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'In Nazi Germany in the 1930s, a secret plan was hatched

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'to create a master race of blond-haired, blue-eyed children.

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'While war raged and millions were murdered,

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'these elite children were bred to populate the Reich

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'that would rule for 1,000 years.'

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Did they want me as a child?

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Or just did they want somebody

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as an ideological person for the system?

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'The project was called Lebensborn,

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'and was the brainchild of SS chief Heinrich Himmler.

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'He said, "Should we succeed in establishing this Nordic race,

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'and from this seedbed produce a race of 200 million, then the world will belong to us.'

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The date of my first birthday,

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"From your Godfather, H Himmler."

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One of the worst criminals in Germany.

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'For the Lebensborn children there would be a tragic outcome.'

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SPEAKS IN GERMAN

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'70 years after World War II began, this film reveals

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'what has become of the children who were born to be the master race.

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'After a life of lies and deception,

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'Guntram Weber finally discovered that he was a Lebensborn child,

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'the illegitimate son of a leading SS officer.

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'These shocking revelations

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'have led him to retrace his father's footsteps

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'to the autumn of 1939,

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'in an attempt to understand his own past.'

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He crossed into Poland.

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Carrying his gun.

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And carrying a list of people he was going to arrest and kill.

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And he knew what he was going to do. And he wanted to do it.

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'One stop on Guntram's journey will be the home in Poland

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'where he spent early childhood.

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'But this was no ordinary upbringing

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'with a mother, father, brothers and sisters.'

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I spent my earliest 15 months here and I know next to nothing about it.

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There are lots of secrets connected with that.

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And most of them are unpleasant.

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This is strange.

39
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The floor looks... I don't know.

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Familiar. Familiar.

41
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'Guntram's first home was one of 30

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'built across the German empire by Heinrich Himmler from 1935 onwards.

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'Their purpose to nurse a special class of illegitimate children

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'capable of becoming the new master race.

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'This project Himmler called Lebensborn or "fountain of life".

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'Like Guntram Weber, Gisela Heindenreich was brought up in a Lebensborn home.'

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Himmler first said, "We have to avoid abortions.

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"Because too much of this precious German blood is getting lost."

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Then he said, "We make an institution called Lebensborn to help women who are pregnant."

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Now, here's the "but".

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"Only to women of good blood."

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This was what Lebensborn actually was.

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They accepted only women fitting the racial "correct" type.

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WOMAN SPEAKS GERMAN

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'Every last detail of the Lebensborn project was overseen

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'by Himmler's watchful fanatical eye.

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'Himmler had rapidly risen to become head of the SS and the Gestapo.

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'Born into a middle-class Catholic family,

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'he became a chicken farmer with a particular obsession

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'for the breeding of genetically pure white hens.

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'It was natural for Hitler to entrust him

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'with the Nazis' programme to create a new master race.

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'But who would be the sexual engine behind this patriotic procreation?

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'Himmler's very own SS.

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'Hitler said, "I do not doubt, within 100 years

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'"all the German elite will be a product of the SS."

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'They became simultaneously an instrument of terror

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'and the genetic seed for the so-called "Aryan race".

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'Together with specially selected blond-haired blue-eyed wives,

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'they were encouraged to have large families.

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'But Himmler soon realised

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'that the strictures of married life slowed up the breeding process.

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'He encouraged his men to extend their carnal duties beyond the marital bed,

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'with Lebensborn on hand for the new single mothers and their children.

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'Himmler said,

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"I have systematically defied existing laws and explained to my men

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"that children are always a blessing.

78
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'"Now my men tell me with shining eyes

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'"that they have just had an illegitimate child.

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'"The girls regard it as an honour, not a disgrace."'

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GISELA: Like never before in their life, they had an importance,

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which they had not had before.

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You were selected to be somebody who will have a child.

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The child will be an Aryan child.

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This child will be part of the so-called master race

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so you are important yourself.

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They had evenings with music and dances,

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but also with training of Nazi ideology.

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I had contact with women who said it was the best time of their life.

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They had nice stuff.

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Everything was OK.

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They felt like, "You are a sister of mine. We have the same ideology."

93
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'For the Lebensborn children themselves,

94
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'their daily routines were tailored to serve the Reich

95
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'and prepare them for their destiny.'

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GUNTRAM: Imagine 30 babies in one room,

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where the nurses are instructed not to answer signals from the babies.

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As a baby, you would utter certain desires. The desire to be fed.

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The desire to be cleaned. The desire for warmth, for cuddling.

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For whatever.

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Your desires would not be answered.

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And that was...that was...programme.

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It was not just, you know, that they forgot.

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It was a programme

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to break your will.

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Once you have broken a person's will you can install your own order.

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'In Lebensborn homes, fathers remained anonymous.

108
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'The Reich was the authority.

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'Himmler even became Godfather to a carefully selected few.'

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'Guntram Weber's mother refused to reveal his father's identity.

111
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'As he grew up in post-war Germany,

112
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'the desire to know where he came from grew ever stronger.'

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I was consciously looking to solve the secrets

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that my mother and my stepfather and the older generation left me with.

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I had questions about myself.

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So, one day, when there was no-one else in the house,

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I went and I opened the wardrobe

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and I looked at the strongbox and the key was on it.

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So I took it, unlocked it, looked in...

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SHARP INTAKE OF BREATH ..found lots of papers.

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None about myself.

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None about myself, but I found a silver cup.

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It gives the date of my first birthday

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and then it says, "From your Godfather, H Himmler."

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I knew the name Himmler, even at 15 and 16.

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And I knew the man was a...

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was a...criminal,

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one of the worst criminals in Germany.

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That indicated that my father must have been high up,

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somewhere close to Himmler.

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'Himmler was Godfather to at least 50 Lebensborn offspring

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'sired by his closest SS colleagues.

