me... When I evaluate it all together, they don't mean that he thought the Jews were being annihilated, when he gives a number: so and so many have now been deported.
Barbel
10:56:10:05 The resettlement ,the deportation,... The annihilation. The deportation was something you can't...
- The murdering.
10:56:23:04 ...can't forgive and, even if at that time one couldn't have... well, thank God two thirds of the Jews from Germany.
-You've said that before.
- It's true. Elmar has the precise numbers.
Malte
10:56:36:14 Whether they're correct or not I think it's amazing that people say, these could leave and the other third were killed.
Barbel
10:56:47:13 Can I just finish...
- That's what I understood.
Those who could leave or who had to leave and could, because they could pay, those were the people one knew, the doctor or the lawyer, those kind of people. But you didn't know the other ones. And people from our circles never came into contact with them. Those were the poor Jews who couldn't to leave.
- And so?
10:57:19:03 They were deported. All I wanted to say is that...
Malte
10:57:21:24 They were killed. Do you think that lets anyone off the hook?
- No.
-That not all three thirds were killed?
Barbel
10:57:30:07 No, but... Because you say the Germans just looked on happily. What people said is: They emigrated. And people accepted that answer.
Ellen
10:57:46:23 But people must have realized what was happening, because one day I asked our father, "Papa, are you a Jew?" Because he was wearing a medal, and to me it must have looked like a Jewish star. They were bewildered, but I only know this from something Erla said maybe.
Malte
10:58:15:07 So even before you knew what a medal was, you knew what a Jewish star looked like. Couldn't you say that?
Ellen
10:58:21:18 Maybe... It could be.
Malte
10:58:26:04 And those who were arrested?
Barbel
10:58:28:03 10:58:30:00 1:22 I don't know if anyone noticed them being arrested.
I didn't notice and I don't think our mother did either.
Malte
10:58:36:22 With about 300 thousand people, a lot of Germans must have noticed when their classmates or neighbors were suddenly missing.
Barbel
10:58:43:20 It wasn't that many. The number doesn't matter.
Ellen
10:58:46:10 One time on the street there was a very old man with a coat and he looked so haggard, or impoverished, an old man who wore a Jewish star. That was my impression. I asked whoever was there, what that is.
Malte
10:59:13:22 I met Mrs. Alexandrova. Until the Nazis came she taught at the German school in Pressburg. As late as March 1945, she and her newborn son were abducted to Theresienstadt.
Viola Alexandrova
10:59:27:07 My parents were deported, they were all deported. And never came back.
Viola Alexandrová und ihr Sohn Fero
My children grew up without a grandmother, grandfather, aunts or uncles. We didn't have that. It's a long story how they learned where I am. At that time, it was November - September, October, November - he wasn't even three months old. We came to Sered. Sered was a labor camp. Sered was completely empty, because just the day before they had deported the people. But those were the last deportations and only the younger men had been taken to Auschwitz. The older men and women with children went to Theresienstadt. I was in Sered for three months, not just me, of course. They were waiting for Sered to fill up again.
Malte
11:00:47:08 That was already February 1945, or January?
Viola Alexandrova
11:00:52:01 It was still 1944. All I can remember is this date. I already said, I may remember birth-dates, but I'm not good with dates otherwise. But I knew, on March 13 we had to be in Theresienstadt. It took us four days to get there, in cattle cars. On June 11 I came back with him. At that time he weighed... He was just a little corpse.
Barbel
11:01:30:11 I'm not guilty of anything. I don't feel guilty. I don't regard our father as guilty. I don't have to have guilt feelings.
Malte
11:01:39:02 The Catholic bishops in Slovakia...
Barbel
11:01:41:18 Nothing about gassing...
Malte
11:01:44:05 But about mass killings.
Barbel
11:01:47:01 Yes, mass killings. Many were partisans. There were really Jewish partisan groups, because the Poles wanted to be by themselves so the Jews had their own partisan groups...
Malte
11:01:58:04 This has nothing to do with partisans. They just clearly said: In these so-called work camps, the Jews aren't put to work, they are being killed.
Barbel
11:02:07:21 Show me that first.
Malte
Jews were killed in masses.
Barbel
11:02:10:18 Yes, killed in masses, that's true, they were, in the course of shooting partisans, the Jews were also collected.
Malte
11:02:20:03 You mean it was right that they were shot?
Barbel
11:02:22:11 No, not that, but that's war, little Malte - That's just war. The terrible reality is shooting and murder. You act as if you are I don't know what, the avenger, the avenger of the oppressed.
Malte
11:02:39:05 Shame?
Barbel
11:02:40:24 I don't know what that is...
Malte
11:02:43:16 You know very well what that is.
