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ABSTRACT
Hitler’s Children (Chanoch Ze’evi, 2011) is the first Israeli documentary dedicated to the topic of descendants of Nazis. This article analyzes cinematic and ethical choices in mediating a notably painful subject for Israeli audiences. It claims that the emphasis on reconciliation and the focus on descendants who acknowledge and express remorse for their parents’ roles in the Holocaust set a cinematic tenor of confession and guilt. The similar perspectives shared by the five descendants interviewed for the film marginalize the conflictual and complex responses of descendants of perpetrators which have been discussed in research, culture, and other films.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 See Steir-Livny, Two Faces, 96–147; Porat, Smoke-Scented Coffee, 357–78; Ofer, “We Israelis Remember, But How.”
2 Zimmerman, Don't Touch, 27–215; Gertz, Different Chorus, 78–102; Steir-Livny, Two Faces in the Mirror, 7–68.
3 There is a dispute among researchers over the historical, political, and social events that changed Holocaust consciousness in Israel. They present various events such as the Kastner trial, the Eichmann trial, the period before the Six-Day War, the Yom Kippur War, the political change of 1977, and more. See Segev, The Seventh Million; Shapira, New Jews, Old Jews; Yablonka, Survivors of the Holocaust; Yablonka, The State of Israel vs. Adolf Eichmann; Zertal, Hauma veha-Mavet; Porat, Smoke-Scented Coffee.
4 Gertz, Different Chorus, 78–102. Steir-Livny, Two Faces in the Mirror, 69–95.
5 Loshitzky, “Post-memory Cinema”; Friedman, “The Double Legacy”; Friedman, “Witnessing for the Witness”; Gertz, A Different Chorus, 78–102; Steir-Livny, Two Faces in the Mirror, 96–147.
6 I use the terms ‘second-generation Holocaust survivors’ and ‘third-generation Holocaust survivors’ not just as biological terms but more widely as cultural terms, which describe the generations that were born after 1945. See Milner, Torn Past, 19–35; Steir-Livny, Is It OK to Laugh About It?, 35–50.
7 This film is discussed by Charlotte Schallie elsewhere in this volume.
8 Steir-Livny, Our Holocaust.
9 Hopper, “Not Monsters, Men.”
10 Ze’evi, Hitler’s Children.
11 Izikovich, “Descendants of Prominent Nazi Officials.”
12 Hirsch, “Past Lives.”
13 Bayer, “After Post-Memory.”
14 McGlothlin, Second-Generation, 38
15 Hopper, “Men, not Monsters.”
16 Prager, After the Fact, 151–70.
17 Steir-Livny, Two Faces in the Mirror, 124.
18 Deuelle-Luski and Wolkstein, “On a Film Unfinished.” For more information on the various genres of international Holocaust films and the problematic nature of the different representations see Kerner, Film and the Holocaust.
19 Saxton, “They Both Hate Spielberg,” 106–24.
20 Ibid.
21 Heywood, “Holocaust and Image”.
22 Felman, “Film as Witness”; Felman and Laub, Testimony; Loshitzky, “Holocaust Others”; Rozenbaum, Hitelr, 221–7.
23 McGlothlin, Second-Generation, 1–42.
24 For example: Bar-On, Legacy of Silence; Bar-On, “Descendants of Nazi Perpetrators,” 55–74; Bar-On, “The Use of a Limited Morality,” 415–27; Bar-On and Gaon, “We Suffered Too,” 77–95; Bar-On, Ostrovsky, and Fromer, “Who am I,” 97–118.
25 Bar-On and Charny, “The Logic,” 3–20.
26 Welzer, “Cumulative Heroization,” 198–215.
27 Von Plato, “Where are the Children,” 221–7.
28 Frei, “Parallel Universes?,” 216–20.
29 McGlothlin, Second-Generation.
30 Ibid.
31 Gurevich and Arev, “Trauma, Guilt, Forgiveness”; Aharoni, “Self-Documentation”; Duvdevani, First Person, Camera.
32 Duvdevani, First Person, Camera.
33 The fear of inherited sin, transfer of evil, and the will to stop it by not having children is also expressed in literature by the children of perpetrators. See McGlothlin, Second-Generation, 26–7.
34 Ibid., 26.
35 Ibid.
36 Ibid.
37 Grierson, “First Principles of Documentary (1932–1934).”
38 Rotha, “Some Principles,” 148.
39 For example, Forsyth, Grierson; Barnouw, Documentary; Barsam, Nonfiction Film; Corner, The Art; Nichols, Introduction; Renov, The Subject; Warren, Beyond Document; Aston and Gaudenzi, “Interactive Documentary.”
40 LaRocca, 7.
41 Ibid.
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Liat Steir-Livny
Dr. Liat Steir-Livny is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Cultural Studies, Creation and Production at Sapir Academic College, and a tutor and course coordinator for the Cultural Studies MA program and the Department of Literature, Language, and the Arts at the Open University of Israel. Her research focuses on the changing commemoration of the Holocaust in Israel from the 1940s until the present. It combines Holocaust studies, Memory Studies, cultural Studies, Trauma studies and Film studies. She has authored numerous articles and five books: Two Faces in the Mirror: The Representation of Holocaust Survivors in Israeli Cinema (2009, Hebrew); Let the Memorial Hill Remember: The New Commemoration of the Holocaust in Israeli Popular Culture (2014, Hebrew); Is it O.K to Laugh about It? Holocaust Humour, Satire and Parody in Israeli Culture (2017); One Trauma, Two Perspectives, Three Years (2018, Hebrew); Remaking Holocaust Memory: Documentary Cinema by Third-Generation Survivors in Israel (2019).