133
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'He himself practised what he preached,

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'producing two illegitimate children of his own.'

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There was a shelf at the library with new acquisitions.

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I would go through all the books that came out

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about national socialism.

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I was especially interested in looking at the photos.

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Um...

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And I, er... I tried to determine whether there was any similarity

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between myself and people on those photos.

142
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'It wasn't until many years later

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'that Guntram's stepfather finally told him who his real father was.

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'Ludolf von Alvensleben,

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'a dedicated Nazi, a high-ranking SS officer

146
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'and Himmler's adjutant.

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'In 1939, Alvensleben proved his loyalty to Hitler

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'and the Nazi regime in the most brutal fashion.

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'On 1st September 1939, Germany invaded Poland

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'and started World War II.

151
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'Hitler had ordered that Poland be reduced to a slave nation.

152
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'Its aristocracy, clergy and intelligentsia were to be wiped out.

153
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'During the invasion, Alvensleben led the Selbstschutz,

154
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'a brutal paramilitary organisation made up of Germans living in Poland.

155
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'Alvensleben told his men,

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'"You are now the master race here. Don't be soft. Be merciless.

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'"Clear out everything that is non-German."'

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I will never understand how they came

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to do the kinds of things they did...

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..convinced they would get away with it.

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They were even thinking they could rule the whole world,

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convinced they would get territories for the...

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LAUGHING: ..for the master race.

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You know. Which was to govern the world.

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'Guntram is heading to the War Crimes Office

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'in Bydgoszcz, the town his father used as a Polish base.

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'He and researcher Chris Dziadzielwialski

168
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'have been granted rare access to view criminal case files

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'detailing Alvensleben's crimes.

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'Death Valley just outside town was the site of one of them.'

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Death Valley, or the Fordon Valley, as it used to be known,

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was a desolate and secluded forest,

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away from the city of Bydgoszcz.

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The Germans were transporting the people

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and they were digging ditches

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and then executing people there

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during the war.

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As you can see, this is case after case, after case.

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Some are still open, still people seeking justice.

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'On one day, 7 October 1939,

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'Alvensleben's men executed over 4,000 Poles

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'who were piled into shallow graves and left to rot in Death Valley.'

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It does mention specific names of victims.

184
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Here it mentions Betty Israel.

185
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Betty Levine.

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In Fordon.

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And Fordon again.

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Then Fordon again.

189
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Always, um...

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these killings always happened

191
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with the participation of the Selbstschutz.

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And there are pictures of victims.

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There's a word "Zamordowany" which is "murdered".

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And there are their names.

195
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Franciszka Rupinska, Aniela Rupinska. Sisters or related.

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You see photos of people

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and they were killed just for having a certain nationality.

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It's easy to put away written documents,

199
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but it's not easy to put away the photos and the pictures.

200
00:16:05,800 --> 00:16:11,840
'After the war, Guntram's father was captured by the Allies but escaped.

201
00:16:11,880 --> 00:16:15,160
'Like many high-ranking Nazi war criminals,

202
00:16:15,200 --> 00:16:18,440
'he fled to the safe haven of Latin America,

203
00:16:18,480 --> 00:16:23,440
'living out his life as a free man in Argentina.'

204
00:16:23,480 --> 00:16:27,280
I remember seeing some of the statements he made after the war,

205
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when he was far away from Germany.

206
00:16:30,160 --> 00:16:32,320
One of the statements was,

207
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"There was something at the beginning of the war, but that wasn't much."

208
00:16:38,720 --> 00:16:44,720
30,000 dead people in this area in three months.

209
00:16:44,760 --> 00:16:49,640
I don't know what to say to someone who makes that kind of statement.

210
00:16:49,680 --> 00:16:55,000
"Oh. There was something at the beginning of the war, but that wasn't much."

211
00:16:56,360 --> 00:17:00,960
'Guntram's father's role in the "racial cleansing" of Poland

212
00:17:01,000 --> 00:17:05,120
'was all part of a plan to accommodate the new master race,

213
00:17:05,160 --> 00:17:09,880
'clearing Eastern Europe so that Lebensborn children, like his son,

214
00:17:09,920 --> 00:17:13,560
'could settle there in an expanded Reich.

215
00:17:13,600 --> 00:17:15,280
'Himmler said,

216
00:17:15,320 --> 00:17:18,440
'"Should we succeed in establishing this Nordic race,

217
00:17:18,480 --> 00:17:22,800
'"and from this seedbed produce a race of 200 million,

218
00:17:22,840 --> 00:17:26,720
'"then the world will belong to us."

219
00:17:26,760 --> 00:17:32,200
'Fuelling the empire's expansion by breeding was too slow for Himmler,

220
00:17:32,240 --> 00:17:35,880
'so he turned to other means to expand the Lebensborn.

221
00:17:35,920 --> 00:17:40,600
'He said, "I intend to take German blood from wherever it is found

222
00:17:40,640 --> 00:17:43,600
'"and steal it wherever I can."

223
00:17:43,640 --> 00:17:46,880
'Himmler instructed Lebensborn operatives

224
00:17:46,920 --> 00:17:50,800
'to go out and kidnap "Aryan" children from their parents

225
00:17:50,840 --> 00:17:54,520
'in the occupied eastern territories.

226
00:17:54,560 --> 00:17:58,440
'Folker Heinecke discovered years after the war

227
00:17:58,480 --> 00:18:02,640
'that he had been abducted from the Ukraine, trafficked to Poland,

228
00:18:02,680 --> 00:18:06,360
'and forced into the Lebensborn programme.'

229
00:18:54,920 --> 00:18:59,120
'Children like Folker were Germanised

230
00:18:59,160 --> 00:19:02,760
'and forbidden to speak their own language.

231
00:19:02,800 --> 00:19:07,000
'By the end of the war, over 200,000 "Aryan" children

232
00:19:07,040 --> 00:19:10,800
'had been stolen from Poland and Russia alone.

