The Flat

Film (2011)
Directed by Arnon Goldfinger

Original Music: Yoni Rechter, Cinematography: Philippe Bellaiche and Talia Galon, Film Editing: Tali Helter-Shenkar

With Arnon Goldfinger, Hannah Goldfinger, Harald Milz, Tamar Tuchler, Edda Milz von Mildenstein, Michael Wildt, as themselves

Arnon Goldfinger's Grandparents — Arnon Goldfinger’s grandparents

A documentary about the dismantling of the director’s grandmother’s flat in Tel Aviv, and the discovery of an unexpected friendship between his grandparents and a Nazi SS officer and his wife before and after the war.

Arnon Goldfinger begins his film by documenting the beginning of the process of taking things out of his grandmother’s apartment. She has just died at the age of 98 and her apartment is filled with many pieces of memorabilia from her youth in Germany. What turns up, in the process of going through things, is a couple of Nazi newspapers. It turns out that, unbeknownst to Goldfinger’s mother, who figures centrally in the film, there was a continuing social relationship between her parents (Arnon’s grandparents) and a German couple who had sizable Nazi affiliations. It also becomes clearer, through Goldfinger’s investigations, what personal losses his family suffered during the war.

This is a film about memory, and about denial, and it is done in a subtly moving, slightly offhand way. The genius of the film is the combination of the informality of the interviews, combined with the intensity of Arnon Goldfinger’s underlying investigative focus and drive to uncover the story.

The remarkable thing – and one sees this most vividly in the case of Goldfinger’s mother – is an initial unconcern and associated vagueness about the complex past. One envisions this woman, Hannah, as a young woman earnestly building her life in Israel after the war, complacently ignorant of her parents’ life before the war.

Arnon Goldfinger, Director of 'The Flat' — Arnon Goldfinger
Director of “The Flat”

Equally forgetful and seemingly unconcerned is the daughter of the SS officer who was the friend of Arnon’s grandparents. She is very sweet and welcoming through most of the documented interactions, but the film shows quite well how, in her case, there is also a desire to willingly accept obscured memory even when challenged by fact.

In contrast, as revelations unfold, it is striking to see how Hannah’s awareness, and interest, gradually focuses and gels.

Arnon Goldfinger is a continuing incisive presence in the film, engaged in the interview process with all involved and displaying a motivated sincerity and compelling drive.

Additional notes containing spoilers

The film might have contained a bit more research about the career of the Nazi friend of Arnon’s grandparents. Apparently he was Eichmann’s superior at one point, which would have made him a pretty powerful Nazi. But there is no indication from the film why, for example, if he were so powerful, that he was not tried at Nuremburg. Goldfinger’s researches in East Germany showed that he never left the party and continued to be powerful and influential, but not accounting for why he was not included in Allied investigations and indictments after the war provides a big conceptual gap.

Goldfinger’s great-grandmother perished in the concentration camps. Despite that, his grandparents maintained a postwar relationship with this powerful Nazi and his wife. They probably thought, as did the Nazi’s daughter, that he had left the party early on and was not so powerful.

But, if he were powerful, why were there no other postwar accounting of his influence? Perhaps the record of his career got lost in an East German archive, but we never know that to be true because Goldfinger’s pursuit of the evidence goes only so far.

This is a curious family history, not a work of investigative journalism, so one cannot hold Goldfinger too accountable. But the interest of his family tale depends, to some extent, on this missing evidence which represents the weak link in this otherwise interesting and engaging film.

– BADMan

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