''2 or 3 Things I Know About Him'' (german: 2 oder 3 Dinge, die ich von ihm weiß) is a documentary film in which

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) **Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ger ...

director

Malte Ludin Malte Ludin is a German filmmaker. He was born in Bratislava, Slovakia in 1942. He studied political science at the Free University of Berlin. Malte was the youngest son of Hanns and Erla Ludin. His father served as ambassador to Slovakia durin ...

examines the impact of

Nazism Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Na ...

in his family. Malte's father,

Hanns Ludin Hanns Elard Ludin (10 June 1905, in Freiburg – 9 December 1947, in Bratislava) was a German diplomat. Born in Freiburg to Friedrich and Johanna Ludin, Ludin began his Nazi affiliation in 1930 by joining the party, and was arrested for his ...

, was the

Third Reich Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...

's ambassador to

Slovakia Slovakia (; sk, Slovensko ), officially the Slovak Republic ( sk, Slovenská republika, links=no ), is a landlocked country in Central Europe. It is bordered by Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east, Hungary to the south, Austria to the s ...

. As such, he signed

deportation Deportation is the expulsion of a person or group of people from a place or country. The term ''expulsion'' is often used as a synonym for deportation, though expulsion is more often used in the context of international law, while deportation ...

orders that sent thousands of

Jew Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""Th ...

s to

Auschwitz Auschwitz concentration camp ( (); also or ) was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It con ...

. Hanns Ludin was executed for war crimes in 1947.

Production

Malte Ludin did not undertake this film until after the death of his mother, Erla. The documentary does include clips of earlier interviews he conducted with Erla, however. Malte also interviews his sisters, who recall their father with some fondness.

Synopsis

A German filmmaker forces his siblings to come to terms with their father's Nazi past. Despite documentary evidence of Hanns Ludin's direct involvement in the deportation of thousands of Slovak Jews to their deaths, director Malte Ludin's sisters remain in various phases of denial about their dad. His older sister, Barbel, is a particularly staunch denier of any complicity on the part of the elder Ludin, who served as Adolf Hitler's ambassador to Slovakia during World War II. The film exposes the spectrum of reaction to the Holocaust among the post-war generation in Germany. While Ludin confronts his father, and Germany's, guilt full-on, his sister Barbel continually refuses to concede the most basic points about the mass slaughter of millions of Jews by the Nazis.

Release

''2 oder 3 Dinge, die ich von ihm weiß'' was first shown in 2005. In 2007, it was released as ''2 or 3 Things I Know About Him'' in

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

by the

National Center for Jewish Film The National Center for Jewish Film is a non-profit motion picture archive, distributor, and resource center. It houses the largest collection of Jewish-themed film and video outside of Israel. Its mission is to collect, restore, preserve, catalogu ...

. It opened at

Film Forum Film Forum is a nonprofit movie theater at 209 West Houston Street in Greenwich Village, Manhattan. It began in 1970 as an alternative screening space for independent films, with 50 folding chairs, one projector and a $19,000 annual budget. Ka ...

on January 24, 2007, and was paired with '' Torte Bluma'', an

English-language English is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family, with its earliest forms spoken by the inhabitants of early medieval England. It is named after the Angles, one of the ancient Germanic peoples that migrated to the is ...

short by

Benjamin Ross Benjamin Ross is a writer and film director, born in 1964, based in the United Kingdom. His most noted works are ''The Young Poisoner’s Handbook'', based on a real-life poisoning case, '' Poppy Shakespeare,'' and The Frankenstein Chronicles, ...

Reception

The film was received well by critics. , the film holds a 100% approval rating on

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

, based on six reviews with an average rating of 8/10.

References

External links

* 2000s German-language films Slovak-language films Documentary films about the Holocaust 2005 films German documentary films Documentary films about families 2005 documentary films 2005 multilingual films German multilingual films Slovak multilingual films 2000s German films {{hist-documentary-film-stub