Inheriting Trauma
NOTES AND THOUGHTS FROM REFLECTING ON THE DOCUMENTARY, THE COMMANDANTS SHADOW
My mum, although I never believed she didn’t love me, wasn’t present in any way,” Maya Lasker-Wallfisch explains. “She was unavailable.” Anita’s horrific experiences during the Holocaust stunted their relationship. “Intimacy is not something that my mum does. So I always had a profound sense that something was wrong with me.” Maya is a psychotherapist and notes the way trauma is inherited in families.
“In my own inner world, there are days when I’m completely dominated by the past,” she describes. The Commandant’s Shadow shows Maya settling into a new home in Germany, reclaiming something “stolen” not only from her parents but also from her by the Nazis. In one moving scene in the film, Maya visits a cemetery and FaceTimes her mother from the site. They pour over old family documents together.
“In my own inner world, there are days when I’m completely dominated by the past,” she describes. The Commandant’s Shadow shows Maya settling into a new home in Germany, reclaiming something “stolen” not only from her parents but also from her by the Nazis. In one moving scene in the film, Maya visits a cemetery and FaceTimes her mother from the site. They pour over old family documents together.
When Maya invites her mother Anita to visit Auschwitz with her, however, Anita refuses. “Your Auschwitz is not my Auschwitz,” Anita says, in one of the film’s most emotional moments. Working on the documentary helped Maya and her mother Anita become closer. “I guess perhaps we’ve had more honest conversations about my life and what happened. She’s acknowledged what it was like for me growing up and we’ve forgiven each other,” Maya tells Aish.com.
Hans-Jurgen Hoss, Rudolf Hoss’ son, remembers growing up next door to Auschwitz. It was “where I had the best part of my life,” he says. Over the course of making the documentary, Hans-Jurgen read his father’s memoir for the first time; the contents shocked him. He describes his memories of his father as being a kind, loving man who, he insists, couldn’t possibly have known about the genocide of millions of Jews and others taking place in Auschwitz. Viewers watch the elderly Hans-Jurgen begin to reassess the way he views his father and his entire childhood.
After reading the memoir, Hans-Jurgen - along with his son Kai Hoss, and Maya Lasker-Wallfisch - visits Auschwitz. Their first stop is the Hoss family’s old house. Hans-Jurgen shows us the handsomely apportioned home, describing where he used to play. They visit the prison camp on the other side of the walls where Rudolf Hoss “worked.” It’s a shocking contrast. To his credit, the elderly Hans-Jurgen doesn’t shy away from these difficult encounters, struggling to put into words the intense emotions he feels as he learns more about his father’s crimes.
When the documentary was made, Hans-Jurgen Hoss hadn’t seen his older sister Inge-Brigitt for 55 years. (They also have another living brother, Rainer, who does not appear in the film.) Hans-Jurgen, along with director Daniela Volker, traveled to the suburbs of Washington DC where Inge-Brigitt lived. (She has passed away since The Commandant’s Shadow was completed.)
A former model, Inge-Brigitt is a composed, forceful old lady who adamantly insists that her parents were both loving and gentle people in all situations. In a previous interview, she had insisted that the Auschwitz prisoners who worked in her family’s home and grounds “were always very happy” and that “they called my mother ‘the Angel of Auschwitz’” because her mother “was just a nice person.”
In The Commandant’s Shadow, Inge-Brigitt doubles down on her whitewashing of the past. She isn’t sure the Holocaust really happened, certainly not the way history books record it. Did so many people really die? she wonders. If so, why are there so many survivors? Her callousness is shocking, standing in sharp contrast to her brother who is willing to learn as much about his father’s actions as he can.
“It took me two years to get to the point of talking to Inge-Brigitt,” Daniela Volker recalls. When Inge-Brigitt first expressed her willingness to doubt the horrors of the Holocaust, Daniela was willing to believe that she misspoke and gave her opportunities to change her comments. “I kept trying to ask her again; I didn’t want to be unfair. But it was extraordinary that she wanted to share her Holocaust-denial thoughts.” They remain in the film, perhaps the last words she ever spoke about her father’s horrific legacy.
A former model, Inge-Brigitt is a composed, forceful old lady who adamantly insists that her parents were both loving and gentle people in all situations. In a previous interview, she had insisted that the Auschwitz prisoners who worked in her family’s home and grounds “were always very happy” and that “they called my mother ‘the Angel of Auschwitz’” because her mother “was just a nice person.”
