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	November 2002
		My Father's Keeper by Stephan Lebert, published by Abacus, 2001, rrp $24.00 reviewed by Betty Reeve
			In 1959 a German journalist interviewed the children of the top Nazi criminals Himmler, Göring, Bormann, Hess and Fritz Todt (armaments minister after Speer, whose job it was to make the mostly fatal allocations of forced labour). Forty years later his journalist son, Stephan Lebert, interviewed the same children, now in their sixties and seventies. Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be... Lebert explores the adult lives of the children, tracing their efforts to balance the effects of their fathers' beliefs and actions, with their abiding love for their parents; 'to remember in gratitude the fathers who gave us life'. Spiritual trauma How do people come to terms with such inner tension? Many of the elderly children, such as Wolf-Rudiger Hess, maintain to this day unflinching loyalty to their fathers' beliefs and reputations. Similarly, Gudrun Himmler is an active member of a support group for ex-Nazis. However there is also the tragic story of the youngest Bormann child suffering from emotional and spiritual trauma, who starved himself to death as a two-year-old. Perhaps the saddest tale is that of the son of notorious Hans Frank, the 'King of Poland', who was hanged with others after the Nuremberg trials. Niklas Frank Junior has led a life of drug-addicted despair due to his hatred of his father. Questions Martin Bormann Junior became a Catholic monk and a religious teacher. As a Christian, Bormann is the only one of the children who has led a life fulfilled by service to others. He says of Niklas Frank, 'I would like to meet him. Perhaps I can help him...' On a personal level Lebert's book serves as a reminder that as parents we irretrievably shape our children's lives, but on a wider level Lebert warns that any attempt to deny the crimes of the past will condemn us to repeat them. 'National Socialism answered certain questions. The answers were: anti-Semitism, xenophobia, cults of youth and body, exaltation for the small man, anti-intellectualism...' The questions may have changed but 'the answers are as current as ever'. My Father's Keeper makes sobering reading.