The Flat – 2011 Israeli Documentary

Have you ever wondered if there are secrets in your family’s past you don’t know about? Even if you have never wondered, what would your reaction be if you found out your family was not who you thought them to be?

The Flat (2011 Documentary by Arnon Goldfinger) examines this premise as the Director, Arnon Goldfinger, and his family begin to clean out the flat in Tel Aviv that belonged to his grandparents Kurt and Gerda Tuchler, both immigrants from Nazi Germany. At first the family sorts through typical bric-a-brac of a home occupied for decades; clothing, books, grandmother’s large collection of gloves and other accessories. They really did not know what they were looking for, just sifting through the remains of a European past. But soon they begin to find letters, magazine clippings and photographs that lead them to uncover a shocking story. Their Jewish grandparents were very close friends with Leopold von Mildenstein, a head SS officer in the Nazi regime and the predecessor of Adolph Eichmann, and his wife. Goldfinger’s grandparents, in fact, took the couple to Palestine in the early 1930s as the officer investigated it as a suitable place to send German Jews.

The documentary follows along as Goldfinger finds and visits different family members, including the daughter of the von Mildensteins, and pieces together this confusing family history that nobody ever talked about and was a mystery to even his own mother, the Tuchler’s daughter. Some of the interviews with her were painfully awkward as a story she had no idea about, continued to unfold.

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