Stephan Lebert: My Father's Keeper

By MARGIE THOMSON

Lebert follows in the footsteps of his father, a German journalist who, in 1958, interviewed the children of Nazi leaders. More than 40 years on, Stephan Lebert re-interviews most of his father's subjects to see what life has made of them: Rudolph Hess' son Wolf-Rudiger; Hermann Goring's daughter Edda; Heinrich Himmler's daughter Gudrum; Martin Bormann's son Martin; Karl-Otto Saur's son Karl-Otto. The answer, as might be expected, is at best sad, at worst horrific.

Each in their own way has manoeuvred to reconcile private memories of loving fathers with the public knowledge of the same men as monstrous and cruel. Martin Bormann jnr, now a Catholic priest, most closely achieves this reconciliation; Gudrun Himmler, at the other extreme, still ardently supports her father and his actions.

"I'm sure I've hated my father so much because I keep finding him in myself," says poor Niklas Frank, son of Hans Frank who, as governor-general of Poland, was responsible for the murder of hundreds of thousands of Poles. Niklas has dealt with his legacy with "ruthlessness, self-laceration, hate".

This is a thoughtful account, a discreet examination of lingering evil, which tries to draw out lessons for us all in the experiences of these now-elderly children, and the ideology from which they sprang. One of the essential characteristics of many leading National Socialists, says the Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal, quoted here, was that "at home they were utterly charming people". This realisation, he thinks, is dreadful and at the same time hugely important, because "only the person who has grasped it knows that evil lies dormant in most people and can break out at almost any time". Compelling stories.

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