Event Title

“The Flat”: The Narrative of a Perpetrators’ Daughter

Submission Type

Paper

Abstract

Holocaust documentaries have been produced in Israel since its establishment. Up until the late 1990s, they focused solely on the Jewish victims and their families. More recently, however, Israeli cinema has attempted to broaden Holocaust representations to include the ways perpetrators’ descendants cope with their familial pasts. Alongside films that discuss offspring who feel shame, guilt, and wish to atone for their families’ crimes, one of the topics addressed by contemporary Israeli documentaries is denial of parental participation in the third Reich's heinous actions. The talk will focus on the documentary The Flat (Arnon Goldfinger, 2011) as a case study. In the film, Goldfinger, who is a third-generation Holocaust survivor, investigates a family secret regarding the long-standing friendship between his grandparents and a Nazi couple, before and after the Holocaust. During the course of his search, Goldfinger meets with Edda, the grown daughter of the Nazi couple, who refuses to acknowledge the fact that her father had been a high-ranking officer in the third Reich. The talk will discuss the ways in which Edda’s reaction to her father's past reflects the findings of researchers claiming children of Nazis cling to every shred of evidence which can possibly help them invent their own versions of the past; a mythological history, in which family members led “good and innocent” lives despite their Nazi ties.

Share

COinS
 

“The Flat”: The Narrative of a Perpetrators’ Daughter

Holocaust documentaries have been produced in Israel since its establishment. Up until the late 1990s, they focused solely on the Jewish victims and their families. More recently, however, Israeli cinema has attempted to broaden Holocaust representations to include the ways perpetrators’ descendants cope with their familial pasts. Alongside films that discuss offspring who feel shame, guilt, and wish to atone for their families’ crimes, one of the topics addressed by contemporary Israeli documentaries is denial of parental participation in the third Reich's heinous actions. The talk will focus on the documentary The Flat (Arnon Goldfinger, 2011) as a case study. In the film, Goldfinger, who is a third-generation Holocaust survivor, investigates a family secret regarding the long-standing friendship between his grandparents and a Nazi couple, before and after the Holocaust. During the course of his search, Goldfinger meets with Edda, the grown daughter of the Nazi couple, who refuses to acknowledge the fact that her father had been a high-ranking officer in the third Reich. The talk will discuss the ways in which Edda’s reaction to her father's past reflects the findings of researchers claiming children of Nazis cling to every shred of evidence which can possibly help them invent their own versions of the past; a mythological history, in which family members led “good and innocent” lives despite their Nazi ties.