Das wirst du nie verstehen

Anja Salomonowitz portrays three women from her family who were almost girls during the Nazi era. All three were significantly involved in her upbringing. They were on different sides, present history differently today and belong to different memory collectives: Hanka Jassy, their great-aunt, survived Auschwitz. Gertrude Rogenhofer, her nanny, was a socialist and supported her uncle in the resistance. Margit Kohlhauser, her grandmother, lived in Graz during the war. She did what most people did there: Nothing. The film confronts the family stories, examines the after-effects of history and the mechanisms of its transmission. While the grandmother insists that she cannot remember, Gertrude Rogenhofer tells of the holes that the deportation of Jewish acquaintances left in her life. “Of course people knew that people were being deported,” she says. Hanka, on the other hand, cannot find the words to express what she is unable to forget.