The question seemed to catch the reluctant man with the unfortunate last name off guard.
The girl is part of a contingent of Israeli high school students taking a class trip.
They’re standing inside a building that’s now a museum exhibit on the grounds of what was the Auschwitz ?concentration camp.
Moments before, they were told the man in front of them was Rainer Hoess, the grandson of the commandant who managed the camp where more than a million Jewish men, women and children were killed.
The moment was captured in the 2012 documentary “Hitler’s Children,” a film that tells the stories of five descendants of high-ranking Nazi officials and their struggles in coping with the legacy they were born into.
A screening of the film, sponsored by the C.A.N.D.L.E.S. Holocaust Museum and Education Center in Terre Haute, was shown Wednesday night at Indiana State University.
Hoess, grandson of Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Hoess, was there.
Hoess, 49, who recently sold his business and devoted himself full-time to speaking out against right wing extremism and human rights violations, featured prominently in the film.
In the film, Hoess agrees to take his first trip to Auschwitz to see the idyllic gated villa he only knew from family ?pictures.
His father spent his ?boyhood at the house, playing among the trees and gardens with toys made by the workers in the death camp just beyond the wall, which Hoess called “The gate to hell.” In one scene, Hoess looks over the lush gardens of the villa, marveling.
“The dimensions of the garden fit delusions of grandeur perfectly,” Hoess muttered to his companion, Israeli journalist Eldad Beck.
Eva Mozes Kor, founding director of C.A.N.D.L.E.S., led the question and answer session with Hoess after the film.
Hoess travels the world speaking to students about the dangers of right wing ?extremism.
According to Hoess, neo-Nazi movements in Sweden and Germany are no longer minority groups.
In Sweden, Hoess said, the social democrats have 420,000 active members in a nation of 8 million. When someone in the crowd asked if Hoess thought something like the Holocaust could happen again, he didn’t blink.
“Oh yes it could happen again,” Hoess said. “It could happen anywhere.”
At the end of that scene in the documentary, in Auschwitz, an old man from the crowd of students speaks up.
He says he’s a Holocaust survivor and that he’s spoken to many of “Hitler’s Children.”
The man, named Zvika, makes his way to the front, where Hoess is, speaking as he goes.
“I tell the young people ‘You weren’t there,’” Zvika says. “Don’t feel guilty.”
When he makes it to Hoess, they embrace. Hoess cries.