Barbel
11:02:46:18 That's ridiculous. Why ridiculous? - I'm so ashamed! No. You are dogged and stubborn because you insist on trying to get me to say something that proves you are right.
Malte
11:03:02:06 Do you think he condoned their death? Just so he could continue believing in Hitler?
Barbel
11:03:07:13 Of course, he condoned and he wanted to remain in power,
Malte
11:03:12:02 No, but what do you think it was? You must be able to say something!
Barbel
11:03:16:06 No, I have nothing to say about it.
Malte
Was he crazy?
Barbel
11:03:18:20 Yeah, maybe he was crazy, like we are all crazy. Yes, he was crazy.
Malte
11:03:23:12 Our father knew it. So where did he put this knowledge?
Barbel
11:03:27:01 Yes, probably in... I don't know what pocket.
Voiceover
11:03:38:04 ...the end of exceptional permits for Jews "practically meant the extension of a death sentence, for the ensuing transfers to camps for Jews outside of Slovakia were connected with physical liquidation".
Newsreel
11:04:21:18 "Field Marshall Keitel enters Bratislava's festive City Hall, where he will be accommodated in the grand suite during his visit. Dr. Kovacs greets the esteemed guest as Adolf Hitler's representative and one of his closest associates. After the visit with Defense Minister General Catlos and Prime Minister Dr. Tuka Field Marshall Keitel strides to his audience with the President of the Republic, Dr. Jozef Tiso."
Voiceover
11:05:07:09 The front line was nearing. In Slovakia resistance was growing. Partisans gathered in the woods. An armed uprising began at the end of August 1944. Some regular troops joined the revolt. The SS and the Wehrmacht took control of the country. The Gestapo hunted down the last remaining Jews.
Malte
11:05:45:02 Wouldn't that have been the right moment to stop?
Barbel
11:05:49:17 I don't think so. He might even have regarded that as running away. Like the saying: The rats leaving the sinking ship. Maybe he wanted to complete what, in those few years, his task had been there.
Subtitle
11:06:20:01 "Museum of the Slovakian National Insurrection"
((Translates German writing on screen - Museum des Slowakischen Nationalaufstandes)
Malte
11:06:36:19 Like your husband said one night: We are ruled by criminals. It looks like we are ruled by criminals.
Erla
11:06:44:23 I think it was 1945.
Malte
11:06:48:24 That's one of those moments, when an Ambassador says that then he's in a severe crisis.
Erla
11:06:55:08 He definitely was.
Malte
11:06:58: As the person closest to him, what did you say?
Erla
11:07:00:21 I tried to console him and to tell him...He didn't respond to my saying there is a lot of good and one has to accept that it comes with a lot of bad.
Voiceover
11:07:21:12 "The Slovakian Foreign Ministry informed the embassy about a letter requesting the Slovakian government to permit an asylum for Jewish children, and aged and sick people under the protection of the International Red Cross. We told Dunand there were no prospects for the of a Jewish asylum, since it is proven that the Jews, regardless of age or sex, were crucially involved in the uprising in Slovakia. An asylum would be used as a new center for Jewish resistance."
Ellen
11:07:57:18 I can't say he wasn't a criminal. But for me he definitely wasn't.
Subtitle
11:08:04:13 Children of a perpetrator
Ellen
11:08:16:19 Like I said, my conviction is that I'm not the child of a perpetrator. But the way I have lived, and the difficulties I had in my childhood and youth, I was one. And in my head maybe I'm more of a perpetrator's child than here.
Barbel
1108 11:08:38:23 11:08:41:15 2:17 I don't see myself as the child of a perpetrator. I see myself as the child of... one of the victims of this terrible time. Of this terrible... terrible idea, to have one person, Hitler, to place all your hopes in that one person and think this person will save the world. That's simply absurd and that's what our father must have thought. Many thought that.
Malte
11:09:14:19 Was he crazy, or what?
Barbel
11:09:16:21 You didn't have to be crazy. You had to live in that time.
Subtitle
"Meine Schwester Ellen"
Ellen
11:09:20:22 The only thing I've reproached him with is that
Meine Schwester Ellen
if he had wanted to know and hadn't held on so strongly to his unshakeable belief in National Socialism - I don't necessarily connect it with Hitler - then he could have... whatever it might have been,...known or done anything.
Fabian
11:09:51:03 Not only because he's my grandfather, but because unfortunately these were probably the most atrocious crimes
"Fabian, ihr Sohn"
ever committed in human history. That this man was involved in it was maybe simply too much to deal with.
Ellen
11:10:10:13 It's no use tearing yourself apart and to know that I have to accept it. I have accepted that I'll never have precise clarity about it.
