FEATURE

BLIND SPOT by André Heller & Othmar Schmiderer:

 

Traudl Junge, born in 1920, served as Hitler's private secretary from 1942 to the war's end. She typed his personal correspondence, was expected to eat lunch and have tea with him, and took down his last will and testament. Junge was imprisoned briefly after the war ended, but the amnesty for young people applied and she was denazified in 1947. Her memories had never been made public until director André Heller finally convinced the Munich resident to give an on-camera interview in the spring of 2001. The older I got, she explained, the more I was troubled by what happened, and the guilt I felt for having worked for this man and for liking him. (...) It's as if I can't help being angry at this childish young thing that failed to recognize a monster, and didn't realize what she had gotten into.

In a 90-minute documentary entitled, Im toten Winkel - Hitlers Sekretärin, conceived by André Heller and Othmar Schmiderer, the elegant, eloquent lady talks about the circumstances and coincidences which steered her toward this job, about Adolf Hitler as the private person and father figure she knew from the office, about the last days in his bunker, and about the confusion and anguish at having naively shut her eyes to reality which plagued her throughout the following years. According to the directors' plan the protagonist is virtually the only one to speak except for a few brief questions posed by the interviewer. From time to time she watches the footage of what has been shot so far and is confronted by her own statements. As the camera observes her, Ms. Junge listens to her image speak, viewing herself at a distance and examining a part of her past which is so difficult for her to forgive. I could have said no, she remembers about the selection process for her wartime job, but my curiosity was too strong. (ks)

 

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