dasungesagte - Lothar Herzog Film

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Most of the Germans who supported the 3rd Reich never spoke about their experience again after 1945. In almost every German family, the topic was a taboo: the unspoken.
The film takes a psychological approach to interviewing the subjects in order to show what they exactly thought, felt and did during that time, and how they view their involvement in retrospect. The result is a profound insight into Germany’s collective unconscious and how it has been repressed for decades. The testimonies are painfully honest, startling and unsettling, but sometimes also emotional and touching, and often full of moral ambiguity, from denial and repressed guilt to trauma and grief. We also interviewed German-Jewish survivors to highlight the blind spots that remain even today in the memory of those who supported the regime. The juxtaposition of the two perspectives is particularly revealing, and yields shocking insights.

What an extraordinary document bearing witness to the lives of members of the 1920s generation! The film brings the testimonies into narratives of their lives. Their tales are marked by defensive movements and justifications, as well as renewed emotional shocks and the admission that the monstrous and terrible things they experienced are stuck inside them and will remain unsaid. The terrible reality present in their recollection threatens to overwhelm the viewer.

Werner Bohleber

Psychoanalist and author of many works about Rememberance, Holocaust, Trauma

This important document reveals many things which had previously remained unsaid. Yet, in the end, many things still remain concealed. The traces and scars left by the Nazis‘ inhumane policies on victims and survivors, as well as on those marked by their role as perpetrators, appear non-verbally.

Alexandra Senfft

As a society, we are still not free from the legacy of the past, despite all the proudly outward-looking commemorative pomp.

Paul Brodowsky

Professor for creative writing (UdK). Author of the novel 'Fathers' (‚Väter')

But this is precisely what makes the film stand out: It achieves in a very impressive way, to let also the taboos shine through in what people say. As a composition and source, it is therefore a work of great value in the fight against forgetting.

Bernward Dörner

Historian and Professor at Center for Research on Antisemitism (TU Berlin)

AWARDS

’Special Mention’ at the Festival ‚Filmare La Storia‘ in Turin

(no public screening)

Jury statement:
“For the historical relevance of its subject, its undeniable educational value and its superb research. [The film] reconstructs the youth of an entire generation of Germans who grew up under the Third Reich and German National Socialist propaganda without glossing over its dark side.”