Fedor
11:10:27:09 I would let children spare themselves the final guilty verdict
Fedor, ihr Mann
and the final condemnation, if it doesn't absolutely have to be. If there aren't facts on the table that are so indisputable that they have to say: There's no room for interpretation, he was a... real perpetrator.
Malte
11:10:57:02 So we simply have to live with the fact that... That we may be siblings, and that you are my oldest sister but that you can't answer your little brother what went on in our father's mind. Because if one is noble, like you say... - Noble! Then one wouldn't have done it.
Barbel
11:11:13:09 Noble is... I do think he was better than I am and maybe even better than you.
Voiceover
11:11:22:20 In early April 1945, President Tiso appeared here, fleeing from the Red Army, accompanied by the German Ambassador.
Stift Kremsmunster, Osterreich
Voiceover (Malte)
The Americans were searching for both. The government in Prague wanted their extradition. There Tiso was seen as a traitor, the German as Hitler's agent. My father was quartered in the castle across the way and was waiting for orders from Berlin. On April 20, when photos of Hitler were already rare, he celebrated Führer's birthday. Then GIs came to the castle.
Monica Cavallin
11:12:03:20 They were looking for a hiding place in the building for the Ambassador,
Monica Cavallin
because they were afraid that they would him away immediately. Then my father remembered this room. The rug cellar. He sent him up there with a ladder and he climbed up. He had some dried fruit and a few cans and plenty of water. Then a mason came to brick up this arch. It wasn't on the blueprint, and my father thought that would keep them from finding him. But the Ambassador couldn't stand it very long up there. They always communicated through a little hole by knocking in code. My father went down, it was 4 or 5 in the morning, to bring him more provisions. Then he left on a bicycle. Accompanied by lots of good wishes, because he was an exceptionally benevolent and nice person. We all liked him a lot. As a child, he gave me a leather bag. I was very proud of it. There were Slovakian coins in it.
Subtitle
11:13:17:19 Completing his task
(German translation of writing on black screen)
Voiceover (Malte)
11:13:30:22 He turned up again in a US Prisoner-of-War camp. Our mother saw him for the last time there, through the fence. He rejected any opportunities to flee.
A book widely read shortly after the war says he wanted to face up to his responsibility. In October 1946, two officials came from Prague and took him away. Back to Pressburg, the scene of the crime.
Andrea
11:14:05:13 If you deny that he also helped people...
Meine Schwester Andrea
Malte
11:14:10:21 We don't want to deny that at all.
Andrea
11:14:13:09 Then you'll have to do that alone. I think it's low-down, dirty, to use such documents to...
Malte
Don't work yourself up. There's no need to.
Andrea
I think you have...
Malte
11:14:24:09 If you read the document from Hahn, it indicates...
Andrea
11:14:27:06 Because he didn't know, the people weren't told...
Malte
11:14:30:02 Maybe so, but...
Andrea
Fabsel, you needn't gloat...
Fabian (?)
11:14:33:10 I'm not gloating, I'm just so surprised... at the discrepancy with what I've heard before.
Andrea
11:14:40:05 OK. But it's not for you to judge.
Fabian (?)
11:14:42:09 In our family, we always heard he saved Kurt Hahn's life. But this letter doesn't show that.
Andrea
11:14:47:08 But it does, tacitly. - He hints at it. Can you put that down there, please? It just can't be that a Nazi rescued people's lives...
Heiner
11:15:12:11 I felt I'd been tricked, because as a child
Meine Neffe Heiner jun.
I ran around depicting my grandfather more as a resistance fighter.
11:15:22:13 ...wouldn't it be nice...
(German translation of writing on black screen)
Subtitle
Fedor
11:15:25:04 At any rate we didn't give Fabsel this impression.
Meine Schwager Fedor
He can't have had that impression.
11:15:30:07 I can remember that the only way I spoke about Hans was
"Fabian, sein Sohn"
as if he had been a fantastic man, as if he'd been a resistance fighter.
Malte
11:15:44:06 Did you tell your friends that?
Fabian
Yeah.
Malte
11:15:44:13 Where did you get this information?
Fabian
11:15:46:19 Probably from my mother.
Fedor
11:15:49:03 It's impossible that he thought he was a resistance fighter. Did he say that? Impossible, impossible!
Ellen
11:15:58:19 My children have already experienced too much of it. The way they are... they are very insecure. And that's what I passed on to them, because I was always insecure and still am. Because of these traumas, you might say. I see very clearly that I have passed it on and I'm convinced anyway that the next generation carries this burden in them.
Benita
When I first met you at LSE I didn't know you were Jewish, at all. I just thought you were a very sexy man, because you were much thinner than now, and so it wasn't a problem really in the first few minutes at least.