233
00:19:10,840 --> 00:19:15,000
'Building a numerically and physically superior master race

234
00:19:15,040 --> 00:19:18,400
'was at the core of Nazi ideology.

235
00:19:18,440 --> 00:19:22,640
'Hitler had perverted Darwin's survival of the fittest

236
00:19:22,680 --> 00:19:29,440
'to justify his notion that a strong race should prove a right to exist.'

237
00:19:54,480 --> 00:20:01,000
GISELA: The idea was that there is a special race, the so-called Nordic race.

238
00:20:01,040 --> 00:20:05,760
Blond, blue-eyed people and a special height

239
00:20:05,800 --> 00:20:08,320
are the more precious race.

240
00:20:08,360 --> 00:20:11,680
And they also have a good character.

241
00:20:11,720 --> 00:20:17,840
This crazy maniac idea was that the Aryan race should be,

242
00:20:17,880 --> 00:20:24,480
because they were so precious, should finally reign the world, this was the idea.

243
00:20:24,520 --> 00:20:28,240
SPEAKS EMPHATICALLY IN GERMAN

244
00:20:28,280 --> 00:20:31,720
CROWD CHANTS: Heil Hitler!

245
00:20:34,640 --> 00:20:39,120
GUNTRAM: Look at them closely. Look at them closely.

246
00:20:39,160 --> 00:20:42,160
Many of them were crazy.

247
00:20:42,200 --> 00:20:45,320
They happened to be able

248
00:20:45,360 --> 00:20:47,800
to be in power.

249
00:20:49,360 --> 00:20:56,840
And they assumed that... it was their right

250
00:20:56,880 --> 00:21:01,000
to shape all of Germany in their own image.

251
00:21:08,520 --> 00:21:13,120
'This new world order had no space for flawed imperfection

252
00:21:13,160 --> 00:21:15,160
'or genetic corruption.

253
00:21:15,200 --> 00:21:18,640
'After all, why should the hard-working Germans

254
00:21:18,680 --> 00:21:20,920
'be burdened by the impure?

255
00:21:55,960 --> 00:21:59,680
'While the Nazi propaganda machine was spreading hatred,

256
00:21:59,720 --> 00:22:05,240
'Dorothea Buck was a school student living near the north German coast.'

257
00:22:32,440 --> 00:22:38,320
'Hitler himself had always been an advocate of enforced sterilisation,

258
00:22:38,360 --> 00:22:43,360
'arguing its case long before he came to power in 1933.

259
00:22:43,400 --> 00:22:46,560
'Following a nervous breakdown in 1936,

260
00:22:46,600 --> 00:22:52,520
'19-year-old Dorothea discovered how quickly Hitler's policy

261
00:22:52,560 --> 00:22:56,040
'had become actual medical practice.'

262
00:23:56,240 --> 00:24:01,720
'Dorothea was one of 350,000 forcibly sterilised

263
00:24:01,760 --> 00:24:07,400
'because they were mentally ill, blind or even just depressed.

264
00:24:07,440 --> 00:24:10,160
'Master race logic soon dictated

265
00:24:10,200 --> 00:24:15,120
'that sterilisation would progress to extermination.

266
00:24:15,160 --> 00:24:21,360
'In the autumn of 1939, while Hitler unleashed Nazi barbarity in Poland,

267
00:24:21,400 --> 00:24:26,360
'in Germany he also sanctioned a secret euthanasia programme.

268
00:24:29,680 --> 00:24:37,160
'Over the next two years, more than 70,000 genetic undesirables were murdered.

269
00:24:37,200 --> 00:24:42,200
'Dozens at a time were crammed into small gas chambers,

270
00:24:42,240 --> 00:24:48,840
'their brains dissected on crude tables for genetic research.'

271
00:24:48,880 --> 00:24:53,600
If the Nazis would have known all the scientific results

272
00:24:53,640 --> 00:24:58,440
of genetic experiments, if they knew what we know now - my God!

273
00:25:00,360 --> 00:25:03,440
I had times when I felt like shivering

274
00:25:03,480 --> 00:25:05,840
and, my God!

275
00:25:05,880 --> 00:25:10,880
Well, we have to be very happy that they lost the war.

276
00:25:12,720 --> 00:25:15,040
'After Germany's defeat in 1945,

277
00:25:15,080 --> 00:25:19,880
'the world began to see the full horrors of the Nazi regime.

278
00:25:19,920 --> 00:25:23,600
'Millions had been systematically wiped out.

279
00:25:24,920 --> 00:25:29,840
'The Nazi experiment lay in tatters, Germany shamed and in ruins.

280
00:25:29,880 --> 00:25:34,280
'Although Hitler and Himmler had committed suicide,

281
00:25:34,320 --> 00:25:38,680
'over the next two years, the Nuremberg trials put 200

282
00:25:38,720 --> 00:25:42,640
'of the surviving key architects of the regime to justice.'

283
00:25:42,680 --> 00:25:47,080
< This tribunal sentences you to ten years in prison.

284
00:25:47,120 --> 00:25:51,400
'Lebensborn leaders escaped prosecution,

285
00:25:51,440 --> 00:25:58,960
'claiming the programme was merely a socially progressive network for orphans and illegitimate children.

286
00:25:59,000 --> 00:26:04,600
'After Nuremberg, many Lebensborn mothers, still loyal to the Reich,

287
00:26:04,640 --> 00:26:09,160
'continued lying to their children about their origins.'

288
00:26:10,320 --> 00:26:12,400
GISELA: I felt it.

289
00:26:12,440 --> 00:26:15,080
I felt that there was something...

290
00:26:15,120 --> 00:26:19,280
It was always since I was a child, something was wrong with me.

291
00:26:19,320 --> 00:26:24,080
My story is that I was born in a Lebensborn home in Oslo.

