Uwe & Gabriela von Seltmann-The Future of the Past

 „Anything that has not been suffered and solved to the end will return."

Hermann Hesse

„It's always good to know what went down before you, because if you know the past, you can control the future." Bob Dylan

The Hebrew scriptures say that the sins of the fathers will be visited upon the children to the third and fourth generations. For German journalist and writer Uwe von Seltmann, this has been a lifelong painful reality. Challenged by an unknown Jewish man at a synagogue in Kraków, he began to research his grandfather's Nazi past -- and discovered that his grandfather was SS-man in Kraków and had participated in one of the greatest atrocities of the Holocaust. After publishing a book about this research Uwe met in Kraków Gabriela, the Polish granddaughter of Michał Pazdanowski who was killed at Auschwitz concentration camp in 1944.

Uwe and Gabriela fell in love, married and are now living together in Kraków, the town where Uwe's father was born. Two years ago they started to do research on the life and death of Michał Pazdanowski who was -- like Uwe's grandfather -- held taboo within the family.

The project „Two families, two pasts -- one future" is to demonstrate that it is possible for members of victim's and perpetrators' families to live together -- even if the past continues to have an impact on today's daily life: War, elimination and the Holocaust are just a few pages in a history book to many Germans aged 16 or 40 today. To the descendants of victims, however, the Nazi period is still present even 70 years after the attack of Nazi Germany on Poland -- present as a trauma.

The project is a challenge of social and political importance with an international dimension. No matter if it is in Ruanda, the Balkan States or in Germany/Poland, families of perpetrators and victims will meet again and again. The Seltmann and Pazdanowski families are an example for numerous other families who have to handle a burdening past.