Garan
Would it have been a problem? If I was wearing my yamulkar? And my tefillin?
Benita
Yeah of course. I would never have gone out with a religious nutter no matter what denomination. But, you didn't even know I was German.
Garan
No. I didn't know you were the grandchild of a Nazi.
Subtitle
11:17:10:12 Grandfather's shadow
(German translation of writing on black screen)
Voiceover (newsreel)
11:17:12:10 "...one great goal before its eyes: the liberation of the German nation. In hard work on ourselves, in constant struggle against everything that is un-German, this goal must be achieved. Let our honor be to serve this goal."
Heiner
11:17:33:12 The most important aspect for me is that, my grandmother and her children never managed
Heiner jun., Eris Sohn
to face this truth. They bequeathed their own complexes and insecurities and repressions to our generation.
Ada
11:17:52:02 The only thing I understand is
Ada, Ellens Tochter
that it is a huge conflict for you all. You have an emotional connection to it. But because of documents, books, and everything else, at the same time, you see it in a different way,
Malte jun.
11:18:14:00 It's not like I think, uh-oh, my name Ludin
Malte jun, Barbels Sohn
is soiled with guilt.
Benita
11:18:24:15 But it's interesting to see documents
Benita, Barbels Tochter
he really signed himself. That you can really see, he was quite simply there and lived and did things...
Garan
I've never read these things. I've never seen anything in English.
Garan, ihr Mann
Benita
You know that he was in Slovakia. You know that he was an Ambassador.
Garan
Yeah.
Malte
And you know that he got involved in the Holocaust in Slovakia?
Garan
Not until recently. But I'd always imagined that. I mean, how can a man who works for Adolf Hitler not be involved in the Holocaust? My position is clear - that I find the whole issue of the Holocaust distasteful and sickening and the people who were involved and directly responsible were cowards and criminals. And whatever craziness that drove them to think this was the right thing to do, this was moral and this was for the good of Germany...
Malte jun.
11:19:27:05 It's my grandfather's guilt, but it can't be handed down to my mother or me.
Fabian
11:19:45:07 Ultimately I think everyone does know it somehow. You can't block out the facts so that you believe it.
Fabian, Ellens Sohn
So it's a conflict always in you, and you delude yourself.
Astrid
I think it is important for my son to know not just about his history
Astrid, Tilles Tochter
but also what my relationship is to that history. But he doesn't have to search and infer the way I had to with my father.
Fabian
11:20:14:18 The man stood by it. That's obvious, that he believed in it to the end. It was his life. He died for it. To strip him of that, by not wanting to acknowledge how he came to be that way and what he stood for, doesn't do him justice. Ultimately, they have a false image of their father, an image of a person who could have been someone else, but not their father.
Voiceover (newsreel)
11:20:46:08 "Former Ambassador Ludin gave the cruelest orders against the Slovakian population during the national uprising...
Astrid
I think I still haven't resolved. I'm still searching for the impact. Because it can't not have any impact on me.
Subtitle
11:21:10:20 ‘My father, last pictures'
(German translation of writing on screen - Mein Vater, letze Bilder)
Andrea
11:21:28:11 I really wish he hadn't been there. That his life had taken a different course.
Voiceover (Malte)
11:21:45:17 "I implore you in the name of the whole nation, in the name of thousands of victims of concentration camps and mass graves, in the name of the widows and unhappy orphans, and all those whose life and happiness were destroyed in this war, to sentence Hans Ludin to the utmost penalty that can be pronounced upon a person in this world: death by hanging."
Barbel
11:22:30:01 We wanted to put it behind us.
Malte
11:22:32:06 You didn't want to do this interview and this film.
Barbel
11:22:36:00 Right.
Malte
11:22:37:08 You didn't want it to happen, so what changed your mind?
Barbel
11:22:41:20 I always thought if I don't take part, you'll make the film anyway. And maybe I'm the only one... Because I'm so unshakeable in my certainty, which the others aren't. That's their right. I'm the only one who can do something for Erla, for our father and for our... deceased brother and sister.
Victim's son
11:23:29:09 ...and was sent here, and he held his office until April 1945. Then he is actually the one to whom my parents and my whole family fell victim. Evil is simply stronger than good. Because evil is a vacuum that has to be filled. So it is active. Good is content with itself and so it's passive. It's just there. Evil has to seize hold of something. And that's why it's stronger. Because it's active.
Malte
11:24:12:11 But why is evil a vacuum?
Victim's Son
11:24:15:23 Why it's a vacuum? Because evil can never be satisfied.
Friedhof, Bratislava
Credits