292
00:26:24,120 --> 00:26:28,200
My mother was employee of the Lebensborn

293
00:26:28,240 --> 00:26:30,800
and she was still working in Oslo.

294
00:26:30,840 --> 00:26:35,440
Then she came back with this little baby to her sister and said,

295
00:26:35,480 --> 00:26:39,840
"I brought you an orphan from Norway. Didn't you always want a girl?"

296
00:26:41,400 --> 00:26:45,480
So I was brought up in my very first three years,

297
00:26:45,520 --> 00:26:51,560
I thought my aunt was my mother and my cousins were my brothers.

298
00:26:52,720 --> 00:26:54,800
'After the war,

299
00:26:54,840 --> 00:26:58,800
'Gisela's uncle, the man she thought to be her father,

300
00:26:58,840 --> 00:27:03,200
'was freed by the Allies and returned home.'

301
00:27:03,240 --> 00:27:06,880
I was about three, three and a half.

302
00:27:06,920 --> 00:27:11,360
The boys, who were some years older, said, "Papa is coming!"

303
00:27:11,400 --> 00:27:15,000
So Gissie also said, "My papa is coming back!"

304
00:27:15,040 --> 00:27:20,560
Then this guy said, "What is this SS bastard doing here in my family?"

305
00:27:20,600 --> 00:27:23,800
This was the shock of my small life.

306
00:27:23,840 --> 00:27:28,960
That I was a "SS bastard". I didn't know the word, of course.

307
00:27:29,000 --> 00:27:34,000
Then he said, "This is not my child." And I was lost.

308
00:27:34,040 --> 00:27:38,400
'When Gisela's real mother came forward,

309
00:27:38,440 --> 00:27:43,640
'she was told yet another story about her daughter's origins.'

310
00:27:43,680 --> 00:27:47,040
They told me my father died in Russia,

311
00:27:47,080 --> 00:27:49,560
which was normal for my generation.

312
00:27:49,600 --> 00:27:53,320
I didn't have a picture from him. This was also...

313
00:27:53,360 --> 00:27:58,920
Other children whose fathers had been killed in the war,

314
00:27:58,960 --> 00:28:02,000
they had pictures, she didn't have.

315
00:28:02,040 --> 00:28:05,640
She said she was his fiancee.

316
00:28:05,680 --> 00:28:10,560
She hadn't had time before he had to go to the war. And of course.

317
00:28:10,600 --> 00:28:15,040
If he had come back, then of course they would have married.

318
00:28:15,080 --> 00:28:19,160
I stopped asking because I felt this is a wound in my mother.

319
00:28:27,480 --> 00:28:34,960
GUNTRAM: After the war, the adults were obviously trying to stay out of politics.

320
00:28:35,000 --> 00:28:39,560
They refused to talk about the past. They did not praise Hitler.

321
00:28:39,600 --> 00:28:42,760
They did not praise national socialism,

322
00:28:42,800 --> 00:28:47,920
but they defended many of the things that happened.

323
00:28:50,040 --> 00:28:54,160
But as the years passed and orphans of the war came of age,

324
00:28:54,200 --> 00:28:58,560
'countless stories emerged about the Nazi era.

325
00:28:58,600 --> 00:29:03,160
'Gisela learned about Lebensborn from an article in the German press.

326
00:29:04,320 --> 00:29:09,280
'It described the homes as anonymous breeding farms.'

327
00:29:11,400 --> 00:29:16,480
GISELA: Oh, my God! My father was a stud who had to produce children.

328
00:29:16,520 --> 00:29:19,320
My mother was a whore?

329
00:29:19,360 --> 00:29:22,840
This is how I found out I was a Lebensborn child.

330
00:29:22,880 --> 00:29:25,760
They wrote it like this. This was horrible!

331
00:29:25,800 --> 00:29:31,160
I had to survive believing I was the result of...

332
00:29:31,200 --> 00:29:34,160
some...stud and whore.

333
00:29:34,200 --> 00:29:36,800
And I didn't want to ask her.

334
00:29:36,840 --> 00:29:40,600
She also read this article in a newspaper.

335
00:29:40,640 --> 00:29:43,040
She never said one word to it.

336
00:29:43,080 --> 00:29:47,720
I said, "If she doesn't talk, maybe it's true, maybe it's not."

337
00:29:47,760 --> 00:29:51,600
In these times, I really thought about suicide.

338
00:29:51,640 --> 00:29:55,520
'Eventually, her mother admitted the truth,

339
00:29:55,560 --> 00:30:01,440
'that her daughter was the product of a casual liaison with a married SS officer.

340
00:30:01,480 --> 00:30:05,000
'But Gisela's doubts persisted.'

341
00:30:06,160 --> 00:30:08,320
What did they want?

342
00:30:08,360 --> 00:30:11,520
Did they want me as a child?

343
00:30:11,560 --> 00:30:14,160
Or just did they want somebody

344
00:30:14,200 --> 00:30:18,520
as an ideological person for the system?

345
00:30:25,480 --> 00:30:29,760
'After Folker Heinecke had been kidnapped from the Ukraine

346
00:30:29,800 --> 00:30:32,280
'and put into the Lebensborn programme,

347
00:30:32,320 --> 00:30:38,160
'he was adopted by a wealthy shipping family from Hamburg.

348
00:30:38,240 --> 00:30:42,360
'He had a privileged upbringing with his adoptive parents,

349
00:30:42,400 --> 00:30:45,960
'until a chance encounter changed his world.'

350
00:31:31,960 --> 00:31:35,760
'Like all parents who adopted a Lebensborn child,

351
00:31:35,800 --> 00:31:40,440
'Folker's mother and father maintained their vow of silence.

352
00:31:40,480 --> 00:31:46,560
'They brought him up as the heir to the family shipping business.'

