After World War II, many people who survived had relations with renowned Nazis.
Despite what they have gone through, they had to keep on going.
Each one chose a different path…
Bettina Goering (great niece of Adolf Hitler’s second in command Goering) lives in Sante Fe, asking from people hate Germans for what they are. (1) Bettina Goering lived in exile in New Mexico and shockingly described how she and her brother had reached the same conclusion as Larkin (in his poem poem This Be the Verse) and had been sterilised. “I cut the line,” she said. (2, 3)
Hitler’s godson Niklas Frank (whose father Hans was Nazi governor of occupied Poland responsible for the death camps in which six million Jewish people were killed), lectured about his infamous father to young people in the former East Germany in a bid to prevent them from straying into the far-right scene that preys on the young unemployed and desperate. (4)
Monika Goeth, daughter of the monstrous camp commander Amon, portrayed by Ralph Fiennes in Schindler’s List, recounted falling in love with a bar owner only to see a concentration camp tattoo on his wrist one evening and to discover he had been imprisoned in her father’s camp.
Himmler, great niece of Heinrich Himmler, said her generation learnt languages with dedication so that they could go abroad without being recognised as Germans.
(5)
Ruth Kalder Goeth, the wife of Goeth, committed suicide in 1983, shortly after giving an interview in Jon Blair’s documentary Schindler. (6)
Gudrun Burwitz, the 81-year-old daughter of Heinrich Himmler still works at a ruthless pace to keep the Nazi flame alive. (7)
Martin Adolf Bormann became a catholic priest. (8)
The sins of the parents, definitely play a role in their childrens’ lifes. But should they? It is up to us to decide. You never fight hate with hate. But you can completely eradicate it with love… If these stories have something to teach us, this is that the war does not end when the last bullet is fired. It goes on and on in the minds of people for years to come, until someone forgives and puts an end to the infinite loop of hatred…