Inheritance

Monika Hertwig is the reason to see "Inheritance." She comes across as a very real, lovely woman, someone you'd like to have as a friend or next door neighbor. She's a grandmother and housewife, in her sixties, very tall and slim. She's sensitive and caring. She's also the daughter of Amon Goeth, the commandant of Plaszow, the Nazi concentration camp depicted in "Schindler's List." In that film, Ralph Fiennes played Monika's father. Monika was born in 1945. Goeth was executed in 1946.

Monika reports how she learned, slowly but surely, as a child, who her father was and what he did. Monika contacted Helen Jonas, who, as a child, had been one of two Jewish woman named Helen who had served as Goeth's slaves in his Plaszow home. Jonas lived in New Jersey. Monika and Helen met at the site of the Plaszow concentration camp, and James Moll filmed their meeting.

As several viewers have noted, Monika comes across as the more sympathetic of the two women. Monika allows her emotions to show. She weeps profusely when meeting Helen and appears to be approaching Helen for a hug. Helen rebuffs her. It is clear that Helen was severely hurt by her childhood experiences, and has never fully recovered. She still views the world as hostile, even when it is not. Monika is not an enemy. It is her profound misfortune to be the biological child of a very evil man, but she herself is not evil. One would have liked to have seen Helen express the forgiveness for which Monika so obviously hungers.

Monika never knew her father, and comes to know him from others' accounts, including Spielberg's and Fiennes' depiction of Goeth in "Schindler's List." Helen fleshes out the depiction. Goeth pushed Helen, a mere child, down the stairs in his home several times. He knew that Helen, his little slave, had a boyfriend, Adam. One day Goeth teasingly asked Helen where Adam was, and, then, within minutes, shot Adam. Goeth kept two large dogs at Plaszow. He trained them to maul and kill human victims. He robbed Jews before killing them. Monika has a cigarette case from her father. She suspected that he stole it from one of his Jewish victims.

Most mysterious is Monika's mother, Ruth Kalder. No one in the documentary mentions it, but, weirdly, Ruth looks Jewish; certainly her features are those that Nazis would identify as Jewish. She had abundant, striking black hair and a prominent nose, which Monika inherited. In one photo, Ruth looks very much like Chico Marx. This is not a wisecrack, but a statement of fact. It's more than a little odd that Goeth would select a girl who looked so Jewish, even as he sent thousands of Jews to their deaths for their allegedly obvious "racial inferiority," a racial inferiority that was supposed to be obvious in their dark Semitic features, allegedly so different from blond Aryan superiority. One has to ask, why did Ruth love Goeth? The documentary does not probe this pressing question.

"Inheritance" includes archival film footage of the actual execution, by hanging, of Amon Goeth. It was a grotesque event. Hangmen need to know their physics. Length of rope and drop must be calculated to produce a clean death. The masked executioners in Poland tried to kill Goeth two times before getting it right on the third try. The viewer may question why it is important to view this spectacle of death.

I would like to have seen some harder questions asked of each character. Monika: Point blank, did you inherit any of your father's evil? Where did that evil come from? Where did it go? Is he in hell? Can God ever forgive men like Amon Goeth? What would you do if you were God? Would you send your father to hell forever? If not, why not? Helen: Will you ever be able to forgive? Will you ever be able to move on? Will you always be stuck in victim mode? Why are you so harsh with Monika? What about Helen's children? I would have liked to have heard more about their experience of being children of survivors. I would have liked to have seen some depth given to Poland. The bulk of this film was shot in Poland. There were Germans and Jews but there were Polish victims and heroes and perpetrators as well. Poland isn't even background in this doc and that is a failing. Two suicides and one drug addiction are mentioned, but not explored. In short, I was very moved by this documentary, but I would like to have seen it go deeper into the very big questions it touches on.

In the company of "Capturing the Friedman's," this is a film that could never be repeated. And let's hope there are no more opportunities to do so in the future.

My heart was pounding the entire time I watched this film. I felt for both women, and I awaited passions to boil over with the breath hanging in my throat. Surely, these are two women seeking some sense of resolution or closure, but are they seeking it from one another?

If you haven't already viewed this film, I recommend "Schindler's List" and "Hitler's Children" as prerequisites. They will help frame the content that you will be witnessing in this film.

This is an amazing story of two very powerful and proud women. One who survived the holocaust as a victim, the other brandished a victim by her patronage. The story revolves around two women meeting for the first time, one a survivor of a concentration camp, the other the daughter of the commandant of the camp, amon goeth. It begs the question: are we responsible for our father's mistakes? It's hard to imagine the courage both women would have to convey in order to meet each other but they both do brilliantly. I would definitely recommend a viewing, if for nothing else, for the amazing composure of these women who prove tolerance knows no bounds.

An odd coincidence that I watched this after I Am Twenty, another film about people whose fathers were lost in WWII. But Monika Hertwig had a very distinctive father: Amon Goeth, the vicious Nazi concentration camp commandant immortalized in Schindler's List. Monika struggles to cope with the atrocities committed by Goeth, and reaches out to Helen Jonas... a survivor who, as a young girl, was taken into the Goeth villa as a household servant and suffered abuse directly from Goeth's hand. The meeting between these two women provides moments far more shattering and resonant than anything in Spielberg's film, especially when they return to the villa. A very moving story of women trying to find peace with their histories, even better than Moll's previous Holocaust documentary, The Last Days.