353
00:32:20,120 --> 00:32:24,080
'As the Lebensborn children grew up in the '50s and '60s,

354
00:32:24,120 --> 00:32:28,160
'an optimistic Germany began to emerge from the rubble of war.'

355
00:32:28,200 --> 00:32:30,920
GISELA: It was when rock'n'roll started.

356
00:32:30,960 --> 00:32:34,040
I was a passionate rock'n'roll dancer.

357
00:32:34,080 --> 00:32:41,040
I think that lots of my...yeah, "vulneration" and my angriness.

358
00:32:41,080 --> 00:32:43,120
I could dance.

359
00:32:43,160 --> 00:32:46,120
Perhaps this saved me for a while.

360
00:32:48,880 --> 00:32:52,920
'While Gisela immersed herself in this new world,

361
00:32:52,960 --> 00:32:57,760
'Guntram Weber, who knew that his father had been close to Himmler,

362
00:32:57,800 --> 00:33:01,840
'continued to be dogged by questions about his past.'

363
00:33:01,880 --> 00:33:10,600
How would I have acted in a society that was akin to one in the '30s and '40s in Germany.

364
00:33:10,640 --> 00:33:13,000
What wouldIhave done?

365
00:33:14,960 --> 00:33:20,960
I posed that question to myself again and again. What wouldIhave done?

366
00:33:21,000 --> 00:33:27,440
In hindsight, you can tell yourself, "OK, I would have killed Hitler."

367
00:33:28,880 --> 00:33:33,520
But would you have done it under those circumstances?

368
00:33:33,560 --> 00:33:36,360
I wish I could tell myself

369
00:33:36,400 --> 00:33:41,400
that I would have rebelled against the system.

370
00:33:41,440 --> 00:33:44,080
I'm not sure I would have.

371
00:33:45,120 --> 00:33:47,120
'As the years went by,

372
00:33:47,160 --> 00:33:52,440
'the Lebensborn children uncovered more of their parents' secrets.

373
00:33:52,480 --> 00:33:57,160
'Gisela discovered that her mother, Emmy, had been a keen operative,

374
00:33:57,200 --> 00:33:59,800
'working between Poland and Munich.

375
00:33:59,840 --> 00:34:04,760
'So crucial was her role, she had been called to testify at Nuremberg

376
00:34:04,800 --> 00:34:08,080
'about the organisation's kidnapping of children.'

377
00:34:08,120 --> 00:34:11,160
I read all her files.

378
00:34:11,200 --> 00:34:14,600
Of course, she...she...

379
00:34:16,320 --> 00:34:20,560
..spoke very, very clever, like they all did.

380
00:34:20,600 --> 00:34:25,920
Of course, she went to Poland to get some orphan children from there.

381
00:34:25,960 --> 00:34:32,320
They were all claimed as being orphans. You never know where they came from.

382
00:34:33,360 --> 00:34:38,400
Children who were saved and brought into special homes

383
00:34:38,440 --> 00:34:42,760
where they had to forget their original language,

384
00:34:42,800 --> 00:34:44,840
they had to learn German,

385
00:34:44,880 --> 00:34:50,440
and then Lebensborn organised the foster parents or adopted parents.

386
00:34:50,480 --> 00:34:52,760
'It was only after his parents died

387
00:34:52,800 --> 00:34:55,920
'that Folker felt able to explore his past.

388
00:34:55,960 --> 00:35:01,040
'He discovered that he had been used as a case study of child abduction

389
00:35:01,080 --> 00:35:03,360
'at the Nuremberg trials.'

390
00:35:47,840 --> 00:35:54,080
I really confronted her with her own words from Nuremberg.

391
00:35:54,120 --> 00:35:58,240
Then she "remembered" something. But still she said...

392
00:35:58,280 --> 00:36:04,040
I said, "You must have asked yourself why you went to Poland

393
00:36:04,080 --> 00:36:09,360
"and you got some children you had to bring to Germany.

394
00:36:09,400 --> 00:36:11,800
"Where did they come from?"

395
00:36:11,840 --> 00:36:14,240
"Well, they were orphans."

396
00:36:14,280 --> 00:36:19,000
I said, "You can't imagine this. I know they were robbed."

397
00:36:19,040 --> 00:36:21,200
"We don't know anything!

398
00:36:21,240 --> 00:36:25,360
"I didn't know then and I don't know today.

399
00:36:25,400 --> 00:36:27,360
"They were orphans."

400
00:36:27,400 --> 00:36:29,400
Point.

401
00:36:29,440 --> 00:36:33,720
And I said, "Well, you must have known that...

402
00:36:33,760 --> 00:36:37,800
"You must have seen that those children you got from there

403
00:36:37,840 --> 00:36:41,360
"were only blond and blue-eyed children."

404
00:36:41,400 --> 00:36:43,920
Then she said, "Well,

405
00:36:43,960 --> 00:36:46,640
"we didn't take everything."

406
00:36:46,680 --> 00:36:49,280
That's what she really said.

407
00:36:49,320 --> 00:36:52,320
And this was like, I... I broke...

408
00:36:52,360 --> 00:36:54,600
I collapsed crying

409
00:36:54,640 --> 00:36:59,760
because all of a sudden, in this sentence, I heard everything.

410
00:36:59,800 --> 00:37:07,080
When she said, "Of course, we did not take everything."

411
00:38:32,040 --> 00:38:36,280
The whole issue is a question of identity.

412
00:38:36,320 --> 00:38:40,240
All of us, we don't have a real identity.

413
00:38:40,280 --> 00:38:43,640
And we lost it the more we knew.

414
00:38:43,680 --> 00:38:46,800
Everybody says they've always had the feeling

415
00:38:46,840 --> 00:38:51,360
like the ground is shivering.

416
00:38:51,400 --> 00:38:54,040
You never feel like you stand...

