Director David Evans. Photo courtesy of TFF.

Director David Evans. Photo courtesy of TFF.

GALO: So do you feel like you were able to keep that personal professionalism throughout most of the time?

PS: Most of the time, yes. When I was in the courtroom holding up a document condemning 100,000 Poles to death with Otto Wächter’s signature, Horst looked at the document and said, “Yes, but it says Poles, not Jews.” That was probably the closest I got to going pretty crazy.

DE: More so, the thing that made it so interesting about these three men to film is, perhaps unexpectedly, the amount of warmth, friendship and mutual trust that there is. So that moment when Philippe confronts Horst more emotionally, it felt to me like a progression of their friendship rather than deterioration, because it felt like it was based on a fundamental respect man-to-man.

The reason Philippe seems so irritated is that he can’t believe this man [Horst], whose intelligence he respects as well as his compassionate attitude toward the world in general — how could he have a blind spot about this one thing? So it strikes me, like all the best moments in the film, as the emotional timbre of it. It’s a positive one, even though the events that are being disputed are horrific. There’s something very dignified about the relationship among all three of them.

PS: The reason for that is this is not a film about the Nazis. This is a film about a son and a father. If my father had committed those crimes, which way would I go? I can’t put my hand over my heart and say I would go Niklas’ way. I really understand that Horst is desperately trying to find the good in his father. And I respect that, I really do. I think he takes it a little far, but that underlying and very human, very basic sentiment is one that I respect.

I don’t think Horst is a bad person, I think he’s a fundamentally decent person, but he’s very damaged by an experience. The moment that chokes me up every time I watch it is when he goes back to being a six-year-old and describes everything being lost — and that was so raw, everything was unexpected. We didn’t do one take, two takes, three takes; everything you’ve seen is just what came out. And at that moment, he revealed that there was some sort of fracture in his life and he’s never recovered. It’s a sentiment that transcends a particular situation. It’s a universalizing thing, a child confronting something that’s falling apart. It touches all of us.

GALO: I think one of the parts that effectively sum up Horst’s position was him saying, “Yes, he was a Nazi. But he was my father.” Philippe, I believe there was a hint of irony when you and Horst were looking through his scrapbooks and you said, “Oh, another skiing vacation,” as he proudly turned the pages. If you’re that young, you almost can’t associate war crimes with the lake, the ski resort. They’re completely dichotomous.

PS: They even went on family trips to the ghetto. I had never seen anything like this before. That’s part of his life and that was a shock to see it, I never thought of him as living with all these relics. You have family albums that go back generation-to-generation and we’ve all got them, but his are signed by Himmler and Hitler. That’s pretty weird.

GALO: David, we know that the reason Philippe was personally invested in the film was because of his grandfather’s family. Why were you were drawn to direct, though?

DE: Only that I’m friends with Philippe, we’re university friends…the idea of going on this kind of odyssey with him. In retrospect, it now has that satisfying quality where it looks as if it was always intended to look that way, but I had no expectations at all of what the film would be like.

PS: We didn’t know where it would end up, it all started with an article I wrote for The Financial Times, [“My father, the good Nazi,” 2013]. And what happened after that came out was a very strong reaction. David and his wife came over for a dinner party and we had a conversation about it. The next morning, my wife says to me, “I think David would like to make a film.” And I said, “Well, he didn’t say that to me.” And she said, “No, Abigail [David’s wife] had told me.” [Laughs]

DG: They’re friends separately [laughs].

GALO: So, really, it’s the wives that got the ball rolling on the film, actually!

PS: You could definitely say that. We had decided that the main idea for the film [would be] to get the two men together in a debate.

DE: We thought that would be it. And furthermore, Philippe thought that at that stage, once they had done that confrontation, neither of them would want to do more filming — and that Horst certainly wouldn’t want to. Niklas kind of tears him [Horst] to pieces in front of a paying audience in London, and we thought that Horst wouldn’t want to continue, so [much so] that we [thought] we’d have to get as many interviews in before the Purcell Room [at Southbank Centre, London] to capture their memories about their fathers on film. But, in fact, it was kind of like the springboard, it was only the beginning — because after that, they just wanted to do more and more.

GALO: Maybe it served as their own form of catharsis to do the debate then?

DE: Absolutely.

PS: And I think Horst came out of it thinking that he did very well.

DE: That’s undoubtedly true, which he did. There was that moment when the woman in the audience attacks him, but there were lots of people who, like you, said, “I understand where Horst is coming from, he only knew good things about his parents.” He’s very emotionally accessible.

GALO: He’s a hard guy to hate. I think part of it was that he was so open to you about his past, allowing any question, whereas you can see with Niklas that he just hates both of his parents. He had a fractured relationship, and for good reasons. And the paternity thing was kind of a shock, too. I think when I was watching it, everyone around me was thinking, ‘What do you mean his dad’s best friend could have been his real dad…?’ [Laughs] So that just added another layer of scandal to an obviously terrible issue.

