“The Shadow of the Commander”: the son of the executioner of Auschwitz testifies in a fascinating documentary

He is a solitary old gentleman with a hesitant gait, heavy shoulders, a lost look. As a child, Hans-Jürgen Höss grew up with his four brothers and sisters in a beautiful property next to the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp of which their father, Rudölf Hoss, was the zealous administrator during the Second World War. After being the subject of an astonishing fiction, The Zone of Interest by Jonathan Glazer, awarded at Cannes and the Oscars, the story of this (almost) ordinary home is the subject of a fascinating documentary, The Commander's Shadow in theaters this Wednesday, November 6.

Now aged 87, Hans-Jürgen Höss testifies for the first time on camera. Director Daniela Völker took more than a year to convince him, helped in her task by the eldest son of this man of few words. Protestant pastor, Kai Höss, 63, feels deep guilt about his family heritage. “My grandfather is the worst mass murderer in the history of humanity”he declares point blank. An observation reinforced by reading his autobiography, written in prison, and in which he does not express the slightest remorse. A mind-blowing text, read in voice-over throughout the film.

At the start of the documentary, Kai does not understand how his father could have ignored the fate of the prisoners locked up just a stone's throw from his room. “I had a pleasant and idyllic childhood in Auschwitz“, admits the octogenarian to Daniela Völker. The director will then have a daring idea: to take this witness like no other on a journey in the footsteps of his past. First in what remains of the property which sheltered his young years Then on the other side of the wall, during a sequence that gives goosebumps Between the two, she will take him to the United States to visit his older sister Inge-Brigitt, whom he n. hasn't been seen for several decades.

The Commander's Shadow also gives the floor to Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, 99 years old, nicknamed the “violinist of Auschwitz”. After escaping death, this woman with an exceptional destiny settled in the United Kingdom where she built her life and launched a brilliant international career. She also gave birth to two children, including Maya, a psychotherapist with whom she has a complex relationship. Maya, 66, believes that her mother transmitted to her in utero a pain that has conditioned her entire existence. It is she who is actually at the origin of this documentary, following a meeting which aroused the curiosity of the director.

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In a skillful and daring manner, Daniela Völker brings together two generations of men and women, marked by Nazi barbarity and its consequences. The Commander's Shadow questions memory, but also resilience and the capacity for forgiveness during a meeting as improbable as it is moving between Hans-Jurgen Höss and Anita Lasker-Wallfisch over a cup of tea. An extraordinary documentary, all the more essential in view of the burning news.

>> The Shadow of the Commander by Daniela Völker. 1h47. In theaters this Wednesday, November 6