417
00:38:54,080 --> 00:38:58,000
What we in psychology say, you need grounding

418
00:38:58,040 --> 00:39:00,440
to be a person in this world.

419
00:39:00,480 --> 00:39:03,600
We didn't get a grounding in the first years.

420
00:39:03,640 --> 00:39:08,200
Then we found something is wrong. Then the historical context.

421
00:39:08,240 --> 00:39:10,360
So it gets worse and worse.

422
00:39:10,400 --> 00:39:16,800
'Guntram Weber's mother died before he could discover the truth about his past.

423
00:39:16,840 --> 00:39:19,240
'Over time, the legacy of lies

424
00:39:19,280 --> 00:39:23,840
'combined with the fractured sense of his father's role in Nazi Germany

425
00:39:23,880 --> 00:39:26,400
'resulted in a near breakdown.'

426
00:39:27,600 --> 00:39:29,600
I did not know...

427
00:39:31,520 --> 00:39:33,680
..where to turn.

428
00:39:33,720 --> 00:39:37,920
I did not have an idea of what to do.

429
00:39:37,960 --> 00:39:41,560
I think, deep down, I was afraid of knowing.

430
00:39:41,600 --> 00:39:45,400
Of knowing about the dark secrets,

431
00:39:45,440 --> 00:39:49,280
which I assumed were there.

432
00:39:51,960 --> 00:39:54,080
At the same time...

433
00:39:56,880 --> 00:40:01,720
..I realised that I had to do something.

434
00:40:01,760 --> 00:40:04,960
'Over the past six years,

435
00:40:05,000 --> 00:40:08,760
'in a bid to shed more light on his Lebensborn past,

436
00:40:08,800 --> 00:40:15,520
'Guntram has been trying to form a complete picture of the man he never met, but has shaped his life -

437
00:40:15,560 --> 00:40:20,480
'his father, SS General Ludolf von Alvensleben.'

438
00:40:22,120 --> 00:40:23,960
I want...

439
00:40:24,000 --> 00:40:27,360
to find some way of...

440
00:40:27,400 --> 00:40:30,920
taking control of my own situation.

441
00:40:30,960 --> 00:40:34,200
Yeah. They refused that.

442
00:40:35,960 --> 00:40:41,880
My mother refused it when she refused me information about my father,

443
00:40:41,920 --> 00:40:44,720
about my early months.

444
00:40:47,760 --> 00:40:52,560
And I want it. I want some control over my own life.

445
00:40:54,920 --> 00:40:59,400
'Guntram's journey to Poland is his attempt to come face-to-face

446
00:40:59,440 --> 00:41:03,440
'with the atrocities his father committed against the Polish people

447
00:41:03,480 --> 00:41:08,560
'during and after the German invasion of 1939.

448
00:41:08,600 --> 00:41:12,440
'At the museum in Bydgoszcz, Guntram discovers letters

449
00:41:12,480 --> 00:41:17,400
'from soldiers describing their involvement in "ethnic cleansing".'

450
00:41:20,560 --> 00:41:23,160
It's called document number 27.

451
00:41:23,200 --> 00:41:26,080
It must be from 1939.

452
00:41:26,120 --> 00:41:30,320
It's for Kreisleiter Kampe,

453
00:41:30,360 --> 00:41:33,560
who was in charge of this area.

454
00:41:34,880 --> 00:41:37,760
"We want to add...

455
00:41:37,800 --> 00:41:44,760
"that the high...moral...power of resistance

456
00:41:44,800 --> 00:41:49,240
"we have found among Polish people

457
00:41:49,280 --> 00:41:51,280
"arises...

458
00:41:51,320 --> 00:41:56,360
"among other things, arises from the fact

459
00:41:56,400 --> 00:41:58,400
"that...

460
00:42:00,400 --> 00:42:05,280
"..when they are being...liquidated

461
00:42:05,320 --> 00:42:09,000
"that when they are being liquidated

462
00:42:09,040 --> 00:42:13,040
"they mostly show...

463
00:42:13,080 --> 00:42:19,600
"a fearless, courageous...behaviour."

464
00:42:25,920 --> 00:42:28,560
I can't. Can't stand this.

465
00:42:36,720 --> 00:42:40,120
I don't know, there's no word about humans.

466
00:42:42,080 --> 00:42:44,960
Or...

467
00:42:45,000 --> 00:42:49,240
They're just being praised for their courage.

468
00:42:53,560 --> 00:42:58,800
This is beyond my... my scale of comprehension.

469
00:43:03,600 --> 00:43:05,960
This...this father of mine,

470
00:43:06,000 --> 00:43:08,680
he ordered those things.

471
00:43:08,720 --> 00:43:11,560
He ordered those executions.

472
00:43:17,600 --> 00:43:20,600
'In the massacres of 1939,

473
00:43:20,640 --> 00:43:25,120
'around 60,000 people, the elite of Polish society,

474
00:43:25,160 --> 00:43:29,600
'were culled to pave the way for the Lebensborn generation.

475
00:43:32,520 --> 00:43:36,760
'Lebensborn was about giving birth to a master race.

476
00:43:36,800 --> 00:43:41,840
'Its mirror image, the death camps and genocide of the Jewish race

477
00:43:41,880 --> 00:43:46,280
'and millions of others who would be exterminated.

478
00:43:56,680 --> 00:43:59,160
GISELA: I think I will never get

479
00:43:59,200 --> 00:44:02,480
something like understanding, or whatever.

480
00:44:02,520 --> 00:44:04,480
It's just horror.

481
00:44:04,520 --> 00:44:08,440
It's just horror, and the horror goes on.

482
00:44:08,480 --> 00:44:12,680
In those nights, I don't sleep. I still have nightmares.

483
00:44:23,360 --> 00:44:25,360
In my consciousness,

484
00:44:25,400 --> 00:44:30,400
it's always I am the other part of those people who had to die.

