LEGACY
70 years after the end of the war in Germany. They say post-war generations bear no blame, but they bear responsibility. Responsibility for ensuring something like this never happens again. But what does that mean?
Seventy years after the end of the war, we have a reached a junction in Germany – at least as far as the history of the war and Nazi period is concerned. Contemporary witnesses are dying out, but history lives on – as a legacy shared by generations and as the past that is part of each and every one of us. They say post-war generations bear no blame, but they bear responsibility. Responsibility for making sure something like this does not happen again. But what does that mean exactly? The film focuses on people who were born after the war, the second and third generation. Their fathers and grandfathers were perpetrators, sympathisers or even victims. They are all concerned with their legacy, professionally or through the history of their own family. They are therapists, historians, film-makers, state prosecutors, teachers, artists – and all of them the children and grandchildren of the generation of perpetrators and victims. Will they succeed in teaching future generations about the responsibility of history? A film about the topicality and relevance of the past.