"Every father who is in a war, should think about his children. When they've grown up, when they see what their fathers did, they will be in the same situation that I am. And they never will live a normal life."
Those are the first words spoken in "Inheritance," a documentary airing on UNC-TV, and they're said by Monika Hertwig, a German grandmother who sets out on an emotional journey to reconcile the memory of the father she remembers with the father she discovered after his death.
Hertwig's father was Amon Goeth, the Nazi commander of a Polish concentration camp; if you saw "Schindler's List," he was the man played by Ralph Fiennes. If you didn't see that movie, let me make it plain: he was a sadist, a man who whistled after he murdered. He wasn't just following orders. He enjoyed killing.
After finding out her father's past, Hertwig seeks out Helen Jonas, who was Goeth's servant in the camp, now living in New Jersey. The two women — one the daughter of a perpetrator, the other that perpetrator's victim — meet and their encounter is heartbreaking, riveting, powerful.
Both women are brave. Jonas returns to Poland for the first time and has to confront a past that she can't forget and really, must remember. Hertwig has to confront her "inheritance," the sin's of her father and the truth of his life. It would be hard enough to hear your father described as a monster, but Hertwig gets the details.
This obviously isn't easy viewing. Besides the emotional terrain, there's archival footage of the hanging on Goeth. It's not gory, but it is a hanging.
Yet "Inheritance," directed by James Moll is worth the discomfort.
Because of UNC-TV winter pledge drive, "Inheritance" airs at 2am Saturday morning. You can also see it online in its entirety at http://www.pbs.org/pov/pov2008/inheritance/fullfilm.html
Assistant Features Editor Adrienne Johnson Martin would like to have her life turned into an animated cartoon. 