485
00:44:30,440 --> 00:44:33,320
It's no wonder you feel guilty

486
00:44:33,360 --> 00:44:36,800
if you're a part of this other side.

487
00:44:36,840 --> 00:44:42,000
And it doesn't help too much to know it's not your fault.

488
00:44:42,040 --> 00:44:45,920
Many people say, "Why do you feel guilty?

489
00:44:45,960 --> 00:44:48,880
"It was not you. It was your parents."

490
00:44:48,920 --> 00:44:51,400
Still, they were my parents.

491
00:44:52,640 --> 00:44:57,640
And I can only say that I think it's very important

492
00:44:57,680 --> 00:45:02,400
that we don't go into the same habit like our parents,

493
00:45:02,440 --> 00:45:05,880
into the silence and not talking about it.

494
00:45:05,920 --> 00:45:09,800
'Gisela's mother continued to maintain her silence.

495
00:45:09,840 --> 00:45:13,320
'She talked little about what she had done,

496
00:45:13,360 --> 00:45:16,280
'refusing to confront her past.'

497
00:45:16,320 --> 00:45:18,480
She was 89, almost 90.

498
00:45:18,520 --> 00:45:24,960
She was sick. No specific. She was old and she didn't want to live any more.

499
00:45:25,000 --> 00:45:27,640
"I want to die. Why can't I die?"

500
00:45:27,680 --> 00:45:32,240
She had horror nightmares. She told me some of her nightmares.

501
00:45:32,280 --> 00:45:36,320
I said, "Mama, there must be something you are carrying with you.

502
00:45:36,360 --> 00:45:38,360
"Why don't you tell me?"

503
00:45:38,400 --> 00:45:41,720
I really said it in my very soft manner.

504
00:45:41,760 --> 00:45:46,320
I said, "I think there is something burdening your soul

505
00:45:46,360 --> 00:45:50,280
"and perhaps you can deliver it if you..."

506
00:45:50,320 --> 00:45:53,280
She said, "No. There is nothing."

507
00:45:55,040 --> 00:45:57,560
'Guntram Weber's parents both died

508
00:45:57,600 --> 00:46:01,480
'before he could learn the truth of his origins.

509
00:46:01,520 --> 00:46:04,840
'So his journey to Poland is to confront

510
00:46:04,880 --> 00:46:08,840
'not his father, but his father's crimes.

511
00:46:10,440 --> 00:46:14,080
'Among those massacred on his father's orders

512
00:46:14,120 --> 00:46:18,760
'Was school headmaster Zygmunt Polakowski.

513
00:46:18,800 --> 00:46:22,840
'His 91-year-old daughter Jadwiga still lives in Bydgoszcz.'

514
00:46:29,040 --> 00:46:31,440
Dziendobry.Dziendobry.

515
00:46:31,480 --> 00:46:33,360
Dziendobry.

516
00:46:33,400 --> 00:46:36,400
Dziendobry, Pani Polakowska.

517
00:46:36,440 --> 00:46:40,040
Dziendobry. Dziendobry.Dziendobry.

518
00:46:40,080 --> 00:46:43,000
Do you speak a little bit English?

519
00:46:43,040 --> 00:46:45,560
A little. Only a little.

520
00:46:45,600 --> 00:46:47,600
Only a little.

521
00:46:47,640 --> 00:46:50,440
I want to say something

522
00:46:50,480 --> 00:46:52,640
on my own.

523
00:46:53,840 --> 00:46:57,640
I am sorry.

524
00:46:58,800 --> 00:47:01,160
Thank you. Thank you.

525
00:47:01,200 --> 00:47:03,360
Enter, please.Thankyou.

526
00:47:04,440 --> 00:47:06,960
This is my father.

527
00:47:07,000 --> 00:47:09,480
I saw his photo.

528
00:47:09,520 --> 00:47:13,720
Isawhisphoto. This is my father killed.

529
00:47:13,760 --> 00:47:16,480
On order of your father.Iknow.

530
00:47:16,520 --> 00:47:18,680
Yeah.Iknow.

531
00:48:59,280 --> 00:49:01,920
How old were you?

532
00:49:01,960 --> 00:49:05,120
Very young. 20 years.

533
00:49:05,160 --> 00:49:07,520
20 years.

534
00:49:07,560 --> 00:49:12,160
And all my life happy.

535
00:49:12,200 --> 00:49:14,840
Happy life.

536
00:49:17,160 --> 00:49:20,200
It was crushed.Yeah.Yeah.

537
00:49:20,240 --> 00:49:22,240
Crushed.

538
00:49:35,760 --> 00:49:38,280
GISELA: Guilty.

539
00:49:38,320 --> 00:49:42,200
This is really the one word is you feel guilty

540
00:49:42,240 --> 00:49:48,400
if you know that you were taken into this horror scene

541
00:49:48,440 --> 00:49:51,760
from the very beginning of your life.

542
00:49:53,920 --> 00:50:01,480
It goes on. What is in my genes when my father was a Nazi criminal?

543
00:50:04,160 --> 00:50:09,400
It's a whole human issue with shadows in everybody.

544
00:50:09,440 --> 00:50:14,320
And which circumstances do allow people

545
00:50:14,360 --> 00:50:16,680
to live more like their shadows?

546
00:50:16,720 --> 00:50:22,960
'In recent years, Gisela has shared her experience as a creation of the Third Reich

547
00:50:23,000 --> 00:50:29,560
'by giving talks to the German public in an attempt to confront them with the truth.'

548
00:50:29,600 --> 00:50:32,120
I managed,

549
00:50:32,160 --> 00:50:38,720
almost, not quite, but managed to transfer my feeling of guilt and shame

550
00:50:38,760 --> 00:50:42,520
into the responsibility to talk about it,

551
00:50:42,560 --> 00:50:45,080
and especially with young people.

