My Father's Keeper: Children Of Nazi Leaders

An Intimate History of Damage and Denial.

At the end of the Second World War many Germans found themselves in the unfamiliar role of being incriminated, attacked and persecuted. Presenting themselves before Allied denazification hearings, many more were put on trial and condemned as active supporters and accomplices of the Nazi regime.

But while many of them managed to unburden themselves of their guilt, a small group had to face a reality which most Germans were spared: these were the children of the leading Nazi figures, who, as bearers of execrated names, faced a lifetime forever scarred by the actions of their predecessors. This is their story.

Based on truly remarkable research, this book is made all the more extraordinary because it was itself carried out by a team of father and son. In 1959 Nobert Lebert visited these men and women then in their early twenties, standing on the threshold of their adult lives. Forty years later, his son Stephan renewed contact, to discover how their lives had developed under the burden of their family name.