In The Commandant’s Shadow, Inge-Brigitt doubles down on her whitewashing of the past. She isn’t sure the Holocaust really happened, certainly not the way history books record it. Did so many people really die? she wonders. If so, why are there so many survivors? Her callousness is shocking, standing in sharp contrast to her brother who is willing to learn as much about his father’s actions as he can.
“It took me two years to get to the point of talking to Inge-Brigitt,” Daniela Volker recalls. When Inge-Brigitt first expressed her willingness to doubt the horrors of the Holocaust, Daniela was willing to believe that she misspoke and gave her opportunities to change her comments. “I kept trying to ask her again; I didn’t want to be unfair. But it was extraordinary that she wanted to share her Holocaust-denial thoughts.” They remain in the film, perhaps the last words she ever spoke about her father’s horrific legacy.
As Anita Lakser-Wallfish and her daughter Maya greet Hans-Jurgen Hoss and Kai, Anita notes the incredible irony of this moment. The son of the very Commandant who murdered her friends and relatives and who had power over her life every second of every day is sitting in her home, but he is a very different figure from the one we met in the beginning of the film. After learning so much about his brutal father, Hans-Jurgen is a changed man. He thanks Anita for her selflessness in inviting him in.
It’s a moving moment, and director Daniela Volker wisely allows us to observe the pleasantries these two very elderly people share as they chat and look at old pictures together. Maya described her mother’s invitation as “magnificent generosity” and hopes viewers will be inspired by her example
It’s a moving moment, and director Daniela Volker wisely allows us to observe the pleasantries these two very elderly people share as they chat and look at old pictures together. Maya described her mother’s invitation as “magnificent generosity” and hopes viewers will be inspired by her example
RISING ANTISEMITISM
The film was in its final production stages when Hamas staged its October 7, 2023 attack. Maya, still living in Germany, has found that anti-Jewish sentiment has skyrocketed there and feels the lessons of The Commandant’s Shadow are needed now more than ever.
“Life has profoundly changed,” Maya notes. “I’d always been aware of an unconscious bias in Germany before October 7; it’s one of the things I’ve struggled with in my transition to living here, the unconscious antisemitism. Now it’s not so unconscious. I’d never felt fear before. Now I’ve felt fear.”
She’s stopped wearing the Magen David necklace she inherited from her Aunt Renata, who perished in the Holocaust, noting that this feels like another theft from those who hate her and seek to do her harm.
Daniela Volker was also surprised to see anti-Jewish hatred rising in her native Germany. It reminds her of the stories about Nazi Germany that Anita told her. “What shocked me was that so many things Anita said before October 7 took on a new meaning. They were almost prescient. She was saying that Jews aren’t out of danger. I didn’t really understand it until we all saw it being live streamed.”
The film was in its final production stages when Hamas staged its October 7, 2023 attack. Maya, still living in Germany, has found that anti-Jewish sentiment has skyrocketed there and feels the lessons of The Commandant’s Shadow are needed now more than ever.
“Life has profoundly changed,” Maya notes. “I’d always been aware of an unconscious bias in Germany before October 7; it’s one of the things I’ve struggled with in my transition to living here, the unconscious antisemitism. Now it’s not so unconscious. I’d never felt fear before. Now I’ve felt fear.”
She’s stopped wearing the Magen David necklace she inherited from her Aunt Renata, who perished in the Holocaust, noting that this feels like another theft from those who hate her and seek to do her harm.
Daniela Volker was also surprised to see anti-Jewish hatred rising in her native Germany. It reminds her of the stories about Nazi Germany that Anita told her. “What shocked me was that so many things Anita said before October 7 took on a new meaning. They were almost prescient. She was saying that Jews aren’t out of danger. I didn’t really understand it until we all saw it being live streamed.”
“It’s Anita’s view that the Holocaust is something that can’t be put together with other genocides,” Daniela explains. Each experience has its own specific roots, and it’s crucial to learn from the Holocaust that all forms of Jew-hatred are wrong. “I wanted to let her have the last word: survivors won’t be around forever. She’s someone who has so much to say and has a razor-sharp intellect. I wanted to end it with her thoughts.”
The Holocaust began with hatred against Jews and isolating them as the “other. That seems to be happening again today. The Commandant’s Shadow is a dire warning of where anti-Jewish hatred leads.
The Holocaust began with hatred against Jews and isolating them as the “other. That seems to be happening again today. The Commandant’s Shadow is a dire warning of where anti-Jewish hatred leads.