552
00:50:47,520 --> 00:50:50,920
'For Gisela's mother, it was only on her death bed

553
00:50:50,960 --> 00:50:56,880
'that she betrayed any recognition that the truth needed to be told.'

554
00:50:56,920 --> 00:51:00,840
I really spent the last nights with her in the hospital.

555
00:51:00,880 --> 00:51:02,920
She died in my arms.

556
00:51:02,960 --> 00:51:05,000
It was not easy.

557
00:51:05,040 --> 00:51:09,880
In former times, I almost had a personal resistance.

558
00:51:09,920 --> 00:51:13,440
I didn't want to be touched from her.

559
00:51:13,480 --> 00:51:18,560
In the end, I could stroke her and, well...

560
00:51:18,600 --> 00:51:22,600
She said one of the... And this I had also respect.

561
00:51:22,640 --> 00:51:27,240
One of her last sentences in the night before she died...

562
00:51:27,280 --> 00:51:33,160
She woke up. Before, I couldn't understand her, and then she said,

563
00:51:33,200 --> 00:51:37,280
"It is good you brought the truth on the table.

564
00:51:37,320 --> 00:51:41,800
"It's good we made the peace between us."

565
00:51:41,840 --> 00:51:45,800
And these were her last sentences

566
00:51:45,840 --> 00:51:50,200
so it was kind of, "Good. It's OK. Mama."

567
00:51:52,040 --> 00:51:55,520
I at least was lucky to talk to my mother,

568
00:51:55,560 --> 00:52:00,000
which many of other Lebensborn children could not.

569
00:52:00,040 --> 00:52:03,720
I got at least some answers.

570
00:52:08,840 --> 00:52:12,920
'Death Valley lies just beyond the outskirts of Bydgoszcz.

571
00:52:12,960 --> 00:52:17,520
'It is a permanent memorial to those murdered on the orders

572
00:52:17,560 --> 00:52:22,080
'of Guntram Weber's father, Ludolf von Alvensleben.

573
00:52:22,120 --> 00:52:25,960
'Jadwiga Polakowska has asked to be taken there,

574
00:52:26,000 --> 00:52:30,320
'to tell Guntram about the day she made a terrible discovery,

575
00:52:30,360 --> 00:52:35,080
'six years after the Germans arrested her father.'

576
00:53:41,920 --> 00:53:45,240
Ja. It went straight to my heart.

577
00:53:46,280 --> 00:53:49,640
And...But it is true. It is true.

578
00:53:51,080 --> 00:53:53,360
SPEAKS IN POLISH

579
00:53:53,400 --> 00:53:56,800
INTERPRETER:I didn't lie in my story.

580
00:53:58,800 --> 00:54:01,640
I told you the way it was.Yeah.

581
00:54:03,640 --> 00:54:06,320
It's not YOUR fault.

582
00:54:08,080 --> 00:54:12,160
You have only trouble. And me, too.

583
00:54:14,840 --> 00:54:18,920
Pojednanie, tylko pojednanie.

584
00:54:36,800 --> 00:54:38,960
'Following the Third Reich's defeat,

585
00:54:39,000 --> 00:54:43,960
'the Lebensborn experiment ended in failure, consigned to history,

586
00:54:44,000 --> 00:54:48,240
'as the Nazis' perversion of science and medicine.

587
00:54:48,280 --> 00:54:52,480
'These children's destiny was to be part of a master race

588
00:54:52,520 --> 00:54:55,560
'that would rule for 1,000 years.

589
00:54:55,600 --> 00:55:01,880
'But they did not grow up the blond-haired, blue-eyed puppets that Himmler had envisaged.'

590
00:55:01,920 --> 00:55:05,600
GISELA: Our parents have been brainwashed enough.

591
00:55:05,640 --> 00:55:09,840
After the war they could say, "We couldn't change it."

592
00:55:09,880 --> 00:55:15,560
But for us, it was yeah, we didn't get a brainwashed gene somehow!

593
00:55:15,600 --> 00:55:21,080
It was like we really got just the opposite.

594
00:55:21,120 --> 00:55:24,280
We got the kind of...of guilt.

595
00:55:26,120 --> 00:55:30,280
Of all the former Lebensborn kids I know, there is nobody

596
00:55:30,320 --> 00:55:33,600
who says, "Well, wasn't it good? Look at me!

597
00:55:33,640 --> 00:55:39,080
"I'm a very good-looking Aryan type! Wasn't it somehow also good?"

598
00:55:39,120 --> 00:55:41,840
I don't know anybody.

599
00:55:41,880 --> 00:55:46,800
'Folker Heinecke's Germanisation programme he was forced through

600
00:55:46,840 --> 00:55:50,720
'failed to erase his pre-Lebensborn past.

601
00:55:50,760 --> 00:55:53,360
'He has never given up his dream

602
00:55:53,400 --> 00:55:57,440
'that his true blood relations are alive - somewhere.'

603
00:57:14,520 --> 00:57:18,480
'Like Gisela and Folker, Guntram Weber has rejected

604
00:57:18,520 --> 00:57:20,960
'all that Lebensborn stood for.

605
00:57:21,000 --> 00:57:24,680
'He is now using his experiences in Poland

606
00:57:24,720 --> 00:57:27,520
'to atone for the crimes of his father,

607
00:57:27,560 --> 00:57:32,560
'establishing writing workshops to help enable the people of Bydgoszcz

608
00:57:32,600 --> 00:57:36,200
'come to terms with the wounds inflicted by the Nazis.'

609
00:57:36,240 --> 00:57:42,080
'Gisela Heindenreich has written of her experiences as a child of the Nazis

610
00:57:42,120 --> 00:57:46,480
'and lectures worldwide on the evils of the regime.'

611
00:58:28,080 --> 00:58:32,000
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