How are you to live, when you are the son of a Nazi murderer? Martin Pollack, a reporter and writer, decided to retrace his biological father’s footsteps to give back dignity and identity to his victims. Many of them were killed in Slovakia after the Slovak National Uprising. – Gerhard Bast, an elite Nazi, took part in the massacre of partisans and civilians after the suppression of the Slovak National Uprising near the towns of Banská Bystrica and Ružomberok. His biological son is Martin Pollack, an Austrian journalist and writer. In his book, The Dead Man in the Bunker, he followed Bast’s footsteps in Slovakia. Today, he only returns there through Michal Hvorecký, his friend, translator, and writer-colleague. In the film, Michal Hvorecký seeks out several almost forgotten places of memory related to Bast’s crimes and even living survivors of the Slovak National Uprising and witnesses of Bast’s slaughtering. Throughout this journey, he asks himself: “What does the message of the Slovak National Uprising – through which Slovakia rejected fascist ideology based on intolerance and hatred and took a stand on the right side of history – mean to the Slovak collective memory today?”

The screening will be followed by a discussion in Slovak. The discussion will also be interpreted into Slovak Sign Language.