Once upon a time the Himmlers were just a normal German family. There were three brothers - Gebhart, Heinrich and Ernst. Heinrich grew up to become the head of Hitler's SS, mastermind of the concentration camp system and chief perpetrator of the Holocaust.
When Katrin Himmler, Heinrich's great-niece, was 15, one of her school mates asked during a history lesson if she was related to the Himmler. "Yes", she stammered, at which there was a deathly hush in the classroom. As she grew older, Katrin gave her family history a wide berth, but with an Israeli husband and a half-Jewish son, she realises that she cannot evade the past so easily.
Katrin Himmler's cool but meticulous examination of the Himmler story reveals the gulf between the "normality" of bourgeois family life and the horrors perpetrated by one member.