My Father's Keeper: Children of Nazi Leaders: An Intimate History of Damage and Denial

Lebert, Norbert,Lebert, Stephan

ISBN 10: 0316089753 / ISBN 13: 9780316089753

Published by Little, Brown Paperbacks, 2002

About this Item

Connecting readers with great books since 1972! Used books may not include companion materials, and may have some shelf wear or limited writing. We ship orders daily and Customer Service is our top priority!

Seller Inventory # S_472977722

Bibliographic Details

• Title: My Father's Keeper: Children of Nazi Leaders: An Intimate History of Damage and Denial
• Publisher: Little, Brown Paperbacks
• Publication Date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0316089753
• ISBN 13: 9780316089753
• Binding: paperback
• Condition: Very Good

About this title

Synopsis

In 1959 the German journalist Norbert Lebert interviewed the children of prominent Nazis: Hess, Bormann, Goring, Himmler, Baldur von Schirach (creator of the Hitler Youth) and Hans Frank (governor of Poland). Not knowing what to do with the interviews, he boxed them up and stored them. After Lebert's death, his son Stephan -- also a journalist -- inherited the files. Fascinated by what he found, he set out to re-interview the same people forty years later.

Revisiting his father's subjects, Lebert explores how each of them deals with the agonizing question: What does it mean to have a father who participated in mass murder? For the most part, the Leberts found that the children remained intensely loyal to their fathers, regardless of their crimes. Gudrun Himmler, for example, lives in a Munich suburb under her husband's name, keeping secret contacts with other nostalgic Nazis. In fact, Niklas Frank is the only one who rejects his heritage. But when he writes in a popular German magazine of his rage against his father -- a man charged with two million deaths -- hundreds of letters pour in from outraged readers. Whatever your father did, they argue, fathers must always be honored.

Remarkable in both its content and its narrative power, My Father's Keeper is an illuminating addition to the dark literature of the Nazi past -- and perhaps of any totalitarianism -- and of how this past continues to haunt the present.