PS: That was a very strong feeling in the Purcell Room. We were surprised, actually. A lot of people were psychoanalyzing it. But then, what was unexpected was that we said, “Let’s go to the city where it all happened.” And Horst said, “That would be great! They’re actually celebrating my father, it would be great if we brought cameras to that.” So it followed a trail that we had not imagined.

DE: Absolutely. We couldn’t have foreseen that. I think a lot of it has to go to Philippe’s credit. It has partly to do with the filmmaking process but both of these men are quite wily, neither of them are naïve about media. Horst having worked for an artist, a lot of his job had to do with managing the artist with the media. Albeit, we’re talking about a long time ago, so it’s not as sophisticated as it is now, but still. He isn’t wet behind the ears; he knew how film crews worked. And Niklas had a very senior job with the media in Germany. So it’s not like either of them were in any way seduced by being on camera, or flattered or anything like that.

Genuinely, the film sort of facilitated a different and perhaps more openly curious inquiring kind of relationship between them and Philippe. Obviously, Philippe’s Jewish heritage is going to be a hot-button issue with the heritage that they have. Partly, though, it just has to do with personality. Philippe’s attitude toward them is always very warm and respectful. And they both needed that for different reasons.

PS: Which I expect may irritate some people that see the film, and particularly some from the Jewish community.

GALO: I think you’re right though, if you had come in guns blazing toward one specific side, you wouldn’t have gotten the opinions from Horst that would have made the film what it is, which is an honest portrayal about what sons think about their fathers despite their crimes against humanity.

PS: That’s definitely right. But it wasn’t a conscious decision, in a sense, to be like that. There was definitely a respect among all the men with each of their opinions; it was genuine.

DE: I’ll tell you what was interesting. By necessity of the job, there were different photographers. Some guy that we enjoyed working with was no longer able to do it, so we had a replacement — and one of them was German. Out of all of us involved in the making of the film, he was the one that when we said “cut,” he went, “Oh my God, I can’t believe Horst.” He was freaking out. He really found it hard. He said that he could hardly bear to hear it. Of course, he was a perfect professional, but off-camera he had more personal problems with what was said than anyone else.

GALO: Did you have to emotionally prepare yourself for any of the scenes, like when you went to the Zhovkva Synagogue and the nearby field? Did you feel like you needed to do something for yourself beforehand to remain composed?

PS: I had been to the places before, because in doing research for the book, I had spent time in this town. I knew both places. I think the synagogue I was fine about. I thought, “It is fine, it’s a building, there are no bodies here.” But I was anxious about the field. If you listen very carefully, because we were wearing these mics, you can hear sounds. I think Natalia, my wife, could tell I was weeping, but she didn’t tell me. [There I was], standing in a field with 3,500 bodies that are literally down there under the water, and they are there because of the actions of the Nazis, not their sons. I don’t ascribe any responsibility to Horst or Niklas, and I’ve been very clear about that. They are as innocent as anyone else. As we arrived, I felt that it was incredible that I came back to this place with these two men. I don’t know whether the viewer would know what sound they were truly hearing. Did you know, David?

DE: Yes, believe me, we struggled to save that sound in the final version that you haven’t seen yet. They got rid of that noise and I said, “no, you have to bring that back because that’s Philippe crying!”

PS: I just…that’s my family that was there. Niklas was very gentle and sensitive. I think Horst was too, in his own way. There was a scene with a flower and he’s ripping it apart — and I understand that he understands, but he can’t bring himself to say anything when Niklas says, “Come on, Horst. Accept what your father did, here of all places.” Then there was the unbearable heat and the flies. The flies, actually, were really terrible.

GALO: Just when you thought you couldn’t handle anymore aggravation.

DE: Exactly! [Laughs]

PS: It was really an extraordinary and intense moment.

GALO: Ultimately, what do you want people to take away from watching What Our Fathers Did?

DE: What I think the film is about most generally is the relationship between memory, justice and love. Those three things go round in my head. I never thought that something so specific and so historically important to Holocaust survivors would have this huge gravitational pull. It never occurred to me that at the end, what people would walk away with is a glimpse of human nature that they hadn’t seen in that way before.

PS: For me, it’s two things: one of them being the relationship between the child and the father, which is a complex thing that doesn’t lend itself easily to characterization. The second thing, which was a surprise, is that history goes round and round. Here I am in 2014 standing in a field with Ukrainians dressed up in Nazi uniforms regarding what happened 70 years ago. And at that very moment, Russia was invading Ukraine. The very same issues have returned. So there’s a sort of parallel process going on — the human experience, the child and the father, and then the bigger picture of how these events all repeat and connect. For me, it’s the interaction of the personal and the historical, which in a way is David’s more poetic way of saying “memory, love and justice.” History is personal and national, but it internationally connects us.

“A Nazi Legacy: What Our Fathers Did” had its world premiere on April 19 at the 2015 Tribeca Film Festival.