Inheritance

Sins of the fathers
Monika is the real-life daughter of Amon Goth, the infamous commandant of the Plaszow concentration camp and a main subject of the "Schindler's List." Monika, a tall, rangy and emotionally fragile woman, has spent a lifetime coming to terms with the monster who was her father. In his film, she arranges to meet Helen Jonas-Rosenzweig, who along with her own mother was employed as a cook by Goth at Plaszow. The women hope for a cathartic encounter that will purge them of their shame and horror.

Oddly, Monika comes off as the more sympathetic of the two women. Her emotions are raw, unhealed and close to the surface. Helen has lived for years with the effects of the cruelty experienced and witnessed at the camp, and her story is smoother for frequent repetition. Both women clearly are victims, and both bear the scars and shame of the past. I felt viscerally how passing through the Holocaust changed lives forever, despite the passage of decades. And I saw how the evil of the...

Excellent, Moving Documentary
"Inheritance" is a documentary that tells the story of two women with very different scars from the World War II genocide of European Jews. Now in her 60's, Monika Hertwig has struggled a lifetime with what she learned at age 11 -- that her father, Amon Goeth, had not been killed in World War II like other soldiers, but was hanged as a war criminal when she was a baby. Over the years, she forced herself to learn more about Amon, but when Steven Spielberg's "Schindler's List" came out in 1993, Monika became sick with the truth. Helen Jones was 15 years old when she arrived with other Jews at the Plaszow Camp in Poland, which was both a work camp and a death camp. She was singled out by Amon Goeth to live in his house as a servant. Decades after the Holocaust, Helen's appearance in a German television documentary captured Monika's attention, and the two women arranged to meet at the Plaszow concentration camp memorial to the thousands who died there. Director James Moll ("The...

Poignant documentary of two women struggling to come to terms with their past
In director James Moll's "Inheritance", we are introduced to two women who have something in common - they are both connected to an infamous war criminal, Amon Goeth, commandant of Plaszow concentration camp during WW II, who was eventually hanged for war crimes.

Monika Hertwig was Amon Goeth's daughter and only child, though she never knew her father since she was born just before he was hanged. Despite this relative unfamiliarity with her own father, Hertwig is very much affected by his actions, carrying the burden of guilt all these years. Her most intense impression of him is Ralph Fiennes' portrayal of Amon in the movie "Schindler's List." When Hertwig sees an interview with Helen Jonas on television, a Jewish woman and former Plaszow inmate who had been a slave worker in Amon Goeth's household during the war, she decides to meet her to get a better understanding of who her father really was.

The documentary shows viewers these two women's journey - Hertwig...

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